Timothy's Thoughts

L eadership is a favorite topic of people these days. I suppose we all want to think of ourselves as leaders and to feel in control. I follow a number of blogs, including that of Michael Hyatt. He often writes about leadership and I’ve noticed that some of the people who follow his blog write about leadership. There’s a lot to be said about leadership, but today I want to cover a topic on leadership that I don’t expect I’ll see on Michael Hyatt’s blog or that of most of the people who talk about leadership. To state it in the most simple terms, Leaders have no business drinking alcohol. I’m sure you recall that Paul gave the qualifications pastors and deacons in I Timothy 3 and Titus 1. Of the pastors he said “not given to wine” and of deacons he said, “not given to much wine.” And you may be thinking, “I know what it says, but I don’t really think that means pastors aren’t supposed to drink at all and it certainly doesn’t mean that other leaders shouldn’t drink.” You wouldn’t be alon...

T he final question from the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt is What are you doing to ensure you continue to grow and develop as a leader? I wish I could answer this by saying that I'm doing all of this great stuff. I wish I could say that I have this great mentor who is helping me become a better leader. I don't. I wish I had it all together as a leader. I don't. But you want to know what the really cool thing is? With all of my shortcomings and all the stuff I do that I shouldn't do or the stuff I don't do that I should, I see God molding me, shaping me to become something better. I figure that at the rate I'm going, I'll have this stuff all figured out about the time I close my eyes in death. But that's okay. I figure that's the whole point. When we get it figured out here and our faith grows strong, we move on to that home prepared for us on the other side. I don...

T he question today from the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt is What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time? Remember your place. In particular with ministers in a church, I would remind them that the Lord's people are like his sheep and leaders are only the undershepherds watching out for them. When someone hires you to watch his sheep, he is more concerned about the sheep than he is about you. We might also remember that the church is the Lord's Bride. I don't remember Dad getting upset about much of anything when I was growing up. O, I got my fair share of spankings, put I don't remember him being angry. But I do remember one time when I was a teenager that I said something I shouldn't have to Mom. I may have called her a name, but I don't think that was it. Dad and I were going to go somewhere. I remember having a conversation on th...

S ocial networking, is the topic from the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt Can you explain the impact, if any, that social networking and Web 2.0 has made on your organization or you personally? I hear that Web 2.0 is dying as a term. It is probably just as well, but the stuff it is will remain for a long time. A few weeks ago, we had a student in our Sunday school class who was absent. When I got home, I sent her a simple little message on Facebook saying something like "Missed you in class." I encounter people on a daily basis on various blogs that I will probably never meet in person. I spend far more time with social networking than I probably should, but I have yet to see any significant change in our church because of it. E-mail has finally caught on. It seems like our committees are doing more work through e-mail these days than we are doing when we meet face to face. I know Robert'...

N ow for the question from the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt that I should probably dread, but I shall rush in. Today's question is What is the one behavior or trait that you have seen derail more leaders’ careers? Adultery. That's not a trait, but it is certainly a behavior. I don't hold to the idea that people are born adulterers. Several (many?) years ago, just before my adolescent years, there was this pastor that I admired. He was working with a church that was small, but growing. They were meeting in a store front and working with college students. I remember us visiting their church frequently, primarily to give them support, I suppose. I was too young to know, but I thought him an elquent preacher. I remember one of his sermons, it was about David and Bathsheba. Looking back now, I can't help but wonder if it might have come from a guilty conscience, because he got involved wi...

T he 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt seem to get harder as we go along. Today's question is What is one mistake you witness leaders making more frequently than others? This one hurts, because I see myself making the same mistake. That mistake is a leader being so focused on becoming a great leader that he fails to lead. All the leadership books in the world won't do you a bit of good if you do nothing but read leadership books. Let me bring it down to a real world example. Writers are leaders, are they not? Whether we are writing a non-fiction book, a novel or a only a blog, we write hoping that our words will influence people. And the words of many writers do. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin is said to have started the Civil War. At the very least, it helped it along a little. So, every writer has the potential to be a leader through the words he writes. It stands to r...

W hat is the biggest challenge facing leaders today? is the question I'm answering today from the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt . That's a tough one. I look at some of the challenges and I can't help but think that things haven't changed in thousands of years. There's never enough resources. There are always people who don't get along very well. Then there are those people who get along too well. Just when you think you've gotten the resource problem licked, something changes and you don't know which direction you should be going anymore. It's just the same old stuff, repackaged. So, is one of these the greatest challenge? Is there something bigger? If I could name one thing that is the greatest challenge facing leaders, it is a lack of faith. Did you know there isn't a problem out there that a leader couldn't handle if he would just turn it over to God? ...

T he characteristics of leaders the topic of the day when answering one more question from the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt . What is one characteristic that you believe every leader should possess? Humility. The leader who is too proud to bow his knees and cry out to God is not fit to lead. The leader who does not see those he leads as being more important than himself is not fit to lead. If anyone had reason to boast, Paul did. He had seen heaven, but the Lord gave him a thorn in the flesh. Without it, Paul wouldn't have been fit for much. The thing that destroys most leaders is pride and it is one of the hardest things for a leader to fight. One can watch people take action at his command and it is easy to imagine that he is somehow more special than those he leads. Then the day comes when he leads them in a way he shouldn't lead. Maybe they follow. Maybe they don't, but his little e...

A nother couple of questions from the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt . Today they deal with new employees and hiring. How do you help a new employee understand the culture of your organization? I wish I had a profound answer to this one. I don't. Some time ago, I had a man take offense to something I did. He questioned whether I had violated Robert's Rules of Order . I suppose, if you want to take it down to the letter of the law, yes, I did, but I have grown accustomed in our organization for people to be more interested in working together in harmony than worrying about some of the finer details of Robert's Rules of Order . Had that culture been communicated to this person when he came onboard, the issue might not have come up and it would have saved us both a lot of heartache. But how do you communicate something that requires experience to learn? Write a story? Create a video? That'...

T oday’s question from the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt deals with communication. How do you or other leaders in your organization communicate the “core values”? They are being taught from the pulpit. They are being taught from the Sunday school classrooms. They are being taught by the Awana workers. And I hope that parents are teaching them in the home. That was short, so let’s look at another question. How do you encourage others in your organization to communicate the “core values”? When you place these questions in the context of a church, some of them seem almost too obvious. Is not one of the core values to communicate the core values ? As we communicate the core values we are also encouraging their communication. Do you set aside specific times to cast vision to your employees and other leaders? No, not usually. How do you ensure the your organization and its activities are aligne...

T oday I continue to answer the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt . At this point, this activity is growing a little tiresome. Many of these questions seem to be very similar with very similar answers. But this week we move on to the question, Which is most important to your organization—mission, core values or vision? When you are talking about a church, isn’t the mission to teach the core values ? I don’t exactly see how you can possibly separate the two. And if we take the biblical understanding of vision , which Proverbs 29:18 seems to imply is right up there with the Law, we can’t say that one is more important than the other. But I doubt Michael Smith meant it quite that way. In a business sense, the vision comes from the big boss, whomever that might be. Since Christ is the head of the church, vision would still be right up there with the law, even in the business sense, but let’s leave him out...

C ontinuing to answer the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt , this week’s question is, Where do the great ideas come from in your organization? I’ll tell you where they don’t come from. They almost never come from the leaders. Leaders are great people, but tend to get caught of in making the last great idea work. You get tunnel vision sometimes and then some ordinary person comes along and asks, “Wouldn’t it be easier if you did it this way?” Your natural tendency might be to tell them all the reasons they are wrong, but after you take the time to consider the idea and make adjustments for things they hadn’t considered, it might the one of the best ideas you’ve seen in a long time. Remember Moses? He got so busy trying to judge the people that he didn’t have time for anything else. His father-in-law showed up one day, observed what was going on and told him he ought to get some men to help him. Moses set up...

B y now, you may have noticed that I have been using Sunday as a day to post my answers to the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt . This week’s question is As an organization gets larger there can be a tendency for the “institution” to dampen the “inspiration.” How do you keep this from happening? When we consider what the “institution” is, what we find is that it is a structure that defines exactly how things ought to be done. There is a place for the institution. Some rules are important, especially for a large organization. A committee of three, for example, may not need a chairman to accomplish its task, but if there is a committee of fifty, you had better have a chairman and a secretary, just to keep things running smoothly. But there is no reason that has to dampen inspiration. Inspiration comes from responsibility. If I a person sees a problem and feels personally responsible for solving that problem,...

W hat are the most important decisions you make as a leader of your organization? asks Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee 1 . Every leader ends up making decisions that impact the whole organization. If you happen to be the President, your decision might mean the death of thousands. I, fortunately, have never been faced with such momentous decisions. In my opinion, the most important decision I have ever made involves whether I should make an executive decision about something or take it before the group. How you address that issue is fundamental to your view of leadership. The basic question is do you see your role as a leader as being the primary decision maker or as one who enables others to be the decision makers? Do you have enough confidence in your people’s abilities to allow them to make the decisions or do you believe there things that are too important to risk it? Is it the leader’s role to make the big decisions and leave the details to the w...

P roverbs 29:18 could be the verse of the Bible that is taken out of contest more than any other. This is especially true of Christian businessmen. Consider the reference Mike Hyatt made to it in 6 Steps to More Courage . What he says about it is fairly typical of how businessmen reference it or how some pastors reference it. We want our people to understand the importance of having a vision and following through, so we quote this great Bible verse that seems to say just that. “Where there is no vision, the people parish.” If you want to survive, you have to have vision and the courage to follow through, right? Yes, to a point, but in the words of Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride , “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” First, most people leave off the second half of Proverbs 29:18. The whole verse says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish; but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” When you read a verse like this, you need to re...

O n Friday, June 19, 2009, Mike Hyatt post 20 Questions to Ask Other Leaders . These questions were asked of him by Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee. I looked through these questions an I thought, It might be good to answer these myself, just to know how I as a leader would answer them. I don’t know that I will answer all of them for your benefit here, but that first question is one that I feel needs to be answered today, Father’s Day. Can you name a person who has had a tremendous impact on you as a leader? Maybe some one who has been a mentor to you? Why and how did this person impact your life? Everything I know about leadership I learned from my Dad. Everything . I’ve read books on leadership. I have spent time with many leaders. I have been in various positions of leadership. Taking all of that into account, I still look back at my successes in leadership and think I learned that from Dad . Or I look at my failures in leadership and I think I sh...