Several things strike me about this absurd situation.

First, Mr. Obama ran for the office of President of the United States, not President of Christianity, not President of Heaven. Given the biblical injunction that none of us are to judge the heart and soul of others, it strikes me as personally irrelevant and biblically beyond my call of duty to ascertain whether he is or is not a Christian. If he claims to be a Christian and actually is, that’s wonderful; but, in the end, he answers to God, not us. If he claims to be a Christian and is not, that’s too bad; but, in the end, he answers to God, not us.

The aggressive judgmentalism surrounding this matter is suffocating. Call me naïve, but I am convinced that God can defend Himself and His territory; He doesn’t need me to cast doubt on the integrity and stated commitments of others in order for Him to retain control of the universe. My job is to pray for the president, regardless of what his faith is, and as Paul reminds us in Romans 13, to obey the leaders the Lord allows in public office.

Second, once again Christians are being portrayed – with some justification – as people who are against things. I think the world is now sufficiently appraised of what we stand against. Perhaps it’s time to put up a positive front and show them what we are for by demonstrating the love of Christ in all that we think, say, and do.

Third, we’d better figure out how to handle concerns about the potential of people who believe differently than us becoming president. (No, that’s not a sly way of insinuating Mr. Obama is not a Christian.) Once the mid-term elections are behind us and the 2012 presidential race begins in earnest (i.e., November 10), Mitt Romney will likely be the early frontrunner for the Republican nomination. If you don’t already know, you will hear plenty about how Mr. Romney is a devout Mormon. While our surveys suggest that even in this post-everything culture Mr. Romney is unlikely to make it to the White House (largely because of his choice of faith), he will be a formidable presence and his faith will emerge as a bigger issue than it was in his 2008 bid. It is ironic that the Republican Party – i.e., that which is most closely associated with evangelicals and other conservative, Bible-believing people – is the one that must ponder what to do about a legitimate candidate who is associated with a faith group that most evangelicals and many conservative Christians consider to be a cult.

How will Christians respond to Mr. Romney’s candidacy? I think the answer to that question may wind up being more important than who gets elected president in 2012.

I don’t know about you, but all of the wasted energy and public anguish that we Christians devote to pursuing marginal concerns is awfully tiresome. When do we get to the part where we focus on cleaning up our own house and demonstrating genuine humility? At what stage do we impress the world with the abundance of our love, generosity, and tenderness? When do we abandon the witch hunts and the lust for power in favor of justice, service, and compassion?

I guess I don’t really care if Mr. Obama (or Mr. Romney) is Christian, Muslim, Jew, atheist, Hindu, Mormon, or Scientologist. I simply want a true leader who honestly reveals what he/she believes, offers a full-blown vision for the future, makes good on his/her promises, and serves the people in harmony with the values that have made this country great. All things being equal, I’d probably prefer a genuine Christian to someone who is not a devoted follower of Christ. But, then again, all things are never equal and past experience has shown that being a committed Christian is not necessarily a recipe for successful political performance.

Shockingly little has been made of this decline. I think the widespread ambivalence about that decrease is, in itself, stunning. Perhaps the widespread disinterest reflects the confluence of several factors: people’s growing disinterest in organized religion, the frog in the kettle syndrome (the decline has been consistently small each year, but over the course of time has added up to a substantial loss), the frequent denial of bad news by church leaders, the comparatively larger short-term gains and losses of other institutions capturing the imagination of the media, etc.

I’d encourage you to pause and think about the significance of losing people’s confidence. A leader can only sustain forward movement if he/she has the confidence of the people being led into battle. Now, if a church is simply providing a safe comfort station for hurting people, that’s one thing. But if a church is intent upon facilitating a moral and spiritual revolution, recognizing that doing so is a declaration of war on current cultural preferences and values, the loss of confidence is a devastating setback. And – strategically – such confidence cannot be restored by simply waiting for the tide to turn; church leaders must intentionally win back people’s confidence through visionary leadership, holy character, and guiding people in transformational ministry efforts.

Barna Group research has shown that during the past decade, not surprisingly, the Roman Catholic Church has suffered the greatest loss of public confidence. But the Protestant Church has struggled, too. The two generations of adults (Busters and Mosaics) now assuming a substantial share of positions of leadership in the Church think and live very differently than their predecessors – and have divergent expectations related to faith, institutions and leaders. No church is immune to the morphing needs and expectations that challenge all organized groups.

Today’s a good day to realistically assess how much trust and confidence your community has in your leadership and in that of your ministry. Ask yourself questions about people’s understanding of, passion for and engagement with the vision; the efficacy of the strategy you rely upon to pursue the vision; people’s ownership of the proposed process for transforming the world; the efficiency with which your ministry engages the world; the effectiveness and openness of your communications about the cause and your progress; and the utility of the measures you rely upon to evaluate transformation.

The overlooked quality is that Steinbrenner learned from his mistakes. Toward the end of his 37-year reign, even before his health issues shifted the operational decision-making authority to his executive team, he interfered much less with the running of the organization. He discovered the importance of allowing the professionals he hired to be left alone to do what they were hired to do. They answered to him for their performance in no uncertain terms, but as time went on he tinkered less and less with the numerous peripheral decisions that went into running the ballclub.

One of his best qualities, I think, was his insistence on winning. Now some who read this will blanch at that statement, offering the “winning isn’t everything” view. If that’s your mind set, then I’d ask you to think of it this way: insert your preferred bottom line for “winning ballgames.” Perhaps you believe that facilitating the activity of people of character is the ultimate outcome. Maybe it’s winning people to Christ. It might be running a business with integrity or profitability. Fill in the blank. My point is that George was the leader, he established a well-defined vision of success, and he let nothing stand in his way in order to achieve it.

When Steinbrenner bought the team, it was in disrepair: they had not won a championship in 11 years and had lost the competitive fire that had made the Yankees baseball’s most storied franchise. Steinbrenner bought the team from CBS for $8.7 million in 1973. Today, that same team is worth $1.6 billion. There are various reasons for that explosion of value, but the most significant is that he had a clear and compelling vision and he put all of his resources behind it. During his 37-year era the Yankees won 16 division titles, 11 pennants and 7 world championships. Did he do it with the same style you or I would recommend? Probably not. But you cannot help but be struck by the impact of a single-minded quest to make a vision come to pass. Style is negotiable; vision is not.

I believe it is possible to learn something from every leader you observe, whether they are tremendous, awful or somewhere in-between. The Steinbrenner years provide a library of lessons on leadership, but I think none of those lessons shouts for attention as loudly as the importance of a clear vision and the passion to enforce it.

How does Steinbrenner’s single-mindedness about something that is arguably insignificant – professional athletes winning baseball games – compare to your vision and commitment related to ministry? Without that vision as the centerpiece of his reign, the Yankees would have been just another team with a wealthy, loudmouthed, often obnoxious owner. A compelling vision changes everything. What’s your story?

I am a big believer in consciously developing your worldview in order to (hopefully) reflect God’s view of the world. But I wonder how many times a day the worldview I have embraced serves as an excuse to ignore uncomfortable viewpoints – that is, a set of attitudes that use my worldview as a reason to experience reality through a limited and self-defeating filter.

Ours is an age of sound bites and symbolism. When we hear a particular name or idea we often have an immediate response: either our defenses go up or we open up to the coming ideas based on the mental image we have of the communicator. It is a black-and-white view of the world, as if people of differing ideological or theological viewpoints lack valid ideas. So much of our screening is based on the image of the person that we possess. Wary of wasting time, we protect ourselves from ideas that we assume will clash with our own. Weary of ideological conflict, we openly entertain ideas that coincide with our own and carefully block the rest.

That moment of enlightenment reminded me of the interviews I had conducted with leaders for the Master Leaders book I’d written not long ago. One of the greatest lessons I’d gleaned from the 30 high-performance leaders interviewed for the book related to the importance of listening. I recalled that listening was ranked as the most important skill of a leader. And Ken Blanchard’s comment that you cannot listen effectively unless you’re willing to have your mind changed by what you hear caused me to reconsider how good a listener I am. (Obviously not as good as I need to be, if you’re wondering.)

Upon reflection it became obvious that one of my shortcomings was that I had limited “listening” to the process of hearing the spoken word. I had ignored the written word as communication that we listen to, as well.

After catching myself in that indefensible act of censorship, I returned to the beginning of the article by my liberal colleague and tried to read it as objectively as possible. To my surprise, he had some intriguing things to say – not necessarily views that I chose to embrace, but perspectives that were more reasonable than I would have given him credit for prior to reading the piece. Ah, another humbling moment…

There are certainly limitations as to how far you can take this argument. For instance, the time crunch is a reality: you simply cannot devote time to listen to every nuance of every competing argument on every topic that intersects with you life. You would be deluged with information, mired in continual debates, and never get anything done. (Which, as some wags might point out, qualifies you to be a member of Congress.) But I wonder how much wisdom I miss by screening out too much of the content that I assume will be of no value based solely on cues such as the leanings of the author or the location of an article. Are there helpful insights to absorb by hearing from people who are ideologically distant from you? Does selective listening, efficient though it may seem, produce diminishing returns?

One of the intriguing aspects had to do with the presence of local politicians. Because the event took place five days before the state’s primary election, we had invited sitting officials as well as candidates to attend the event. They were aware that they would not be introduced and would not be given any time to address the crowd, since the event was a benefit for the service agency, not a political rally. As best I could tell, we had exactly one candidate (who is also an incumbent official) present. He did nothing to draw attention to himself. And he actually stayed awake throughout my entire presentation on why poverty lingers and how we might attack it.

At one point during the presentation I noted that we are not likely to defeat poverty without committed leaders – those who do not just campaign against poverty (after all, who’s for it?) but who are truly devoted to doing what it takes to overcome poverty as efficiently and quickly as possible. It’s a matter of justice: doing what’s right simply because it’s right. I encouraged those in attendance to sharpen their focus to listen and watch for cues that suggest a public figure isn’t using the issue of poverty for political advantage but is fully committed to paying the price and staying the course to ensure positive outcomes.

After the event ended, the incumbent official came forward to introduce himself to me. We bantered about some of the strategies the city was employing to combat poverty. And then an unexpected thing happened. He asked if I was aware of one of the newest strategies the city was introducing. I was not. He explained it and talked about the very positive results that were emerging in the early stages of the rollout and how many of the city’s poor people had benefitted in some lasting ways. And I noticed that he began to tear-up as he described the wonderful changes that were happening in those broken lives.

I had my cue.

When I did the interviews for Master Leaders last year – a book that conveys the leadership wisdom of some of America’s greatest leaders – I was reminded that whenever I encounter a leader who is genuinely passionate about serving people, especially in an area of shared passion and concern, the ball is then in my court to do whatever I can to support that leader. It’s easy to be cynical about political leaders, but one of the life lessons I derived from working in state government many years ago for a state legislator and Speaker of the House was that there are numerous people in public office who really do want to serve people. That blew my mind – and changed it. But they cannot lead well if the rest of us fail to serve them as willing and dedicated followers. If only more of us realized the power of passionate followership.

The day before the game I received a thank you for the purchase and the team’s best wishes regarding my experience at their ball park. I attended the game, which was enjoyable, but then the most interesting part of the experience unfolded. The evening of the game (it was an afternoon event) I began receiving a series of very positive emails from them. The first one was a great recap of the game, along with video highlights, which served as a reminder of the pleasurable experience they had provided. The next was another thank you for attending the game and asking if I had any suggestions for how they could improve my next encounter with them – service, food, parking, etc. The third was a link to their ticketing process, enabling me to buy tickets for upcoming games.

Using the simplest of technologies (e-mail) the team helped me to feel like they wanted to take care of me and was willing to go beyond taking my money. They provided a sense that they cared about my experience and gave me with some nice post-game benefits (the recap and video highlights, not to mention a discount on team merchandise). Sure, it’s all marketing but it was done in such a way that I would not hesitate to return to that city and attend a game next time I’m there.

It made me wonder how well we use the technology available to us when people attend or visit our churches. Do we, as the leaders of the church, take the initiative to engage people in an ongoing sense of community and dialogue about the church experience? How tough would it be for a church to pursue feedback, or to send an e-mail with highlights of the sermon (or, if copyright restrictions don’t come into play, the worship music)? How many teachers invite congregants to participate by sending ideas for forthcoming sermons? The list of possibilities for such engagement is endless.

I don’t see many churches doing this. Granted, it’s more work and could be construed as intrusive. You’d have to get contact information. Tech-driven marketing never makes up for the absence of the personal touch. And maybe it doesn’t add a sense of value to people’s experience. How has your ministry used technology to facilitate meaning follow-up? How have people responded? How do you figure out whether it’s worth the effort? What are some approaches you hope to try in the future?

What do you make of this “moral authority” argument? It’s a sticky discussion because we are all immoral to one degree or another: we all sin and are therefore immoral (i.e., engaging in bad or illicit behavior, based on accepted standards). At what point does one’s sins, especially if they have been repented for and the sinner has taken steps to address and transform his behavioral patterns, get forgiven? Does forgiveness empower the sinner to re-enter his former bailiwick?

I’ve read a bunch of the books on these matters, but still find that it is not as black and white as some people apparently believe. And I’ve encountered the tough questions about who is justified in returning to their past livelihood. For instance, I would not want a pedophile to return to teaching in an elementary school classroom, even if they are “reformed.” I would not want a drug addict returning to his job as a pharmacist.

But I’m not as clear-cut in my thinking regarding how to respond to a humble, repentant and “rehabilitated” servant of God who wishes to return to share what he has learned on the most difficult part of his journey. After all, nobody is forced to listen to that person’s teaching, or to accept his leadership. When the person is a gifted servant who seems to honestly seek a chance to serve God again by using those gifts, and is willing to serve under the authority of moral people, do we have grounds for refusing him the opportunity?

Personally, I am moved by the degree of forgiveness Ted’s wife, Gayle, has shown toward him. I am affected by the willingness of his children to stand by him. I am struck by the scriptures challenge me to forgive others, seventy times seven, and to worry more about the log in my own eye than the specks of dust in the eyes of others. Ultimately, I want to be wise and discerning, but to remember that I am rarely qualified to throw the first stone at another sinner.

I find such simplicity and directness in Mr. Hill’s response unusual and refreshing. He is a 7-time All-Star himself, a man of great talent and someone seeking to become a champion in his sport before he retires. Imagine such a person admitting that he has been so dominated by his opponent he doesn’t even know how to distinguish good from bad! If only we had more leaders who were willing to be so honest.

How tiresome it is listening to leaders pontificate on things about which they know nothing. During my media training for publicity tours, I’ve been taught that you should never say you don’t know the answer to a question posed by an interviewer. The standard ploy is to provide an answer to something you do know, even if it does not address the question that was asked. I have used that strategy on a number of occasions, but every time I do so I become uncomfortable with the practice: after all, it is meant to portray me in a way that perhaps I do not deserve to be portrayed. It may be clever, but is it honest? Is it better to be seen as knowing something when you don’t, or to admit to ignorance and be seen as – well, ignorant?

This reminds me of a quote from George Orwell: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” Are we living in an era where we need many more leaders who will engage in such “revolutionary” behavior, regardless of the consequences? Do we need to train followers to embrace such revolutionary acts because of the benefits of having leaders who choose integrity over self-preservation?

When I began Barna Research Group (as it was originally known), our first significant client was Disney. It was odd because Disney’s VP of Research called me out of the blue. The call was placed by their research director, a woman I had previously worked with at a large media research firm. After some discussion, she asked if I’d be interested in taking on some of Disney’s work. Trying to get a toehold in the research industry, I was ecstatic, but asked her why she’d offer such a privilege to a virtually non-existent company. “Because I know I can trust you,” was her reason. Upon further questioning, she described her observation of my honesty in telling clients the truth rather than what they wanted to hear, and a commitment to conducting research properly, even if it cost more or took extra time. She said that in her experience with research suppliers those qualities were hard to find.

Fast forward 10 years to a hospital in Denver. I have an incurable disease that affects my vocal cords and requires periodic surgery. (Eighteen operations and counting…) I had heard about a surgeon in Denver who had a “cure” for the disease. I flew to Denver to discuss his process and his past results, which were very impressive. I decided to allow him to use the treatment on me, which was administered during the usual surgery. To make a long story short, I nearly died on the operating table. Afterwards, confused about the outcome and searching for an explanation, I dug more deeply into his research process only to realize that the numbers he trumpeted were grossly inaccurate. I had trusted him because of his pedigree, his position and his presentation of the “facts.”

Think about your role as a leader, and the importance of having people’s trust. Why do they trust you? Have you earned it based on stellar character and performance or is it based on their unfounded hope that you will justify their faith in you?

Over the years I have thought about how we can earn people’s trust. The best lessons for me have come by studying God, whom I have learned to trust implicitly. I had to ask myself why that is. Sure, the scriptures say we should trust God with all our heart, but I’ve been burned too often to blindly trust anyone anymore. So what makes God trustworthy?

Your experience may lead to different conclusions, but my trust in Him is based on the fact that He is very clear and upfront about His values and expectations backed up by His consistency. He has proven to be predictable and reliable in what He has communicated, how He has treated me, and in His responses to people throughout history. He has earned my respect and trust through such consistency. Even when I do not agree with His decisions, I have to admit that they are consistent with His expressed ethics and innate character. And it is much easier to trust someone who has made his non-negotiables clear through simplicity and repetition.

I have also been moved to trusting Him because it seems evident that He genuinely cares about me. Trust relates to the belief that the other person wants what is best for both of us. That has become an important insight for me. Over the years I have interacted with business partners and ministry leaders who have been honest and upfront, but whose purposes are consistently selfish and competitive. I know they will do whatever it takes to win what they seek.

Another way of stating these things is that the Lord’s trust has been earned by His character and performance, and His performance is predictable on the basis of His character. The consistency between the two tells me that He can be trusted even in situations in which I have no direct experience with how He will behave; what I have experienced causes me to believe it is reasonable to have faith in Him.

By the way, I think the trust issue is one with which President Obama is struggling in ways different than he expected. When he was elected, the public gave him what we might call “tentative trust” – belief in him based on what they had experienced during the campaign, but not sufficiently deep as to give him free reign. Believing he had a broad mandate to change government and lifestyles in the U.S. the president began pursuing sweeping and expensive reforms in the midst of financial collapse and uncertainty, without having earned people’s trust. After all, he had never governed anything in his life, he was black (i.e., representing a group of people previously not trusted at that level of leadership), and his agenda was only vaguely clear in its implications. Had he moved at a more moderate pace, perhaps he would be facing less opposition and arrived in a place of “earned trust.”

Personally, I wonder if I have earned trust in leadership situations by being a man of consistent character, one who is worthy of respect and loyalty based not on my words but on my actions. It’s one of those questions that is worth pondering on a regular basis.

Recent surveys have shown that a majority of voters are comfortable with the Republicans for playing the role of naysayer in the face of an aggressive push by Democrats toward expanded government and government spending. The media, whose liberal tendencies have been well-documented, has positioned Republicans as negative and unproductive because of their efforts to block the Democratic wish list from becoming law.

At the very heart of leadership is the determination to remain true to your vision. A crucial dimension of staying true is being able to say “no” to things that are do-able and sometimes even popular. The Republican vision may not be easy to discern these days, but it is certainly vastly different than the dreams of the Democrats now in power. Regardless of which approach you prefer, we have to appreciate the consistency of the Republicans for resisting government expansion as much as we appreciate the vision behind the Democratic dream of expansion. The challenge to us as individuals is to clarify in our own minds which vision reflects our own view of what is best for society. Neither party is bad for pursuing its vision. It is our constitutional responsibility to study those divergent strategies, embrace one of them, and get involved in the governing process.

At the same time, we have to be wise consumers of information and reject the temptation to accept media characterizations, often supported by public statements from one party or another, that Republicans are somehow inferior lawmakers because their primary response over the past few months has been the “no” vote. First, a more careful reading of the Congressional Record (which can be boring and long-winded but also revealing and insightful) indicates that Republicans have offered more than just “no” votes. Second, with media bias so entrenched – on both ends of the ideological continuum – that most Americans are no longer even aware of its existence, we have to become re-sensitized to the dramatic effect media filtering and embedded ideology can have on our perspectives. Third, we might be well-served by demanding a more objective reporting of events and perspectives in exchange for giving the media our attention and trust.

The democratization of information in America comes with a cost: i.e., that you and I must do a better and more diligent job of seeking the truth of events than what might be delivered to us by subjective media sources. Further, we have to take seriously our responsibility as the protectors and developers of our nation’s destiny by understanding the value and the power of “no” as much as the value and power of promoting new ideas and laws. Both of those approaches can serve us well and both reflect a different vision of leadership.