Numerous companies cut back on staff as the economy tanked. But the new pattern is that many companies are finding their cost-cutting measures, driven by staff reductions, have been so effective – i.e., profitable – that they are now planning further rounds of personnel reductions. Still other organizations, convinced they can cut back no further, now believe a lean work force is a productive work force and thus do not plan to rehire laid off employees or fill vacant positions. These scenarios spell financial hardship for a large number of unemployed or underemployed workers.

How will churches handle this? Hopefully, by doing what they can to support their people who are struggling financially and by expanding their lay ministry efforts. As churches experience a continuation of diminished revenue during a period of increased congregational needs, the pressure to replace departed staff with volunteer labor will grow.

Without meaning to be insensitive to the difficulties experienced by those who are casualties of the reduction in fulltime and part-time ministry jobs, the diminished number of and reliance upon professional clergy is in the long-term best interests of the body of Christ. In the midst of this transition it is important for the body of believers to honor and assist those who have lost paid ministry positions. But for the overall health of the Church, recognizing laypeople’s gifts and the value of using those abilities in service to others can only strengthen the Church. The transition to a more streamlined, lay-led church body is a painful shift but one that will bear long-term fruit for the Church if properly understood, orchestrated, and supported.

An article in the Wall Street Journal published earlier this month pointed out that there are now thousands of businesses who employ chaplains to facilitate on-premises faith activity. While some of those chaplains serve primarily as on-site counselors, a large share lead groups of employees in times of worship, Bible study, prayer, and service activities. One of the reasons that businesses foster the blending of faith and work is that it produces a better work environment, higher productivity, and a deeper sense of team engagement. These outcomes, of course, enhance the bottom line, causing many business leaders to conclude that a faithful workforce can be a more profitable workforce. Organizations such as Tyson Foods have led the way in this regard, employing about 120 chaplains to minister with Tyson’s 117,000+ employees across the nation.

One of the controversies, of course, is whether or not a group of believers meeting together during their lunch hour to worship, pray, study and share their lives constitutes a “church.” Some say it is simply an addendum to participation in a more conventional form of “church life,” others argue that such meetings are the church in practice, and many people avoid the conversation altogether, not sure what the Bible says about what it means to be the Church.

The fact that such activity in the marketplace even raises controversy speaks to the shallowness of our understanding of concepts such as the kingdom of God and the body of Christ. We often seem to let traditions define our activities and standards, without exploring the genesis of those traditions and seeking to disentangle tradition from biblical mandate.

I am encouraged by the existence and growth of marketplace ministries of all sorts, ranging from the kind of corporate churches led by chaplains to the presence of ministries happening on sports fields around the nation. Some critics contend that these groups cannot be considered genuine churches because of various factors: no formal membership is required, there is no set time for their meetings, they lack an identifiable pastor, they do not engage in the standard series of conventional church activities, etc. But it seems that the New Testament provides a less complex standard for us to meet than we have set for ourselves. I guess your reaction to organic forms of church depends on where you draw your criteria from: scripture or tradition.

Other critics of marketplace ministries (as well as other non-traditional, more organic forms of church) opine that the leadership and teaching provided in such churches is inadequate. While our research certainly shows instances where house churches, marketplace ministries, and other organic church forms lack solid biblical teaching or effective leadership, the research also shows that such cases are not the norm. A different way of looking at the matter is to recognize that thousands of conventional churches also suffer from poor teaching or mediocre leadership. Organic churches do not own that market!

Would you agree that God is less hung up on the form of our meetings and means of engagement with Him than we are? The scriptures give us tremendous latitude in methods but little if any in the message. The current agitation among many conventional church leaders about the existence of non-traditional forms of spiritual community suggests that is not a popular perspective, whether it is biblical or not.

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?

This is a superficial use of the data, ignoring the reasons for the apparent discrepancy between atheists and born agains. For instance, merely looking at the divorce numbers overlooks the fact that atheists have less divorce because they marry less often; they tend to substitute cohabitation for marriage, and those relationships have a shorter duration than marriages.

Another common error in such arguments is that of assuming that being Christian is synonymous with being morally perfect. As any thinking Christian will admit, we remain sinners – aware of our moral failings, convicted of our moral imperfections, and seeking to raise our game to a higher level. I am not aware of any mature Christians who claim moral superiority over other people – that would be judgmental, which itself is a moral failing – but know many who lament the fact that Americans (be they atheist, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish or otherwise) are not living up to a higher moral standard.

Another dimension of the atheist arguments I have recently read is that there is no standard to live up to; morally, in that view, is a personal choice, based on their determination of what serves their needs best. To me, that’s really scary since that renders murder, rape and other atrocities morally viable if so determined by personal preference.

It is abundantly easy to identify social statistics that support any desired perspective. What’s harder is to offer a compelling, comprehensive and viable worldview that does not have God’s moral standards at the center.

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?

I recently encountered a thought provoking quote regarding the impact that we can have on children. Apparently it’s a Chinese proverb. “A child’s life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark.” That raises several questions I’d love for you to ponder with me.

1. What pieces of paper are you intentionally leaving a mark upon?
2. What pieces of paper are you marking without much intentionality or purpose?
3. When was the last time you stopped to examine the marks you have made?
4. How satisfied are you with the marks you have left behind?
5. Who else, thanks to your permission, is leaving marks on the papers that you influence? (Personally, I’m thinking about media figures, teachers and coaches, and peers.)
6. How satisfied are you with the nature of the marks made by those others?
7. What have you learned about how you engage with and influence young children and adolescents? And how have you altered your engagement behaviors to reflect those lessons?

I don’t know about you, but for me, spending a few minutes reflecting on such questions is a pretty sobering experience. As much as I like to think I’ve applied some insights from research and experience in my dealings with young people, my objective analytical side suggests otherwise.

The research is pretty compelling in showing that the marks made on a person’s life before the age of 13 are virtually indelible. The early impressions we make go a long way toward shaping a person’s worldview, relationships, dreams, expectations, and core reality. Many of us treat our opportunities to affect a young person quite cavalierly – to their detriment as well as ours. It takes great discipline to look at each of our interactions with young people as moments of influence, perhaps even as defining moments, and to act with great poise and purpose. How we handle those moments of opportunity will go a long way toward developing the Church of the future.