Brief Moments

      On a daily basis this spring of 2014 I far too often see a spirit of fear driving the attitudes and behavior in customers, co-workers and organizational leadership.  It's often not the larger global awareness causing concern regarding Putin's dubious expansion into Ukraine, the new outbreaks of Ebola, Al Qaeda threats, the Syrian war, Afghanistan or any other ongoing/emerging crisis far from home.  Most are too unaware of what's happening globally because our lives are too busy trying to survive. Paying attention requires too much additional learning and understanding which might require doing something.      Some of this fear stems from a completely dysfunctional U.S. government bent on opposing anything the other party desires or focusing so tightly on extremely uneducated philosophies that at no level can they be trusted to do what's in the best interest of citizens.  The perception that our government only works for large cor...

    My love for studying leadership developed over twenty years of community change, human development, and self employment while collaborating, building consensus and creating opportunity. The literature and thoughts regarding leadership are ongoing and continually reworked:   Transactional Leadership , Transformational Leadership , Authentic Leadership , Servant Leadership , Values-based Leadership , Strengths Based Leadership, Positive Leadership and on and on. Sometimes different labels are just a way to publish new books and measures of certain leader qualities but there are similarities across the spectrum.  Just different terminology with associated meanings.      Certainly some part of my dissertation will contain a leadership element, just as the master's thesis did but not because we need more studies or data relating to leadership. As a species we've long ago crossed the knowledge threshold of what real leadership is...

Stephen Tremp      Pieces of this have come out in many posts since Stephen Tremp convinced me to join the A-to-Z Challenge last year.  95% of what I write is sitting on hard drives, floppy discs, or old type written paper which requires enough resources to hire somebody to convert.  Probably in the next 18 months that happens. And yes, I know that using THIS as my T word in the challenge is weak but the 6 jobs working schedule with the Phd puts Blogs in the background of priorities. Forgive me for the length in sentence structure and in total. Kay Redfield Jamison      Having listened for years to National Public Radio in the car and online I am familiar with the This I Believe Series and although reading the individual philosophies contained therein is interesting it does not at all compare to what one experiences when hearing the original writer speak their own words.    Written language is valuable, but ...

     Recently our congregation participated in our second annual Do Something day immediately following a shortened Sunday service.  Since arriving at First Church of God five years ago, lead pastor David Colp has had a heart for community transformation within the overriding vision of transforming lives through Christ.  A thousand or more members of all ages spread out through the area working on a wide variety of projects last year and again this year.  We were asked to keep track of all the hours we volunteered over the course of the year (something I didn't do well) as we reached for over 50,000 hours, near $1,000,000 in time and talent donations to the area.  Treasure gets donated as well by many, but that's a different story and not different from many congregations of varied but common theology. 2011 Team      I had the honor of leading a group working at the United Way of Southwest Michigan (UWSM) both yea...