MInistry Leader's Update 2/6/08

“Top Ten”

About 15 years ago Hans Finzel wrote a book “The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make”. Number 10 is “Failure to Focus on the Future”. Here are some of his observations:

 The future is rushing at us at breakneck speed
 A leader’s concentration must not be on the past nor the present, but on the future
 Vision is an effective leader’s chief preoccupation
 Organizations are reinvented with new generations of dreamers


Here’s an interesting letter from future President Martin Van Buren to President Andrew Jackson in 1829,

The canal system of this country is being threatened by the spread of a new form of transportation known as ‘railroads’.

The federal government must preserve the canal for the following reasons:

 If canal boats are supplanted by railroads, serious unemployment will result. Captains, cooks, drivers, hostlers, repairmen and lock tenders will be left without means of livelihood, not to mention the numerous farmers now employed in growing hay for horses.
 Boat builders would suffer and towline, whip and harness makers would be left destitute.
 Canal boats are absolutely essential to the defense of the US. In the event of unexpected trouble with England, the Erie Canal would be the only means by which we could ever move supplies so vital to waging modern war.
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How many of our churches and how many of us are too easily pulled into this kind of thinking? Our churches are so easily tempted to be more concerned about preserving the past than envisioning how we can move into the future. The leader’s job IS the future.

“A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others do.” --- Leroy Eims

“Stay one step ahead of your people and you are called a leader. Stay ten steps ahead of your people and you are called a martyr.”

“My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.” ---Charles F. Kettering