For me, as someone having founded and co-founded several organizations, few things are more satisfying than spending time with men and women starting a company or non-profit. While most of the conversation is about start-up, I try to get around to the topic of what happens when it grows. One of the most useful tools for understanding the lifecycle of an organization is that developed by Dr. Ichak Adizes, the founder of the Adizes Institute. We all begin at the same place: an idea born in response to an opportunity. The new idea becomes an infant dependent on the resources of the founder and that stage may last months or…

He sat down, paused before he spoke and then said, “It’s too much for me to give thanks. I cannot be thankful for this. I will never be thankful for this.” He and his wife had lost their son and someone with the best of intentions had quoted Paul’s instructions to the church in Thessalonika, “Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.” Then was not the time to say, “Paul did not say be thankful for everything – but thankful in everything.”  Yet, that is what I thought about for days afterwards. Paul says, literally, eucharisteo, in everything and in…

One of our daughters spent a semester at The University of Florence in Italy years ago so Carol and I took the opportunity to visit her. One morning, they encouraged me to visit the Basilica of Santa Croce while they were shopping. It was early and the stone interior was still cold but the morning light filtered through the windows and the absence of any other visitors made it my private chapel for a time. Centuries of Florentine families were buried in the floor and the walls. Every square inch was given over to providing tombs for the wealthy, powerful and respected families of the Renaissance. I glanced over to…

For years I have been a fan of those able to take concepts from different periods of history, various disciplines, and skills to help people translate all of that into ideas that can be applied to their own circumstances. Too often we think information needs to be taught in the specific dialect of the audience. Lawyers only learn from lawyers; educators from professors, ministers from theologians. A relative few have mastered the art of learning from everyone because they have an internal translator that makes virtually everything they read and hear applicable to their situation. They learn from everyone. I forget how rare that is and was reminded this week…

What the heck was Jonah’s problem with Nineveh? The same problem as the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son. The same problem as Job and Jeremiah and David. In fact, the same problem all of us have. How can God be inconsistent? How can he be soft toward the rebellious and so strict with those of us who try so hard to do what is right? We need Psalm 37 to be true. We need to know that in the end the wicked will get their due and we will get ours. We need to know God does not have a double standard and that he is…

Rebellions do not happen overnight. After years, there is always a tipping point in either an event or a moment that precipitates them. We talk about the beginnings of the American Revolution and we know it was not simply the Boston Tea Party or the Boston Massacre, but the years of resentment over the taxes Britain imposed to maintain their troops after the French-Indian War and to increase revenue for a Parliament strapped for cash by an exploding national debt. There was a twelve-year buildup to the American Revolution. It is true for David’s son, Absalom’s rebellion as well. Look at the numbers: After the rape of his sister Tamar…

In that same interview mentioned in the blog last week the question was asked, “What is the state of what some of us call Big Philanthropy in America.” Big is usually relative, isn’t it? Not only that but bigness always faces challenges that are new. For generations in this country there were relatively few big churches. Even now, the average church size is around 100 attending. When we began Leadership Network in 1985 to focus on the growing phenomenon of large churches we could find only about 300 churches with a weekly attendance of 1,000 or more and today there are likely over 3,000 megachurches. While the issues of the…

A few weeks ago I did an interview and while much of it was on philanthropy the questions ranged across a number of topics. This first question was a good one. Does religion still have a place in what some used to call “the public square”? Yes, of course. However, it will be (and should be) what we have long referred to as “civil religion” and not a particular brand of religion. It has always been a combination of commonly held beliefs, symbols and rituals that have served as a national religion with its own sacred places and ceremonies. Truthfully, we want that. The question about religion and its influence…

In 1887, four people in Denver imagined a plan for working together in new ways to make Denver a better place. They founded a small organization to benefit 10 area health and welfare agencies while raising $21,700 that first year. That idea became the first United Way and the movement has since raised and distributed billions of dollars across the world. In an an effort to improve the way the Cleveland Trust Company did business, the company’s president, Frederick H. Goff, established in Ohio in 1914 the world’s first community foundation, The Cleveland Foundation. He combined a number of trusts managed by the bank into a single organization. The foundation…

My wife, Carol, was sleeping in the passenger seat as we drove past the exit sign for Tyler, Texas. It was 1977 and we were on our way to Boston from Dallas. Never having been to Tyler we knew no one there but out of nowhere and for no reason I said, “Lord, send me to Tyler.” Through a series of connections and circumstances we found ourselves seven years later driving toward Tyler again but this time we took the exit and have been here ever since. It’s our place to which we are called. We’ve never doubted that and this was long before reading this passage in “Jayber Crow”…