This is the first in a series of posts on common leadership pitfalls. When I think about the best leaders I’ve known and seen and when I think about occasions my time – whether in a primary leadership role or not – has been best used or wasted, several themes come into focus. In this first post, I will take up one of the most common leadership pitfalls: confusing good process with actual productivity. I intentionally modify “process” with the adjective “good” because I want to be clear that a) I think attention to process is very important and b) this isn’t a complaint about busyness for busyness sake. Attending with care to...

Dear Partner in Preaching, Given the choice, which would you choose, love or justice? I know this is a hard choice, as both are really important. So if you’re anything like me, you understandably want both. And yet every once in while, we are forced to make a choice. And that can feel really, really hard. I think that’s part of what is going on in this quite remarkable parable. You know the contours of this story as well as I do, but lets tarry for a few moments at the climatic moments of the story. Let’s first put ourselves in the place of the workers who were chosen last. Likely they had all but given up hope for work that day and...

Two hundred years ago this day and night, attorney Frank Key – known to us today as Francis Scott Key – thought he was witnessing the end of the American dream. Opposed to the brutality of war and regarding the U. S. endeavor to take on Great Britain as utter foolishness, Key nevertheless volunteered to be part of an emissary to the British to secure the release of a captive. All went well, except that the British, who had already bombed Washington to pieces and now were intent on destroying Baltimore, felt that Key and his party knew too much about their plans and could not be released. And so Key and his companions were kept aboard...