There are few things more satisfying that making something – putting in time and effort and having something tangible, something you can hold in your hands, when you’re finished. Fewer and fewer of us find ourselves doing that kind of work. At the end of the day, there’s isn’t much many of us can hold on to. It doesn’t mean that what we’re doing isn’t worthwhile, important, or have significant consequences; just that the fruits of much of our labor is intangible. Which might explain why I liked the following video so much. In just over three minutes it shows 299 hours of labor – along with a lot of wood, sweat,...

Having served for more than a decade as Dean of Duke Divinity School, L. Gregory Jones is now a senior strategist and professor of theology there. His work is reliably insightful, challenging, and innovative. More than that – and those who know theologians will understand why I want to underscore this next point 🙂 – his work is also regularly and eminently practical. He’s written another important article posted at Duke’s Faith and Leadership website called “Performance as Leadership Preparation.” I couldn’t find a place to comment on the site, so I’ll both commend his article to you as well as respond to it here. In his...