By Janice Shaw Crouse
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Popeye the Sailor is a 1930s comic strip character who is still popular through home video productions of the television cartoon series. What stands out in the old Popeye series are the "Popeye Moments." That's when Popeye has had all he can take. At that point Popeye says, "I've had all I can stand! I can't stands no more!" He flexes his biceps and off he goes to straighten things out.
Those of us who work on America's cultural and domestic issues know exactly how Popeye felt. There are moments when we can't stand any more; we've had all we can stand, and we "can't stands no more!"
America stands at a Popeye Moment regarding children living in fatherless families, and we need to do everything we can to "straighten things out."
We've had plenty of warning about illegitimacy and the very real dangers of "father absence." Somehow, though, the ever increasing trends have not really set off an alarm in the public square.
In the mid-60s, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned us about the dangers of fatherless families, yet while the statistics have steadily increased, it has been politically incorrect to warn against "illegitimacy." Little attention has been given when researchers and social analysts have cited the predictable negative outcomes of an absent father in the family or when they have spread the news that illegitimacy feeds on itself –– the daughters of unwed mothers are more likely to have children out of wedlock. For years, nobody really noticed or cared when conservative lobbyists and activists provided strong evidence that sex should be reserved for marriage and that the married mother and father provide the best place for raising children.
Yet in recent years, our work has produced widespread promotion of increasingly more sophisticated and effective abstinence-until-marriage programs. As a result, teen childbearing has dropped dramatically since the early 1990s. This decrease shows the positive impact of abstinence programs on the teen birth rate as well as the teen abortion rate – which has dropped even more than the teen birth rates.
Even so, the latest figures from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reveal that well over one-third (36.8 percent) of all American children (2 out of 5) are born out of wedlock. Illegitimate births total over 1.5 million a year. Unbelievably, it is not teenage hormones that are driving this disastrous increase. Instead, single adult women are the ones who are having the babies without marrying the father. The upward trend of unwed births to mothers over age 20 has steadily increased since 1975; this, in spite of the fact that birth control is readily available and that these women are old enough to know better.
Well, day 1 of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit is history. This is my first summit (and my first time at Willow Creek); so it was a jam-packed day for me. Let me give you a brief rundown of things that stood out to me...
The day started off with Bill Hybels talking on "The Leader's State of Mind". His whole discussion was what happens before you get a 'vision' for something? What causes a leader to have and develop the vision he/she has? Using Exodus 2 as a text, Bill stated that many times vision comes out of a state of "Holy Discontent". He mentioned Popeye (the sailor man) and how he would take as much as he could (when people gave Olive Oil a hard time) until he got to the point where he would say "That's all I can stands... I can't stands no more." In our lives, he asked us "What can't you stand"? That's your area of "holy discontent". Many times your vision comes out of finding your area of "holy discontent" and doing something about it. It's when your heart is in agreement with God's heart on things that matter to him. Some examples of this he gave were David (when fighting Goliath); Nehemiah (and the re-building of the wall); Martin Luther King (and his fight against racial injustice; and the founder of World Vision (who started the organization after seeing dying children who had no food). All of these people got their vision when they had their 'Popeye' moment of "Holy Discontent". Of course, Bill Hybels expressed this whole idea much better than I did (in one paragraph). It was a very interesting and thought-provoking start to the day.
Then came Rick Warren's turn... Rick also spoke out of Exodus on topic of "Leadership Is Stewardship". Rick talked about giving up your Identitiy, your Income, and your influence so that God can use you. If anyone has had to do this recently, it's been Rick with all the fame, fortune and influence that has come his way the past couple of years. For example, on the topic of income, he said "What you think you own is on loan". And he has taken some large steps in this area (giving back his salary to the church; being a 'reverse tither'; not changing his lifestyle, etc.). It was a great message... and he even wore a suit! (Go figure!)
Those were the two big key-notes for the day... the sessions in the afternoon were good as well; and the worship was awesome.
Anyone else have any other observations (if you attended)?
Sorry if this is a little disconnected... it's been a long day; and I'm about ready to crash! :)
Until tomorrow...
For the past few days, my wife and I have been attending the Leadership Summit at Willow Creek Community Church, one of the largest churches in North America.
I’ve been to four of these conferences now, and each time I go, I end up getting motivated to be a better leader, to try harder, to rely on God more, and all that good stuff.
This time has been no different in that respect. So, for my own benefit, and hopefully for yours, I thought I would record my notes from each of the sessions here.
The Leader’s State of Mind — Bill HybelsEach year, Bill Hybels starts the summit off by talking about how much he loves the summit. The one phrase I have heard him say more than once is that he loves the summit because it’s filled with leaders and “Leaders get it”—leaders understand each other.
He took us all the way back to the first conference message he ever gave on the issue of leadership, long before the Leadership Summit was even thought of, and his points from that message are still just as relevant today. It was a message on the five things he believed about leadership.
- The church is the most leadership intensive organization in the world.
- There is a spiritual gift of leadership.
- Most churches undermine the expression of leadership by creating systems to restrict the freedom of leaders.
- Most people love to be led
- The church is the hope of the world and its future rests largely in the hands of its leaders.
Bill said that he still believed all those things.
Bill moved on to the next point of his message when he talked very briefly about the tings leaders do. He simply listed and described that leaders cast vision, build teams, and build other leaders.
However, the key question for the morning was, “What gives birth to vision?”
Where does vision come from?When Bill said that, my ears opened a little wider because that is one of the questions that I have been thinking about quite a bit recently. I myself have been wrestling with the issue of how to determine when a vision is from God and when it is simply a result of one’s own desires.
Of course, when we think about great visionaries, we often expect to hear that their vision was birthed out of some kind of firestorm spiritual experience. Should we assume that is always the case?
Bill drew our attention to the story of Moses to consider how his vision was born.
The Source of Moses’s VisionWe first went to Exodus chapter 2. Once, when Moses was younger and still living in the land of Egypt, he came across an Egyptian soldier who was beating a Hebrew slave. Moses was outraged at the sight of the fight and the injustice of how his fellow Hebrew was being treated, and he stepped in to intervene. In the resulting struggle, Moses ended up killing the Egyptian.
A few days later, Moses saw two Hebrews engaged in a fight, and once again, he was outraged. This time, though, the fight was between two Hebrews—brothers
Finally, Bill Hybels took us to Exodus 3 which is really where we all were expecting him to go in the first place. In fact, I was wondering why he took us on the little detour through chapter 2. It’s obvious that Moses’ defining moment and the moment when he really got the vision happened with bare feet in front of a bush that flamed but did not burn.
But Bill asked the question that made us all stop and think, “Was Exodus 3 really the defining moment for Moses’s vision?”
Exodus 3:7 says this:
The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.”
The motivation for God’s redemptive work in the book of Exodus is found in that little phrase, “I have seen the oppression of my people.”
Amazingly enough, that is exactly what Moses had experienced himself back in chapter 2!
In Bill’s words, Moses had been “wrecked” by something that also “wrecked” the heart of God!
Moses’s God-given vision was essentially God saying, “What you can’t stand, I can’t stand, and I’m ready to use you to do something about it.”
In the old cartoon Popeye the Sailor Man, there would come a point in time during each episode when Popeye, a normally mild-mannered fellow, would get pushed to the limit and would declare, “That’s all I can stands; I can’t stands no more.” Then, he would eat his spinach, receive amazing physical strength, and put right whatever was wrong in the situation.
Bill asked us, “What is it that you can’t stand?” That is what propels us into leadership!
Holy DiscontentBill claimed that God gives each leader a “holy discontent” that will not stand for a situation to continue. * David had it with Goliath * Nehemiah had it with the wall of Jerusalem * Martin Luther King, Jr. had it with civil injustice.
In each case, the thing that wrecked the heart of the individual was also something that wrecked the heart of God.
Here’s the point, vision is essential, but discerning the vision can be difficult. That’s why every leader needs to find his or her “holy discontent”—the passion that something must be changed.
What’s yours?
Other ObservationsTo conclude the message, Bill gave a few quick practical observations that I simply list here:
- Not everything that bugs you is to be your mission.
- Don’t give up too soon if you don’t know it yet.
- When you find it, feed it. It’s often easy to be discouraged by reality and choose to escape or avoid rather than attack. A leader must feed the discontent to feed the vision.
- Quinn says that when a person gets gripped by a passion, that person enters a new state of mind he calls The Fundamental State of Leadership.
- Discontent can wreck you with pessimism if you let it. Instead, the leader must not let hope die.
This was one of the most profound, challenging, and encouraging messages on vision that I have heard in a long time. So many times, I have heard Christian leaders talk about how a leader needs to basically become a hermit for a period of time until God reveals the vision for his or her leadership. They often look to Moses’ 40 years in the wilderness between Exodus 2 and Exodus 3 and claim that we all need to go through something similar.
However, I am by nature a person who is very aware of the rapid passing of time. In my weaker moments, that leads to impatience, but in my stronger moments, it is a fire that makes me say, “Something must be done!”
I can totally relate to what Bill was teaching, and I also find more examples of it in Scripture than of many other teachings on the same topic.
I have allowed my discontent to die out of disillusionment. I have allowed my idealism to fade to a great degree. But I have been renewed. There are things I hate, and I know from the pages of the Bible that they are things God hates as well. What wrecks my heart also wrecks his, and I have just been given the freedom to claim that as my God-given vision!
As one of my life verses says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” Psalm 37:4. If my heart is in the pursuit of God above all other things, then I am free to likewise pursue the other desires he will give me!
Want to know my passion? I have two right off the top of my head:
- I can’t stand the disunity and divisions plaguing North American Churches. Denominations, parachurch ministries, publishing companies, church associations, independent congregations, warring congregations—It’s time we all started working together for the same goals.
- I can’t stand the false teachings that have caused people (myself included) to be weak in the exercise of their faith. Gender issues, church politics, spiritual gifts, moral standards, and God’s grace—It’s time we return to the truth of God’s Word and allow the truth to set us free.
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