Living in a place where rocks are prominent—and they are much more prominent in winter when they take visual precedence over the foliage—makes you think about the role rocks have in God’s creation. The story of the creation of the Mississippi River valley is outside our ability to comprehend and visualize unless you can picture what 800 Olympic size swimming
Names matter. Your name. Your business or organization’s name. The names of all the people you work with matter. Your clients' and customers’ names are all important. Think about how business names have changed and are now delivered as shorthand for their original names (FedEx was Federal Express and 3M was Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing). What makes each of these
If you remember A Prairie Home Companion radio show, you might remember a regular performer named Bill Staines. Bill passed away in December, 2021, and was known as a modern-day Steven Foster for capturing the essence of American culture through folk music. Bill’s most popular song is called “A Place in the Choir,” and I thought it made a great
It’s good to have wisdom. Biblically, the person with the most wisdom in the bible, other than Jesus, was Solomon. 1 Kings 4:29 says, “God gave Solomon wisdom and great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore. Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the people of the East and greater
How many Pilgrims made the journey to America? Around 102 passengers, 30 crew What was the name of their ship? Mayflower What port did it leave from? Leiden, Netherlands What month and year did they arrive? Nov. 1620 (two-month journey) Name five last names of people from the first ship? Bradford, Cooke, Moore, Fuller, Browne When was the first Thanksgiving
There are various types of freedom: freedoms granted through our government and our constitution, including the freedom to practice religious beliefs of all kinds. This is one form of religious freedom…so important, in fact, that the first article in the Bill of Rights addresses freedom of religion. So, if we want to understand our constitutional freedoms, we should go back
Every business or not-for-profit has its version of a value system. There are often two types of value systems—internal values to which the culture and behavior of the organization conform and external ones, which represent the unique positioning of the organization relative to its customers, clients, or members. Let’s concentrate on internal values in this article. There are seven examples
Once you've built a team with the potential to be high-performing, the next step to ensuring their success is to empower them. Teams can still achieve great things with hands-off managers, but when we look back over time, trends suggest that the teams with leaders who empower and support them perform better than those without. Over the last two months,
Building a high-performing team is not an easy task. Numerous factors determine the team's success and not all of them are under our control from the get-go. But, there are four practices we can call on to make the process of building a high-performing team easier and more effective. Last month I introduced the biblical approach to building a high-performing
You have probably heard the phrase “Never waste a good crisis.” The quote is attributed to Winston Churchill, who, in the mid-1940s, actually said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” The goal of leveraging a crisis is rapid change—more rapidly than could be achieved in non-crisis situations. It’s a desire to drive accelerated change when the economic and