Presby-Musings

Good is the enemy of great... Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.   - Jim Collins  There is a moment in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus is tempted by the Accuser (the literal translation of the word Satan) to do good things, rather than great things. He's tempted to:  turn stone into bread rule the world perform impressive miracles  The Accuser's temptations are strong.  In one fell swoop, Jesus could solve the problem of hunger in the world, blow everyone away with how powerful he is (which would remove all doubts about him), and then basically take over the world and fix all the political, economic and social ills of the day.   Instead, Jesus refuses to do what seems good in favor of what is great.  He pushes back against the temptation to affect one particular moment in history, in order to fulfill his calling to change  all of history  and to bri...

  Weird: Because Normal Isn't Working by Craig Groeschel I just finished Craig Groeschel's newest book, Weird: Because Normal Isn't Working .  It took me a while, not because it was a hard read (it's not), but because I was busy doing ministry, going to school, being a father, husband, son and countless other things. For those of you who aren't familiar with Groeschel, he is the lead pastor of LifeChurch.tv , a mulit-site megachurch in Oklahoma.  LifeChurch also has the distinction of being one of the most innovative, creative and open source-minded evangelical churches in the U.S.  They routinely give away potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of teaching and preaching material a year---not to mention over 2 million downloads of the Bible.  Groeschel is the author of several books, a frequent speaker at church leadership events, a husband and the father of six.  Back to my review...  Ironically, the sort of busy-ness that kept m...

How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In by Jim Collins (Harper Collins, 2010) When Jim Collins wrote his books "Built to Last"and "Good to Great" some years ago, he had no idea that some of the companies that he would be profiling as bastions of corporate success and longevity would be gone or nearly gone just a few short years later.  No one--or hardly anyone--foresaw the bloodletting that would take place in the global economy throughout 2008-2009--a bloodletting that resulted in the demise of more than one corporate giant.  Collins latest book, "How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In" begins by surveying the destruction of the Great Recession, and taking stock of the many companies that were "built to last," but didn't.  What Collins discovered, as he and his team culled through the names of once-great companies in recent history that have gone the way of the dodo, was that many of the "mighty...