I’ve never felt like this before.

I’ve never really ever felt prejudice against me before.  But it did this week in Panama.

Seems white people aren’t particularly liked down there.  Everyone wants our ‘gringo dollars’.  Especially the taxis.  One guy in particular tried to charge us $12 for a short taxi ride. We declined, and found another for $2.

In a fast food joint they took our order, and then we waited 10 minutes while they served another 4-5 customers.  We finally got our food, but not without a look of disgust from the server.

At another place, they absolutely butchered our meal.  We had ordered it based after seeing a few other people with the same thing.  Ours looked like a greesy plate of dog food.

We had to emphatically exclaim to almost everyone- “no Americanos… somos Canadianos!” But it was too late- the prejudice… pre-judgement… was already in.

I was hurt.  I was mad.   I was furious.  I felt awful… being white.

But it got me to thinking… how did blacks feel when they boarded a bus just 50 years ago?  How did the Jews feel when forced to wear a star?  What about when Japanese were rounded up and sent to camps?

And these were just the beginnings of prejudice and oppression… what about the African slave trade? Holocaust? Hiroshima? Rwanda? Darfur? Egyptian women and genital mutilation? Kids as child soldiers?

The prejudice against me made me mad, but it also made me realize how much worse it can get.  Obviously the answer isn’t to shut up and take it… no, it’s to ensure that MY life is free of prejudice towards others.  That I make sure I’m not pre-judging, racist, oppressing person.

I want to be loving of all people, welcoming those of other cultures, and allowing freedom to occur in the lives of everyone.

Sorta like my King does.

Jay

In my business bachelors, I took a few leadership courses. In one of my courses, we attempted to define leadership. We came across three definitions. If you consider yourself a leader, which one are you?

Managerial Leader: meet the day-to-day, short-term objectives. Motivate workers to accomplish direct goals. These leaders are essential to get things done!

Visionary Leader: create long-term goals and objectives. Motivate a team seeing the overall perspective and pushing a team toward a long-term goal. These leaders are essential to create and cast vision for people to follow and be motivated.

Strategic Leadership is defined this way: “Influence others to voluntarily make day-to-day decisions that enhance long-term viability, while maintaining its short-term financial stability”

I was interested to take this definition of a strategic leader and apply it to church ministry. When I look at Jesus, I see Him more of a strategic leader: he cast vision & met the daily needs of people.

Here is my working definition of a Pastor (I know that having a definition for a role is kind of weird sometimes, but it helps me know what to focus on and stay focused):

“A Pastor must focus to positively influence the congregation to voluntarily pursue involvement that supports community, advances the church and glorifies God, while challenging personal growth and developing spiritual multipliers.”

I would be very interested to know your thoughts on this!

For Jesus’ Fame,
JK

There’s a cool Quaker dude here in Costa Rica named Wolfe Guindon. He’s known as “the man who saved the cloud forest.”

But it wasn’t as easy as all that.

See Quakers rule by consensus.  Which means everyone must agree, so that no one feels resentful or bitter.  So that there’s unity, not division.

At the time, the cloud forest was starting to be developed.  More and more trees were being cut down, and the land was being ruined.  Not big deal right?  Except that the cloud forest is THE source of water for the entire area.

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Nice place right?

This is a brothel.  It’s called ‘Sonia’s Place’ (locally known as “Sonia’s Knob”).  It’s less than 100 metres from the first place that we stayed.  The young, scantily clad girls serve drinks to ogling men, under the watchful eye of their “mothers.”

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I play Ultimate Frisbee. If you haven’t heard of it, you’re missing out. I love it! It’s my best exercise, and usually only, of my entire week. A few months back we had two pretty big games. As Captain, my role was to motivate, encourage, teach, and lead by example.

In our first game, I did none of those. We were trying new things I had taught and nothing was working. I was playing horrible and my attitude switched to silent, negative, and frustrated. What kind of a leader is that…a useless one. I recognized it near the end of the game and tried to switch back, but it was too late. We lost a game we should have won.

When I look back on that game, our entire team was more negative. There were nearly no “high-fives” going around like usual. Nothing was clicking. Attitude reflects leadership. If you’re a leader, its time you reflect on your own attitude. If you follow a leader, your voice has a major impact on your leader. Encourage and challenge that leader to be a better one!

People tell me that their favorite leader is one that lives what they teach. Is your attitude reflecting what your calling people to have? How is your attitude when you lead people? Would you want people to echo that attitude?

What are your thoughts about this?

In my second post on leadership, I will give a few definitions of leadership, followed with a potential definition of a lead pastor of a church.

For Jesus’ fame,

James Kelly (JK)