OK, kids, here's a metaphor for the day. Pictured stage right is a Uno Electric Uni-cycle. It's the future of travel, they say! The metaphor part is that this unit accelerates when the operator leans forward. It's a leadership thing. You see, great leaders find motion and momentum when they lean forward. It's an eye on the future that keeps them and their organizations on point. It's a hard sell for church types, though. We tend to lean backward. You know, that means deceleration.
So, I'm there. It certainly takes all types and most of us are not futurists. Sure, we're gumbo of personality types, gifts, strengths, introverts and extroverts, positives and negatives, weirdos, nerds, fruitcakes, geniuses, airheads, visionaries, deadheads, and people with flat-tops. But, if leaders down the ages, regardless of their natural bent, didn't learn the lessons of leaning forward, we'd still be selling buggy whips, and churning butter on the front porch.
Think about it! Gutenberg leaned forward to envision and invent the printing press. Some ancient dreamer thought up the wheel. If Henry Ford hadn't leaned forward, we'd have missed the assembly line and the industrial revoluton, and cool gadgets like the Uno. Where would we be today if Al Gore hadn't thought outside the box to create the internet? Yuk, yuk. It's inane to imagine a world without visionaries. The Apostles took the Good News to the Gentiles. Luther defied conventional theological ideas with his 95 theses. So forth and so on.
Yet, for generations church leaders have been mired in the past. The commands to preserve ancient landmarks, perpetuate the Apostles teaching, and secure the things ordained by Christ have been grossly misunderstood. Today, denominations and local churches spend a good bit of spiritual capital and influence worshiping traditions with little significance. It works an seem appropriate because they're leaning back- ward, riveted on the past.
Solomon wrote some guiding verses about the dynamic tension of past and future. In Eccesiastes he wrote, "Don’t say, "Why were the former days better than these?" For it is not wise of you to ask this" (7:10). Well, I can imagine Solomon was steeped in tradition and had a good eye for the past. He evidently understood leaning forward too. He knew the good old days, you know, the past, were not the best of God. The prophet Isaiah agreed. Through Isaiah God said, "Look, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it?" (Isa. 43:19). He implied some people would not see it. They were most likely leaning backward.
I'm praying our denominational leaders will study some of the research we constantly gather and use it to look forward, and then lean forward. If we don't the distance between us and a dark world will just grow.
Lean forward.
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