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Management Principles,
Small Things
by Joe McKeever
1.
Management Principle No. 6--Learn from your failures and go forward
2.
Management Principle No. 5--Know when to give in.
3.
The Day of Small Things
Management Principle No. 6
Learn from your
failures and go forward
I
invited Adam to lunch with me, planning to speak to him about
his relationship to Christ. His wife Christa appeared to be an
active Christian and their two daughters were full participants
in our church's youth program. Perhaps Adam just needs a little
encouragement, I thought.
After
he agreed to meet me, I asked Adam to choose the restaurant. "How
about Jimmy C's," he said, and had to tell me where it was.
I was new to the New Orleans area and hardly knew one restaurant
from another in this city noted for great eating. We would meet
at noon on Thursday.
We
greeted each other, were seated in a booth, and gave our orders
to the waiter. I went straight to the subject on my mind. "Adam,
can I ask you about your relationship to Jesus Christ?" He
was friendly and open and did not mind at all telling me his thoughts.
Somehow along the way, he had studied under humanist teachers
and they had provided a steady diet of atheistic reading for his
young vulnerable mind, and it was my assignment, it appeared,
to try to counter some of that.
The
waiter brought our lunch, I said a short blessing, and we dived
in. That's when the young woman showed up at our table.
She
was dressed--or not dressed would be closer to the truth--in a
flimsy, see-through shortie pajama thing that showed far more
of her than it ought. I would not have been more stunned than
if she had walked down the aisle of my church dressed like that
in the middle of my sermon. Glancing around the restaurant, I
saw she had company. Other attractive young ladies were similarly
unclad and were visiting at the tables and chatting with diners.
Adam
and I had visited Jimmy C's on the day of their weekly lingerie
show.
Continued
Management Principle No. 5
Know
when to give in.
Two
cars met on a narrow one-way bridge. One man leaned out of his
window and yelled, "I never back up for fools!" The
other called out, "I always do," as he reverses his
automobile.
Question:
which of those two men is the stronger? Obviously, the one who
gave in to the other.
Here's
another.
The
interstate traffic was heavy, fast, and aggressive. This was no
place for timid drivers if they wanted to survive. Suddenly, a
speeding car cut in front of two others without giving a signal
and almost clipped the bumpers of both vehicles. The two drivers
were shocked, then frightened, and then enraged. One driver took
out after the offender, the adrenalin of his anger fueling his
determination not to let the culprit get by with such behavior.
The second driver calmed himself down and reminded himself that
his goal was to arrive safely at his destination, and most definitely
not to get revenge, not to teach other drivers a lesson, and not
to let his anger get him into trouble.
Now,
which of those two drivers is the stronger man? Clearly, the one
in control of his spirit.
How
does that line go from Proverbs? "He who is slow to anger
is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit, than he
who captures a city." (16:32) The point is made in the opposite
way in Proverbs 25:28, "Like a city that is broken into and
without walls, is a man who has no control over his spirit."
The
little church had decided that the two leading women of the congregation
would get together and select the new carpet for the auditorium.
Eloise wanted a neutral color. She said, "We're still not
sure what color they're going to paint the walls and we don't
want to clash with that. And, this color will go well with the
choir robes." Evelyn, however, had her heart set on a bright
red. "We had red in our last church and it brightened up
the place so much. I'm not going to budge on this. It has to be
red."
Church
fights and congregational splits have been built on differences
as slight as this. But Eloise was determined not to let that happen.
She said, "Let's do it your way, then. I'm sure red will
be fine. It's not as if this were the most important matter in
the world."
Good
for Eloise.
Continued
The Day of Small Things
The
other morning, a TV news show featured the author of a book about
transitioning from college life to the workaday world of a career
person. The woman said, "One thing you should do is clean
up your internet image." That was a new thought for me. She
continued, "You want people to think of you as a professional
person now, not the carefree kid of messy dorm rooms and frat
parties."
I
thought of one of our pastors. His e-mail address begins "tennizbum."
On the other hand, another of our pastors has an address that
begins with "Godsman." Knowing nothing of the two except
their internet handles, which would you choose as your spiritual
leader? (Tennizbum is a good guy. Just making a point.)
Sometimes
these little details are clues to who we are in greater ways.
I keep thinking about a staff member I used to know who was extremely
lazy. One of his former pastors said to me, "I should have
picked up on that quality about him from the beginning. The first
time he walked into our church offices, he spotted a couch near
the receptionist's desk and said, 'Oh boy--a couch! This is my
kind of church!'"
Robert
Cerasoli is a name we expect to hear more in the future. He's
the new inspector general for the City of New Orleans. We've never
had one of those before, but the office was created in 1995 when
voters approved a number of revisions to the City Charter. An
ethics board was called for, one that would hire an inspector
general to study the workings of city government and root out
corruption. Only recently did we get the ethics board and they've
just now hired Cerasoli as the IG from a list of 21 applicants.
The
assignment doesn't begin until August, but Cerasoli, a Massachusetts
native, has been in town this week--at his own expense, he said
on the radio; he's serious about this--meeting with officials
and trying to get a handle on the exact powers, directions, and
limitations of his job.
The
newspaper says his salary is $150,718 and the budget for his office
is $250,000 for the rest of this year, which doesn't sound like
a lot. When you consider that U. S. Attorney Jim Letten's office
has netted 28 convictions, guilty pleas, or indictments in an
ongoing probe into city government just in the last year or so,
it's obvious the inspector general has his work cut out for him.
Continued
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