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Thanksgiving Is All in Your Head By Scott Rodin

Is Thanksgiving in your head, and should it be? The Oxford Dictionary defines thanksgiving as “the feeling of being happy or grateful because of something.”[1] I think the Oxford Dons got it wrong. What they’ve described is thanksfeeling. If they are right, then it will only take a brief viewing of local, national, and world news to convince you to leave…

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Living and Leading in an Age of Anxiety By Scott Rodin

Learn to Resist the Anxiety the World Provides Mark Sayer’s new book, A Non-Anxious Presence, How a Changing and Complex World Will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders, suggests that anxiety is the dominant theme in our world and our leadership. This anxiety is generated by what he calls the ‘gray zone’ in which…

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Lost in a Maze of Self-Reliance By Scott Rodin

Lost and The Need for the Way Out Sometimes leaders lose their way. Amidst personnel challenges, cultural pressures, financial uncertainties, and self-doubt, we can muddle along, unsure where we are going. Unexpected challenges, unsuccessful strategies, criticism of our best efforts, and rapid change can bring us uncertainty, lack of direction, and even despair. Do you…

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What Do You Expect from Jesus? By Scott Rodin

Learn to Live and Lead in Easter Joy Easter Saturday morning Linda and I were having prayer and coffee on our deck, and we were discussing how this day was called Black Saturday by the ancient church. We wondered how the disciples must have felt, huddled in a secret room, scared, stunned, despondent. It occurred…

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Neither Born nor Made By Scott Rodin

The Truth Beyond the “Born or Made” Debate There’s an ongoing debate in leadership studies as to whether great leaders are born or made.  The nature vs. nurture discussion has focused on the traits of successful leadership and asked whether these were inherent in the DNA of some people, or whether they were simply acquired…

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How a Jar of Dirt Can Save America By Scott Rodin

What will you do with a jar of dirt? What will we learn from a jar of dirt when It’s difficult to enter 2023 without some sense of foreboding? We seem to be living in an unrelenting tension between our firm conviction that God is on the throne, and the evidence of a nation that…

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Enough is Enough: A Thanksgiving Prayer By Scott Rodin

Finding The Way Back to Thanksgiving Thanksgiving week has become a most peculiar season in American life. I love this day, it’s my favorite holiday of the year. But each year when it comes around, I find myself saddened by the disjointed nature of the activities of the week that seem contradictory at best and…

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Defining The “Main Thing” By R. Scott Rodin

The Importance of Knowing Your Main Thing “The Main Thing is to Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing” was a saying framed in the entry of a church I recently visited. Good words, easy to say but hard to do. I’d propose that the first step for leaders is to define our ‘main thing’.…

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The Challenge We Share By R. Scott Rodin

The Common Challenge of Every Leader It may seem presumptuous to propose that there is one challenge to leadership that is so universally experienced that it is consistently at the top of the list of reasons leaders struggle and fail. But a recent experience has moved me deeply and convinced me that there may be…

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The Path to Leadership Failure By R. Scott Rodin

Time to Assess if You are on the Path to Leadership Failure Every day we hear stories of leadership failure. Some are national in scope, some regional, some in our own communities. Whether it’s a moral failing, an ethical compromise, poor decision making or just pure burnout, it’s likely each of you reading this blog…

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