Slinky Dog Leadership

 Here is my message from Sunday. The scripture was

Most of you are old enough, or perhaps I might say seasoned enough, to remember the Tylenol poisonings in 1982. Just a quick refresher, someone added cyanide to Tylenol pills in the Chicago area, which killed seven people. In the immediate aftermath there was much conversation about what to do. The FDA actually recommended to Johnson and Johnson that they only recall the pills in the Chicago area, and were opposed to a nationwide recall to try and keep the country from panicking. Members of the board wondered if perhaps it could be more targeted in order to keep the economic income down, and many predicted the end of Tylenol as a brand, and perhaps even the end of Johnson & Johnson. But instead of following that advice, the CEO, believing in the first line of their credo, “We believe our first responsibility is to the patients, doctors and nurses, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services.” And so, the CEO instead recalled Tylenol from around the country, as well as working with the media to issue emergency warnings, which then led to new safety standards for bottles, amongst other things. Their response is now studied for leadership principles in times of crisis.

I’ve been thinking about that example in this past week in comparing it against the way that Boeing has responded to their current crisis with the loss, basically, of a door during flight from one of their planes, on top of their crisis in losing two similar planes to crashes several years ago in which they tried to blame everyone but themselves. But this week the CEO of Boeing said that they supported the FAA’s decision to ground these models until they found out what went wrong. But, my thought was why did they need the FAA to take this action for them; why didn’t they ground the planes themselves and have the FAA agree with their decision? Leadership is hard, but sometimes we know the right decision and what to do, to be out front, even if we might have to pull others along with us, being proactive, which is what Johnson & Johnson did, versus being pushed to do the right thing, being reactive, which is what Boeing appears to be doing.

Try The Other Side

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was John 21:1-11 and it represented my State of the Church Address:

Today marks the end of my second year, or the beginning of my third year, here at Mesa View, depending on how you want to look at it.  I would like to begin today by thanking all of our volunteers and people who give of themselves in some many ways to this church and in service to the community.  But in particular I would like to thank the members of the Staff Parish Relations Committee, some other key members, and for the prayer partners who were lifting me up in prayer this past year, because it was by far my hardest year in the ministry.  Every organization has cycles of ups and downs, and I firmly believe that this past year we hit the bottom of our trough and are now on an upward climb.  Our attendance has seen continued increases each month this year, until last month, but we always see a drop off when school lets out, and let me remind you that your presence here is really important.  Not because of numbers, but because it’s a lot better, and to be honest it’s more fun, when the sanctuary is filled then when it’s less full.

I was appointed by the Bishop to Mesa View for many reasons, but one of the biggest was to get our finances in order.  Many churches approach their finances by using the mushroom communication model.  Do you know what the mushroom communication model is?  Keep them in the dark and shovel in lots of manure.  Hopefully you know that’s not the way I want to operate.  The truth is we are doing better.  I would like to say that we no longer have financial worries, and that everything is great.  I’d like to say that, but it’s not true.  We are better, but we are not out of the woods yet.  We didn’t get here in a few years, and we won’t get out of it in a few years.  If you have been reading the newsletter, then you should have seen that our last financial report was a little bleak.  The last number I got from Don Coates this week was that we were projecting to be somewhere around $2000 in the hole at the end of June.  So don’t stop giving just because you might go away for the summer, because our work doesn’t end.

But here is the good news.  Our electronic giving options are helping us to create a stable, reliable income stream, and thank you to everyone who has signed up for electronic giving, and I would strongly encourage others to do the same.  The good news is that for maybe the first time, but definitely the first time in a long time, we created a savings account, in which we had $5000 when we entered the summer.  The good news is that last month we paid off our debt to John Deere for the purchase of our lawn mower and this month we paid off the conference loan we took out to help pay for the roof repairs.  The good news is that when we started here two years ago we owed more than $10,000 to the conference for back pension obligations and we will have that paid off in October.  The good news is that we refinanced our mortgage, which freed up resources that we have needed.  We ended up having to put in a new HVAC unit in the annex, a $7000 charge, but we covered the entire thing in cash, and that allowed us to bring in the YMCA and turn that building into a revenue source for us again, while also serving the community.