Happy New Year! I know first hand that every actor yearns for an audience, every artist longs to have their work appreciated, every athlete for the next big game, and every writer hopes to be read.

Statistics are a funny thing, something I try not to dwell on in my writing life.

I write because I love writing.  

However, my friends at WordPress.com put this year-end summary together for me and I was surprised at my reaction.

Gratitude.

Thank you so much for being part of my writing life in 2011!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,600 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Being a Christian and a leader can get a bit confusing at times. 

As we learn to believe, we slowly begin to deepen our understanding of Biblical truths.  But every once in a while someone writes a book or has a theory that gets all our boondockers in a bunch.  When this happens there is an almost immediate response by the uptight grumpy people who leave behind a backlash of unanswered questions in the wake of arguments and position taking. I think there is a better way to handle controversy within a family.

Because I don’t want to walk around with a wedge, I typically face the controversy head-on and seek a healthy perspective.  However, as I watched the new video that Rob Bell has put out to promote his book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.  It made me think. 

It appears that Rob is dropping an A-bomb on the concept of hell and challenging us to rethink the nature of God.  To me it seems like a fair question to ask.  A theological question that demands a balanced,  “truth-filled” presentation that only the Bible offers us.

However, I was just about to justify my theological position in the shower when God gave me one of those ”whispers”.  It dawned on me, many Christian leaders don’t have a template to turn to when family (meaning the church) controversy pops up.  The net result is we all look like quibbling school children who have no clue about anything.  Basically, we sound stupid, and the world loves that. 

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When I was 17 I joined the Naval Reserves.  I don’t exactly remember why.  Perhaps it was because I grew up thinking that the sailor on the Cracker Jack box was really my older brother Smokey.  No matter the reason as I marched into my boot camp experience the question of “why” did not matter much.  The thing about military training is within the first couple of days you become completely stripped of your identity and your ego.  Naked, I had become my social security number.  I knew nothing; I didn’t like to swim and lived in Nebraska.  Desperately, I clung to the hope that canoe racing down the Platte River would account for some type of nautical tenure.   It didn’t.

At 17 years old I was one of a handful of young recruits to enter the US Navy and become a member of a company of trainees.  I don’t remember how many started with us but quickly our ranks faded as people, having been reduced to a number, broke – like the hull of the Titanic never to emerge in-tact again. 

I, on the other hand, found a new rhythm to life and was asked to lead a squad of “real” men and even earned a promotion upon graduation.  Looking back, I would not have considered myself a leader at all.  But someone did…and that was a bit scary.  

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