US News & World Report: Rick Warren one of the 25 Best Leaders
October 25, 2005
USNews.com: A big man with big ideas: Rick Warren (10/31/05)
Warren is one of the 25 best American leaders according to US News & World Reports. According to the article, “the real key to Warren’s success, say those who study him, is his ability to mobilize ordinary churchgoers to become active lay ministers.”
Warren’s leadership style is decidedly low key. He delegates creative and managerial duties, reserving for himself the role of “chief disturbing agent” –providing Saddleback’s vision, values, and voice. Micromanaging is not a temptation. “You have to have people around you who are smarter than you in certain areas, and you just let them go. That comes with having a good sense of your own strengths and your weaknesses.”
Aides describe Warren as a “voracious learner” who has been known to read a book a day on everything from history and biography to business. “To me, leading is learning,” Warren says, “and the moment you stop learning you stop leading and your organization stops growing.” He says he has learned from both positive and negative influences as diverse as Mohandas Gandhi and George Patton. His most important role models, he says, have been Billy Graham (”a model of great integrity”), Drucker (”a personal mentor on managing rapidly growing organizations”), and his late father, a Baptist minister.
Episcopal liberals prepare for split
October 25, 2005
From the Washington Times…
A liberal Episcopal group is crafting a strategy to disenfranchise about 16 conservative bishops if the denomination’s pivotal General Convention next year in Columbus, Ohio, results in a church split.
Informally named the “Day After” for the aftermath of the June 13-21 event, the strategy outlines a way to file canonical charges against conservative bishops, unseat them from their dioceses, have interim bishops waiting to replace them and draft lawsuits ready to file before secular courts for possession of diocesan property.
The strategy was revealed in a leaked copy of minutes drafted at a Sept. 29 meeting in Dallas of a 10-member steering committee for Via Media, a network of 13 liberal independent Episcopal groups.
Looks like the conservatives in the Episcopols have had enough and their walking out. It’s a very interesting article.
The Man Who Would Murder Death: A rogue researcher challenges scientists to reverse human aging
October 25, 2005
From the Chronicle of Higher Education, this article caught my eye…
If you wish to be a prophet, first you must dress the part. No more silk ties or tasseled loafers. Instead, throw on a wrinkled T-shirt, frayed jeans, and dirty sneakers. You should appear somewhat unkempt, as if combs and showers were only for the unenlightened. When you encounter critics, as all prophets do, dismiss them as idiots. Make sure to pepper your conversation with grandiose predictions and remind others of your genius often, lest they forget. Oh, and if possible, grow a very long beard.
By these measures, Aubrey de Grey is indeed a prophet. The 42-year-old English biogerontologist has made his name by claiming that some people alive right now could live for 1,000 years or longer. Maybe much longer. Growing old is not, in his view, an inevitable consequence of the human condition; rather, it is the result of accumulated damage at the cellular and molecular levels that medical advances will soon be able to prevent — or even reverse — allowing people to go on living pretty much indefinitely. We’ll still have to worry about angry bears and falling pianos, but aging, the biggest killer of all, will cease to be a threat. Death, as we know it, will die.
Someone is actually trying to take on the great equilizer. Death is the great eqilizer according to Quoheleth. Everyone will die. Despite the fact that this scientist has developed a seven-step plan to “cure” aging, I have a feeling that his maker will have something to say about this.
Today’s the day
October 25, 2005
Finally…
After six months, multiple delays, being told I may have Leukima, then Mono, then there’s nothing wrong with me…after changing doctors…at 12:30 pm EDT today I will finally go under the knife and have my ACL replaced, get my meniscus cleaned up and have the arthritis cleaned out and “greased down”. And it’s all being done by Dr. Axe! (No, this is his real name!)
Dr. Axe tells me I’ll be down between 5 and 15 days, so I’ve got 10 books sitting at a reading station in the house that will keep me occupied, so I’ll share my thoughts on several topics over the next few weeks.
6-3
October 25, 2005
Bama’s 6-3 win against Tennessee was like old times! Great defense, people making plays when they had to. Absolutely incredible game. The best thing is that it keeps Alabama undefeated!
