OUTSTANDING IN MY FIELD

Like trying new food when I know what I like, I've been a little reluctant to read outside my field. Recently I've been reading a couple of books outside my normal diet. As a result of seeing a front page review of Donald Miller in The Willamette Week, I started reading Searching for God Knows What. And after conversation with a colleague in a mega church I ventured into the Business Section of Broadway Books to find Stephen R. Covey's The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness. The dissonance is almost killing me!

Miller, young, searching, Portland based, evangelical, church oriented. Covey, established, confident, living in the suburban Rockies of Utah, Mormon, business oriented. Miller writes paperback with thick pages and in a folksy, coffee house style. Covey is hardback, with complementary CD with 16 short films for use as you read and for your power point presentation with permission only.

Miller is searching for God--or God knows what. Covey is teaching the way after effectiveness to greatness. I'd pay admission to witness a fish bowl conversation between the two of them! Is there any common ground at all? Is excellence next to godliness? Does sloppy mediocrity serve the Gospel? I should have stayed within my field! As if I know what my field is...

...hmm. I'm a local congregational pastor in a neighborhood mainline church. I'm like the family doctor fifty years ago. I'm a general practitioner in an age of specialization: part counselor, part administrator, part teacher, part community leader, part spiritual guide. I know people through all the stages of their lives, birth and death, financial difficulties, American dreams, cold winds blowing, mighty surprising mountains of hope. And in a way I like it in the middle of many things. So reading from Searching and 8th Habit has stretch my circle, my thinking and my comfort zone.

Searching for God Knows What is refreshing, surprisingly insightful, somewhat cynical and only occasionally arrogant. Citing Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran martyr of Nazi Germany, a personal hero to me, whose resistance to the dominate culture led him to participation in an unjustifiable and unsuccessful conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, on the one hand, and U2, a contemporary rock band, whose political/spiritual lyrics drew my wife's ear twenty years ago AND referring to God consistently as "Him" and asserting Moses' authorship of the books of the Bible, on the other, leaves me a little knocked off center. He is an unusual combination of dyed in the wool Evangelical and spiritual progressive, thoroughly post modern, whatever that means, and intriguing. Again my stereotypes are challenged, for which I am thankful.

Covey, presses my buttons on the other side. White, wealthy, well-educated, male, privileged--confident to the point of arrogant AND insightful, thoughtful, dedicated, and even searching in a less dramatic fashion, post modern on the other end of the scale. In his opening chapter he tells the story of poor women in Bangladesh who through an economist's attention and organizing eventually founded a community bank which has loaned out over $4.5 billion in loans mostly of $200 or less for homes or businesses to nearly 4 million people, 96% of whom are women. It's a twenty year story of overcoming assumptions about poor people's ability to repay loans and banking needs to make larger loans for more profits. It's a great story, and left me somewhat confused.

Are there principles of leadership, of business, of life, which lead to success and which are applicable to any field--education, business, church, etc? Are these principles and practices value neutral and available to any goal? Is effectiveness next to godliness? Can I apply Covey's wisdom to Martin Luther King's admonition, that if you want to be first, be first for God, if you want to be great, be great in the Kingdom of heaven if you want lead the band, be a Drum Major for Justice? Is the orientation toward greatness, toward success, Satan's temptation from the mountaintop looking over all the kingdoms OR Jesus' wisdom to have a plan when you are building a tower?

So here I am stretched between the spines of two very different books. One, old, established, clear; the other, fresh, challenging, playful. Both, post modern, and now both planted in my soul as a local pastor wrestling with God and greatness, with soul and effectiveness, with leadership and following Christ.

P Moe
April 18, 2005