Good Leadership

Proverbs 20:28 - "Love and truth form a good leader; sound leadership is founded on loving integrity."

For some reason I am really struggling with my leadership role at church. I just assumed it would be an easy transition and my role would not change that much. I was recklessly wrong.

I found this scripture yesterday. There is so much information in the Bible about leadership but for some reason this verse stuck out to me. I feel I should reevaluate my actions in light of these things, starting with love.

Love after all is the most important commandment according to Jesus. I should show my team and students that I love them. Even when I disagree or see a need for correction, my actions should be dictated by the same divine Love that corrects me.

Secondly is Truth. I left Wyoming with such a charisma for honesty, and yet somehow the opportunity to impart that has slipped through my fingers. I believe honesty is key to having a successful team. Yet I find myself holding my tongue or holding back words because it is more difficult to be honest than it is to be civil with one another. Man I need to grow a pair already.

Reckless. Lee was reckless. He was reckless in loving others because he would fight to the death for anyone he led. He was reckless for being true with others because he was a severely honest person. I should have been taking notes.

Grace and Peace, Zane

Wyoming Update

This will be my Wyoming update post, even though I got back from the trip over a week ago.

In a nutshell, my trip was everything I hoped it would be. It was a much needed retreat from life, and a chance to organize my thoughts and priorities. I feel like I made some decisions that will keep me focused on the present, and not worried so much about the future. Also, I got a chance to develop my leadership skills through good information and real-life leadership labs. It was really good. I highly recommend NOLS to anyone that is interested in developing leadership and has the guts to live in the back-country.

Of the decisions I made, the biggest one was to stop pursing my own business. Over the last 2 years or so I have made a few attempts to get a website business off of the ground. I have started to slowly shed that work simply because it takes too much time, money, and stress to keep afloat. After that I had a few solid entrepreneurial ideas, however I've decided that again I do not have the time or the capital to truly invest myself into another venture. Most importantly, I have plenty of work to do at the church and I feel the greatest reward will come from serving there. In short, my attention has been divided by too many activities for too long. By letting go of some of these "pipe dreams" I'll be able to focus more on ICY and less on money and business.

Now we can move on the pictures. I uploaded most of my pictures to flickr, but if you don't have the time to surf there here are some highlights.

Picture of me on the trail

This is the most common "scenery" I saw.

Europe Canyon, it looked like a foreign planet.

View from the top of Mt. Victor, this was my highlight of the trip.

My biggest fish, 19"