The "Rest of the Story"

Image by Professor Pigg via Flickr

Here's an excerpt from a great article by Gordon MacDonald: "Most Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love."

MacDonald does a good job of talking about the importance of the seemingly "little" things in the middle of our quest to leave a mark as a Christian leader. One of the reasons the Hunsbergers were drawn to SCC was what I saw in Pastor Russ the first Sunday we visited (t was also the last Sunday we visited -- we made it our church home immediately). Another reason we were drawn here was what we saw in the "rest of the story" (Paul Harvey). The "rest of" the Austins tell you what Pastor Russ is like when he's off the stage, out of the limelight, when he hasn't had a chance to prepare notes.

I had a guest speaker sit down next to me once at a conference I was hosting up in the Midwest. We had just met a few months before and he leans over and says "You're awesome." I'm preparing to write his comment off as just another nice thing to say to the host, until he followed up with this comment: "I can tell who you are by what I see in your children." Several of my grown sons/daughters were in attendance at the conference. THAT comment sunk in -- the Lord was showing me AGAIN that what will really matter when I'm on my deathbed ready to slip into eternity is what those closest to me saw in me. How does my Heavenly Father view my "accomplishments?" What do Gay and the kids think about me -- what will they SAY about me when I'm gone?

MacDonald does a great job of bringing these kinds of values out onto the table in his article.

Here's a link:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/thepastor/pastorsrole/leafrakingdoctrine.html?start=1

Let us know what you think!