Corey Paxton

I had the privilege of spending a couple hours with Hugh on Thursday. I am hoping we can get to be better friends and partner together in tangible ways in the future. He has an inspiring calling and gift from God in his ability to serve and build relationships with people who are homeless.  I have a lot to learn from him.

You can find more about his ministry here.

In our conversation, I was most encouraged by hearing the joy he experiences in his calling.

Thanks for what you are doing and your reminders to the church that mission happens best through relationships, and is as much about our hearts as it is the people we are connecting with.

Leadership theorist, Peter Senge writes on why top-down efforts are limited for bringing about significant organizational change:

Why do we cling to the view that only the top can initiate significant change? Is it just our unwillingness to give up a familiar mental model? Is it the fear of stepping out of line without the imprimatur of the hierarchy? Perhaps, also there is an element of self-protection—the comfort of being able to hold someone else, namely, top management, responsible for the lack of effective leadership. There is no doubt that a CEO opposed to fundamental change can make life difficult for internal innovators, but this hardly proves that only the CEO can bring about significant change. At the very least, shouldn’t we be suspicious of the knee-jerk tendency of people in organizations to “look upward” and expect top management to fix things?”

Consider a different view: little significant change can occur if it driven form the top.

Hierarchical authority, as it has been used traditionally in Western management, tends to evoke compliance, not foster commitment. The more strongly hierarchical power is wielded, the more compliance results.”

the more we appreciate the inherent limitations of executive leadership in bringing about deep change, the more frustrated we are likely to feel, given the immense need for change [if we keep trying to change it from the top].

Have you ever thought about the God’s strategy to bring about change? God chooses to overthrow empires with fisherman?

The Ultimate Authority of the Universe chooses bottom up change.

So, if God is the King of the grass-roots movement, why does the church still want emperors? and why do we build empires?

For those of you wondering how I spend most of my days right now while I am finishing my degree and raising support for CRM, I work as a painter. Not only have I learned a handy skill (which I had none before), but also end up having great conversations in the process. We have a Burmese refugee who works with us named Su Min who jokes me to “stop talking, start painting” and I joke with Nate (my burly boss) that he hired me as his personal spiritual consultant rather than as a painter. Bernie thinks I should start writing about some of these conversations, so I follow the lead of my trusty therapist friend.

Today I had a really interesting conversation while working the brush with my friend Josh Peace. I recently gave him the book Exiles by Michael Frost to read, and he had some really insightful thoughts about it.

I’ll share one of his ideas that really got me thinking (maybe more later)……

In what sense can we become like Jesus? As Protestants, our basic framework for understanding the good news of Jesus is that humans are imperfect (sinful) and never can be perfect on our own efforts, and Christ lived a perfect life to pay a substitutionary atonement for our sins so that we can be back in right relationship with God.

We now speak of becoming like Christ, but in what sense? We’ve talked about his life in terms of perfection, which is the one thing we can never become, so what does it mean to be like Him? If it means being perfect, why would we even try to become like Him?

I think this is a great question that many people wrestle with, and it really spurred my thinking. The basic Protestant gospel helps us to understand what we are free from (the consequences, penalty, and guilt of sin), but often not what we are free for in terms of our humanity becoming like Jesus.

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