Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Compliments department

a Jesus thought...
Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them. (Matthew 4:24)

a Godly thought...
No matter how seeker friendly one might wish to make the service, it still communicates dualism. In the end God is experienced as a church god and not the God of all of life, including church. (p158 Frost & Hirsch)

a leading thought...
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world: and that is an idea whose time has come. (Victor Hugo)
a Dave thought...
In follow up to the Chasers security breach I have been fascinated by the response of our citizens. A report this morning reads...

THE ABC has received 266 complaints about the Chaser team's breaching of security at the APEC forum in Sydney last week. The national broadcaster has also had 177 phone calls, emails or letters of "appreciation" for the stunt in which the Chaser team were charged by police with entering a restricted zone after driving a mock motorcade bearing Canadian flags through two security checkpoints. (If you want to make your own opinion it is being viewed tomorrow night 9pm on ABC.)
I was told that one official complaint made to the media may represent 100 people but there is normally only one in a 100 that has the courage or the time to follow through on a given issue. The figure I would like know is how many are represented when a compliment is issued. My suggestion it is more likely to be around 200.

We live in a society that looks for opportunity to knock something or complain about an issue but when we are happy with things we rarely give our feedback. I'd like to hope it is different in the church, but experience tells me it probably isn't. I was once taught to change a culture look for those doing things well and encourage them, rather than always pointing out the problems. I encourage you all to look for people doing things well and let them know, who knows you maybe 1 in 200.


Just a thought.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was just contemplating this thought the other day. I was thinking about leadership and what made for good and bad leadership. I thought about those who had leadership responsibility for me over the past and the ones that brought the best out in me and others around me were ones that spoke encouragement into our lives and the one leader who continually spoke condemnation into our lives got the worst out of us and those around. So sometimes we can learn from bad experiences not to repeat them ourselves. How I agree that we should not stay silent when things are going well - we should tell those responsible and make it even better.

Blessings to you
TJ

Anonymous said...

I reckon you're doing a fantastic job Dave! (... seriously ;)

bl