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An audio version of the full speech is available (mp3, approx 45+ minutes):
Carl Townsend spoke adult Singles at Rolling Hills Community Church September 18 at 10:45 A.M. on Signs of Hope: Leadership in an Age of Chaos. Carl looked at Habakkuk and what he saw and the burden that drove him to prayer. Carl then looked at where the Church is today and the responsibility of the Church when the vision Habakkuk saw is much the same one we see today. And this was supposed to be a chosen nation!
In reading that first chapter, the Northern Kingdom was already gone and the Southern Kingdom was about to be taken away by the Babylonians. The issue was not the Babylonians. The issue was that the Southern Kingdom was already destroyed, and from within.
The historian Arnold Toynbee has pointed out of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.
Another version of his same quote:
Out of the 21 civilizations he studied that collapsed, 19 died from within, not by conquests from without. He tells us that there were no bands playing or flags waving when these civilizations decayed. It happened slowly in the quiet and the dark when no one was aware of what was happening.
What did God want Habakkuk to write on the billboard?
The Just Shall live by faith. (verse 4)
What is the billboard today?
What is the promise in the last verse of the book?
A recent quote from Matt Damon describing the kind of leader he wanted:
Somebody who believes that building a strong, solid, educated middle class is ultimately the best thing for America. Someone like FDR. There’s a misconception that leaders lead. They don’t. They follow. Every great movement has come from the bottom up.
(TIME, 9/12/2011, p. 92)
Do you believe this?
What kind of leader do you want?
Can you name anyone alive that fits that description?
Here is interesting article about a speech Senator Hatfield (who died August 7, 2011) gave some years ago at Warner Pacific College.
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20110821/COLUMN0108/108210326/Rep-Vic-Gilliam-reflects-his-time-Sen-Hatfield
Senator Hatfield
The comments Senator Hatfield in this speech could be applied to many other areas where Christians should be involved: political change, abortion protests, protecting my city parks, etc, – you name it. And Senator Hatfield lived what he is saying here.
Leadership through command and control is doomed to fail. No one can create sufficient stability and equilibrium for people to feel secure and safe. Instead, as leaders we must help people move into a relationship with uncertainty and chaos. Spiritual teachers have been doing this for millennia. Therefore, I believe that the times have led leaders to a spiritual threshold. We must enter the domain of spiritual traditions if we are to succeed as good leaders in these difficult times.
Margaret Wheatley, Leadership in Turbulent Times is Spiritual
I’ve been doing a lot of study of the book of Habakkuk lately. John Maxwell, in his The Maxwell Leadership Bible, calls this book of Habakkuk “Leadership with no easy answers”. The very first verse of the first chapter begins:
The burden which the prophet Habakkuk saw.
I have two words circled in my Bible: “saw” and “burden”. What did Habakkuk see? The following verses describe a nation much as America today. Habakkuk then hurls three questions at God. In the first question, he is asking if this is a chosen (or “Christian”) nation, why is all this going on? Where are You in all this? The wicked surround the righteous. Justice never goes forth, and there is strive and contention.
The Lord answers Habakkuk, and the answer is shocking. The Northern Kingdom has already been taken away, and the Lord tells Habakkuk that the Southern Kingdom will be taken away by another nation that is far more wicked than Israel itself.
Habakkuk then asks God what is going on. Do you really know what you are doing here?” (Maxwell) In Habakkuk’s second and third questions, he expresses his confusion to God and is asking how this can possibility be right.
Ever been there in your own life? If God is good and loves you, why would he take that spouse, or that child, or leave you jobless?
What does Habakkuk do? As the second chapter begins, we see that Habakkuk says he will “stand his watch and wait to see what God will do. And watch to see what He will say to me…”
Habakkuh says he will wait. Sometimes the hardest thing for a leader to do is wait. I remember after the Billy Graham crusade here meeting Bob Crider, a local evangelist, in a local restaurant. I knew he was involved in the local and massive prayer summits at the coast where hundreds of pastors gathered at times to pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit in Portland. I asked him when the pastors would begin acting, moving beyond the prayer. His answer touched me deeply. “Carl,” he said, “we must wait for the Lord to speak.” It’s hard for a leader to wait.
Habakkuk waited, but it was an active waiting. The word “watch” is used twice in the verse, and a different Hebrew word is used each time. When he says “I will stand my watch”, the word refers to the role or functional gift of the watchman. Ephesians 4 describes the five-fold functional gifts of the Holy Spirit, and here is another functional gift. The watchman stationed himself on the walls of the city and watched 24/7 for what was going on outside the city.
The second time the word “watch” is used, it refers to a motivational gifting (1 Cor 12). It translates as to lean forward, to peer into the distance. It’s an intentional action birthed from passion.
The Lord answers Habakkuk, and the answer is in the second chapter. He is to write the vision on a billboard, so that anyone reading can read it even if they are running. THE JUST WILL LIVE BY FAITH. The third chapter is a prayer of praise and becomes a worship experience on the part of Habakkuk. The concluding verse (and I love it):
The LORD God is Carl’s strength;
He will make Carl’s feet like deer’s feet,
And He will make Carl walk on Carl’s high places.
Several lessons we can learn from this:
What other lessons do you see?
In 1776 a restlessness stalked the new American colonies. Radical leaders in the colonies, opposing taxes imposed by England, rebelled not only for tax relief, but for the independence of the colonies from England. The underground printing presses quickly became a major force in shaping the destiny of the colonies. Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”, published in January of 1776, argued that the cause of America should not be just a revolt against the taxes, but a demand for independence. The fifty page pamphlet sold over 100,000 copies in two months. More than any other single publication, “Common Sense” paved the way for the Declaration of Independence in July of 1776. As the vision for America grew, Pain wrote more than 16 other papers. In December of 1776 while Washington’s troops wintered demoralized, Washington read another of Paine’s papers to his troops.
“These are the times that try men’s souls…”
Paine was not the only writer that shaped the vision of new America. Dozens of publications were printed on basement printing presses by a network of visionaries. These publications, which were called “broadsides” at that time, shaped the country. It was the printed word that rallied Americans to the cause, building community and motivation that supported the American army with food, money, and supplies. The face of history was changed.
Today, as with these visionaries, men and women who have shaped history have always had their networks. Those who have lead from the networks and using the tools of communications have always been the major force of cultural change. Hundreds of years ago in Europe the Gutenberg Press paved the way for the Scientific Revolution, the Reformation, and the Industrial Age. America was the first country in the world that was birthed from the cultural forces of the Gutenberg Press.
During the middle of the twentieth century the picture changed. During the last few decades the powers that have charted our personal destinies have always been the wealthy. In the Industrial Age, only the wealthy could purchase and control the means of production and afford the networks necessary to remain in control. The wealthy have always had their networks – their country clubs, private schools, international “commissions”, and even their electronic networks on large main-frame computers.
With the emerging of the personal computers, social networks, PayPal and more this is no longer true. Because of the rapidly decreasing cost of technology, it no longer takes large resources to build networks that span geographic barriers or to access any type of information. The new underground force for change is no longer the printing press and broadsides, but rather the Internet. Pamphlets, eBooks, papers, and blog postings can easily be stored and distributed using the Internet. Like the visionaries of early America, the leaders of our time are quickly discovering the power of the Internet and are using it to build networks and motivate people for change. Information published electronically can circulate far faster and less expensively than the printed word. Information is power, and the networks for communication and information access are already becoming available to almost anyone in the developed countries.
As a result, these new electronic networks are already having and will have in the near future a profound effect on our culture. Learning and using these is important taking back our government. We need to stand up for our rights now – or we will lose them.
““With the coming of the information society, we have for the first time an economy based on a key resource that is not only renewable but self-generating…We are drowning in information but starving for knowledge.”
John Naisbitt
“Networks offer what bureaucracies can never deliver – the horizontal link…Hierarchies promote moving up and getting ahead, produce stress, tension, and anxiety. Networking empowers the individual, and people in networks tend to nurture one another.”
John Naisbitt
(This may be distributed if reference given)
“Leadership through command and control is doomed to fail. No one can create sufficient stability and equilibrium for people to feel secure and safe. Instead, as leaders we must help people move into a relationship with uncertainty and chaos. Spiritual teachers have been doing this for millennia. Therefore, I believe that the times have led leaders to a spiritual threshold. We must enter the domain of spiritual traditions if we are to succeed as good leaders in these difficult times.”
Margaret Wheatley, Leadership in Turbulent Times is Spiritual
New article on the new paradigm and related leadership issues here.
Embrace the Change
“My goal is to create a situation of full unemployment–a world in which people do not have to hold a job. And I believe that this kind of world can actually be achieved.” – Robert Theobald
Can you think of anything more stupid than what Moses did to rescue this nation? The Israelites were the economic engine for one of the most advanced civilizations of that time. Here’s old Moses—80 years old—standing there with nothing but a silly stick going in to Pharaoh. Then, to top it off, God tells him to throw down the stick (Exodus 4:1-5). Moses had to throw away the only thing he was left holding. Moses took a faith step.The same thing is true with us. God really wants to astonish us, just like He did with Moses. Do you have any idea about what God wants to do to rescue you?First, however, there must be this intimacy. Then He speaks. Then we must let go of what we are holding. Then God will astonish you. The sole purpose for God creating you is for intimacy with Him. Can you hear that? See it? Taste it? Act on it?Why not pray in the morning for God to astonish you that day. Then watch when and how He does it. Got wants to astonish you – but probably not the way you expect.Note: For more on Moses, Purpose, and his intimacy with God see Exodus 33: 13,17. The word know in this passage is from the Hebrew yada, the same word used in Gen. 4:1 when is says “Adam knew Eve his wife” – The word LORD used in this passage is from the Hebrew Yahweh, referring to a deeply personal God that knows us and wants us to know Him.(from Carl’s Beyond Illusion: Leading from Reality)
Brian, thanks for Seth’s leadership quotes at:http://briandoddonleadership.com/2011/02/12/30-leadership-quotes-by-seth-godin-from-tribes-part-1/More (Part 2)http://briandoddonleadership.com/2011/02/12/34-leadership-quotes-by-seth-godin-from-tribes-part-2/
