I just started reading another book by Tom Brokaw. My brother gave me this one for Christmas. I had read his book, The Greatest Generation, a few years ago. In The Greatest Generation, he chronicles the stories of the World War II generation which is fast leaving the earth. So, he wanted their stories told, his father’s and mine’s generation.

In this book, The Time of Our Lives, he begins to explore the ideas which have changed rapidly and asks poignant questions regarding our country and our culture. Such questions as, “Have we lost our way?” And, “Who are we now as a nation?”

As I was reading the preface and the introductory questions were being asked, I thought to myself that the church and Christianity ought to be asking the same questions. One of the real questions for thought is the technological breakthroughs and inventions and how cyberspace is changing us, in fact, dramatically.

We are radically changing the way life is lived. When I first saw “texting” being advertised for cell phones, I thought, “Why text when you could just call?” But, it caught on and now we live in a texting world. We gave up writing letters and started using e-mail and now we have given up talking for texting.

What is amazing is that you can make a call to a person, particularly younger ones, and get no response. But, if in the next minute, you text; you will get a reply shortly. I think it has come to the place that we do not want to talk. The culture has dismissed civility and dispensed with the hello’s and how are you’s to cut directly to the terse point and counter point. We have further reduced the joy of the language to cryptic phonics to convey our message in as few key strokes or taps as possible. Yet, the communication has increased to the point that no one in the room is really connected to the folks in front of them; they are connected to anyone who texts them from anywhere in the world.

The ubiquitous smartphone lives in the hands of people. I know some that never put it down. They nap with phone in hand so the slightest vibration alerts them to the demand of the text. Young  people and adults live hunched over their phones as they punch out cryptic messages oblivious to their surroundings. The attention span of most people has been reduced to 160 characters.

Now, while saying all of this, I am one who enjoys the technology and uses it. However, my life is not a Facebook expose’. There are people who have ruined their lives thinking Facebook is a good forum to vent their feelings on or show pictures that may be compromising. Really!? Cyperbullies? Turn your computer off.

At Christmas, all the kids came in with their newest tablets, electronic I mean, and they were enjoying all the new apps and movies. I commented to them that this could be the first Christmas when the family gets together and no one talks to each other because they are engrossed in their own little cyber world. Well, they did not continue and we had a great time, but that one moment when I walked into the room, it was everyone hunched over their device in the own world while all were around.

“Techiness” is fun but not at the expense of human interaction, I mean a real human, flesh and blood. Avatars, screen names, fake personas, all are fantasies that mean a person never learns how to be anyone; they are adrift in a sea of zeros and ones.

The whole culture will have to re-discover the arts of human civility, privacy, diplomacy of conversation. The very fruit of the Holy Spirit is the essence of human interaction that appreciates and honors and builds the community.

As a church or Christianity, I think our challenge is a communal one. Will we continue to extol relationship where one faces the reality of sin, the reality of grace, and the transforming power of God? Can we use technologies in a way that is godly rather than ungodly. Each new thing comes to us in a fairly moral neutrality, but man perverts it and many times makes it’s use immoral.

The church is challenged to be a place where people can still relate human to human and human to God. We must not lose our way, lose focus, or fail to tell the age old story of redemption. We still have to touch people. The Gospel is not the cyber message; it is a message of human pathos as one human touches another with redemptive grace, making room for the Holy Spirit to bring new life through a new birth.

  “And the things that you have heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” 2 Timothy 2:2

     

    At my age, there is a tension for the present and the future. You want to be a viable force and ministry, but you also want to have things in place for the next generation. My son, Bill and I were talking about this and he commented that what came to him one day was, “Do you want to be a Legend or leave a Legacy?”

For me that summed up what I have been observing for years. This holds true in the corporate world, the church, and even family. John Maxwell, well known writer on leadership, states that all things rise or fall with leadership. While there are numerous approaches to leadership, it still takes leadership for success. 

While visiting Bill in Georgia, we toured some Civil War sites and a study of that war shows the importance of leadership. Some generals were great leaders and others were not. The war would have lasted only a few weeks or months if the North had the quality of leadership that the South had.

Leadership is an innate quality of some, but has to be trained and cultivated. A leader can develop through trial and error at the expense of his followers, or he can be trained by those who have experience and allow the innate qualities to surface at an accelerated pace.

However, observation shows there are two kinds of leaders, those who want to be legends and those who want to leave a legacy.

The Legend leads with the iron fist of his or her qualities. Often the legend is brutal in execution of goals. The legend wants no challenges from subordinates since he has no peers. A legend can be extremely successful. Henry Ford was known for his invention and his temper. He single handedly destroyed a car on the line with a sledge hammer because it was not what he wanted; although the public was crying for it.

The legend does not prepare for the future since no one would be good enough, and somehow the legend thinks he will go on forever. His goal is to make everyone miss him when he is gone and the company, church, or family will just have to suffer his absence. It is the cowboy riding off into the sunset with Happy Trails playing in the background.

Leaving a legacy is a different story. The one who chooses to leave a legacy is intimately concerned with the future of the company, the church, the family. Leaving a legacy takes diligence, forethought, and planning. We all have a limited time on this earth. What can we do to make sure that the work we have done adds to the long term goal of the Kingdom? 

Leaving a legacy requires identifying next generation potential. The potential is in people, not things. Who are the potential leaders? Who has been called of God? Who has those latent qualities to lead people? Whose character lends itself to integrity?

Legacy requires training those with the potential and giving them opportunity to lead in some subordinate role. However, the goal is to provide seamless leadership transitions for the sake of the company, church, or family.

The legacy maker is interested in people as well as the product or bottom line on a spreadsheet. While we want success as leaders, there is no success in doing well, dying, and having no one prepared to lead on.

Many of the churches I have observed are legend builders. There is no succession plan in place. Some of these churches will be one generation wonders. Some have already diminished or folded or are repositories of older folks with no young people around.

The Bible expressly tells leaders to train, entrust, and leave a legacy. Jesus’ ministry was not only teaching, preaching, and ministry of wonders, but it was full of next generation preparation. It was frustrating at times, evoking disappointment in them that they were not catching on, but continuing forward he moved.

You see, if there is no preparation for the next generation, they lose hope. Their gifts press them as did ours. My gifts still press me. Retirement is not the option for me since the gifts would continue to press me. I cannot imagine walking away and saying I am done with the kind of fire still burning within. But I also know how it is as a young person with a fire burning within. Legends drive all that talent away from themselves because of insecurity, or refusing to make room for the younger talent, or just the fear of competition that someone might have a better idea and ruin their legend status. Many churches have lost the cream of the crop to other works because of the legend mentality.

God wants us to leave legacies of good leaders. To be remembered as a good leader is great, but to be remembered as a leader who invested and trained is better. 

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