Rex M Rogers - Discerning What Is Best

Discerning What Is Best
with Dr. Rex M. Rogers

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 17 March 2011

I’ve known several leaders who didn’t know when to leave. They stayed too long, tainted their reputations, and nearly destroyed their organizations because they couldn’t pull the plug.

These leaders were good people, even superb leaders. But they didn’t have the will to leave. Or just as often, well-intentioned supporters begged leaders to stay long past when wisdom suggested otherwise and the leaders allowed themselves to be beguiled by vox populi. Their organizations paid the price.

No leader lives nor lasts forever. Sooner or later, all leaders resign, retire, are fired, or die in office. I know leaders who’ve found ways to delay or avoid the first three options. I don’t know of any who’ve delayed the last option—other than by moving on and dying out of office.

Whatever. Leaders eventually leave. It’s a given. The concern here are leaders who try to lengthen “eventually” indefinitely.

Not to pick on the man, but Dr. Robert H. Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral may be a case in point. I’m not attacking him, but I believe he’s given us plenty of evidence recently to make my point about great leaders knowing when to leave. Dr. Schuller hasn’t left.

The man is 84 years old. I attended a service last fall, my first and only, and saw for myself how as an older man he got confused a couple of times in the pulpit. More to the point, he turned the reins over to his son and then took them back. He’s turned the reins over to his daughter and just this week countermanded her leadership in public, even calling the press to state his open disagreement with something she had done. Whatever right and wrong or good and best might be regarding the specific issues, Dr. Schuller is demonstrating what it looks like when a leader is so tied into his/her organization that he/she cannot leave long past the time when he/she should have done so.

Leaders sometimes get to a point they confuse their own ego with their position, i.e., “I am the President,” or CEO, etc. It, the leadership role, and me are the same in the leader’s mind. This is not good for him or her or the organization.

Leaders who don’t know when to leave can, in a short time, nearly destroy an organization they worked years to build. I’ve seen this happen and out of grace to others involved I won’t name two universities where this indeed took place.

I could name a university where the newly appointed president found 7 former presidents serving on the Board. How’d you like to face that each time you suggested a change? It's a free country, and this university can do this if it wants, but freedom to act doesn't guarantee wise actions.

I can name “big name” pastors who didn’t know when or how to leave, and worse, hadn’t over the years developed a “bench” of new leaders. In other words these pastors failed to do what John Maxwell says is one of the most important things a leader can do: develop the leaders around you, for the sake of the future of the organization.

Leaders who stay “too long” only end up weakening their organizations. No one stays on top forever. No leader, no matter how good his/her track record, is the only person capable of running the organization well. Sure, there are great ones out there who’ve gone away and come back—Steve Jobs of Apple, Howard Schultz of Starbucks—but they are rare.

Great leaders know when to leave—and then they do. It’s a simple as that. President George Washington retired to Mt. Vernon and then studiously resisted multiple overtures attempting to lure him back into politics or to get him to make public statements criticizing his successors. His is a good model.

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 11 March 2011

Everyone who’s still breathing experiences difficulties. Sometimes they come one after the other, trials or tribulations. Punch. Punch. Body punch. Health issues, family relationship stress, personal problems, financial duress, loss of employment, passing of a loved one, the examples are endless.

How do we survive? Better yet, how can we thrive in the midst of periodic, overwhelming onslaughts of the “vagaries and vicissitudes of life”?

The Old Testament prophet Habakkuk provides an answer:

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fail and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights” (3:17-19).

I remember a time early in our marriage when we experienced a run of problems that placed us in difficult financial straits. It caused me a great deal of stress until one day the thought occurred to me: “It’s just money. What if we lost everything we have? They’re just things.” With those ideas in mind I prayed “Lord, I give it all to you, everything we own, including our current financial pressure. If for some reason in your will it all disappears, it’s OK.”

Of course the Lord did not need my permission to work his will. My submission was more important for me than him. I will never forget that day.

Since that time, when under duress I’ve prayed that prayer a few other times, i.e., “Lord, it’s OK. I give it all to you for whatever you want to happen.” When sincerely offered this prayer results in incredible spiritual rest and emotional release. The problem didn’t go away. The pressure is still there. But how I process it is entirely different. If there are “no cattle in the stalls, yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”

I don’t write this in a flippant or self-righteous way. I know certain problems are bigger than others—a loved ones life-threatening illness or death, for example. But I believe “the Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights.”

I used to believe because this verse represents the theology of my faith. I was supposed to believe it. Now I believe because I’ve experienced the Lord’s strong arm for myself. It’s a continuing lesson, but the Lord is always there—when the fig tree buds and when it does not.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 10 March 2011

Tenure is a sacred word in higher education. But its long-standing dominance in academia may be coming to an end, in part due to mounting financial pressures facing college and university administrators across the country. Actually, it’s more than that: tenure will eventually come under review because municipal and state budgets are upside-down and must be cut to re-establish some kind of financial sanity—education is a part of the pie.

Boards of trustees, school boards, and legislators are reconsidering the wisdom of continuing to create an administratively untouchable class of employees whose compensation acts as a “negative endowment” upon the institution, especially when these personnel retire. Citizens are wondering why individuals employed to serve the public good are granted greater benefits, higher average salaries, extended time off, and contracts for life while the rest of us have to work for a living.

Tenure may be earned by fulltime faculty members, usually after they’ve taught five or six years, when they demonstrate knowledge of their discipline, ability to write and publish research, and one would hope, positive student feedback, and teaching competency. Assuming this is so, faculty peers who consider evaluated colleagues worthy of a long-term commitment may recommend them to the institution for tenure.

Tenured faculty members can pretty much consider themselves employed for life or good behavior. Tenure is a legally defined “property right” that once extended can only be retracted through due process. While it’s possible to release a tenured faculty member for cause, the process is fraught with emotional and legal hurdles, so it is rare indeed.

Tenure originated in the Middle Ages as a means of protecting teachers from arbitrary professional harm. It’s called “academic freedom,” the idea a professor can pursue a line of inquiry or propound views that may not be considered acceptable by others, who may be in a position to suppress the ideas or fire the professor for holding to “wrong views.” In some notable examples the idea has worked.

Meanwhile, about two-thirds of faculty members nationally do not hold tenure. As non-tenure track adjuncts they teach heavy loads, are compensated less, and yet for the most part serve students well and otherwise perform admirably. They do not enjoy the protections of the special one-third.

I should note that tenured faculty members are not a recently discovered new “enemy,” or at least they shouldn’t be considered such. Tenured faculty members in general are not the problem. And among the two-thirds non-tenured professors many are cultivating notable careers. It’s the few among them who abuse the system who are the problem, and even more, it’s the system itself that’s become unnecessary and financially unsustainable.

Tenure is now more about job security than academic freedom. I say this because there is so much case law and other precedent protecting freedom of speech or expression that faculty members are well protected as citizens of these United States. Tenure acts more often as a protection of position than ideas.

Tenure reduces accountability and undermines competitive incentives—faculty peer reviews can come under great pressure to overlook problems and endorse a suspect colleague. When this happens, the system helps perpetuate poor professors, thus robbing students of the high caliber their high education costs should give them the right to expect.

Tenure creates highly inflexible financial and operational commitments for institutions that can no longer maintain them. If an institution needs to reposition its workforce for better productivity or if an institution needs to reduce the size of its workforce, tenure gets in the way. In fact, tenure protects the highest paid teachers, which translates to lower paid teachers taking the brunt of cuts even if at least some of them may be better in-classroom instructors. Tenure protects teachers in disciplines supporting majors students may no longer want, so schools are left with faculty/student ratios that can’t support the program but can’t be changed.

Tenure isolates faculty and reinforces disciplinary values rather than institutional values. So if they’re so inclined, faculty can teach the way they wish and no longer respond to administrative influence, much less directives, to improve pedagogy or increase excellence. They can focus more on advancing within their professional disciplines than upon teaching.

Tenure is an impediment to academic excellence. Even if it must be phased out via new hires, I’d argue public or private secondary schools and low endowed postsecondary institutions interested in surviving should eliminate tenure, which no longer protects academic freedom. It just protects poor teaching and poor teachers.

In lieu of tenure, institutions can put in place longer contracts, sometimes called “term tenure,” of up to five years. They can tie professor advancement and salaries to actual in-class teaching excellence, not solely advanced degrees and most of all, not simply seniority. They can reward excellence and achievement in a multitude of other ways short of granting employment for life.

Tenure isn’t evil. It’s just a system that’s seen its day and should be set aside. Like cutting taxes, an act that first seems to produce less will in a short time produce more—competitive excellence and financially sound institutions. Most of the rest of the workforce outside teaching does quite nicely without tenure. Education can too.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 09 March 2011

All human beings live by values. Mostly we get them, the late Francis A. Schaeffer used to say, “by osmosis.” We absorb them from surrounding culture. We haven’t thought about them; they’re just there.

Psychologists, philosophers, and theologians debate various ideas about how human beings acquire knowledge and values, among them John Locke’s tabula rasa, i.e., “blank slate.” It’s an intriguing idea, but I’ve never believed all children were essentially born with a mind full of nothing and therefore all our knowledge, attitudes, and values develop later via experience and sensation.

I certainly agree our minds and even personalities are formed over time in part by our environment, i.e. Nature (vs Nurture). But I do not believe we start from scratch. Rather I believe God endows each human being at birth with unique personality and talent. Later, through our choices and our life experiences, Nature again, we can build upon, suppress, or redirect our basic personality and talent. But we don’t begin with nothing, like an animal with no more than instincts.

I also believe we craft our personalities, worldviews, and values via Nurture. Made in the image of God we are rational creatures capable of reason and accumulated knowledge. We may be taught—nurtured—and we may learn.

Along the way, we may be taught and we may learn poor or bad values. We make them our own. That’s what Schaeffer meant by osmosis. We embrace values without questioning their moral content.

For example, I’ve known dedicated, knowledgeable, and otherwise spiritually mature Christian people who hold racist points of view. Have they simply never applied—connected the dots—their Christian worldview to their racist viewpoints? Or are they just not knowledgeable enough about biblical theology to sense the spiritual dissonance between claiming to be Christian and to be racist at the same time? It could be either of these possibilities.

This scenario could apply to any number of attitudes, values, or behaviors we've developed: prejudice toward Middle Easterners, a temper or simply ongoing anger, laziness, you name it. We can be different from what we are.

Our task, as believers, is to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18). We’re supposed to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). To do this, we must continually run our values through the filter of our Christian worldview. If we do this, that is, compare our values to the principles God's Word provides, with the Holy Spirit’s enablement we will gradually rid bad values, attitudes, or behaviors from our daily life. This is called sanctification, spiritual maturing.

Clearly, it is possible for human beings to learn and adopt new values, attitudes, and behaviors. We cannot blame who we are entirely upon Nature or Nurture. We can change and we are responsible for our own growth.

"You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness," (Ephesians 4:22-24). Which means this: we may not be able to change the world, but we can with the help of the Holy Spirit change ourselves.

This may sound like work, but actually it’s something far more enticing: it’s hope.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 08 March 2011

Few people of any political persuasion deny the United States has an “immigration problem.” By this, they recognize that perhaps 2 million individuals enter the United States illegally each year and perhaps 10-12 million “undocumented” (the old phrases were “illegals” or “illegal aliens”) individuals already reside in the States.

The highly vitriolic debate gets started when anyone suggests what should be done about our “immigration problem.” Somehow, what one might think would be a fairly straightforward proposition—define American citizenship, put in place a process by which legal immigrants may become citizens, and police borders to assure the law is observed and American security is preserved—is not straightforward at all. In fact, it’s a political quagmire. Meanwhile, more individuals enter America illegally, more Americans are pressed into supporting undocumented individuals’ social and healthcare needs, and more bile taints political discourse whenever “immigrant” is mentioned.

Now, in frustration, some politicians are suggesting so-called “birth tourism” be stopped by changing the longstanding definition of citizenship stated in the Fourteenth Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside.”

These pols claim pregnant women enter the States illegally, then birth their children on American soil so the children will automatically become U.S. citizens, thus becoming so-called “anchor babies” making it possible for Mom to stay. The pols who disagree with this “birthright citizenship” want to change the law so children of illegals will not qualify automatically for U.S. citizenship.

All this is a rather said state of affairs getting to the heart of the fact that Americans no longer agree on what an American is. Some people, responding with compassion or other motives to the millions of illegal immigrants already here, or even those yet to come, seem to want to blithely throw the concept away as if it has no value. What of citizenship? Why does it matter? We’re all one and one for all? Anyone may come, the government will pick up the tab, and somehow it will all work out in the end.

It’s a wonderful utopian vision however misguided and ungrounded in reality. Ultimately, “the government” is us. We pick up the tab, and truth be told, a system built on the backs of a few to pay for the many simply doesn’t work.

In terms of national interest, defining American citizenship allows it to become a boon and blessing to all; it makes sense. Other countries define what it means to be a citizen. Why can’t America do this without being accused of bigotry, racism, or worse?

On the other hand, the anti-birthright citizenship movement is a kneejerk reaction that undermines some of the most precious principles in the American story. We are a nation of immigrants. Nearly all Americans come from somewhere else. It’s part of the genius of America’s free and open society, a land of opportunity, a land where one worships, works, and pursues happiness freely. Progress and plenty must be earned, but they are open to all. Lawyering away a baby’s citizenship because his or her mother is from another country flies in the face of what it means to be an American, not to mention the fact such a law would create an enforcement nightmare.

The open-the-floodgates perspective on immigration is unwise and in the end unhelpful to both Americans and undocumented individuals. The anti-birthright-citizenship perspective on immigration is equally unwise and in the end unhelpful. Neither approach is viable long-term or in the best interests of the nation.

Yet immigration policy and practice needs to be reformed, clearly. And reform isn’t rocket science. As I’ve said before, it can be done. What we need is common sense proposals led by articulate political leaders of integrity. We need immigration law that defines and defends American citizenship with appropriate patriotism. We need immigration law that respects the worth of American citizenship even as it offers this special privilege via legal process to individuals who care to work to attain it.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 07 March 2011

Unprecedented social foment continues in the Middle East and North Africa. People demonstrate, protest, and even fight for change, and “Freedom” is the watchword.

Quick revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt may have spoiled us. The world wants peaceful resolution, and the sooner the better. But protesters in Libya are facing the strongest government opposition yet, complete with mercenaries, tanks, and fighter jets firing on Libyan citizens. Each day the prospects of a protracted civil war grow more likely. Meanwhile protesters in Bahrain, Yemen, and several other Arab countries press their governments for more economic opportunities, access to political decision-making, and basic human rights.

So far, it appears the two successful revolutions and protesters throughout the region seem to be nonsectarian, meaning they’re motivated by something other than religious goals. They’re driven by scattered leaders or by groups of freedom fighters rather than by organized religious movements. This is positive in the sense that religious influence generally heightens the stakes, making orderly transfers of power more difficult. The fact this could change as the revolutions settle into some kind of new political normal is a “known unknown” element of Middle East social transition.

On television or the Internet we watch tens of thousands demonstrate and/or fight. This is impressive, but we should remember there are tens of millions on the sidelines, sitting at home watching, doing nothing, or mostly just not engaging knowledgeably with the protests. What we don’t know is whether these millions at home are or will vote in favor of change or in favor of not changing? This is another element of change-by-the-moment Middle East/North Africa social transition.

One hopes that what emerges in all the countries engaged in civil discourse and/or civil war is a new level of tolerance and respect for minority individuals and groups. That is to say, one hopes post-revolution governments will not only protect basic human rights but will set the tone for inclusive societies in which acceptance is extended to all—ethnicities, races, religions, and also women and the disabled. Whether this will happen is yet uncertain but could change by the moment.

Three groups now seem to have emerged in the Middle East and North Africa: 1) people committed to revolutionary change, 2) people committed to maintaining current governments, and 3) the “silent majority” waiting, watching, and wondering which way they’ll cast their lot when the time comes. This could change at any moment and no one knows just how or in which direction.

The Middle East has always been a fascinating and an inherently important region of the world. Never more so than now.

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