A Pre-Christian Prophet Part II

Jordan Peterson has recently published a video titled Message to the Christian Churches. It addresses the issue of raising up “real men.” Anyone who has been paying attention to the western Christian world will know that the Church has been dealing with this issue for a long time. Remember Mark Driscoll?

July 13, 2022

Right wingers will resonate with Peterson; left wingers will not. True Christianity is not trying to solve the conflict between left and right. Christ’s kingdom transcends our politics, thank God.

However, here again we see a non-Christian speaking with more influence over young men than any Christian leader. It doesn’t matter how wrong or right Peterson’s message is, it is the message being listened to by the most people.

Part I

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Nobody Cares About Your Passion – Visionaries Vs. Masters Part Eight

There is no “I” in team. Yes, but there is a “me”. If you’re leading a team, no one cares about your passion except you. What does everyone else care about? Their own passions of course. Why would you expect anything different? Now, this isn’t a bad thing — in fact, just the opposite — if everyone is passionate about the same thing. You’d expect everyone on the same team to be passionate about the same thing. If everyone is passionate about different things, then that’s no team. If all the team has the same passion except one person, then that one person is in the wrong place. If you, as the team leader, are constantly struggling to get people to do their part, then you are in the wrong place.

On any sports team, every player is passionate about the game. Also, every player wants to be the star player. Every player is passionate about his own success. Sure, the coach has to be passionate too if he wants the players to listen to him, but each player will put his own passion before the coach’s passion. If the coach sees a player with no passion, that player is booted off the team.

I’m mostly repeating myself from what I’ve written in my other Visionaries vs Masters articles, but that’s okay. Nobody is reading this anyway.

If you want to lead, give your team what they want: the ability to satisfy their own passions. You don’t like their passions? Then why are they on your team?

Hopefully I’ve now used the word “passion” enough times to make you sick of it, as you should be.

Also, if you want to be a master, you should ditch the whole team model entirely.

Visionary Leaders Vs. Masters – Seven Part Series

One of my favourite series of articles I’ve written on this blog nobody reads is my Visionary Leaders Vs. Masters series.

I’ve decided to link all seven articles here for your reading enjoyment, even though I know no one is actually reading this and I am only writing to myself which is probably not very healthy mentally.

David Bentley Hart on Romans 9

Conferences are a Waste of Time

speaker You might be like me and hate conferences. But, is that a good enough reason not to go? Perhaps not. So lets flip it and assume you love going to conferences. Is loving them enough of a reason to go? It might be for you. (You know that you only go to conferences because you love them if the highlight of your entire year is the conference itself.) But suppose you wanted to convince a conference hater to go and to do so you had to come up with other reasons why you go different from the fact that you love them. What would those reasons be?

Conference Lover (CL): Conferences are great for team building and community.

Conference Hater (CH): If you only see a group of people once a year at a conference and not at any other time during the year, they are not your team nor your community. If you do see them regularly throughout the year, why have a conference?

CL: There is great teaching.

CH: If you own an iPad and have an internet connection, you literally have at your fingertips access to the world’s greatest teachers on any subject at anytime throughout the year.

CL: Networking!

CH: Assuming that networking refers to meeting people who have solutions to the problems you’re facing, why would you wait for a conference to hopefully meet someone? Why would you not actively pursue meeting the right people throughout the year?

CL: It’s a great time to get away from it all.

CH: Like a vacation? My vacation time is limited and I’m not going to spend 80% of it in a conference hall.

CL: Your presence at the conference signals your loyalty to the organization.

CH: Hah! Next….

CL: Vision casting from the leaders — seeing the bigger picture.

CH: I’m not fumbling around with no vision for 360 days of the year only to find it at a four day conference. Besides, you don’t want to make any major decisions for your life while being hyped up at a conference.

CL: You don’t want to be independent do you?

CH: My dependance rests on those close at hand and in my day to day life. And their dependance rests on me.

CL: Conferences are fun, encouraging, and essential for your success.

CH: If the single subject of the conference were something that I was very passionate about, like a particular theological theme, or Christian education, or blacksmithing, then I might go to be educated or for fun. But as soon as the conference is advertised as something essential for my success, then I know it will neither be fun nor essential for my success.

CL: ……

What else would you say?

Here is what a tolerable conference looks like (but probably still a waste of time):

One very specific theme which directly relates to those in attendance. No general themes like “Leadership” or “Moving Forward!”. (Read my article on Andragogy, linked to below.)
The conference is kept small enough so that it can be interactive throughout. Can an attendee ask questions, or provide input? Or is the room too full of people for that?
Two or three days long maximum.

“The best kind of ‘conference’ is going on vacation with a small group of your smartest friends.” ~Naval Ravikant

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