Over the years, I've heard people make a variety of statements that caused me to pause and ponder the credibility of what they spoke.
I once heard someone say, “If you are going to lead you need to read.” While that sounds good on the surface, it fails as a blanket statement. I have met a number of national-level leaders from developing nations that could barely read and owned no books. They were apostles providing wise oversight for thousands of people. I have known leaders in our affluent western culture that could afford to purchase and read a book a week yet struggled in the very elemental aspects of life and faith. Some of this “read to lead” mindset flows from an education-based model of leadership we have adopted that was not present in the Early Church when the Gospel was empowered by the Spirit, not the development of human intellect.
Another comment I heard came from a man who supervised hundreds of churches for his denomination. He made a comment about a small town pastor as the dear man walked by, “He’s a 50-person pastor.” At the time, I barely had 10 people in my new church plant. The supervisor judged the quality and impact of the man’s ministry based on the number of people he could draw on a Sunday morning, not the impact the man and his church were having in their community.
You could supply your own list of comments that do not carry the content of full truth. We toss these comments around making huge and inaccurate assumptions about life and people. Today, discern what you are repeating without processing its content. I have found some of the things I parroted over the years had no depth of wisdom in their broad-brush proclamation. I no longer repeat those half-truths.
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