Letter To The President

Dear Mr President,

Today you will be chosen to lead what many call the most powerful position in the world.  With this comes responsibility to lead.  I can only assume that in your running for President you have chosen to accept responsibilities for leadership. So with that I would like to ask you to consider the following possibilities for leading in this brave, new, wired world:

Lead With Love: As President the world will be watching you.  In ever move you make, ask the very simple clarifying question, “How would I want to be treated?” Leadership begins with love.  It means providing an example for the world to follow.  And love, which is begins with seeing and holding the other person’s dignity, is the highest ideal.

Ask Us To Be Responsible And Then Give Us Responsibility: The world is waiting for the most powerful leader to give away power. Help us see a vision for a better America, one that includes lifting our neighbors up, having faith in each other, and being the creative individuals we are.  Invite us to participate in our own growth and maturity.  Invite us to take responsibilities for our neighborhoods, children and schools.  Show us the value of turning our backs on greed as a mechanism for growth.

Live In The Moment: Don’t pretend you are a savior so you can get elected.  This could be the most important four, or even eight years, of your life.  You have the chance to lead with a sense of abandon.  If you act in the moment with wisdom, not worrying about what will happen in 2012, we will almost assuredly vote for you again.  But if you pretend to be the our savior, you’ll just be like every politician who sold out.

Give Us A Vision: You have the opportunity to think like a visionary.  Give us HUGE problems to dream about and solve and then let us solve them.  What would it look like to solve issues like Aids, clean water, and third world poverty.  We are the nation of entrepreneurs. We have the creativity and the resources.  Will you give us the initiative?

Be Honest: Shoot us straight.  We can handle the truth.  We may not like it but it’s easier to handle in the long run once we’re over the initial shock.  The truth just works better.  The truth is we can tell when you’re lying anyway.  And when we can’t John Stewart will eventually find out and you’ll look silly.

Don’t Forget The Impoverished: Will you be the President who restores compassion to the Presidency?  One of the best ways to do that is to begin with the poor.  Show the world what it would look like to think about the least of these in a way that is not patriarchal but restorative.  Help our brothers in poverty rise above the muck and mire and restore their dignity.  We need you to take a stand against those who oppress the poor, the sick and the widow.  Fight for the dignity of those who can’t fight for themselves.

Show Us How To Sacrifice: Ask us to think beyond ourselves but also show the world how.  This country was built on sacrifice and it has always been what made us great, not just as Americans, but also as human beings.  To sacrifice is to love and become the best of who we were designed to be.

Cross Lines: Show the world what it means to come over the traditional lines of “us” and “them” so we can discover “we the people”.  It’s just too easy to focus on what separates us.  Help us see and participate in what brings us together and a people.  Invite us to cross lines so we can become a more whole people who rise above our own self interests.

Mentor Other Leaders: Spend time with the Fortune 500 leaders of America asking them not just how they can create new jobs here but also how they can use their power in ways that create a better future.  Call them to move beyond greed and selfish abandon and to a more meaningful future of love and sacrifice.

Lead With Courage: Take courageous risks that will both succeed and fail.  But at least try.  Think outside the box and reveal to the world once again why we are the nation that once led the world.

Please consider these requests as you begin looking towards the next four years.

Much love to you.

Jonathan

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This post is part of a Synchroblog on Leadership.  The following blogs took part in the experiment:

Jonathan Brink – Letter To The President

Adam Gonnerman – Aspiring to the Episcopate

Kai – Leadership – Is Servant Leadership a Broken Model?

Sally Coleman – In the world but not of it- servant leadership for the 21st Century Church

Alan Knox – Submission is given not taken

Joe Miller – Elders Lead a Healthy Family: The Future

Cobus van Wyngaard – Empowering leadership

Steve Hayes – Servant leadership

Geoff Matheson – Leadership

John Smulo – Australian Leadership Lessons

Helen Mildenhall – Leadership

Tyler Savage – Moral Leadership – Is it what we need?

Bryan Riley – Leading is to Listen and Obey

Susan Barnes – Give someone else a turn!

Liz Dyer – A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Polls…

Lionel Woods – Why Diverse Leadership is Good for America

Julie Clawson – Leadership Expectations

Ellen Haroutunian – A New Kind Of Leadership

Matt Stone – Converting Leadership

Steve Bradley – Lording or Leading?

Adam Myers – Two types of Leadership

Bethany Stedman – A Leadership Mosaic

Kathy Escobar – I’m Pretty Sure This Book Won’t Make It On The Bestseller List

Fuzzy Orthodoxy – Self Leadership

Sonja Andrews – Leadership In An Age of Cholera

Tara Hull – Leadership & Being A Single Mom

Glen Hager – Election Day Ponderings On Leadership

Beth Patterson – Leadership:Being The River

Bill Ellis – Spiritual Leadership And The Rehumanizing Of Our World

Liz Dyer – A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Polls

Joe Speranzella – Leadership: This Election and Social Justice

Andries Louw – South Africa’s leadership crisis

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Really Expensive Buildings

Jeromy, MonachusBellator, and I all got together yesterday with our families for the first of three meetings we are having around Advent Conspiracy.  We’re looking at how we can redeem the way we participate in Christmas.  Americans alone spend 540 billion on Christmas and the worlds clean water problem could be solved for 10 billion.  Something’s wrong there and we’re just not happy about it.

And during our meeting my wife pulled out a catalog from Samaritans Purse, an organization that is really being creative in ways of supporting third world problems.  Families can purchase real tangible needs for families in poverty.

$100 – One Emergency Shelter

$750 – One Well

$7,500 – One House

$20,000 – One School

$25,000 – One Medical Hospital

$75,000 – One Church Building

To steal a line from Jeromy, “What is wrong with this picture?”

Why would a church cost three times as much as a hospital?  Why would it cost almost four times as much as a school and ten times as much as a house.  We’re talking walls and a roof here.  Why not build an outdoor amphitheater with a tent, or as Jeromy said build ten houses and teach people the priesthood of all believers. I couldn’t help wonder if we’re teaching third world countries the same expectations that we have about our concept of church.

And I couldn’t help wonder which one of these items Jesus would have chosen.  I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

But I just don’t get it.

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My Predictions for 2012

There was so much dialog, conversation and some argument on the Presidential election this year.  It seems like every four years we spend a billion dollars tryign to elect the “most powerful man in the world”.   And somehow these expectations always get lost sometime around March of next year.  We stop talking about what our President can do and start complaining about what he hasn’t done yet.

So I was thinking about what life will be like four years from now.  And here are my predictions for 2012.  I actually wrote this before Dobson’s apocalyptic diatribe so they are not connected.

– We’re still going to be talking about the economy because we think we never have enough money.

– For the first time in our lives we will have lived with an African American leader for four years and will sit back asking ourselves why it took so long and what we were afraid of.  (Yes I think Obama will win.)

– The church will be much more interested in solving global poverty than abortion or gay marriage. 2016 will be even better.

– We’re still going to be talking about abortion because Roe v Wade will not have been overturned.  But we will have begun to dialog the top reasons women have abortion.

– Green technology will be front and center in the debates for President as we continue our slow move away from fossil fuels.

– Jeb Bush will run for President on the Republican ticket with Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

– Hillary Clinton will contemplate and stew over why the Democratic party won’t let her run against Obama again. She try and figure out how she can replace Joe Biden.

– The United States will gain favor in the world for its international relations that are bent towards helping the poor, not warfare mentality.

– Youtube will host the first Presidential debate.

– Our national debt will be its lowest in twelve years.

– We will be out of Iraq.

– Dick Cheney will still be afraid of the 1% possibility that we’re gonna be attacked. (You have to watch the movie W to understand).

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