Above all else

In the 80s, we lionised corporate titans - the people who made the machines that symbolised the rise of the comfortable middle class - cars, washing machines, aeroplanes.  Everyone read Lee Iacocca's eponymous biography "Iacocca", and how he rescued Chrysler.  Everyone followed Jack Welch, the man who grew General Electric's revenue from 12b USD to 410b USD. In the 90s, we fell in love with personal computing and later, the internet.  Bill Gates with Microsoft, Steve Jobs, in his first tempestuous incarnation with Apple, and Jerry Yang, who helped us organise the internet and gave us email on Yahoo, before Google emerged. Then in the 2000s, we celebrated financiers.  These days, most people only remember the financial crisis of 98-99, but before that, everyone thought Alan Greenspan, the Fed Chairman, was wiser than Yoda in keeping interest rates low, and the CEOs of the big banks, like Sandy Weill of Citi and Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers, could do no wron...

Succession is a big deal, whether it's in the context of a government's leaders, a corporation's senior management, or a church's pastors.  Many people think that leaders should be, and are chosen by popular vote.  But most times, that's not really the case.  The appointment of Prime Minister isn't by popular vote.  Only a select group of party members choose who the leader of a political party is, and if the party wins at elections, then that person pretty much automatically becomes Prime Minister.  The same goes for the CEOs of most companies.  The directors of the board, especially the nominating committee, sit around a table and decide who should be the CEO, and also appoint the other senior members of the management team.  It's not supposed to be a popularity contest. And so it is with church leadership as well.  One might ask, hey, don't I get a vote?  No, I'm afraid you don't.  You pay your taxes, but you don't get to cho...