The Turnover God
November 25th, 2003
Dear Friends
My son came back from Austria recently and told me he had
met a missionary from Africa, who when introduced, said: Oh your
Dad is the one that……..! OK, I have a reputation! I have wound
up more people than clocks in a Swiss museum. My wife knows it, my Mum knows it and even the dog knows it. My Dad often quoted the Proverb about a ‘good reputation’ from ... Solomon, the guy with a 900 concubine reputation!
Was it counsel, boast or remorse?
All of this may seem self indulgent, except someone came into my office and began to talk about a colleague with a ‘reputation’. They asked me what I had done to deal with this person and their ‘reputation’, which rather unnerved me. I wanted ask them what they had done since they were more aware of ‘the reputation’ than I. It’s amazing how we embrace hierarchical leadership when life gets untidy.
I was talking in the car park to another colleague who has struggled with personal grief to the extent that he no longer professes to trust God. Why does a loving God allow suffering? What is God doing about all of the suffering in the world? It’s amazing how we embrace hierarchical Lordship when things go wrong. Maybe God also turns our questions and asks what I am doing about world suffering?
Indeed God does turn questions. Pharisees – men of the law – dragged a woman before Jesus with a reputation they were prepared to substantiate. The law said that the woman should be stoned. Jesus began writing in the sand, and the questioners turned.
Henry Mintzberg is a name ubiquitous in management literature. In this months Harvard Business Review he contrasts Hierarchical and Engaging Management. ‘Engaging or collaborative management happens when leadership happens throughout an organisation, when change comes from within, rather than from above. Leadership is a sacred trust earned through respect of others, rather than a thrust, thrust upon others’.
Whatever our reputation, God through his grace has given us a ‘sacred trust’. He could do it from ‘above’, but the incarnate God has chosen to do things through all of us. It is a privilege to be a steward of that trust in the context of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Thank you for your contribution in November.
May God continue to bless, and allow us to be victors despite reputation.
Yours truly,
Victor Pilmoor
Treasurer
“ “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”
They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger.
They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!”
Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.
When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman.
Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
“No, Lord,” she said.
And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” “
John 8 : 4-11 (NLT)