The Happy Rant by Ted Kluck

Author:Ted Kluck
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780736985338
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
Published: 2022-05-11T00:00:00+00:00

1A recent text from my friend Cory while watching a Steelers game: “Roethlisberger to Freiermuth sounds like two dorms at Taylor.” He won the evening with that one!

2Which I detailed by hand, earlier that day, as a means of making the date “perfect.”

THOUGHT LEADERS—NEITHER THINKERS NOR LEADERS

TK Much like “creativity,” we’ve created a cottage industry around making nonleaders feel like they’re leaders, because it is sexy and fun to talk about and people can talk about it almost indefinitely. There are a bunch of nonleaders in the leadership industry making bucks off it. That’s okay…but doing a bunch of this stuff and reading about it doesn’t mean you can lead your way out of a paper bag…until people actually follow you. EDITOR’S NOTE: It helps if they follow you to somewhere better than where they are. In much the same way that going to a writer’s conference doesn’t make you a writer. Actually, writing something makes you a writer, so it follows then that actually leading makes you a leader.

Do people actually follow you in any context? Be honest with yourself. If so, you’re a leader. If not, then you probably aren’t yet. EDITOR’S NOTE: Social media is not such a context. If “following” merely entails clicking a pixel, then it doesn’t count.

When I was a freshman in high school, I was a quiet, skinny, shy, mousy little dork in a tough little blue-collar town. The alpha of our team, David Parker—an incredibly handsome, incredibly talented football golden god—took me in. He saw something in me. Taking on Andrew Romine—our other senior alpha—and getting freight-trained by him in practice, to such a degree that my helmet was ajar and my face was bleeding, made me a “made” man in the eyes of those alphas and my coach. That day, at age 14, I became a little dorky baby leader. I came home bruised and scarred and a mess, but my dad respected me, and I knew I had a shot at life. Once I got older and more established, I was always on the lookout for chances to bring young guys in and assimilate them in similar ways—to ease their transition onto the team and assuage their fears—in the same way that Parker did for me. He taught me about leadership in a very tangible way, and honestly, all the poppy leadership stuff comes off as a little ridiculous when compared with sports-related leading, where there is blood involved.

RM I think we’ve pivoted into this kind of “everybody’s a leader” societal thing that is understandable on one hand, but on the other, it also might be blurring our traditional understanding of “leadership.” For example, every parent “leads” their kids, but does that automatically identify them as a leader of a particular cultural group or as an “influencer”? Obviously not, but why are we told it’s important to think of ourselves as leaders, even if God hasn’t given us those gifts?

As a pastor, I’ve spent lots of heartache wanting someone to

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