"Living a Life of Yes" by David Rupert

I remember about four years ago when pictures of Jordan began showing up on David Rupert’s Facebook page. The famous ruins of Petra. Mount Nebo. The Jordan side of the Dead Sea. All scenes of sites well known from the Bible but not on the usual tour of the Holy Land. 

Rupert was there because he said yes. He had made a New Year’s resolution to say yes to every opportunity God put in front of him. The first one arrived four days later – an invitation from the Kingdom of Jordan to visit and write about the Christian sites in that country. 

It was the first time he said yes, but it wasn’t the last. And now he’s written a book: Living a Life of Yes: How One Word Can Change Everything. 

David Rupert

It’s an easy, engaging read, but it’s also thought-provoking – and heart-piercing. Rupert is a writer; his 9-to-5 job (which understates the actual hours) is as a strategic communication specialist. He knows how to write well, and he knows how to write to communicate well. And in Living a Life of Yes, he makes a convincing case.

Note that saying yes doesn’t mean saying yes to everything. It’s saying yes to “everything God puts in front of you.” Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference, but Rupert gives practical, prayer-grounded advice on how to do that. When presented with that kind of opportunity, something more than “thoughts and prayers” is demanded, and he explains how to go beyond one of the tritest expressions in American culture today.

Through 12 chapters, he explains what happened to him when he said yes; how he overcame fear and doubts; how to get ready for changing the world (because that’s the size of the opportunity); the difficulties you can face when saying yes; and real-world examples of people living a life of yes. And he has a challenge: “There’s a time to read and hear about other people, and then there’s a time to be like those other people.”

In addition to his full-time job, Rupert leads Writers on the Rock, a large writing community based in Colorado. His articles have appeared in Christianity Today, Real Living, Breakpoint, The High Calling, and other Christian and leadership publications, and he blogs at Patheos.org. He and his family live in Golden, Colorado.

So, consider Living a Life of Yes. Read it, but you need to do more than read it. 

Believe it. 

Do it.

Saturday Good Reads

The disaster refugee crisis still unfolding in Europe has all the world’s attention, but there is another, related refugee crisis that hasn’t – and that’s the one of Christians displaced by ISIS, the Syrian civil war, and related crises in the Mideast. My friend David Rupert is in Jordan, interviewing Christian families who escaped ISIS and civil war to find themselves in oblicion. His reports are sobering.

Photographer Tom Hussey has created a photo essay on elderly people – looking at younger images of themselves. It’s wonderful. Andrew Sullivan at The Dish has a column on America’s most important Christian writer, and it’s not who you think it might be. It’s a story that resists classification – I could have placed it here under faith, poetry, or writing. Or all three.

Doug Spurling changes a flat tire, Monica Sharman writes a letter, Seth Haines has a confession, and Maureen Doallas writes a breathtakingly beautiful anniversary poem. And more.

David Rupert’s Reports on the Christian Refugee Crisis

This Syrian family is looking for a home.

Nowhere to Go: Refugee families escaped ISIS, but cannot escape captivity.

Ancient Christian city, silenced for 14 centuries, comes alive with refugee church.

Family of five: We pray for ISIS.

Poetry

Blow a Kiss – Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

Rotary Guillotine and The Box – Brendan MacOdrum at Oran’s Well.

Gerard Manley Hopkins – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

Anniversary – A Cento – Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

Graffiti Guy – John Grey at Curator Magazine. 

Faith

Fragrance – Jeanne Damoff at The View From Here.

Her Heart’s Desire – Lynn Mosher.

How to change a flat tire…and a life – Doug Spurling at Spurling Silver.

Why We Walk Six Blocks Through the Cold – Shawn Smucker.

Christians Have One Job – And It’s Not Reading the Bible – Ed Cyzewski.

A Confession, a Liturgy, and a New Ancient Way – Seth Haines.

Open Letter to the Generations Before Me – Monica Sharman at Know-Love-Obey God.

Work

How Do I Know When I Should Switch Jobs? – Single Roots.

Der Champion Tabelle Des Aufbaus Teil 2: Rand – Jack Baumgartner at the School of the Transfer of Energy.

Photography

Elderly People Look at Their Younger Reflections – Tom Hussey at Digital Synopsis.

Vanishing Land – Cate Colvin Sampson at Oxford American.

Party Clothes – Tim Good at Pixels.

Writing

How I Learned to be Human – Mick Silva.

Are Your Book Sales Discouraging? – Sarah Bolme at Marketing Christian Books.

Finding the Words for Faith: Meet America’s Most Important Christian Writer – Andrew Sullivan at The Dish.

Life and Culture

The “Amazing” – What Our Ranking Adjective says About Us – Virginia Hefferman at The Message.

The Shroud of London – a review of London Fog: The Biography – Amy Henderson at The Weekly Standard.

Photograph by Christine Owens via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

“Growth in Leadership” by Dr. Larry Little

For decades, management was considered a business “science,” a discipline that could be taught in business school classrooms and applied in the workplace. One of the primary exponents of management as science was Peter Drucker, who wrote numerous books on the subject including the business classic Management. Drucker’s writings tracked the rise of the 20^th century industrial order, and management was the pinnacle of that.

Management is still taught in business schools, but the order began to fray and unravel in the 1970s and 1980s. Inflation (the prime rate hit 20 percent at one point) and OPEC took a huge toll on the industrial order in the 1970s, and helped led to the convolution of acquisitions, divestitures, restructurings, and downsizings of the 1980s and 1990s. Overlay that with the electronic communications revolution of the 1990s and 2000s, and management as a “science” seemed rather faded and shallow in the face of so much turmoil and change.

What emerged from the turmoil as the operational principle for the workplace was the idea of leadership. The difficult is that leadership can’t really be taught in the classroom. It can be studied, yes. But leadership depends on the character and abilities of the individual, applied in the right way at the right time. Leadership is less a science and more an art. You can teach principles of art, and how art has developed over the centuries, but you can’t really teach an artist the desire and passion to paint, or sculpt, or write.

One the best discussions I’ve read on how leadership functions in the workplace is Make a Difference: Growth in Leadership by Dr. Larry Little (with co-authors Melissa Hambrick Jackson and David Rupert). As the book demonstrates, leadership is easy to understand – we know it when we see it or experience it – but is not so easy to actually do.

Little divides his description of leadership into six components – gratitude, responsibility, ownership, willingness, tough calls, and health. The discussion of each if structured by interviews with leaders at all levels and from all walks of life, people who are leading in their own organizations and circumstances. What emerges from this discussion is an understanding of leadership as something very real and immediate, and something that likely exists within each of us.

Leaders know how to give genuine praise – and why it matters.

Leaders take responsibility and are accountable; they know how to translate vision into reality, and then know that it happens through people.

Leaders are servants, and may follow as much as they lead.

Leaders make the tough calls, but they put others’ interests first.

And leaders know how to maintain their own and their organization’s “leadership health.”

The principles follow from having a broad array of people tell their leadership stories. The principles seem simple, and they are, but simple does not mean easy. Leadership is hard work. It’s also incredibly rewarding work.

And, as Make a Difference: Growth in Leadership demonstrates, as rare as it may be, it can happen anywhere. 

Illustration by Frits Ahlefeldt via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

This was the week a pope resigned – the first time in almost 600 years.

It put me (and others) in mind of leadership.

U.K. PR/Social media guru Neville Hobson took a look at leadership principles from General Electric – and found six dimensions of leadership that (interestingly enough) apply to social media as well.

My friend Jim Wood (aka the Shrinking Camel) posted on determining your spiritual leadership profile.

Michelle DeRusha at Graceful went in another direction – and suggested looking at the pope’s announcement by listening with the eyes of your heart.

My friend J of India (at Neither Use Nor Ornament) has been posting a series of photos that could illustrate the problems of leadership – being between a rock and a hard place. My favorite (so far) is #2.

It was also the week for Valentine’s Day, and I think my favorite post on the subject was David Rupert’s “Love is like a fun-house mirror.”

I also saw a number of posts about what it’s like not having someone to send a valentine to. The word, in short, is lonely. “Passing Time” by pianist Paul Cardell captures that beautifully:

Photograph at top by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The 16th Day of Community: David Rupert

When I happened across David Rupert’s blog Red Letter Believers some months ago, I felt like I had discovered a kindred spirit. I still do.

If I remember correctly, I was looking at the Inside Work blog managed by Jim Hancock, and read a post by Bradley Moore, the Shrinking Camel himself. I clicked over to Bradley’s blog, and liked it so much that I added it to my RSS reader. And one day, a guy with an avatar showing duct tape over his mouth commented on one of Bradley’s posts; I followed the link and discovered Red Letter Believers. (He’s since changed his avatar.)

David works in corporate communications as a writer/editor for the U.S. Postal Service. I’ve spent 90 percent of my career in corporate communications, and a big chunk of that as a writer/editor. We read and follow a lot of the same blogs – and we didn’t plan it that way. We arrived at these same places independently of one another. On his blog, he writes a lot about work, and faith, and work and faith. Here’s what he says his blog is about:

“Red Letter Believers go far beyond politics or religion or entertainment or the things of earth. We are here to encourage each other to live the words of Christ -- the same words that many Bibles put 'in red.' We seek to live out our faith, impacting our homes, our communities, our jobs and our nation.”

He’s written about the difference between being spiritual and being religious; about responding to disaster; Mark McGuire and cheating; Christian party poopers; and what your boss really wants for Christmas, among dozens of other subjects. What they have in common is this: simple, clean language; clarity; depth; and the perspective of faith. Always the perspective of faith.

As I said, I have the blog on my RSS reader, but Red Letter Believers is one of the few blogs I actually check daily. Do the same and be richly rewarded.

(Last month, a number of us participating in the “Twelve Days of Community” - see the button at the top right - sponsored by The High Calling Blogs. The purpose was to highlight the blog or web site of someone other than ourselves during the season of Advent and Christmas. I liked the idea so much that I’m going to continue to do that -- highlight a blog or web site of a person whose thoughts and writing have had an impact on me and others.)