Great Relationships and Great Training

Over the past forty years or so of my professional ministry of offering Christian care and counsel I have directly helped hundreds of marriages and families stay connected and married to each other. That is very rewarding, but it is not enough for me. That is why I did post doctoral work in marriage and family counseling and also studied other ways to impact entire churches and groups of men and women in positive ways so they could live more abundant lives and enjoy A Lifetime of Great Relationships.

If you are following this series of posts about what works in a marriage to promote Great Relationships, consider attending a class on listening, couple communication and marital enrichment. I wish every church had a dozen people who could do what I have done for so long. Just think, thousands of marriages and five times that number of kids would be positively affected.

Sign up for our upcoming conference and learn how to grow in your relationships.

America is Pro-Life

The Gallup Poll does it again. Gallup, one of the most respected polling organizations in the world, regularly asks people what they think about key issues. Since the Supreme Court found in 1973 that it was OK to violate the promise of "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..." found in the Constitution, if unborn babies were the citizens, abortion has been a very hotly debated topic.

Gallup has included questions about abortion in its surveys for a long time. Now, despite the fact that almost every "news" outlet promotes abortion, most Americans do not think it is moral to abort a baby. In today's issue of the Wall Street Journal, the latest Gallup Poll tells what people are thinking today.

Asked to rate various behaviors and social policies (e.g., embryonic stem-cell research, adultery, the death penalty) as either "morally wrong" or "morally acceptable," 50% called abortion wrong, as against only 38% who said it was acceptable. Even more contentious was the finding, for the second year in a row, that slightly more Americans consider themselves "pro-life" than "pro-choice" (47% to 45%).


In other words, God's truth is marching onward and upward to bring people to a sensible position. Thank God for His love and truth.

Heaven's Ageless Life

How old will we be in heaven? What will happen to children who die as infants? Will they grow up or remain as babies? Those are some of the questions asked and answered in the Presbyterian Pro Life Newspaper.

I think you will find the writing and insights interesting and provocative.

Enjoy your reading.

Gary Sweeten

You Can Make a Difference

"When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and
healed their sick." - Matthew 14:14

Heinrich Himmler was the head of the Nazi SS and the mastermind of the Holocaust. During those blood-filled days between 1940 and 1945, the second most powerful man in Germany sent millions of Jews to their deaths. Himmler suffered from intolerable psychosomatic pains and the only person who could relieve these pains was a Doctor Felix Kersten, a Finn, who was a massage therapist.

During Himmler’s massage sessions, he would tell Dr. Kersten about the concentration camps. In 1942, Kersten intervened with Himmler to save Finish, Norwegian, and Dutch Jews. After moving to Stockholm in 1943, he continued to work on rescue and relief, securing freedom for several thousand more Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, and French Jews.

In the closing days of the war, Kersten acted for Himmler in negotiating freedom for Jews with the Swedes and the Allies in Stockholm; he was instrumental in arranging a meeting in Germany on April 19, 1945 between Himmler and Norbert Masur, a Zionist German living in Sweden. One result of the meeting was the freeing of 7,000 women from Ravensbruk to a haven in Denmark and Sweden. The World Jewish Council credits him with saving 60,000 of Jews from the concentration camps.

Top Ten Most Admired Companies

Do you want your company or church or non profit to be we;ll liked and admired? On a more general basis, is it important for the public to admire and respect God's people and institutions? How is the current scandal about the Roman Catholic Church in Europe affecting all Christian groups? Does it really matter?

The Decker Blog covers questions such as this and tries to help people do a better job of communicating their values and goals. I enjoy reading this blog and generally find it interesting and helpful.

Their current blog covers a recent survey on the top ten most admired companies in the world. The survey also revealed the lowest most admired companies. Ouch! I hope I am not on that list. Unfortunately, Delta Airlines was.

Models of Ministry

I am in Copenhagen with Dr. Galina Chentsova, head of the Liferoute.ru ministry in Moscow, Russia. We are headed for a meeting with Peter Dyhr of DAWN to discuss setting up teleios training for 400 new church plants.

Then we go to Randers to be with Peder Poulsen to do a workshop on healing and growth.

For three days I have been with the brilliant and effective Kirsten Callesen. If you want to change the world with Christ's word, works and love, you need a good model of ministry. The current models are not doing so well. They are based on one person lecturing others who learn to be helpless, powerless and dependent.

I suggest that you read a book on a different model now used widely in businesses, internet companies and non profits. The book is: "The Spider and the Monkey.

it is easily read and well written with lots of examples and stories.

i saw the model being used in Denmark by Dr. Kirsten Callesen who heads the Asperbeger's Institute in Copenhagen. She is training the parents of disabled kids to help their children progress. The meet in small groups to learn, share and practice the new insights. the new insights are spreading like wild fire and helping hundreds of families.

The decentralized approach is the only way new ways of behaving can quickly sprad to others. read the book and get trained. Move out for God to touch others.

How Did We Grow So Large?

Equipping Ministries International, an organization we started from the Teleios Ministry at College Hill Presbyterian Church in 1978, has spread to over seventy nations. How did they do that?

Sweeten Life Systems, a ministry we started after leaving EMI, has spread to another ten or so nations with our unique equipping ministry that focuses on Discipleship in Building a lifetime of great relationships. How did we do that?

By following the model laid down by Jesus. We teach, train, coach and mentor high quality Christian leaders who wan to learn about building solid relationships with God, themselves and each other. These men and women are sold out to Christ and to a Discipleship Model not just a "Stand up Comedy Routine".

We "Equip Equippers to Equip the Saints to DO Ministry".

Galina Chentsova is a great example of this model. She came to Cincinnati in 1994 and learned our materials and methods of teaching them. She returned home to Moscow and started training her own Russian friends and colleagues. Now, fifteen years later there are dozens of training centers and hundreds of graduates who are multiplying themselves daily.

It is a fairly long and deep process that produces great fruit for God.

Management

"Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own." - Sidney J. Harris

"There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know." - Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914)

"The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools." - Doug Larson

I am reading a great book and I strongly recommend it to you. I especially recommend it if you are interested in management, leadership, influence and work. It traces the history of management and work in the USA from the time of Governor Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony until the financial blow up of 2008. The Hopper brothers wrote this book and called it, The Puritan Gift because the Puritans developed a unique and very successful manner of managing the Massachusetts Bay Colony while other colonizations failed miserably.

If you wonder why the current managers are failing to understand their employees and their customers, read The Puritan Gift. If you wonder why so many "smart" leaders do such dumb things, read it again. If you wonder why we elected an administration that lacks a single person with practical experience, ponder what the Hopper brothers from Scotland have to say.