In honor of Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday, Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time magazine, put together Mandela's eight lessons of leadership. Stengel writes: "[The lessons] are cobbled together from…conversations old and new and from observing [Mandela] up close and from afar. Many of them stem directly from his personal experience. All of them are calibrated to cause the best kind of ...

The great need for anyone in authority is courage.

Scott Turow begins his novel Presumed Innocent with the words of a prosecuting attorney named Rusty. Rusty is explaining his approach to the jury when he is in court. Rusty says:

"This is how I always start:

'I am the prosecutor.

'I represent the state. I am here to present to you the evidence of a crime. Together you will weigh the evidence. You will deliberate upon it. You will decide if it proves ...

There is nothing quite like a presidential election year to reveal how empty and dissatisfying our political process has become. ... Television has taken over the role in choosing candidates that party bosses once played, but that can hardly be called reform.

If you've done the best you can--if you have done what you have to do--there is no use worrying about it, because nothing can change it, and to be in a position of leadership ... you have to give thought to what's going to happen the next day and you have to be fresh for ... what you have to do the next day. What you're "going" to do is more important than what you have done.

You Know You're in Church Planting When ...

A baby sneezes in the nursery, and the mother leaves the service to check his health.

You discover you've preached three sermons in the past month on "Commitment and Faithfulness through Church Attendance."

Your spouse is ill--and attendance dips 20 percent.

Your hymnals (copyright 1895), your pulpit (ninth-grade shop quality), your (dented) communion set, and ...

Half-heartedness and mediocrity don't inspire anybody to do anything.

Being a leader is wonderful. But it is not without its price.

An abbot ... ought to rule his disciples with a twofold teaching: displaying all goodness and holiness by deeds and by words. To intelligent disciples let him expound the Lord's commandments in words; but those of harder hearts and ruder minds let him show forth the divine precepts by his example.

At the beginning of his reign, King Solomon prayed one superior gift from God. Not wealth, not long life, but something far more valuable--he asked for "an understanding heart," which translated, a hearing heart. He asked, we say, for wisdom. But the genius of wisdom ... is the ability to open a room in one's heart for the talk--and so for the presence--of another. Wisdom is none other than the ...