Leaders are made for Crisis?

For me, since the age of 8, I already had a plan for my life. But my plan had a problem—not for what it contained, but what it didn’t contain. My vision and goal was to change the way corporate America was done.

My father had drilled into my brothers and me the idea that through business we could exert a sizable amount of force on culture. “Business is what shapes society,” he had preached to us, “and whatever shapes society has maximum influence.” He taught me that by working my way into leadership, along with the commensurate authority to hire and fire people, I could create everyday examples of one of God’s first principles: that everyone has intrinsic value. If given the opportunity to put forth the hard work, anyone can realize their potential and transform the world around them.

So, man, I was going for it. Not to land a certain job. Not to make a certain amount of money. Just to change the way corporate America was done. From the top. Doing it better. Doing it differently, where needed. Doing it faster. Helping everybody who worked for me to understand they possessed intrinsic value and that they could both benefit and contribute to society through their God-given abilities. I’d mapped it out, claimed it as my vision, and was devoted to living it to fulfillment. Raising up leaders. Inspiring lofty goals. Changing people’s lives.

Anything wrong with that? Of course not.

And yet while caught up in all these impressive, aggressive agendas of mine, I was overlooking the most important objective of all. In trying to change the way corporate America was done, I wasn’t changing the way family was done. Christian family. Not in my house at least. I wasn’t leading my family in our faith.

Our three children now cover a gamut of ages and each of them leads an active, busy life. Yet every other Sunday evening, by shared consent—as recently as last week and as soon again as next week—our combined families get together by phone to spend a good hour or more in devotions, prayer, and faith building with one another. Every year we still work out our spiritual goals together, deciding as a group what we hope to accomplish. I hope, with the strength God gives me, to be enjoying these times with my children (and their children) for as long as I’m alive.

I’m not finished being their father. Just because they’re out of the house, I’m not done providing active, on-hand, in-person spiritual leadership to my family.

They are—this is—my legacy.

I’m inviting you to join me . .. visit www.victoriousfamily.org and subscribe to our newsletter today for updated information and tools to help you lead and guide your family to something transcendent.