Letters to Rising Leaders

By Tom Mohr

The world needs new Christian leaders guided by goodness, ready to love and heal the world. As our planet, democracy, communities, neighborhoods, churches and families fall into crisis, Jesus searches for servant leaders who will respond. Will we heed Jesus' call? Will good Christian leaders rise up and stand in the gap? As Fredrick Buechner once said, "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

This book, Letters to Rising Leaders, is a clarion call to the next generation of leaders– to become leaders grounded in God, focused on others and ready to serve. To those who feel called to rise to the needs of this world, it is my hope you will find both encouragement and challenge in the pages of this book. Leadership is hard. It starts on the inside. To become a leader of goodness takes discipline, humility and commitment. This book is offered to you as help for the journey. It is my prayer that you will embark on a soul walk with God, and then will take up God's call to love and heal the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350905403

Book preview

FIRST QUARTER:

Who is God?

Week 1 -- Abba Father

O SAP OF LOVE

In You I live and move and have my being

Connected as the branch is to the vine

O Sap of Love so warm, so strong, so freeing

That joins eternal Yours with finite mine

Though in my soul through wheat still springs the weed

Though in my heart the shadows still remain

Your grace has lifted me beyond my deeds

And planted me upon a higher plain

Today I offer far-from-perfect all

To be grafted to the world as is Your will

And so advance the purpose of my call

That I might, like Your others, bear fruit still

Thank you, blessed vine, for sap of Your grace

Emboldening my reach towards Your embrace

Rising Leader,

The world cries out for leaders who know this: God is in all, and God is love. And if God is in all, He is in us and those around us– the intimate love-bond that binds all humanity. And if God is love, He loves us just the way we are. Of course, He hopes we will become the people we were born to be. He wraps us in freedom, then prays we will make the free-will choice to return to Him and our original goodness. He prays that once we see the goodness in ourselves, we will see it in others. That we will care, and because we care we will act as healers within His Creation. This is God.

In January, my letters to you (including this one) probe the question, Who is God the Father?. For you who will become the next generation’s leaders, it is an important question– both for you and the world. Our connectedness to God is deeply correlated with our connectedness to the world. The world needs leaders who care— leaders of goodness.

I can’t define God the Father in any comprehensive way, of course. But perhaps I can offer a few slivers of light. This week and for the next three, let’s ponder four of these slivers: God as Abba Father, God as Creator, God as connected in space, and God as connected in time. Just four twists of an infinite divine kaleidoscope.

Today we start with Abba Father.

Our own fathers wield outsized influence on our views of God the patriarch. My father was my hero. Taskmaster, teacher, hugger, encourager, playmate, provider, protector, moral compass and occasional disciplinarian– he did his best, and I’m forever grateful.

I remember one summer day after church. I was about seven years old at the time. Dad stood by our car, chatting with a neighbor. He was wearing his Sunday best: tall, confident, and well-put-together. He had a way of putting one foot forward as he talked, turning it outward. He liked to bury one hand in his pocket while the other waved in rhythm with his talking. I remember standing there in my rumpled jacket with shirt hanging out, putting one hand in my pocket just like him, sticking one foot forward just like him, and turning the toe of my scuffed-up penny loafers out just like him. Just like him– that was my goal. My father was my sun and moon and stars. And I knew with utter certainty that he was over the moon about me.

So it is with God. God is over the moon in love with you and me. Yes, He is our moral compass and occasional disciplinarian– but He is also our encourager, teacher, provider and protector. Abba Father cares about every hair on our heads. He knows our worst, but seeks our best. He judges gently. His hand is always outstretched; His sandals are tied and He is ready to journey with us through all that life brings. God is faithful: He believes in us, even when we don’t believe in Him.

But how about us? Are we faithful? Do we put one hand in our pocket just like him, and turn our foot just so? Do we seek to be just like Him? I hope so. We will never get it quite right– our shirts will hang out, our ties will remain askew, our jackets will still be rumpled and our penny loafers scuffed. But God our Father treasures our attempts.

Like a diamond, God’s love has many facets. Each offers a fresh and glimmering perspective to reorder our reality. God shines His colorful light upon us in moments both ordinary and extraordinary, illuminating the most important things. He reveals Himself over the course of our lives in stages– showing us each day the light we most need. Whenever I have allowed God’s light to penetrate, my perspective has changed for the better.

This is how I see Abba, our Father. He is patient, encouraging, compassionate, creative, active, forgiving and infinitely loving. He’s not some cold and distant figure sitting on a mountaintop throne. He is intimately with us and in us. He loves us. He seeks a relationship with us. Will we turn to Him?

Good leader, take pause for a moment. Right now. Close your eyes; call out to Abba Father in the silence of your heart. Unlock the door of your soul and welcome Him in. Yes, as you open the door, He is sure to enter on a breeze of change— but the change He will offer will be change for the better. He will reveal Himself to you in stages, turning the kaleidoscope each time you are ready to discover a new facet of Him. All are gifts; all will bring renewal. I hope you will accept the gifts He brings you. But fair warning— He will want a hug.

Next week, we will talk about the motherly side of God.

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!-- 1 John 3:1

May Abba be with you,

Tom

Song of the Month

EVERY SHINING STAR

You see me Lord You search me Lord

You know me just the way I really am

I’ve wandered far I’ve stumbled hard

Yet still I’m part of your almighty plan

Every shining star in the heavens

Has been lit like a candle by your hand

And you God of everything know and love me

It’s a miracle too vast to understand

In the secret place You knit me Lord

You created me to be your special one

And now you call You want my all

Where from your light and love can I even run?

Before a word is on my tongue Before a thought has just begun

You know. You know.

I can fly across the sea But no matter where I flee

You are. You are.

You say I’m made in your own image

But how could that possibly be true

That the soul fire of a sinful seeker

Could be lit by the great almighty you?

We’ve been formed in love By you above

And now you call us forth to go and give

To bring our hearts To make a start

So others might discover love and live

Before a word is on our tongues

Before a thought has just begun We’ll praise Your name

In everything and everyone

We will see your kingdom come Each face Your grace

You see me Lord You search me Lord

You know me just the way I really am

And now you call You want my all

Yes, I am part of your almighty plan

Here I am I will serve Here I am My God

Search Tom Mohr– Every Shining Star

To find this song on YouTube, Spotify and all music platforms

Week 2 -- Creator God

HEED. LEAD. LOVE.

Caught up as howl fights howl tribe by tribe,

one million species quiet go extinct.

Too much just me too little we describe

a planet and democracy so kinked.

How smart we've been these past one hundred years--

Amazon Prime, no God, the bomb and such.

Yet all we've won has come at cost so dear:

in balance, faith, and soulful human touch.

Now systems giv'n by God are overreached.

Humanity cries out for leaders new.

To rally wealth and people to the breach,

to do what only gifted leaders do.

Servant leader, can you hear Creator’s cry?

To Me, beloved, first. Then fly. Fly. FLY!

Rising Leader,

It is winter in Minnesota. Trees and fields are cloaked in white. In our backyard, the fox is in her foxhole. Treetops shelter squirrels as they snuggle in their nests. Flocks of people and birds have headed south for the winter– though many of both still remain. Even now in the centerpoint of winter, life thunders on. Just this morning, a family of deer ambled along the treeline out by the shed. A gaggle of wild turkeys sprinted across the road. Two down-jacket-clad women walked past me along a forest trail, talking up a storm, mist-clouds lingering in the air.

Life. From season to season, from generation to generation, from sea to shining sea and from continent to continent, it pulsates. A continuous, rolling, generative explosion, bursting all around us. Is this not the work of our Creator God?

You alone are the Lord.

You have made the heavens,

The heaven of heavens with all their host,

The earth and all that is on it,

The seas and all that is in them.

You give life to all of them

And the heavenly host bows down before You.

-- Nehemiah 9:6

If God is in all life emergent, the love energy that flows through all people and things, then God is our Creator. He conceives us, births us, and nurtures us. Which makes me wonder– do we pay enough attention to the maternal nature of God? Perhaps it’s time for us to widen our God-concept. For it is written: God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply…" (Genesis 1: 27). Yes, God made all people– women as well as men– in His own image. Humanity in all its male / female complementarity is made by God, to be like God. God is fertile. God is plentiful. God is protective. God is ever-caring. These descriptions sound mother-like, don’t they?

Once we sense gifts of motherhood as well as fatherhood in God, we begin to see a bigger, more complete Creator. As we do, we are not changing Him– we are changing ourselves. As we probe the depths of God’s love and care for all life, we begin to care more deeply too.

But God gave us free will. For too many decades, we humans have abused that freedom to plunder the planet. Nuclear powers have tumbled recklessly from hate to demonization to war. Too often, in our tribalism, in our embrace of autocrats, we have acted in ways that weaken democracy. Caught up in our small circles of care, too often we have failed to respond to the critical life-giving needs of so many around us. Given freedom, all too often we have done the small and selfish thing. How much different it would be if leaders of goodness all around the world were to ask each day, "What would Creator God