Christian Living

(From Voice magazine, Jan/Feb 2016.)

African elephants are the largest land animal on earth. At 12,000 pounds and ten feet tall, they can intimidate anyone and anything. Elephants don’t worry much about predators.

The norm is to live in herds within a matriarchal social structure. The largest female leads the group of eight to one hundred elephants in a tight family unit. At the age of twelve to fifteen years the males leave the group and begin a new family. There is always a dominant male in the herd, but sooner or later, a younger male will take over, and the older ones are left to wander alone. It is a melancholy scene to watch a great-grandfather pachyderm grazing completely by himself.

For whatever reason, some of these older males go berserk; they go rogue. Unstable males become violent and territorial. They go on a rampage, attacking anyone in their way, destroying crops and vegetation. These are the really scary guys.

(Read Part 1 and Part 2.)

(From Voice magazine, Jan/Feb 2016. Read Part 1.)

By Kenneth O. Gangel

(From Voice magazine, Jan/Feb 2016.)

By Kenneth O. Gangel

What Is a Toxic Leader?

A vast percentage of leadership books in both the secular and religious domains deal with how to move from average to good or good to great in your own leadership, or how to help other people on your team do just that. The same analysis holds true in peri­odical literature, both journals and magazines. That’s why Jean Lipman-Blumen’s book hit the market with a crash in 2004. The title alone suggests, one could say, an “alluring” analysis of something we have swept into the corner and refused to look at: The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians—and How We Can Survive Them.

Defective Christian leaders rarely get their pictures in Time or Newsweek for defrauding employees or driving their ministries into bank­ruptcy, but make no mistake about it, we have toxic leaders in our midst. Lipman-Blumen won­ders why people follow such leaders and decides they do so because of a desire for dependence, a need to play a more crucial role in the organiza­tion, and just plain fear.