New Leadership Class by Tieche...

For most of my young adult life, I was on a mad quest for acceptance. Ask anyone who knew me. Looking back at it, I'm surprised that my best friends in college (Jon Fortt and Eric Hawker) - were able to tolerate it. I must have seemed like a giant attention addict. Just thinking about it makes me kind of shiver. I don't know if I could have put up with me. It makes me very grateful that they saw something in me worth sticking around for.

Now, we can go into reasons why I would do things like walk down the beach at Myrtle Beach and trip and fall, just to get attention. Or why I was so loud. Or why I would write 10-page response papers when the professor only asked for 2 pages. But on the cusp of my 30th birthday, I'm starting to feel as though I'm maturing.

Well, at least a little.

I don't crave attention so much anymore. There's a new pot of gold, I suppose.

Now, my greatest desire is influence.

This whole shifting kind of began when I heard a sermon by a guy named Andy Stanley (not my college roommate - who was also named Andy Stanley). He did a sermon series called iMarriage. Now, I listen to a lot of sermons. But this is probably one of the top 5 most influential sermons I've ever heard. He talked about things in ways that I never thought about. His basic premise was that God loved me so much, that he created Nicole and put her on this earth to be a tangible, physical reminder of His love and what unconditional love means.

Which means, conversely, that God loves Nicole so much that He made me.

Which is a big responsibility. But if I do that, I can have a tremendous infuence on her life, like no other person.

From there, the circles of influence should kind of go out. Justus. My close friends. My family. People at Take2. People at FCC. Kids at school.

I wanted this year to be different, in terms of the influence I was having on the kids at Gunderson. And in thinking about that, I started talking with my close buddy Matt Hewitson, an amazing government and history teacher at Gunderson who heads up our leadership and student government class before school. Before school started, he and I were talking, and I threw an idea out there that part of leadership should not just be about planning for events, but it should be about character. I started thinking about that after reading an article by Dallas Willard who said that every graduation speech in college talks about the importance of moral character, but no class in college ever does.

So Matt and I talked and he agreed to let me pilot a program I've been throwing around in my head for a while. It's on leadership, but I'm trying to concentrate on some ideas for character development.

1. Actively working to improve yourself
2. Being a peacemaker and seeking include everybody
3. Having moral authority
4. Serving your community.

These, of course, are brand new ideas that I just came up with just now, and certainly aren't taught by Jesus as part of his core teachings. This morning is my first go-round. I'll have 95 of the student leaders. It's a little tricky, because so much of my thinking is wrapped up around my theology. But good ideas and truth are good ideas, and there are some things that just don't go out of style. Generosity. Kindness. Compassion.

I'm going to talk about some of the greatest leaders of the last 50 years (Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr.) I'm going to show that more than anything, each of these men believe one crucial thing: that all people had incalculable, inherent worth.

And then I'm going to transition and ask the student leaders if they believe that. If they actually treat people that way. And I'll tell some stories about how treating everyone as though they're important can change people's lives.

I heard a kid refer to it as Tieche Thursdays. Hopefully, I'll say some stuff that will inspire kids to live better lives, and really improve themselves and the school.