Tonight we kicked off the Fall semester of Backstage Leadership with our first speaker, Chuck Colson. Chuck Colson is a popular and widely known author, speaker, and radio commentator. A former presidential aide to Richard Nixon and founder of the international ministry Prison Fellowship, he has written several books, including Born Again, Loving God, How Now Shall We Live?
It was truly an honor to be on a private call with handful of others and able to ask him questions directly about his life experiences and his thoughts on leadership. I know many of us felt like we needed time after the call to just soak in all his words of wisdom.
While Chuck Colson was born and grew up in an earlier generation, the things he has learned and insights he has aquired are timeless. He was able to share with us about his passion for the Christain world view, why it matters and why it is important to the church to be able to teach it. As he pointed out during his overview, our society has lost much of its “moral anchor” and that is rooted in a world view (perspective on life).
In case you are wondering what a world view is or how to talk about it, simply ask yourself (or the person you’d like to discuss it with) these 4 questions:
- Where do we come from?
- Why is there suffering?
- Is there a way out?
- What is my purpose?
The answers to these questions are rooted in one’s ‘world view’. There are 4 basic world views:
- Christianity
- Secular / Naturalism
- Islam
- Eastern Relgions
Christianity is very unique in its anwers to the questions above when compared to the other word views and it DOES matter. When you try to take away this uniqueness / difference you begin down the path of “reductionism”.
I very much appreciated Mr. Colson’s openness and honesty about his own life, what he has learned and where he still struggles. I am looking foward to lunch at Catalyst with Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, on October 9. I can tell these next several months are going stretch and challenge me – can’t wait!