Trey Finley

Trusted Advisor, Coach, Mentor

Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way

The story of Christians who helped a Muslim community rebuild their mosque is a snapshot of what human freedom, faith praxis, and self-government can be–at its worst and at its best. It’s a snapshot of the hatred that will always be the underbelly of society. It’s a snapshot of the vulnerability of marginalized culture. It’s a snapshot of the beauty and warm-heartedness of good people.

As a Christian who lives in a place where speech is free and self-determination is accessible, I would absolutely help them rebuild. Not because I share their faith (though how much we share might surprise you), but because I share their humanity. I share their vulnerability to hate. I share their willingness to suffer for what I believe in.

When one of us suffers, all of suffers. That is the mantra that Jesus calls us to live by, and it is the high bar that self-government demands of us. Of all the so-called similarities between the Christian faith and American form of government, this is the closest. Of all the things Jesus offers, this is the most poignant offer that is global and without border. Without empathy and shared suffering, we have no hope of living together in disagreement–civilly, nationally, or globally.

So yes, I’d welcome refugees even if it increases a terrorism threat (not what the probabilities say) or if they change our economy. Yes, I’d help rebuild this mosque. Yes, I’d hide an illegal immigrant if ICE came looking. Yes, I’d buy lunch for a Trump supporter who thinks I’m nuts, politically correct, and in the words of some of my biggest fans, a “pansy” and in favor of “caliphate.”

Whatever. If one of us is suffering, all of us are. And until we get that in our head and heart, we will continue to settle for faith with no relevant praxis and government with no participation.

I came “off the bench” from my Anabaptist perspective this year. I did it because I see too much apathy or willing ignorance towards suffering. As a human who follows Christ, I cannot see suffering and not participate in efforts designed to alleviate it. Not without sacrificing my integrity. We can debate the how, but we cannot debate the call.

God imagines a flourishing human race.  Humans, collectively, desire flourishing.  If we will not fight for that flourishing, we are a party to those that stand against it.

It’s Like Leading a Bunch of Clowns

There’s lot I love about my alma mater, Abilene Christian University, but one of my favorites is Sing Song.  Sing Song pits classes (freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors) against one another in an acapella choral musical production.  Made up of a medley of well-known songs put to (sometimes) humorous lyrics, each class’ musical acts are at once funny and musically impressive.  If you’re an alumnus, it’s a great memory.  If you were to see the show for the first time without knowing what it was, you’re likely to think it’s, um, quirky.  But you’d also notice how much fun the students are having.

Some shows are funnier and more impressive than others, and that’s where my story begins.  I’d like to start with a caveat: we had fun.  We joked around.  We made up some fun lyrics that poked fun at our winless streak. We smiled on stage and looked silly in our costumes.  We made a few last memories before graduating.  Our theme was rodeo clowns, if you can picture that.  The participants were dressed as clowns and I was dressed as a bull, complete with a football helmet covered in brown paper that had horns taped to it.

On to the story…when my senior class officers asked me to direct our Sing Song, I was hesitant.  My main hesitation was our class’ Sing Song reputation.  Let’s say the expectations were low.  Like most rookies, we had no idea what we were doing our freshman year.  In our sophomore and junior years, we ran into a buzzsaw by the name of The Class of 1998 who had already won twice.  But I was honored to be asked, and having successfully played to my ego, the class officers brought me on board.

Playing to my ego should have been my first warning flag.

I came on board with one caveat.  If I would be directing, I would be directing to win, not just play around.  The officers were very hesitant about that.  They reminded me of our reputation and of the expectations of the senior class participants.  They said OK, but they were skeptical.  I was going to do it well and others would follow.  Right?

Having a reluctant team of leaders who favored different outcomes should have been my second warning flag.

When rehearsals began, it quickly became clear to me that what this group needed was a whipping into shape.  We warmed up vocally instead of just starting.  We worked long practices, getting pretty good (I thought).  I thought my motives were good.  I was determined to do something our class had never done before.  I wanted us to win the class competition.  I wanted to beat those pesky undefeated underclassmen.  I was in this to beat the other guys.

I was in this to beat someone else.  Third warning flag.

In the end, we did win a sub-category.  I considered that a big win for us, but really it was a big win for me.  That was never more evident than at our final performance where the participants threw a part of their costumes at me during the show.  I’m pretty sure it was in protest to how hard I had pushed them to do something they really didn’t want to do!

I was the bull.  All I could see was a bunch of clowns running around.  I stunk at leading that group.

This isn’t an exercise in self-pity.  It’s a reminder to me, and I hope to you, that you cannot push your team to go where they do not want to go.  In the end, you’ll be corralled and the clowns will have the last laugh.

And now, I present to you, the Senior Class of 1997, directed by Trey Finley, “After the Dust Settles, These Clowns are Outta Here.”  Enjoy.

 

 

Keeping Faith in the Political Arena

Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that.

Hatred cannot drive out hatred. Only love can do that.

Because I believe that, and because I believe it was inspired, I continue to insist that this is no touchy-feely easy solution love. It’s agape, and it has something to say about how leaders lead, regardless of their arena.

This kind of fierce love believes that:

Executive orders against refugees cannot keep us safe. But radical national hospitality with thorough vetting is life-giving for our nation and for those who’ve barely escaped death.

ICE raids cannot deter illegal immigration. But sanctuary with clear paths to citizenship can show immigrants that there is room here for them to contribute as neighbors.

Drones cannot minimize terrorists. But the will to stop publishing their every move will decrease the fear we feel.

Death sentences cannot force forgiveness and repentance. Only reconciliation and rehabilitation can do that.

Following the law cannot forge justice. Only just laws can do that.

Fierce love. Not the touchy feely church devotional bonfire love. Agape love in the bible is fierce love. Love that fights for those threatened by power gone amuck. Love that insists on finding ways to save one more. Love that gives freely of its resources. Love that stands strong for diplomacy in the insistence upon death. Love that takes a bullet and refuses to fire one.

Our leaders can create enemies or build faith.
They can prey on the desperate or engender hope.
They can feed off fear, or they can be fierce in their love.

We know which of these three will remain. Which will we pursue?

We’re Drinking a Poisonous Potion

I’ve written about and read more about politics in the last six months than I did in forty years prior. I confess my morbid fascination with the poisonous concoction we as citizens are rabidly consuming.

At the heart of my newfound interest is my education and experience in building communities of like-minded people. I was taught early on that community was best done with people who look, think, and believe as I do. That’s straight from the church small group training manual of the 90’s and early aughts. It’s mixed with the marketing axiom that we must pander to our target audience. That formula also has some white supremacy and classism mixed in.

This formula was executed (still is) at many mega-churches around the US. I’d need to do research to confirm, but my educated guess is that the largest churches are statistically more likely to be skewed in attendance towards upper middle class white people. They are not representative of either our nation’s demographics nor the demographics of the people gathered around the Throne.

It’s been a well-intentioned but ill-fated effort at community. The mixture of marketing, homogeneity, and classism accomplishes the opposite of what it intends. It results in division and echo chambers rather community and compromise.

Can we agree that’s exactly where we are as a nation and as participants in the Great Experiment?

Thus, my interest. My theory: our nation is the concoction of efforts towards homogeneity (gerrymandering), marketing (niche media), and $ as free speech (classism). (Side note: classism and racism are bedfellows. You can’t talk about one w/o addressing the other.)

Mixed in a bowl of voter inattention and representative inertia, a very poisonous mixture has been served to us. This isn’t just a political party, choose-your-pet-issue problem.

It’s about what a blessed community looks like and how it behaves. Read at its best, Christian history has a lot to say about this. Look past the fractured identity sub-groups that are wrapped in favorite verses and pet issues. The Biblical story points us towards a community that is inclusive and welcoming. We are welcomed to a community that’s fed with a rigorous helping of self-discipline and self-denial.

The national suicidal concoction sitting on the plate before us has an antidote. It’s not the dismissal and annihilation of the other party, liberal elites, deplorables, city-folk, rednecks, or snowflakes. It’s a character that believes in and fiercely pursues the blessed community.

Gifts We Never Asked For

I was honored to have the opportunity to speak at a fundraiser for breast cancer in Rockwall.  “In the Pink” supports local organizations who help women who cannot afford cancer care on their own.  Knowing some women would have a better chance to become or stay a mom, daughter, wife, and friend, was reason enough for me to give a half hour of my thoughts on the idea that cancer is a gift, but not one we’d ever ask for.

You can download a copy of the script here.  It’s filled not with my ideas of cancer’s unintended gifts, but rather of stories from women who have beaten cancer in this life, and of women who are longer alive to tell their own stories.  I hope you’re blessed by it.

Gifts I Never Asked For

 

Leading From the Margins

Wondering if a leader is the kind of person your kids can look up to?  That YOU can look up to? Look no further than those moved to the margins by their actions. Leadership is often little more than a winnowing of those who might follow. Who does the leader leave behind or minimize?

In politics, who will bear the heaviest weight of their policies? Whose backs will the political leaders build their country on?  In churches, who receives the lions’ share of the pastoral resources?  Who gets overlooked? In business, who feels the first hit of the thirst for more profit? Is it the owner or the employees? In families, which members are more often left to fend for themselves emotionally?

Leaders’ legacies are defined by those they’ve moved from the margins so that they are heard and seen again, rather than forgotten.

In your just business, business owners, observe who is left out or shunned by other employees.  Pay attention to who gets the most negative attention from management.  Learn your employees’ stories; they’ll be more than a budget line item when you do.  Hire parolees.  Participate in work programs for poor or those who lack the skills needed to get a great job.  Check your pay rates to make sure they’re fair to all genders and race.

Not everyone follows, but pay close attention to those the leader leaves behind, dismisses, and minimizes.  Therein lies the clearest view of their character and priorities.

What is Past is Prologue

This plaque on the outside of the National Archives communicates the power o the past to impact the present.

This plaque on the outside of the National Archives communicates the power of the past to impact the present.

Chiseled into the granite outside and the walls inside the National Archives…

“What is Past, is Prologue.”

DC is a shrine to a young nation-state that was unburdened by geography in its origins and that established its identity in relatively easy war and conquest. DC is also an aspiration of an ideal nation-state, with the not-so-subtle hint that no other nation has lived up to that ideal as well as we have.

Yet, there is hidden among the flowery prose and self-congratulatory rhetoric, a hint of humility. You have to look for it; it is not easily found. But there are hints, like this one at the Archives, that a nation proud of its supposed place in the globe might yet have resources to call upon should we choose a less flamboyant role on the world’s stage.

If we can re-discover humility, we will elect collaborators and compromisers instead of ideological extremists. In that humility, we will find courage to confess our complicity in the chaos of Iraq and Syria. In that humility, we will seek a different persona of leader than those remaining in our presidential race.

In that humility, we’ll find strength to repent of our ongoing racism. We’ll find defiant courage to welcome the world’s hurting and face up to our own religious extremism. In that humility, we’ll gladly surrender our righteous indignation over guns and bathrooms. We’ll confess that we love life, so long as our own is preserved.

What pride and power can tear apart, humility and grace can sew together. May you and I find that humility in ourselves, our families, our friends, our churches, and yes, in the circle of friends and family with whom we have profound political differences.

If we are courageous enough to re-write our personal and national histories with humility, we can expect a national denouement worthy of writing, whenever that ending may be. If not, then the Archives will be both historian and prophet.

Because what is past, is prologue.

The Shame Game

In the news, in sports, in politics, there exists a need to tell others how they should feel.

Apparently, Colin Kaepernick should feel ashamed of himself and should be wishing he had come up with a better way to express his frustration with the state of race relations here in the U.S.

It seems that Gabby Douglass should feel ashamed of herself for not placing her hand over her heart during the national anthem.

Hilary Clinton should feel ashamed of herself for using the wrong email server.

Donald Trump should feel ashamed of himself for, well, everything he says.

Shame.

When I place my expectations for how someone should behave based on my personal expectations, I’ve put them and me into a no-win situation.  Consider the following office conflict that happens weekly, maybe daily in every business.

Manager:  Why didn’t you do the job this way?

Team Member (thinks to self):  Well, I’m doing it the way I was taught.  If I’d been taught better I’d probably be doing it better.

 

Later, the VP and the manager have a conversation…

VP: Your team performance isn’t where it needs to be.

Manager (thinks to self): Well, if you’d hire better people, they’d be easier to train and we’d get better results.

 

All three people–the VP, the manager, and the team member–have engaged in the shame game.  They’ve been told by someone else how they should be doing their job.  What they’re told has everything to do with their own experience in doing the job that their subordinate is now doing.  Worse, instead of communicating directly to their supervisors, the team member and manager have swallowed their poorly worded critique.  Here are four suggestions for fighting the blame game in your business.

1.  TALK to the person you need to talk to.  Don’t swallow your words, and don’t beat around the bush when you do.  Say what needs saying.  When you do, figure out how you can ask questions that don’t begin with “why.”  Ask the what, how, when, where questions that get you measurable outcomes and expectations.

2.  Talk TO the person you need to talk to.  Too often, we’re like the child working the parents.  If we don’t get what we want from the first parent, we’ll go to the other parent.  How did we learn that behavior?  We learned because we got different answers.  Kids pick up pretty quick when their parents aren’t communicating their decisions to each other.  Team members pick up pretty quick when their managers aren’t communicating their decisions to each other.

3.  Talk to the PERSON you need to talk to.  Email doesn’t count.  Walk in the office, setting an appointment if you have to.   Get out from behind the screen you’re staring at.  Get out from behind the desk that’s between you and the other person.

4.  Talk to the person you NEED to talk to.  You don’t need to tell your co-worker why your boss is terrible.  You don’t need to tell a peer why someone is never going to amount to anything at the business.  Gossip stinks.  It ruins a business’ culture.  It poisons the water everyone drinks from.

 

The shame game doesn’t work, unless you’re trying to ruin it for others and for you.

Group Think

Groupthink–humanity’s unwavering knack for fearfully crowding itself into a corner, arguing for its right to be there, insulating itself from outside influence, then demonizing those who say, “You’re in a corner, but you don’t have to stay there. There’s a much bigger more beautiful world out here.”

Anyone can say, “let’s make our small little corner great again.”  Leaders bring people out of the corner.

Humility

You cannot separate yourself from the experiences which have given you the personal qualities you seek and the decisions you value. You cannot be objective about yourself, only honest.  Whether in political preference, faith practice, managerial habits, parenting style, or any other human interaction, we are products of our experiences.

Be the person who says, I prefer __________ because I’ve been taught ___________ by those I respect and experienced ______________ in my own life. That person can be taught and led, and can teach and lead others. He/she can be empathetic and present with significantly different people.

We desperately need more of these kinds of people, not just in politics and social media, but in churches, families, businesses, and sports. (We have more of us than are speaking up, so let’s start hearing more from a few of you, hmm?)  Learn something about yourself today. Confess your assumptions about life and people. Dig in, and refuse to accept the surface answer that paints yourself and those you agree with in a positive light and others in a lesser light.

This is the foundation for “love your neighbor as yourself.”