These posts are adapted from Donald Keough’s excellent book The Ten commandments for Business Failure. This book was such an excellent source of common sense and probable one of the best books I’ve read in some time.

Success is more permanent when you achieve it without destroying your principles. –Walter Cronkite

In order to fail, make sure that people do not trust you. That way, no matter how good you are at your particular role in the church, you can be sure that no one will follow you or duplicate what you are doing. If you play the game entirely for yourself, you are guaranteed to alienate everyone and find yourself trying to do everything yourself.

Everyone else is going to cheat you, so why not cheat them?

Of course, that logic does not stand up to the scrutiny of Jesus’ life. Jesus turned this kind of thinking on its head, challenging his disciples to speak plainly, to live with integrity and to put others ahead of themselves.