The following resource is from DesiringGod.org.

I'd like to speak to you a few minutes about education in serious joy for the sake of survival in leadership.

And I could say for the sake of survival period, but my assumption behind the education we do at Western College and Seminary is that everyone

is a leader at some level.

So it's not merely that we aim to help you survive, but that we aim to help you survive for the sake of leading.

That is, for the sake of loving other people wisely enough to get them to where God says they should be.

Christian education never terminates on the educated.

It's always for the sake of their influence on other people for their good, especially their eternal good.

And in that sense, all Christian education is for the sake of leadership, helping other people by loving them wisely to get where God says they should be.

We wouldn't be wasting our time to talk about education in serious joy for the sake of survival period.

Life does bring enough obstacles, threats, setbacks, depletions to warrant that effort, but that's not what I'm going to talk about.

Leadership presents us with more depleting setbacks than life.

Try to love someone, try to love some group wisely enough to move them to where God says they should be, and the setbacks in your life will multiply.

And then add this, the last 14 months.

All around the world, Christian leaders have found the last 14 months to be peculiarly depleting.

Families, churches, schools, parachurch ministries, associations, businesses.

In all of them, the complexity and the heat of controversy and accusation have been many leaders say unparalleled in their lifetime.

Barna Group published a survey just a few weeks ago in which they said that 29% of American pastors have seriously considered quitting in the last year.

So my focus for these few minutes is education in serious joy for the sake of survival in leadership.

Now, at this point I want to draw our attention with inexpressible gratitude and thanks to God and to Tim for President Tim Tomlinson's leadership of Bethlehem College in Seminary for the first 12 years of its existence.

He has not only survived, but he has thrived and because of him under God, the school has thrived.

Now, how he did that, how you did that Tim, and how we should do it is what we now turn to.

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