Tremendous Tracey

We all like to think we are a BFD, yet the only way any of us truly earns those three letters is by Bearing Fruit Daily. Jesus said He is the vine and we are the branches, and that same truth plays out in every group we belong to. Are you in communion or just in union, and are you bearing fruit or just taking up branch space?

Twenty-five years ago, nineteen hijackers appointed themselves judge over the lives of nearly 3,000 people. Against that evil stood a fellowship of ordinary people: flight attendants who stayed on the line, first responders who ran toward the towers, and the passengers and crew of Flight 93, who took a vote. The courage was in them all along.

In Cork we had four excursions to pick from. I could kiss the Blarney Stone, walk the Titanic Heritage Trail, tour the city, or go see how Irish whiskey is made. I skipped the stone and picked the whiskey tour, and I do not drink whiskey. I tasted it once. Yuck. Here is why I went anyway, and what a barrel taught me about people.

They call Iceland the Land of Fire and Ice. Volcanoes and glaciers. Lava fields and frozen waterfalls. And standing there, I realized that's not just geology. That's life. The most spectacular results, the deepest beauty, come from being forged in the fires of trials and intense pressure, or from enduring the cold you feel while searching for your purpose. Fire and ice. Both shape you. Both are necessary.

And speaking of being shaped... Iceland kept showing me hearts.

I've been to Iceland before—passing through Keflavik during my Air Force days. But this time, Mike and I are finally HERE. And standing in front of Harpa Concert Hall, watching it glow from within, I couldn't help but think: that's what leadership looks like.

I gave my neighbor a copy of The Island of Misfit Leaders. He read it straight through, then sent me a meme: a white horse looking into a mirror, seeing a pegasus. The wings belong to the swan standing on its back. From where the horse is standing, that is impossible to know. It cannot see its own back, and no amount of straining or self-examination will ever show it what is there. That is not the flaw in the design. That is the design. Nobody sees their own wings, which is why God gave us each other.

Everybody loved my father, 99 and 44/100 percent of them anyway. Seventeen years after he died, a speaker wrote in to tell me about the woman in the front row who never came around, and what Charlie did about her that cost him half a keynote.

Authoritarianism. Attractiveness. Dominance. Nobody wants to circle a 5 next to those words in a room full of their peers — and in three years of running this exercise, nobody has. But our people never stop scoring us on them. Rank has its privileges, and it has its responsibilities, and the leader who sets hers down at the door is the only one in the room who thinks that part of the test is over.

Some weeks the hostility just hangs in the air—a volatile leader you can't steady, a teammate who turns cold, conflict that pulls your own good people off center—and the real question is never whether you'll face it, but who you'll be when you do. Drawing on Paul's battle-tested counsel in Romans 12, this piece lays out four ways to lead through hostility without being made ugly by it: be the shock absorber that takes the blast so your team doesn't have to, refuse to let anyone else set your terms, lead for the room rather than the malcontent, and walk the long road of kindness home to the follower who has drifted away. You will not win every difficult person, but you can keep your side of the peace clean—and let the good people around you grow steadier for having watched you stay steady.

Insubordination is the first sin. Before the first murder, before the first lie, there was a rebellion in heaven, and the root of it was pride: the self swelling up and deciding I get to say. One week into our next 250 years, here's why inverted is perverted, why a house divided cannot stand, and why the honorable answer to hating your surroundings has never been to stay and stab. It's to walk out the open door.

I can't emphasize this enough: It was overflowing with fellow Americans. Pure and simple. Not THIS type of American or THAT type of American. Not red or blue. Not left or right. Just thankful Americans who deeply love this country.

By the time you're reading this, I'm headed to DC! At 12:01 AM on New Year's Eve, watching the Story of America projected on the Washington Monument, I knew I HAD to be there for the 250th. Six months of planning, the last pair of limited-edition Corral eagle boots in my size, and a whole lot of manifest destiny later — these boots are made for walking straight into history. Stay tuned for pictures from the greatest birthday party in the history of mankind!

A church convention and a stock exchange have more in common than you'd think: both reveal the oldest trick for silencing the people we'd rather not hear. Here's how to spot the rigged ledger—and dress your mind for the best-dressed list.

My father, Charlie "Tremendous" Jones, believed the bedrock of a tremendous life was rich dialogue. So I pay close attention when someone drops the "Q" from "Q&A". When you ask a fair, honest question and the room turns on you instead of answering it, that reaction tells you everything. Here's what the military, a board meeting, and an auditor's wisdom taught me about asking the hard question the right way.