Information, Observation, and Inspiration for Scouters
When did you become a leader?
Was it when someone anointed you the head of something and you took charge? Did you volunteer for a job in your unit? Did everyone else take a step backward when Sarge called for “volunteers” to step forward?
Those are ways to take on a leadership role, but there are others that don’t even involve having “leader” in the title! Continue reading “Start leading before you become a leader!”
Ever since the mid-1960s, the television game show Jeopardy! has been a must-see program for millions of viewers nationwide. Since the beginning, contestants from all walks of life competed for cash prizes, some walking away with hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Two things set the show apart from other game shows of the time. Continue reading “Let’s play Jeopardy!”
Starting this month, I’m beginning a series of monthly articles based on a portion of my class at University of Scouting this year. Besides talking about issues that committee chairs typically encounter, I handed out and we discussed a suggested list of things that the committee needs to attend to, month by month. It’s a checklist of sorts, or a timeline for a troop committee’s year. Continue reading “Committee chair timeline: April”
As the Christian world approaches Easter, the scriptures that are read center more and more on Jesus in his final days, as he traveled and taught, working closely with his disciples and followers. A favorite reading at this time of year is the story, written by John the Apostle in his gospel, about Jesus washing the feet of the disciples gathered for the passover meal. (In those days, most travel was on foot, and the roads were dusty, meaning that a day’s labors or journey left one’s feet filthy dirty. Those who were better off had servants to give the evening foot baths.) When one, Simon Peter, protests, Jesus explains that Peter and the others don’t understand why he, the teacher and lord, is doing the work ordinarily done by servants, but soon it becomes clear:
Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.
Thus we are introduced to one of the earliest recorded examples of servant leadership. Continue reading “Servant leadership: Not a new concept”
Ask most people what they know about Boy Scouting, and the most frequent responses you’ll get are either “Are they still around”? or they’ll cite the negative attention BSA has been getting lately about its policies and past practices.
Ask most Scouting families, and they’ll tell you that Scouting’s purpose is to go camping, for the boys to earn merit badges, and that most eventually become Eagle Scouts if they stick around long enough.
Boys will respond along a range of reactions, anywhere from “my mom makes me go” and “we wear dorky uniforms and sit around in meetings” to “it’s fun!” or “we go camping and have gone on some great adventures”.
Aims and methods, values, mission and vision are rarely mentioned, yet these are at the core of our movement. Continue reading “Scouting from the inside out”