My wife hauls me off to church every Sunday (and that’s not a bad thing). I teach Sunday school, which gets me out of the service. But last week, older kids organized a scavenger hunt for fourth through sixth graders (I teach the middleschoolers), so I had opportunity to sit in the service. Lucky, too.
The pastor announced she would step down at the end of December. After two-and-a-half years, she felt it was time to make room for new blood and a new way of doing things. I thought: “This is how it’s supposed to be”.
People aren’t meant to hold onto power for too long. It’s contrary to the cycle of life. A child subservient to the will of the parents later reaches his or her own maturity and eventually replaces the forebears. Seasons pass, giving way to new life.
I wonder if the founding fathers understood this in the original concepts of U.S. government, where legislators were supposed to do their public service and return to private life.
I believe that big companies tend to work against their own interests or that of their customers. Microsoft is a good example. When the U.S. government tried to divide Microsoft five years ago, I believed a breakup would be good but voluntarily done. The divided companies might have suffered at first, but smaller, more lithe, more responsive, the separate entities could have done quite well for themselves and delivered great shareholder value (disclosure: I am not a Microsoft shareholder). If Microsoft had split into two or three companies five years ago, Google wouldn’t be a competitive problem. The separate pieces would be spry and competitive and responsive.
Back to the pastor. She deserves great praise for the decision to step aside. The role isn’t her job, but her calling to service. I’d love to see a bunch of U.S. politicians step aside, too, having long ago fulfilled their call to serve. Consolidation of power, over-dominance of any one or any entity is destructive. It’s against natural law. In nature, overdominant animals or plants are destructive forces.