Leadership Matters

Greetings,

Plaque outside the Pollard Center

On Monday, Emanuel University unveiled the new William Pollard Center for Leadership Development.  The Center will be part of the Management program and folks around here are rightly proud of this new addition.  Mr. Pollard (Bill) has been here since Friday speaking in classes and in church.  He was also granted an honorary doctorate from the University.  Bill has been associated with Emanuel for over 15 years through his friendship with the president of the university Dr. Paul Negrut.  I found it quite ironic that I found myself in Romania having a lunch conversation with one of the leading voices of Christian business leadership.  God does work in strange ways.  I was quite honored when he asked if I could meet with him next summer so as to apprise him of how he could most effectively assist this institution, community, and country.

All of the ceremony surrounding leadership began to crystallize the impact of the Communist leadership here in Romania, most notably the last Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu.  He was run out of office and killed in December of 1989, but his legacy remains quite ingrained in this culture 24 years after his death.  While here, we have been able to not only observe this legacy with our eyes, but to hear it from the mouths of the people who lived through this time and whose parents and grandparents lived through this time.

Centralized planning meant, among other things, that you were told where you would work, how this work was to be done, and how much work had to be done.  A factory was built in any town or village of a certain size.  Homes on the outskirts of town would be leveled and the people would be moved into flats within the city limits.  The factory would be built on this land and the land would also be used for farming.  All the people in the town would work at this factory.  The central planning committee would tell the factory how much they had to produce each month (no more and no less) and would provide the workers with a certain amount of pay and a place to live (in the flats) for a minimal rent.  Heat in the flats was controlled as well as the electricity.  For most of the flats, this meant one light bulb per apartment.  During this time, churches were either destroyed or left to decay.  

Since the revolution of 1989, the opposite has been happening.  Churches, primarily Orthodox churches, have been built and/or renovated, while the factories have been abandoned and left to rot.  The flats, even with a new coat of paint, are still a blight on the landscape.  The millions of dollars spent on the church renovations is quite controversial as even though most of the country identifies themselves as Orthodox, these churches are empty most of the year except on Christmas and Easter.  You get the sense that the government is trying to make up for years of religious suppression by throwing money at the buildings.  So, in our travels, one could always pick out the Orthodox church and the Communist flats as these were the only buildings over one story tall.  As you got closer to the town, you would usually drive by the abandoned factory.  The picture of the factory below is right next to the beautiful historic downtown of Sibiu, pictures of which we shared with you in our last post. 

One of the nicer abandoned factories

It is very interesting to hear of how people view life before and after the revolution.  Life for Christians and the Christian Church is certainly better.  They are free to worship and open, blatant persecution by both the government and the community has diminished significantly.  Many would say that the Church is not as vibrant as it was and has succumbed to the temptation of comfort and more and more to a materialistic mindset and yearning.  The saying here is that before the Revolution, people had money, but there was nothing on the shelves to buy.  Now, the shelves are full, but there is no money.  It is difficult for us to imagine the complete upheaval of people's lives once Communism fell.  Their entire way of life was altered without warning and without any training.  Like kicking the bird out of the nest well before it knew, or was capable, of flying.  Indeed, leadership matters.  It makes us realize and appreciate the Scriptural imperative to pray for our governmental leaders.

On a much lighter note, I have attached a few pictures of some students and families that make up some of the life here at Emanuel.  Students love to take us out and show us the town.  There is another family that live right down the hall from us in the dorm.  One of the pictures shows Raelene and her four children.  Husband Elijah was in the States at the time of this picture.  The other pictures are of some of our students.  The final picture is Cheryl's favorite, especially the shoes.

Pace,

Cheryl & Tom