Vince Vitale [00:00:42] I'm going to explore a cluster of themes that include things like success, winning, competition. And these are themes that are quite central to my own personal story. They were driving forces in my youth. And then when I came to faith in Christ in college, it was through a sports ministry, Athletes in Action. I was playing soccer at the time, and I was also at a top academic university. And so my early years as a Christian were spent in large part wrestling with what it looks like to live out faith in a highly competitive environment. And more recently, two things prompted me to focus my thinking on these themes again. The first was a commercial for the Paris Olympics that I'm hoping we can watch together now. So this commercial is from the Paris Olympics we're going to watch together. 

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Paris Olympics Ad [00:01:35] Am I a bad person? Tell me; am I? I'm single-minded. I'm deceptive. I'm obsessive. I'm selfish. Does that make me a bad person? Am I a bad person? Am I? I have no empathy. I don't respect you. I'm never satisfied. I have an obsession with power. I'm irrational! I have zero remorse. I have no sense of compassion. I'm delusional! I'm maniacal! You think I'm a bad person? Tell me. Tell me! Tell me; am I? I think I am better than everyone else. I want to take what's yours and never give it back. What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine. Am I a bad person? Tell me; am I? Does that make me a bad person? Tell me; does it? 

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Vince Vitale [00:03:06] That commercial just left me wide-eyed when I first saw it. It's part of a Nike series titled Winning Isn't for Everyone. So I saw that commercial and then not long afterward, around the same time, I was also enrolling my six-year-old and my four-year old sons in soccer for the first time. So that was my second recent impetus for thinking about today's themes. After watching that commercial, and then taking my sons to their first soccer practices, it suddenly dawned on me how utterly confusing the beginning of organized sports must be for little kids. Think about it from a kid's perspective. For the first four years of your life, your parents are constantly teaching you sound, moral principles. Share with your brother, give your brother a turn, don't steal your brother's toy, no hitting your brother in the face with your race cars-- which happened this morning. No, not with your dinosaurs either. All totally reasonable principles for life. And then you sign your kids up for soccer, and they put on their little oversized shin guards, and they look so cute scurrying out onto the field. And then the whistle blows. And out of nowhere, those same eminently reasonable parents that for four years have been repeating sound moral principles, immediately transform into monsters and begin flailing their arms around wildly and screaming things like, "Get them, steal the ball, use your body, hit them harder, tackle them, don't give them a chance, take no prisoners." 

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[00:04:46] Just imagine what is going on inside a four-year-old's brain looking over at the sidelines and thinking, "Who are these people and what have they done with my parents?" You are literally screaming the exact opposite of everything you have taught me for the first four years of my life. And then if you step back for a second and listen to the language, that's really telling as well. Take no prisoners. I can still hear my dad yelling that from the sidelines of my youth soccer games, my biggest fan. Take no prisoners. But it literally means kill them all. Beat the competition. Also pretty shocking language when you actually stop and think about it. Beating people is something you go to jail for, but in sports and later in life and business, we hold up beating other people as a primary marker of success. And then when we win, it's completely normalized to celebrate on the field in ecstasy while someone else is devastated on the fields in tears. Maybe she made a terrible play, feels horrible, let her team down, just utterly ashamed. She worked her whole life for this opportunity, this moment, and completely blew it. And there I am, jumping around her in delight, yelling in her ear as if she's invisible, like she's not even there. So all of this has been swirling around in my head as I've been trying to discern what I want to teach my four-year-old about competition and winning and success. 

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[00:06:22] And here's my emerging thesis that I want to explore with you today. I'm calling it the success paradox. And the basic idea is that the very things that make you successful in youth can lead to failure in adulthood. The very things that seem to make you a winner when you're young, those are the same things that can threaten to create failure and loss later in life. So I'm going to take a few minutes to try to motivate this idea. If you ask a kid whether life is going well, what is he going to talk about? Some pretty good guesses might be sports, school, popularity. I would say those might be the big three when it comes to success as a kid. I'm not saying these things amount to true success, but I'm saying those are the things we tend to care about most, invest in most, our time, our energy, our emotion, if we're striving for a successful childhood. On the other hand, if you ask an adult whether life is going well, what are they going to talk about? They are not going to walk about any of those things. By the time you hit 30, pretty much no one cares whether you were good at sports or at school or whether you are popular. 

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[00:07:36] If you asked an adult how life is doing and if they're inclined to give you a sincere answer, they might talk a bit about work and money, but primarily I think they're going to talk about relationships. Their kids, their spouse, their colleagues, their community. And I suspect that the older people get, the more true this would be. The older we get, the more we tend to realize the centrality of relationships to a successful life in any meaningful sense of success. You ask a grandparent about what is going on in life and how life is going, they will almost definitely talk about the most important relationships in their life. Their kids, their grandkids, their marriage, their friends, their community. So it seems to me that there is this noticeable gap between what we consider success in youth and then what we considered success in adulthood. And it's primarily a gap with respect to the importance of relationships. Kids do care about having friendships for sure, but when you're a kid, it's more about having other kids to play with or about being popular. It's less about deep long-term relationships. In fact, the kids who wind up being most popular are often specifically those who are most intimidating and least inclined to show vulnerability. Traits which inevitably keep relationships from going deep. 

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[00:08:54] Plus, friendships, when you're young, tend to be based on relatively superficial interests or where you happen to live geographically. This kid is on my baseball team. That kid lives down the block. But these things might change next year. And if they do, it's not the biggest deal because the primary requirement for a successful youth is not typically framed in terms of deep, enduring relationships, but in terms of hitting certain measurable targets, high grades, dominating in sports, being part of the popular crowd. So I think there's this success gap between childhood and adulthood. And what I've realized just recently is that this gap is more than just a shift of priorities over time. It's actually a paradox. Because it is the very things that make you successful as a kid that are prone to ruin your relationships as an adult. Paradoxically, winning early in life can actually set you up to lose later in life. Being intimidating and showing no vulnerability in youth can be part of what makes you popular. But if you hold onto those patterns into adulthood, that's a recipe for relational disaster. Now, that's just one preliminary example. But I would say the more successful you are in your younger years, the clearer it becomes that the very things that have made you successful early can cause real damage later. And this is a thesis that's quite personal to me because by the world standards, I was successful in my youth, especially in school and sports. And in some ways this culminated when I was applying for some major graduating scholarships at a top university. 

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[00:10:37] And reflecting back on what it takes to win one of these scholarships is very telling with respect to the success paradox thesis that I'm suggesting. To win a major graduating scholarship at the end of college in some ways could be seen as a pinnacle of early life success. Here are some of the things that are needed. First, you have to learn how to write successful applications. With all of your strengths and none of your weaknesses. You need to know how to present yourself as way more impressive than you actually are. You also need to learn how to nail an interview, how to artfully pivot on a question about your biggest weakness and turn even that question into yet another opportunity to share about how impressive you actually are. Nowadays, you also need to learn to market yourself online. None of us go looking for a new profile picture and think, I know, I want to find the most average picture of myself that I can because that would be the most truthful reflection of the way I actually look. No, we go for the perfect angle, and the perfect lighting, and the perfect filter, but make sure it looks really casual too. You can't be trying too hard. 

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[00:11:51] You have to know how to build your CV, and how to round it out, how to fill it out, even if sometimes that can make it pretty ambiguous whether your community service is you serving the community or the community serving you and your success. You definitely have to know how to network, how to build the relationships that you need to get the letters of recommendation that you need. For major graduating fellowships you need something like 10 or 12 recommenders. Twelve people who will basically say you're the best person they've ever met. I mean, that's ridiculous and it requires a lot of relationship managing and strategy, which again, can make it very hard to learn to pursue relationships for their own sake, as ends in themselves, and not just as a means to your success. And all of this eventually leads to earning credentials. And pretty soon you might have impressive letters that follow you around for the rest of your life. MD, JD, PhD, MBA, CEO, and all of a sudden people start saying your name differently, Dr. Vitale. And you start getting VIP passes to different events and gatherings, and you'll be wearing this VIP lanyard around your neck, even at a Christian event. 

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[00:13:11] And the danger is that you'll start to believe it. And people start patting you on the back and saying, "You're really making a name for yourself." And you thank them so much for saying so. How kind. Forgetting that the one time that phrase is used in scripture is to describe the rebellious motivation that led to building the Tower of Babel. All of this leads to winning. And the more you win, the more competitive you need to become, because there's going to be even more competition for your next achievement. And again, this competitive mindset can serve you quite well when you're young, or at least it seems to. But that need for everything to be a competition can become so ingrained that it can then be very hard to turn it off. And without even realizing it, you can slowly start to treat everyone like an opponent. When there's an argument with your spouse, you have to win. When you relate to colleagues, you stay mostly on the surface because at the end of the day, they are the competition in the way of your next promotion. And as you climb the ladder of success, you adopt Nike's never satisfied mindset. We put more palatable language on it. We'll say that we're driven, or we have a growth mindset. And again, this served us well in our youth. It's what helped us to get ahead and build a nice life for ourselves. 

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[00:14:35] But before you know it, you're working 24/7, you're on the verge of burnout. You've convinced yourself that unlike the rest of the 10 commandments, that one about rest no longer applies. And when you treat yourself like nothing is ever good enough, how will you wind up treating those around you? I have a colleague right now, successful, driven, never satisfied. But the closer you are to him, the more he implicitly puts that expectation of never satisfied on you. And it's really hurting his family in a big way. So hopefully that at least just starts to put some flesh on the bones of what I'm calling the success paradox. The very things that make you successful early in life have this tendency to destroy the things you care about most as an adult. Striving for and achieving the goals of youth can be the very means of us losing what we will care about later in life. And I want to add one more layer to this thesis. Not only can youthful success have a damaging impact on later relationships generally, but I think it makes it particularly difficult to engage well as a member of the Christian church. Because if you reflect on what the foremost characteristic of Christian community is supposed to be, what sets it apart as a community? There are multiple good answers, I think. But here's one biblical one, Ephesians 4:25. 

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[00:16:00] Now, the first half of the book of Ephesian is this beautiful big picture theological vision of the church. And then we get to Ephesians 4 verse 25, it's the very first verse that gives a practical outworking of that vision. In light of this big picture vision of what the church is, how do we actually live? And it says, "Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body." And I think it's significant here that Paul adds, "And speak truth fully." That's a higher standard than merely putting off false hood. My applications and my interviews and my social media pages, they didn't necessarily claim things that were false, but did they speak truthfully? Did they endeavor to give a full picture of who I was, both the good and the bad and everything in between? Different question. Let's look at one more passage. This one's from 1 John. So right at the beginning of the book, we get a paragraph summary of the message that John heard from Jesus. This is the message we have heard from Jesus and declared to you. So now John is going to try to encapsulate, in just a few sentences, the core of the message he heard from Jesus. That should really get us listening. 

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[00:17:20] What's going to be his first sentence? God is light. In him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. That's how we have Christian community. And the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, which we might not do explicitly-- but reading over some of my old CVs, it sure sounds that way. And that habit of presenting ourselves for success can become so ingrained. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So John makes the very same point that Paul makes in Ephesians 4. The mark of Christian community is honesty, truth, being real with one another, living in the light. We don't need to be afraid of the sinful and shameful things in our lives because Jesus already dealt with them. And if we're still keeping things in the dark, what did Jesus die for? 

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[00:18:32] But the way we pursue success in youth makes this so difficult to embrace. In so many ways we're taught that success relies on never showing weakness, that weaknesses need to be kept in the dark. And that makes it so hard to walk into a community that has at its very center a commitment to bringing weakness and failure and vulnerability into the light. Now I want to put this one final exclamation point on what I'm referring to as the success paradox. The success paradox leads to the power paradox. And I'll explain that terminology in a minute, but here's the progression that I have in mind. Aiming for and achieving competitive success in youth tends to lead to landing a good job and then rising the ranks of that job into positions of power and influence. Which sounds like a great thing and it can be, but then you read the research. There is a flurry of research from the last decade on the impact of power, or leadership, or influence on character. And the findings are astounding. Behavioral studies show that people in positions of power start to talk differently. They over-talk and they become bad listeners. They eat differently. They do these cookie monster tests where the people in the positions of power eat with their mouths open and there's crumbs all over the floor and they always take the last cookie. Even drives differently. 

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[00:20:01] They do studies at pedestrian crossings and fancy cars are about twice as likely to blow through and not stop when people are waiting to cross. Because, of course, my meeting is more important than that guy's meeting. And there are also these crazy brain imaging studies that suggest that for people in positions of power or authority, the actual brain functions, the ones that are most relevant to empathy and compassion, they start to deteriorate. Functions like the mirroring functions in the brain actually deteriorate over time when we wind up in those positions. When people grow in power and get comfortable at the top of the food chain with less accountability, they start to lose all sorts of virtues, empathy, self-control, patience. They become worse listeners, less able to see things from other's perspectives, other's point of view. That's a huge one. And the list goes on. And note these virtues are the very things needed to gain power in the first place. Before you were in power, when you're still climbing the ladder, you needed to be able to read a room well and treat people well. You needed a nuanced understanding of what other people are feeling and experiencing in order to gain their trust and approval and to continue moving up the ranks. And if you didn't treat people well, when you were still lower in the power structure, you'd be held accountable by those who were lateral to you and above you. 

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[00:21:28] But once you're at the top of the food chain, all of this changes. You no longer need to be a good listener for people to be willing to hear from you. They have to listen to you because you're in charge. You're the boss, you hold all the power. And therefore accountability disappears as well. Everyone's too afraid of the impact it will have on them to tell you that you talk too much. And this is what Professor Dacher Keltner from UC Berkeley has termed the power paradox. Once we have power, we start to lose the very virtues and capacities that were needed to gain power in the first place. In short, power causes brain damage. That's how the Atlantic summarized the recent findings. And Keltner encapsulates his research by saying, "People with power tend to behave like patients who have damaged their brain's orbital frontal lobes. The experience of power might be thought of as having someone open up your skull and take out that part of your brain so critical to empathy and socially appropriate behavior." If I could give you just one headline that has become really important to me as I think about and mentor others, especially with respect to leadership, here's the headline. The worst thing for your leadership is your leadership. 

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[00:22:50] And for me at least, this was a light bulb realization because I tend to think the more experience I have with something, the better I'll be at it. Practice makes perfect. So the more I study, the more I'll know. The more I exercise, the fitter I'll be. The longer you keep something in the oven, the more well done it's going to get. And I've been in various forms of leadership for decades. So surely my leadership is going to be improving over time, right? That's a very natural thought. But the research actually, in some respects, says the opposite. As a leader with power and influence, the current of the river that you are floating in is not naturally headed in a good direction. This is so critical for leaders to appreciate, but so many are just floating along with no realization of what they're up against. And if you want further evidence of what I'm saying, read through first and second Chronicles with the success paradox and the power paradox in mind and see how leader after leader biblically started well and sometimes continued well for decades only to fall later in life when they lost accountability and began to read their own press. It literally says that with respect to one of the kings. And slowly became less aware of those they were supposed to be serving, less reliant on God, more caught up in themselves. 

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[00:24:27] So let's take stock at this point. The very things that make you successful in youth can lead to your downfall as an adult. And this concern is magnified because youthful success leads to power. And power is incredibly dangerous. So the success paradox leads to the power paradox, which then doubles back to confirm why the success paradox is such a big deal in the first place. Now I'm done giving you all the bad news. Time for some good news, the antidote to all that I've said to this point. A revolution in the way we think about success and power. A revolution that Jesus brought. A revolution perhaps best summarized in Philippians 2, one of my favorite paragraphs in all of literature, arguably the most important words ever written about leadership and success. "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God something to be used to his own advantage." In other words he valued his power not for his own benefit, but for the benefit of others. And therefore he made himself nothing. He emptied himself by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. 

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[00:26:10] Such a privilege to even read those words. And the biblical vision for life just has such a different ring to it than the Nike vision for life. And one thing I find really interesting in this paragraph is that Jesus was at the top. He was equal with God. He was the greatest. He was the best. No competition could rival him. So we know that there's nothing inherently wrong with success. But that was not the thing that he was grasping for. That's the key. The disciples argued over who was the great, (not their best moment) but the Trinity never did. The Trinity never had that argument. Jesus' goal was never to outperform those who shared his title. Instead, he chose to view success and power differently by humbling himself. Humility is the antidote to the success paradox and the power paradox. And I want to take a few minutes here to highlight just how revolutionary Jesus's vision of humility is. And therefore, what incredible news those who follow Jesus have to share with a world struggling with the destructive tendencies of power and of success. Increasingly, people are appreciating the significance of humility, which I find encouraging. And not just Christians. This is Jaco Willink, decorated Navy SEAL for his service in Iraq, Bronze Star, Silver Star, now a leadership coach with a popular podcast, number one New York Times bestselling book, Extreme Ownership, some of you may know. He says humility is hands down the number one most important quality of a leader. 

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[00:27:55] Many others agree with him. And the research backs it up. Research based on hundreds of studies consistently finds that humble leadership is one of the strongest predictors of both employee satisfaction and improved performance. Studies also show that humble leaders stay in power longer, which when you think about it makes sense because they earn the respect and the trust of their employees and their customers and their boards. And so ranking humility near the top of the list of essential leadership qualities seems pretty obvious to me. It seems pretty obvious probably to many of us sitting here in the 21st century West. But here's the thing, that was not always the case, not by a long shot. And here I'm going to lean heavily on the work of John Dixon. You might want to check out his book on the subject. The title is Humilitas. This is the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Once considered one of the centers of the ancient world. First built in the 6th century BC. And inscribed in and around this temple were 150 ethical proverbs. It's referred to as the Delphic canon and it was considered the accumulation of Greek wisdom concerning the ethical life. 

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[00:29:14] Guess how many references there are to humility? Goose egg. Zero. Neither the word nor the concept is mentioned. Not once. And I find that amazing. Because it's right near the top of our list, but it didn't even make the top 150 on the ancient Greek list. Why? Because topenos in Greek, which is then translated humilitas in Latin, are both negative words. They were almost universally used as negative predicates and in a pejorative sense. To call someone humble was to identify in them a flaw, a weakness, a failure. Even the Greek goddess of humility, Aidos, was considered the goddess of humility, shyness, and shame. Aren't those interesting word associations? That humility would be so closely related to shame. Aidos was thought to keep people from doing wrong by making them feel shame or embarrassment, humilitas about their actions. And remember, this was a strong honor, shame culture. So to put humility side by side with shame was not merely to say that it was somewhat negative, but it literally made the opposite. It made it the opposite of what you were supposed to be aiming for as a leader. 

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[00:30:33] Shame was to be unworthy of honor. And honor was always the goal. They called it the cursus honorum, the course of honors more informally, or the ladder of offices. It's where we get our phrase climbing the corporate ladder. And this was the goal of life. Climb the ladder of public offices with increasing honor, beginning with military service, usually for about 10 years, and then working your way up the sequential hierarchy of political offices. And as you increased in rank, it was fully expected that you would be honored for it, and that you honor yourself for it. This inscription is from the Emperor Augustus' Mausoleum. It's known as the Achievements of the Divine Augustus. And it's 2,500 words written by Augustus himself, honoring 35 of his greatest achievements and of course leaving out all of his defeats and all of his failures. And it says that it is written so that we would know the honor that up to the present day has been decreed to no one besides myself. I have to be careful here, but before I start pointing fingers, I need to remember what I do when I get one page to tell people about myself. 

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[00:31:56] However, yes, we hear this from Augustus and we cringe. We want to say, "Come on, man, have a bit of humility." But remember, that wouldn't have made any sense back then. What do you mean have humility? I've spent my whole life overcoming humility, and now I deserve to be honored for it. Augustus died in AD 14. So this is the precise culture that Jesus was born into, and then he turned it completely upside down. Jesus started teaching for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will also be exalted. Imagine how that must have sounded to someone who had just read the achievements of Augustus, which would have been circulated in the empire. Kings were expected to charge into battle with honor and strength. And then Jesus comes, humble and riding on a donkey. And he says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Dane Ortlund points out that Jesus speaks directly about the nature of his heart only one time, only this one time in scripture. And he says it is gentle and humble. And get this, that word translated gentle here in Matthew 11 is the same word that is translated humble when Jesus enters Jerusalem humble and riding on a donkey. So Jesus decides to speak about the nature of his heart one time. And the translators use a different word because they didn't want to say the same word twice but he literally says, "My heart is humble and humble." 

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[00:33:50] Returning to Philippians 2, I also love that when it says though he was in the form of God, that can also be translated because he was in the Form of God. In other words, not just despite being God, but precisely because he is God, because God's heart is humble and humble, low and low, that is why Jesus lowered himself and accepted his own death so that others might be raised to life. And so in short, if you had to just sum it up in one sentence, humility was largely not a virtue, at least not in the West, until Jesus walked this earth. That is the impact he had on human history. And then in the New Testament, writers use the word 34 times about every time positively. And soon after that you start to find humility being used across other ancient literature as a virtue when it never was before. And then 2,000 years later you have secular leadership experts like Jocko Willink saying of course humility is hands down the number one most important quality for a leader without necessarily realizing that in saying that he's making a massive endorsement of Jesus Christ. And I had to smile especially at the study that concluded that humble leaders stay in power longer, for that is precisely why Jesus will reign forever. 

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[00:35:15] He completely redefined humility. Not as shame or humiliation, but as using one's power not for your own benefit, but for the benefit of others. Not to be put low by others, but to lower yourself that others might be lifted up. And in doing so, he took the most humiliating form of torture that Rome could come up with, nailing someone naked on a cross to be publicly shamed, and he turned it into the historical events that we honor above all others. Not humility at the expense of honor, humility as the only form of true honor. I want to end by returning to where we started. Is it a good thing to want to succeed? Is it good to want to win? Well, win what? Let's look at what the Bible tells us to win. First Corinthians 9, "Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a servant to everyone that I might win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew to win the Jews. To those under the law I became one under the law so as to win those under the laws. To those not having the law, I became like one not having a law, so as to win those not having the laws. To the weak, I become weak to win the weak. I become all things to all people, so that by all possible means I might save some." Win what? Win the race. That's the context of 1st Corinthians 9. 

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[00:36:56] But what's the race? The race is winning people for Christ. Nike says winning isn't for everyone. All literally says the opposite. We become a servant of everyone because we long to win everyone. Proverbs 3, "Let love and faithfulness never leave you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart, then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man." Win what? Win healthy relationships with both God and men. Matthew 18, "If your brother or sister sins against you, go and show them their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won your brother or sister back." Win what? Win your brothers and sisters. When relationships go wrong, make it your highest priority to reconcile, to win your family back. One more passage, Philippians 3, "I want to know Christ. Yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings. Becoming like him in his death and so somehow attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press onto the goal to win. The prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." 

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[00:38:36] Yes, we compete hard. Yes, we press on and we strain toward the prize with all of the passion and dedication and drive of great athletes. But what is the prize? The prize is to know Christ, to establish the most important relationship right at the center of our lives and to become like Jesus in His death. His death in which he humbled himself for the sake of others, for the stake of relationship and for the state of reconciliation. In the Christian faith, we are absolutely called to win, but we are called to win people. People and relationships. If we want to get competitive about something, let's get competitive about that. And so this is what I'm trying to figure out how to teach my four-year-old, not very successfully, as I flail my arms wildly and yell from the sidelines of his soccer matches, to win. Yes, absolutely. But to win the right things. I don't want him primarily to be looking around at others as competition to be beaten, but rather to keep his eyes fixed on Christ, the one who was willing to be beaten for the sake of others, for you and for me. 

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[00:39:56] I'm going to end by sharing one more short video with you, mostly just for fun, but it is sort of a poetic summary of what I've been talking about. This is my favorite moment from the Paris Olympics this past summer. This is the final lap of the 1500 meter final at the Paris Olympics, which remember was the same Olympics that the Nike commercial was made for. And at the start of the video, you'll see the two favorites to win the race move to the front. It's Jakob Ingebrigtsen from Norway, and he's a Norwegian Olympic champion at the time. He's actually the runner in the Nike commercial. Who, if you saw it, as he runs by, I've never seen this before, but as he run by in one of the races, he turns and he glares in his competitor's eyes as he's runs by him. And then the other favorite you'll see is Josh Kerr, at the time the world record holder from Great Britain. These guys wanted nothing more than to beat each other. In fact, they were trash talking all over the media in the lead up to the Olympics. It was hysterical. You would have thought it was like a heavyweight boxing match. They're calling each other morons and saying, "I could beat him blindfolded," et cetera. So this is the kind of posture with which they approached the race and now watch what happens. 

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[00:41:12] Men's 1500m final at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

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Vince Vitale [00:42:24] I love that. Cole Hocker, not even really part of the conversation before the race, known as a humble guy, good teammate, never trash talks anyone, just worked hard, wanted to run the best race that he could. And it was just so symbolic to me when Kerr and Ingebrigtsen get so obsessed with beating each other. Ingebrigtsen gives up the inside lane because he's just so focused on his competitor. And it's just amazing, Hocker just stays the course, and just doesn't even have to slide out and just stays straight, passes on the inside. And it was just beautiful to see his post-race interview. He just had this wonderful, humble look of awe and gratitude on his face and the interviewer asked him, "What happened there at the end?" And he just looked like he's just processing it. He doesn't know what to say. And he just says, "I don't know." He says, "It just felt like God carried me through." And he's a person that I believe has a faith. And to me, it was just this poetic symbol. If our eyes are fixed on beating the competition, our trajectory can veer off and we can lose sight of what's most important. But if our eyes are fixed on Christ, not on winning for our glory, but on giving glory to the one who has already won, God will keep our paths straight and he will carry us through. Amen. 

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[00:43:55] Let me just pray for us for a minute as we finish this portion of the event. Lord, thank you that you invite us into a different way of life. Lord, that you turn things upside down. Lord, and you give us power and influence, each one of us in our lives, but not for our own glory, but for your glory and in the service of others. And we just want to acknowledge right now at this point, Lord, that we are incapable, completely incapable, Lord, of making this sort of transformation in our own hearts. And so we thank you that that's not our role, but we come to you humbly and asking that you would fill us, as you say in your word, that you will fill us with your love for others, that you would pour out your love into our hearts by your spirit which you have given us. We trust you for it. In Jesus' name. Amen.

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Ken [00:44:49] I'm glad we recorded that, Vince. I want to go back and watch that a couple of times. It's so incredibly relevant. I've spent 43 years doing peacemaking and training, and I can think of so many church leaders, ministry leaders that started out with that humility, as you said, compassionate, empathetic, wanting others to succeed. And then as they go higher and higher and hire, suddenly just burning out and offending people. And you think of all the megachurch pastors who suddenly just collapse after all that time. You've worked in this field for a long time, too. You know dozens and dozens of very successful ministry leaders. Could you give one or more examples of just where you've seen the qualities that you describe, that humility, in a real practical way where you've actually seen someone live that out in real life in some kind of a ministry situation. 

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Vince Vitale [00:45:48] Wonderful question, Ken. Thank you. Yeah, and it is quite a personal topic to me even because I was very close with actually more than one high level leader that later in life had a destructive fall in their life. And so this recognition I realized in retrospect that on my side I wasn't a good enough friend to some of those people, in part because I vastly underestimated the danger of their jobs and their role as people who were so well known and how difficult it can be to navigate those positions of power. When I thought of dangerous jobs, I thought about people cleaning the windows in New York city on the hundredth floor or something like that. Now, when I look at a leader, when at a business leader, when I look at a ministry leader, I picture them up there on those windows. I think your job is the most dangerous job. I need to be an especially good friend to you. I need to ask the right questions, even when I might have fear that that might have an impact on me. 

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[00:47:00] Turning it around on the other side, I would say one of the things I've seen and one of the things that I really appreciate when people grow in their leadership is when they invite feedback. And I use that word invite very intentionally, because I think what we tend to do is we give people verbal permission to give feedback. And that's not enough. We say at the end of a meeting, if anybody has any thoughts on that, or if anybody thinks differently, please let me know. I'd love to know, my door is always open. But when you are in a position of power and authority, that kind of off the cuff permission at the end of the meeting is not going to be enough to actually encourage people to tell you if they see something that they think is off. And then you can wind up by a degree off or two degrees off, and then you pan that out over 20 or 30 years and you wind up in a place you never wanted to be. So leaders that I've really appreciated have been people who have really looked me in the eyes and not just given me permission, but said, "No, I want your feedback, not just positive, but also negative. We're actually putting it on the calendar. This is when we're going to meet. I want you to bring three pieces of constructive feedback for me. I'm inviting it. I'm encouraging it." And that's something that we all can do in our various capacities of leadership. 

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Ken [00:48:16] Bring some of these comments or questions in the chat box here and just shoot a few of these. From your personal experience, how have you personally cultivated humility in your relationships, work, and home life? 

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Vince Vitale [00:48:29] Wonderful. Not as well as I should be, but I love the question because it has to be very practical and concrete. I've spoken in these general abstract theoretical terms. The most important thing that my wife and I have done is we have tried to really foster in ourselves and in our children asking for forgiveness on a regular basis. And we actually, a while back, we banned the phrase, I'm sorry, from our household because we realized that it had become too flippant. Not that you have to do that, but for us, it had become too casual and too easy to get something wrong and not really stop and take ownership of how we had hurt the other person by just kind of throwing out an I'm-sorry, which is a statement rather than a question. It's not vulnerable. It doesn't require a response from someone else. So we try to really hold strong to the habit of when we get something wrong going to the other, whether each other or to our children, and saying, "Daddy did this, that was not what daddy should have done. Will you forgive me?" And getting a response. 

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[00:49:44] And I would say too one of the things I've been so encouraged about is how young children-- and Corlette you probably know this you better than any of us as you've written on the subject to you and Ken, but how early children can experience genuine reconciliation. It's easier for them than it is for us as adults. I've come to realize that the longer you wait to develop good practices of asking for forgiveness, seeing repentance as a positive thing and not a shameful thing, the longer you wait, the harder it is to step into that. But we started teaching our kids this at two and three years of age. And with very little help from us, we would sit there and watch them genuinely reconcile with each other. And it really spurred us on because we'd be watching them and we'd go, "That's better than the way we do it. We got to step up our game." So that's been really significant for us. 

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Ken [00:50:45] I remember a situation where two young people in our church got into a squabble, their moms took up the offense, the two boys somehow found a way to get together within less than a day, confessed and said, let's go play ball. And the mothers held on to the grudge for like a month. And so, I was so struck by the fact that the kids could just-- and I think it was humility. I think there was humility in those two young boys. They can admit they're wrong, they can forgive each other and put it behind them. But we as adults, really, I think pride, the opposite of humility, hold onto it. Here's another question. Then should we not let our children compete in sports or academics? Just keep them locked up at home. 

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Vince Vitale [00:51:28] I'm so glad that you asked this because I was reading over my notes this morning and I was thinking, this might be how it comes across. And I love competition, I love sports, it's been a huge part of my life, so this is an excellent, excellent question. Sports and competition did take on a different perspective in me. When I was growing up it was all about I needed to win, they needed to lose. And as I stepped into my Christian faith, life became more about worshiping God and part of that meant using my body out of gratitude for him that he gave it to me and that he saved me in the best most excellent way that I could. And I began to really just enjoy and delight in the fact. Just like your father or a parent, somebody you love might be watching you on the field as you play like the God of the universe is watching me play. I've never been more motivated, I've never worked harder than to play for that audience of one. But things shifted. I wanted everybody to play well. I wanted us on the field to produce an excellent game. Later in graduate school, I boxed for a few years and I remember sometimes in sparring somebody would hit me with a really good shot; and I was still working harder than ever before, but I would instinctively say, "Nice shot." And my coaches would hate it. They would just yell at me, "Stop saying nice shot; you're supposed to beat him."

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[00:52:54] But the thing is I wasn't boxing out of anger, I was boxing out of love and I wanted both of us to pursue excellence. I used to pray before my bouts because I didn't want to dominate someone else. I Also didn't want get dominated. I used to pray before my bouts that it would be an even bout, that we would be well-matched and that iron would sharpen iron so that the whole level of the sport would be elevated. And to see that as actually better than me just beating a team that was nowhere near my level, beating a Team 9-0 and them utterly forlorn on the pitch afterwards. So I would say I worked harder after I came to faith in the context of sports, and I fell in love with sports even more, but out of my gratitude that I got to enjoy playing them with God, that he had gotten me this good gift and that he was watching, and it became less about just beating other people. 

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[00:53:52] And so I would say in the conflicts of our kids, try to give them that attitude, play sports, work hard, work hard for the right reasons, and then celebrate things with the right proportionality. So my son, JJ, he has challenges with sports controlling his emotions. He's actually very good at soccer. I think he's going to be really good at it, but if another team scores or if he gets knocked down, all of a sudden he feels overly emotional. And so last week he did a great job. He got knocked down a bunch and he just got back up and he showed perseverance. We've been talking a lot about the word perseverance. I love giving kids big words that they can really grab hold of and feel good about the fact that they know what that means and God's putting that in their heart. And so he was perseverant last week. We celebrated that in a big way. And we celebrated it bigger than the fact that his team won. So often with kids' sports, what we do is we celebrate the score so disproportionately relative to some really good things that God might be doing in our kids' hearts that they ultimately then enter into adulthood thinking the most important thing is that I win. So a few reflections there. I hope they're helpful. 

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Ken [00:55:01] Yeah, it brings to mind even that last video of the race, the events like marathons, where somebody collapses 20 yards from the finish line and another runner will stop, pick that person up, lose their spot in the winner's circle. I would be 100 times prouder of a child who did that than the one who came across the line first. So let's do one more question. This a good one. 33 years of being a college professor damaged me, as you outlined, making me terribly arrogant. The most insidious thing about the infectious power is I didn't see it. I still struggle with how arrogant I can be. Any suggestions in helping me to be more aware of the negative influence of power? 

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Vince Vitale [00:55:49] Well, let me just say to start, I'm so encouraged by that question. To write that question and put your name to it, I just say, praise God, you are well on your way. He is smiling down at that question. One thing I would say concretely, and this is very vulnerable and you want to do this with people that you trust, but to ask others. We are often the worst at seeing into our own hearts, but there are often people around us who can see our tendencies more clearly than we can. And so, asking others what they see, I think can be a significant part of that and having those conversations. And then one other thing I would say too, is oftentimes very practically a lot of it boils down to as we start to get an arrogance in our heart, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And we start talking a lot and listening less and less. 

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[00:56:50] And so very practically, I would do like a word analysis of my life. How many of my words are about me? How many are about others in a positive way? How many are about the Lord? How often am I talking? How often am I listening to others? How often am I my listening to the Lord. And then even taking that into prayer and saying in the context of prayer, do I get onto my knees and just immediately start talking? Or do I have a real posture where I want to create more space for hearing from the Lord than I do for speaking to the Lord? And so taking our words very seriously out of the overflow of our hearts, our mouth speak, but sometimes when we take our words really seriously, it can then double back and have a really positive influence on our hearts. 

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