by Travis Jacob
The Restoration Herald - Feb 2025
In an environment of an ever-changing workforce, the one thing that can and must remain constant in successful churches and organizations is a winning culture. When it comes to building and maintaining a winning culture, we can look back some 2,500 years ago to a person I call a “culture champion.” That person is Nehemiah. In 586 BC, the Jews were captured and taken to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar II after he conquered Jerusalem. In 539 BC, Cyrus the Persian came to power in Babylon and allowed the Jewish captives to return to Jerusalem. It was about 100 years after that, when Artaxerxes I was in power, that he had a Jewish cupbearer named Nehemiah.
Nehemiah had never lived in Jerusalem but held a special reverence for the famed city of his ancestors. One day, he received the disheartening news that Jerusalem had become a mere shadow of its former self. The city gates had been burned, and the wall around the city had been torn down. This was a tremendous burden to Nehemiah, so much so that he asked King Artaxerxes for permission to go to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall. The king granted permission and even gave Nehemiah official letters to prove to the territorial governors that he was traveling with the king’s approval. When Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem, he surveyed the task, gave a report to the city fathers, then organized a workforce. However, not everyone wanted to see the wall built. Nehemiah and his team faced fierce opposition from Judah’s enemies. At one point, tensions were so high that Nehemiah required his builders to work with one hand while holding a weapon with the other. Many teams would have folded under such circumstances, but Nehemiah created such a winning culture among his people that no amount of trouble could stop them.
They not only rebuilt the wall but did so in fifty-two days, a fact that is stunning when you consider the wall was almost two miles long and included as many as ten gates and eight towers. People today look at the accomplishment and scratch their heads. It is one of the greatest examples of a winning culture the world has ever known. Throughout the book of Nehemiah, we see timeless principles that produced such a winning, unstoppable culture. They are principles that still work today. Any church or organization that does what Nehemiah and his team did can produce similar outstanding results. Success isn’t about the programs and systems as much as it is about the culture, yet most leaders obsess over the systems and programs while largely ignoring the culture. Nehemiah was a different kind of leader. The following are three timeless principles found
in the book of Nehemiah that can be learned for building and maintaining a winning culture.
Compassion
How you begin matters, but why you begin matters even more. Take parenting for example. If a couple having marital problems decides to have a baby in a last-ditch effort to keep their marriage together, there’s an overwhelming likelihood they will end up divorced with a kid to pass back and forth on weekends. If, on the other hand, a loving couple decides to have a child because they want to build a strong, happy family, there’s every reason to believe they will end up with exactly that.
Today, you can find instructions on how to do just about anything you can think of. Sadly, there’s very little exploration of the why of things, even though the why of anything you do is critically important. Nehemiah’s story is a good example. One day, his brother, Hanani, along with some other men, arrived for a visit. They had been to Jerusalem and knew the city was in great distress with its wall in ruins and gates that had been burned. When they told Nehemiah, he was deeply moved. In Nehemiah 1:4, he tells of his reaction: “So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.”
This is where we find the why of Nehemiah’s decision to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall. It boils down to one word: compassion. Compassion is a feeling of distress or heartbreak over someone else’s dire circumstances, coupled with a desire to help them. During those days of fasting and praying, Nehemiah’s need to do something to help his countrymen grew so strong that he eventually approached the king and asked for a leave of absence so he could travel to Jerusalem and lead a campaign to rebuild the wall. To many in that time, it would have been an insane idea, but Nehemiah wasn’t responding to logic. He was responding to a longing in his heart. We might even call it an obsession. Compassion is one of the most powerful motivators known to man.
About a thousand years ago, a young man named Giovanni Bernadone, who was the son of a wealthy businessman, traveled to Rome. When he reached St. Peter’s Basilica, he was struck by the difference between what he saw inside and what he saw outside. Inside, he saw a level of wealth that took his breath away, while just outside the walls was a level of poverty that was equally as mind-blowing. On an impulse, Giovanni Bernadone persuaded a beggar to exchange clothes with him. For an entire day, he sat outside the gates in rags and begged for alms with the other pitiful, suffering souls. The experience moved him so deeply that he founded a religious order that dedicated itself to helping and ministering to the poor. Today, you and I know Giovanni Bernadone as St. Francis of Assissi.
Some of the comments you hear on TV, social media, radio, etc., centers around this thought, “God saved President Trump’s life.” If that is true, why didn’t God save the life of Corey Comperatore — the fireman who was assassinated by the rogue gunman? When I hear the statement, “God saved Trump’s life/turned his head” my mind immediately goes to the wife and children of Comperatore and the other injured victims. What must they think? Was President Trump’s life more important than their injured or lost lives? No, of course not.
Let us look at the subject of interpreting providence, and what do we mean by providence? Providence is that which is directly influenced and affected by the hand of God. There are three reasons why events happen. 1) God causes them. 2) Nature affects them. 3) The freewill choices of people. All events can be categorized under these three causes.
So, after January 20, 2025, we are in anticipation of many things we have been promised by the incoming president. Reducing prices and inflation. Closing our borders. Rolling back DEI, LGBTQ. On transgender rights he would end “boys in girls’ sports,” a practice he insists, is widespread. But his policies go well beyond standard applause lines from his rally speeches. Among other ideas, Trump would roll back the Biden administration’s policy of extending Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students, and he would ask Congress to require that only two genders can be recognized at birth. Reductions in burdensome regulations. Targeting the elimination of the federal involvement in our nation’s education. Eliminating the green new deal. Improving the defense of our country.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, as much as these things sound good and make us feel better about the direction of our country they are not enough. While the new administration may be able to improve our physical life, our society still has a spiritual problem. As described in Romans 1:21-32 “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible mankind, of birds, four-footed animals, and crawling creatures.
Christian apologists have long said that the three greatest miracles of the Christian faith are the creation of the universe, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and His bodily resurrection from the dead. To these a fourth awesome miracle could be added—fulfilled Bible prophecy.