My fire department fought a fire last night. It came in around 8pm as a fire in an apartment. When our first engine arrived there was heavy involvement on the first floor with significant extension into the second floor. When I arrived there was heavy fire venting from the roof. At that point I would have bet that we would lose another two or three apartments in addition to the original fire apartment. One of the occupants suffered smoke inhalation — she was treated at the hospital and released.

The Incident Commander and the firefighters who fought this fire did a phenomenal job. They confined the fire to the apartment of origin with some relatively minor water damage to the 2 apartments adjacent on either side. No firefighters were injured.

Leadership take-away:

One sign of good leadership is how your followers perform when you’re gone. The Medford Fire-Rescue Fire Chief was visiting family 1,000 miles away for Christmas yet his fire department did a great job handling a 5 alarm structure fire.

Consider the following excerpt from Traveler and the Chaplain:

Traveler said, “So my mission for God here on earth doesn’t end then after I die.  I’m supposed to grow future leaders to carry on what I’ve been doing while I’m alive.”

“Not just carry on but even exceed!” the Chaplain said with great enthusiasm.  “Look at what Jesus’ followers have accomplished since his death.  There are 2.1 billion Christians in the world today.  2.1 billion.  That’s a lot of fruit!  If you started counting Jesus’ followers out loud, one per second, after 31 years and 8 months, you would still be less than half way to finishing!  And of course during that 31 years and 8 months more people would be accepting Christ at an exponentially expanding rate.  So really, it would be impossible to keep up with the pace at which Jesus is bearing fruit for God’s kingdom.”

Jesus said in John 15:5, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”