Monday, October 13, 2008

Al Quie: Spirituality and Leadership

Today I was fortunate to interview Al Quie about his experiences with spirituality and leadership. Al Quie was formerly the Governor of Minnesota and a U.S. Congressperson. He's also been involved in prison ministries for more than 30 years. Here are some excerpts of our conversation, over orange juice at Perkins:

The realities of the invisible and learning the language of the invisible

Listening to God is like deciphering a bad accent

Going to prison for the first time

Asking another congressman to pray & praying with Gerald Ford when he was appointed President

Moving towards those who don't have power. God wants us to pay attention to those we neglect.

Institutions can provide justice, but not love.

Discerning God's will in secular groups

Leaders set the tone for organizations

Most organizations are fearful of sharing what went wrong

4 comments:

Liz Opp said...

Any chance you could post a photo of Al? It's hard for me to stay focused while listening to an audio clip in the first place, so I'm hoping that a visual cue of who is talking will help me out... as do the one-line summaries of each clip.

Blessings,
Liz Opp, The Good Raised Up

Michael Bischoff said...

Liz,

I'm trying to get better at abiding by copyright laws (I've had some past troubles!)--and I couldn't find a good creative commons photo of Al. But you can go here and open that page while you are listening to the audio.

Richard Fuller said...

I like this format.
I listened to several segments, with captions that intrigued me.
This interview with Al definitely makes me feel better about mainstream politicians.

Anonymous said...

Michael,

This was awesome. It was so inspirational to hear the wisdom of this man. It left me with a deep yearning that more our leaders and especially politicians were more like Al. What an amazing man.

I was particularly touched by his acknowledgement that prayer is about listening to God. In my experience, that is something that very few leaders understand. let alone much of our general population. I love the way he talked about discerning God's voice as being like listening to someone with a bad accent. What are great description.

I look forward to hearing more interviews like this. Nice scoop!!