Five Essential Tips to Engage Volunteers

Leaders resemble vessels. We have a limited capacity (yes, it is true!). Consider a ten-ounce bowl. It is impossible for it to contain eleven ounces of water. Once that bowl reaches capacity, additional water forces some to flow over the edge. The same is true of our...

I’m Not All That

I am not all that. Yes, you read that right. My name is Melinda, and I am not all that. So not all that. Where does this random remark coming from, you ask? It’s just an overwhelming desire to express that we are all the same… beautiful, flawed messes. Sorry I called...

Bleeding Blue Facebook Blood

When unfair accusations are spewed across the universe of social media, I long to hit back, to defend myself and others emphatically in that very public forum. And isn’t this our normal, human reaction? To hit back? To defend? To respond to anger in kind?...

Five Reasons You Should Go on a Mission Trip

Written by Guest Contributor, Marie West, who heads up mission trips for Bridging the Gap. I have always wanted to go on a mission trip. Have you ever said that? Except for a family vacation in Canada when I was five, I had never left the USA until I was 40 years old....

Quietly Influential Leadership

My Grandma Josephine wore her first pair of high heels when she was 13. For the rest of her life, she wore only high heels, and told me once that she thought her leg muscles had stretched to accommodate. It hurt to wear “normal” shoes, she said. Give her sparkly,...