Welcome to my blog. My name is Jerry Strausbaugh. What you will read here are the thoughts, experiences, ponderings, musings and questions I encounter while being a leader. Whether it is in my role as a husband, father, community mental health center director, seminary professor, service club member, or serving in church, I find that being a leader changes me.  I am so interested in how leadership changes the leader that I completed a doctoral dissertation on developmental process of community mental health center directors (Link: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ashland1385055739).

The name of this blog is The Threshing Sledge. The reason for that being the name of this blog is found in my story of becoming a leader.  Early in my role as the executive director of a community mental health center I was so overwhelmed with the pressures and stresses of the job that I wanted to quit. I felt completely inadequate to accomplish the task. During this difficult time I cried out to God. Rather than opening an escape hatch God reshaped my identity. He used several Scriptures to speak to me about leading and how to think about the role he had placed me in. I began to see through the stories of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Nehemiah how leadership shapes both the leader and the led. One passage that spoke to me at a very critical time in my development is found in Isaiah 41:15-16,

See, I will make you into a threshing sledge, new and sharp, with many teeth. You will thresh the mountains and crush them, and reduce the hills to chaff. You will winnow them, the wind will pick them up, and a gale will blow them away. But you will rejoice in the Lord and glory in the Holy One of Israel.

I found these words to be aligned with my role as a leader. As the executive director I am frequently called upon to make difficult decisions in order to protect the mission of the organization. In a sense I act as the threshing sledge described in Isaiah.  Over the years since that insight I have grown more accustomed to the stresses of leading. Still, there are times I must go back to the defining words I received from the Old Testament prophet.  That is because leadership is a journey not a destination. Thank you for reading.