For many years in my professional life I’ve used the phrase, “Never a prophet in your own backyard.” I usually say it when a colleague asks me about hiring a consultant to help the organization’s leadership move forward on a project or in a new direction. Sometimes people around you have such a narrow vision of who you are that they can’t accept that there is more to you or that you can have more to offer. In his neighbors’ eyes, Jesus was a carpenter’s son who was a carpenter like his father. They could not see that Jesus had become more than that. Who was Jesus to interpret scripture? And yet, he did. Jesus had the courage of his convictions to go beyond his neighbors’ narrow-mindedness. He had the courage to challenge his neighbors’ stereotyping and become all that God intended him to be. Do we?