Giving Reality a Reality Check (Is God still crazy?)

As a 25 year old seminary student I sat at a Perkins with our 60-something Senior Pastor and excitedly spewed out a litany of great ideas that would change our church and then the world.  We discussed a few things and then he took a very paternal voice and told me someday reality would catch up with me.  I was disappointed by his response and vowed to never lose my optimistic zeal.

Lately I fear I’m breaking my promise to myself.  The longer I’m a pastor the more reality catches up with me and I start to wonder if I’m headed toward pessimism and eternal discouragement.  Things haven’t broken the way I pictured them when I was 25.

Was I wrong to have that optimistic zeal or am I wrong for letting it fade?  I think the answer is yes to both.  Let me explain.

Sometimes ego wears a zeal mask.

In retrospect my optimistic zeal that day at Perkins was really a complex mixture of trust in God, pride in myself, hope, arrogance, and faith.  I truly did believe God was capable of doing great things, but I also thought my answers to the tough questions were superior to everyone else’s.  The things I wanted to see happen in the world were things that fit with God’s will as revealed in Scripture, but I believed they hadn’t happened because no one had approached them with the passion, vision, and insight I was.  This is a tough thing to admit because I know how bad it sounds, but I kind of doubt I’m the only one who’s been there.

This is still a struggle for me today.  However, as the Spirit continues to do the good work of transformation in me I see more clearly when my thoughts and actions are borne of a godly optimistic zeal and when they are just my ego wearing a zeal mask.  As the Spirit helps me to progressively put the ego to death I find some of the things God gives me passion for are different than the things I was thinking.  Turns out God’s not as passionate about people knowing what I do as I am.

This isn’t my story, I just think it is.

One of the things that impresses me about many of the godly people in the Bible is their clarity about being a part of God’s story.  Take Mary as an example.  An angel comes and tells her that she will conceive a child as a virgin, before she is married, in a culture where being found out for having sex before marriage could ruin your life, let alone actually getting pregnant.  Shortly after the angel delivers the news Mary visits Elizabeth and breaks out in song.

 

Her song is one of praise to God for the great things he has done for her.  You mean like ruining her life?  But Mary didn’t see it that way.  Whatever difficulty God’s work would create in her life she understood that the story wasn’t about her, it was God’s story, and she had been given the chance to be the one woman in history who would carry the Son of God.  She knew God had been at work since the beginning of humanity and that his work would not finish with her death.  I never would have said it, but that day at Perkins I only thought about God’s work in the context of my life.  I’m learning to celebrate the fact that it’s his story, I just play whatever part he gives me.  Success isn’t me changing the world—it’s him changing it through all of his people.

When small isn’t small.

Deeply related to the first two, as God helps me to grow in maturity I’m learning that the things that appear small to me are not small to him.  In Luke 15:7 Jesus says there is rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents.  But I want the 5,000 from Pentecost.

Shortly after I came to Mountair God gave me the privilege of being involved in the life of someone he was saving.  She had a pretty checkered past and was deeply involved in Wicca.  But through dreams and the movement of the Holy Spirit God was powerfully drawing her to him.  I came alongside what God was already doing and walked with her through her exploration, conversion, baptism, growth, and dealing with overwhelming attacks from Satan.  Today this woman has a solid faith that has led her to direct others toward Jesus and help some move toward leaving homelessness.  That is only one person, but it is not small.  At 25 I think I would have said it was.

Another thing I have the chance to do at Mountair is sit and visit with people who are near the end of their lives and have failing bodies.  One woman I went to see regularly had difficulty seeing and couldn’t hear unless you yelled.  One time after sitting with her and trying futilely to communicate for about an hour I felt the Spirit clearly say to me, “now that’s ministry.”  Nothing about that would lead to changing the world, in my mind it was nearly useless, in God’s it was priceless.

In a different context Paul once asked if he should seek human approval or God’s.  Some of my optimistic zeal has been fueled by the desire to please people much more than God.  This led me to see things that were huge to God as tiny.  He’s changing my vision, even if it’s slow.

God is still crazy.

Francis Chan is well known for saying if someone only had the New Testament and then saw American Christianity they’d be extremely confused and disappointed.  We claim to serve the same God who created all that is, parted the Red Sea, saved a man from lions, became a human himself, sat and ate with outcasts, healed the sick, raised the dead, and offered himself as a sacrifice for humanity.  We don’t serve a different God now, do we?  If anything we might expect to see more crazy stuff happen since God lives among us and in us through the Holy Spirit now.

But our God often looks pretty tame.  Our God likes it when people sit in cushy chairs and gorge themselves on teaching they don’t plan on living.  Our God prefers that we send a few dollars to some poor kid in Africa without ever touching the homeless teenager who lives on the streets of our city.  Our God is pleased that we can buy large cars and houses since we’ve generously given away ten percent of our earnings.  Our God really just wants us to be happy and pampered.  Our God would never make us uncomfortable (other than when the pastor HAS to talk about sex in church).

I’ve shared a number of ways that God has deconstructed my 25 year old zeal, but there was some of it that was good—and I fear losing that part.  Too often what coming to grips with reality really means is not expecting too much of God.  It means settling for prayers we can answer without God’s help or that are so general we’ll never know if they’re answered.  We explain that God did great things when he was establishing his Church but he doesn’t need to now that we have churches on every other corner.  Our churches are known more for their worship experience than encounters with God or life transformation.

My optimistic zeal needed to be reshaped by God, but we need to spend more time giving reality a reality check.  God is not done.  God is not boring.  God has given us his Spirit to work for redemption and reconciliation in our world until the return of Christ.  We should be optimistic if we rely on him.  We should have zeal—for prayer, for the poor, for salvation, for hope, for healing, for chains of bondage being broken, for a fully-functioning body with Christ as its head.  We have way too little optimistic zeal these days.  I pray that God strips away our egos and our desire to star in our own stories, but I also pray that he preserves the optimistic zeal we once had.

Why Discipleship is Boring

Want to kill the mood in a group of Christians and maybe put them to sleep?  Start talking about discipleship.  The more I talk about discipleship the more I feel like I’m trying to tell people about the difference between toenail clippers and fingernail clippers.  I’ve had publishers tell me that discipleship just isn’t an interesting enough topic to write anything on–at least not if you want people to buy it.

This is a problem.  Jesus told his disciples to go and make disciples–those were his final instructions.  Is Jesus boring?  I’ve come to firmly believe that changing the tone of the conversation on this topic is essential to the future of the church.  But why do people think discipleship is so boring?  Here’s five reasons.

1. People don’t know what discipleship is.

I frequently hear people refer to discipleship as an item on a list with evangelism, justice, community service, small groups, and a myriad of other “Christian” things.  But Jesus didn’t tell his disciples to make evangelists, service workers, volunteers, parents, and leaders–he knew if they really made disciples all of these things would be covered.  Discipleship is the umbrella under which all of the Christian life resides–or it should be.  Saying discipleship is one thing on the list is like saying being healthy is important but so is exercising and not eating fast food.  We don’t have a cohesive picture of all of life as a Christian because we’ve reduced the thing that is supposed to cover it all to learning more.

2.  People don’t have a good paradigm for pursuing it.

This is deeply related to the first point.  We often think things we don’t really understand are boring.  Ask people to define discipleship in ten seconds or less and most people will struggle.  People have a vague, and often truncated, idea of what it is but they lack clarity.  It’s hard to be passionate about pursuing something that isn’t clear to you.  When a pastor stands up and delivers a murky, generalized vision it doesn’t create momentum and movement.  But if he gives clear, God-given vision it can do that in a heartbeat.  God gave us His direction through Jesus–we are supposed to make disciples.  What we lack is the kind of clarity that helps that happen.

I believe two words provide a definition/paradigm that is clear enough to give motivation and momentum–unique conformity.  All those who claim to follow Christ are called to conform to Jesus and His way.  At the same time, we are all created to be unique and our discipleship comes through our uniqueness, it doesn’t wash it away.  Paul even tells us that the church is supposed to be like a body–each part is unique or the body doesn’t function right.  Unique conformity is easy to understand, and to share with others, but you can pursue it your entire life without arriving or wearing it out.  Imagine if all Christians understood the call to be uniquely conforming to Christ and churches facilitated that movement!

3.  People haven’t tried it.

Because people don’t understand, many Christians haven’t really tried discipleship.  They’ve tried church services, Bible studies, small groups, community service and more (all great parts of discipleship if they’re understood that way), but they haven’t tried discipleship.  Discipleship is an all-in, all the time, holistic life devoted to Jesus.  Unique conformity touches every part of who you are and how God is working in and through you.  But our truncated view of discipleship has led many people to dabble in religion without going all in.  Like putting your feet in the ocean isn’t the same as body surfing, participating in some Christian activities is not the same as discipleship.  No wonder people think it’s boring.

Turn It Around

We’ve allowed the greatest adventure of life to become a subject we’d rather avoid.  We need to make discipleship exciting again.  Being a disciple of Jesus shouldn’t be boring, and if it seems that way to us we need to get clarity on what it is and actually try it.

I Got Tebowed: Why I’m changing my tune

I have not been a Tim Tebow supporter from the beginning.  On the football side I’m still not sure he can make a run of it long-term based purely on skill (though he may be showing all those intangibles and hard work actually are enough), but here I’m talking more about him as a representative of Christianity.  I thought the Bible verses on the eye black were hokey.  The kneel down to pray, now affectionately known as “Tebowing”, looked put on and inauthentic.  I became even more cynical of the whole situation when people around Denver began linking what Tim Tebow was doing to a significant spiritual movement of the Holy Spirit in the area.  They claimed that God was helping Tebow win football games to show His power—an idea I wasn’t a big fan of to put it mildly.

I’m changing my tune.  Not necessarily on all the things I said above, but at least on Tim Tebow as a representative of Jesus to the world.  Here’s why.

It began when I saw this video of Tim being “miked up” during a recent game.

I would have been cussing after some of those hits.  When he knelt down he was actually praying.  He prayed for God’s help in the game but also prayed for God to be glorified win or lose.  I was struck by his authenticity, humility, and sincerity.

I heard 1 Peter 2:12 being fulfilled through my radio and TV.  (“Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”)

I listen to sports talk radio regularly when I’m in the car and I often catch some ESPN programming at the gym.  At the beginning of Tebow-mania most commentators, both local and national, gave a glib shot out to Tebow being a “good guy” and then went on to criticize him for a whole host of things—football related and otherwise.  Yet in the last week nearly everyone I hear has changed their tune.  Though many still doubt his football abilities (I’m still there too), person after person is lauding his attitude, humility, sacrifice, and character—and you can tell they mean it.  All that Tebowing, building hospitals, visiting sick children, and proclaiming his allegiance to Jesus is real and people see it.  He’s won over some voracious critics and made them more favorably disposed to Jesus and Christianity in the process.  I don’t know if they’re praising God yet, but maybe some are.

I saw faithful presence.

This is a term I was introduced to in James Davison Hunter’s book “To Change the World.”  It refers to Christians living their lives as a unified vocation to the Lord rather than a series of fragmented pieces devoted to different gods.  He rightly calls Christians to be faithfully present in whatever venue they find themselves.  Tim Tebow is doing that in the NFL.  In an environment of pride, arrogance, fame, money, materialism, and sex, Tebow is being a faithful representative of Jesus.  It’s impressive.

So yeah, I’m praying for Tim.  I’m praying that God sustains him in an environment full of temptation.  I’m praying he continues to be a model of faithful presence for believers and a light to those who don’t believe.  And, given the results I see, I wouldn’t be surprised if God continues to “strengthen the work of his hands.”

Killing Grace: what we learn about humanity from a viral video

In the past week this video has gone viral.  It depicts a series of flagrant fouls committed at a high school basketball game in Washington.

The reaction to this video has been outrage and anger.  The comments on a variety of sites are primarily full of people leveraging jokes about the weight of the primary perpetrator and talking about what they’d do to him if they were in the game.  This reaction points out a toxic problem endemic of our society–a mixture of a lack of grace and propensity for violence.

I didn’t read through all the comments (I don’t need to spend six hours doing that–I’d go crazy), but I didn’t come across one that expressed any sentiment of grace for the offenders–even grace paired with justice or punishment.  This is what we usually do with others, just not with ourselves.  We look at the dastardly deeds of others and judge their character and integrity and then condemn them.  A boy who commits some hard fouls in a basketball game is worthy of being “beat to death” because he is “lazy and worthless”.  However, the very people who judge this boy engage in personal attacks that amount to bullying and verbal violence to express their judgement.  My guess is that if you asked them they would say those harsh and often horrible words are not indicative of their overall character.  I do the same thing too often.  I have good reasons for my shortcomings but others do not.

Not only do we lack grace, but we are drawn to violence.  I wonder if that isn’t part of the reason this video is so popular.  We celebrate violence in football, MMA, and to deal with bullies.  We fight bullying with bullying.  We fight violence with violence.  All of this serves to do nothing but increase the bullying and violence.  It’s true from elementary school to the interaction of nations.  It’s almost like there’s destruction programmed into our DNA.

The only answer to our lack of grace and love of violence is the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He is the one who offers grace where it is not deserved.  When we receive that it can lead to us doing the same.  He is the one who faced bullying and violence with love and forgiveness.  Only in his power can we do the same and end the escalation of these destructive things.

A Dirty Word for 2012

As I do my own reflecting on 2011 and looking ahead to 2012, the verse that continually comes to mind is John 14:23 where Jesus says, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.”  For much of my life this verse and others like it weren’t among my favorites.  I doubt I’m alone.  When obedience to Jesus comes up legalism alarms begin pulsating in our minds.  Obedience is avoided like a dirty word–probably more.  Following Jesus is about grace, mercy, and love, not obedience, isn’t it?

Following Jesus is about receiving His love, grace, and mercy, but that doesn’t make our obedience irrelevant.  A few things that play into this.

Is obedience to Jesus restrictive or freeing?

In my teenage years I saw Jesus’ teaching and the other commands of Scripture as prohibitions that kept me from having fun.  I wasn’t supposed to “go too far” with my girlfriend, use the kind of language everyone else did, or think of myself first.  Obeying Jesus was restrictive.  As the Holy Spirit has helped me to mature (at least a little) I’ve come to more clearly see that obedience is freedom, not bondage.  When I obey the teaching of Jesus I have deeper relationships, a more fulfilling life, and I don’t have to be worried about someone finding out my secrets.

I’ve experienced this in the last couple weeks.  My wife and I are planning to begin a workout and nutrition plan we’ve done in the past again in a couple days.  This is something that has benefited not only our bodies, but our relationships, as we have more energy and the joy of knowing we’re being good stewards of our health.  As I looked ahead to this I decided to throw good nutrition and exercise out the window for the couple weeks around Christmas and the New Year.  I’ve felt sluggish, uninspired, tired, and disconnected from God.  When I have self-control (a fruit of the Spirit) and am a good steward of my health I feel liberated; when I don’t I feel in bondage.

When we look negatively at obedience to Jesus we are making the inherent assumption that He doesn’t want what’s best for us–He just wants us chained to some arbitrary rules.  That assumptions belies how little we think of his grace, mercy, and love.

Is our relationship with God one-sided?

An aversion to obeying Jesus also betrays a very one-sided love.  We want God to show us love and mercy and for Him to bless us with things, but we are not so enthusiastic about showing Him love in return.  In a human relationship this would be characterized as using someone, not love.  A person who seeks to take from another all the time without any mutuality is a leech, not a lover.

We talk often about a relationship with God, but in reality this relationship is often much more transactional than relational.  We bite the bullet and obey God more than we disobey Him and then He gives us the things we want or at least doesn’t punish us.  That is not a relationship, it is a transaction.  In a relationship of love both parties work tirelessly to express their love to the other.  Even the commands of God are an expression of love because they will lead to the best for us, our neighbors, and the world.  I want to love God deeply and express that clearly.  After all, He’s loved me first.

Are we willing to love God in the way He says He feels loved?

One of the things I love about my daughter is that she doesn’t make you guess what makes her feel loved.  Often when I go in to say good night to her she turns her back to me and says, “Please rub my back Daddy.”  In many cases she is good at vocalizing the things that make her feel love, cherished, and cared for.  I am happy to oblige her requests because I love her deeply and long to make her happy and for her to know my love.

In John 14 Jesus explicitly says that we show we love Him by obeying Him.  Certainly this is not the only way our love for God is expressed, but Jesus says it’s one of the ways.  If we truly love Jesus then obedience becomes a wonderful opportunity to express to Him how much we love Him.  Like rubbing my daughter’s back it is not an obligation but a joy.  It is a significant paradigm shift to see obedience to Jesus as an expression of love rather than a moral obligation.

Tossed around by God

My kids love to wrestle.  When they were younger this involved their willing submission to a variety of acrobatic feats I put them through.  I can’t do that with my son (Isaiah) anymore.  Now I actually have to defend myself as he goes on the attack.  But with my daughter (Ayla) I have another six months to a year for tossing her around.  There are few things in life that can beat her joyful squeals as I spin and toss her.

As we look ahead to 2012 and are inundated with articles, sermons, and blog posts about resolutions, I was struck by the importance of her posture toward me when we “wrestle” for the way I think about my approach to another year.  It has everything to do with being disciples of Jesus.

She can’t toss and spin herself.

Ayla loves to spin around on her own, but the things she’s able to do alone don’t compare to what she can do when she lets me provide the power for her acrobatics.  The same is true for us with God.  I spend a lot of time thinking about the things I need to do and how to accomplish them.  I forget easily that what I can accomplish is nothing compared to what God can do with me if I submit to Him.

She’s not in control.

When Ayla comes to “wrestle” she has some idea of what we’ll be doing, but she doesn’t determine exactly what she’ll be doing.  She can ask me to do the things she enjoys the most, but has to rely on my willingness to do those things if they’re going to happen.  Similarly, when we submit our will to God’s and ask Him to work through us we give up the ability to determine what will happen.  We can guess that it will involve using our spiritual gifts and abilities, working for redemption and reconciliation, and growth in our conformity to Christ, but the specifics are likely to be quite different than we expect.  In prayer we can ask God for things and listen to what He wants for us, but we don’t get to determine exactly what happens.

She has to trust me.

Ayla comes to me because I take care of her as we’re “wrestling.”  I don’t drop her, insist on doing things she doesn’t like, or keep going for ten minutes after she asks me to stop.  She trusts that I want to have fun with her in the same way she wants to have fun with me.  She also trusts that I love her and want to protect her.  For us to really be disciples of Jesus we have to trust God too–especially when we face difficulty or God asks us to do things that don’t make sense.  There are times when life and God’s direction don’t make sense and we have to trust that he loves us and stays with us.

It looks a little crazy to other people.

Ayla and I have been doing this for at least three years without injury (okay, without significant injury).  Despite that, when we start wrestling my wife often leaves the room or covers her eyes.  Our wrestling looks a little crazy to her and to some others who have witnessed it.  When we throw ourselves on the will and way of God the things we do and don’t do will sometimes look pretty crazy to others.  Many of them won’t serve to advance our careers, build our bank accounts, or make us comfortable.

As you look ahead to 2012, what would it look like to let God toss you around a little bit?

Five Principles for Making the Right Hire

Our church is in the process of hiring an Associate Pastor to give some added leadership to our effort to revive a church that has been in decline for a number of years.  By God’s grace we have seen some very positive signs in the last couple years, not to mention we have fertile soil for new ministry because of the long history of godliness and hospitality in this church.  So we have a lot of hope but understand this is a church at a crossroads.  That makes is that much more important that we hire the right person to join these efforts.  We don’t have two or three tries to get it right.  As we’ve entered into this process there are a five guiding principles we’re using, some we started with and others we’re learning along the way.

Number 1: Hire a person, not a job description.

There are a number of things we believe are important in order for us to move toward God’s future for the church.  We’ve outlined five areas we believe we need to address (vision implementation, community missionary, pastoral care, family ministry, and leadership development) but we’ve resisted the urge to get too specific on the details of what it looks like to pursue each one.  Our approach is to find a person/people who have a passion and ability to function well in these areas and then let them have the most prominent say in what we actually do.  We want to maximize the strengths of the person we hire, not handcuff them with a job description that doesn’t fit their gifts and abilities.

Number Two: Behavior is more important than intention.

Thanks to my friend Christopher Hooper (@xchristopher) who introduced me to the well known idea of behavioral interviewing.  For those who have interviewed and especially people in Human Services, I’m sure this is a well-known concept, but learning about it has been helpful for me.  It makes sense that the best predictor of how someone will function is to look at what they’ve done in the past.  It’s easy for someone to talk a good game, but more important that they’ve shown they can play a good game.  This doesn’t mean a person can’t change, but like I said before, we don’t have time to try out someone who hasn’t shown previously ability in certain areas.

Number Three: Compatibility with the Lead Pastor

In the next two years the person we hire and I will be working together extremely closely to develop the ministry through the Spirit’s power.  Our board chairman has reminded me over and over that one of the most important components of success will be my ability to work together well with the new person.  This doesn’t mean we have to be best friends, but it does mean we need alignment on values, beliefs, and philosophy of ministry.  We also need to be able to complement each other’s gifts.

Number Four: Understanding of the environment.

I don’t mean someone who can explain a carbon footprint, I mean someone who comes in understanding how to minister in the environment Mountair finds itself in.  This means knowing the differences between faithful ministry in an urban context instead of a suburban one.  It means knowing how to relate to people across all the ethnic, socio-economic, and generational lines that can be so difficult to navigate.  It means being able to love the long-time members of the church and be passionate about reaching the community in innovative ways at the same time.

Number Five: Character over competency

This is nothing new either, but the last thing we need is someone who is immensely gifted but ungodly.  I’ll take someone who stumbles through a sermon but is an example of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus over a captivating orator any day.  Of course we hope to find someone who has great character and competency, but we’re also trying to keep them in the right perspective.

These are five of the important principles we’re working from.  What else have you found helpful in your experience?

Thanksgiving Prayers

Recently I’ve been trying to expose myself to more variety in the things I use to reflect and pray. This last week that resulted in using two prayers–one written by St. Tikhon of Moscow (late 19th century) and the other written by an Omaha Native American. I share them with you hoping they can move you toward thankfulness to God this Thanksgiving.

St. Tikhon of Moscow

Come, ye thankful people, and let us raise a hymn of grateful praise to God, our Benefactor and Creator, the bounteous source of all our blessings, the riches of our earthly life, and the glory of the world to come, for in His great mercy and love for us His children, He has granted us salvation.

Come, ye thankful people, and let us praise the Father, who in His goodness created heaven and earth, and all that is in them, endowing us His creatures, with reason to worship Him, who in His great mercy and love for us His children, has granted us salvation.

Come, ye thankful people, and let us praise the only-begotten Son, who for our sakes clothed Himself in mortal nature, choosing to suffer and die for us, trampling down death and raising us with Himself, who in His great mercy and love for us His children, has granted us salvation.

Come, ye thankful people, and let us praise the Holy Spirit, who descended upon the Apostles, making them fishers of men, through whom the earth has received, the knowledge of the Holy Trinity, who in His great mercy and love for us His children, has granted us salvation.

Unknown Omaha Native American Christian

O divine Gift-giver,
I stand beneath the endless waterfall of your abundant gifts to me.

I thank you especially for the blessing of life, the most precious of all your gifts to me.

I thank you, Ever-generous One,
for clothing to wear,
for food and drink to nourish my body,
for all the talents and skills
that you have bestowed upon me.

I thank you for the many joys of my life,
for family and friends,
for work that gives to me a sense of purpose
and invests my life with meaning.
I thank you as well
for the sufferings and trials of my life
which are also gifts
and which together with my mistakes
are among my most important teachers.

Grant that I may never greet a new day
without the awareness of some gift
for which to give you thanks.

And may constant thanksgiving
be my song of perpetual praise to you.

I love you. Keep trying.

A couple weeks ago my 6 year old son Isaiah gave me a drawing he made in children’s church.  On the picture he had written, “I love you.  Keep trying.”  When he gave it to me he said, “Daddy, I wrote that because I really love you and you do a good job with your pastor stuff, but I still think you can do better.  So I want you to keep trying hard.”  While this might sound like a backhanded compliment, hearing the way he said that and knowing his heart it was anything but.  He taught me a lot about God and the church that morning.

Real love is not dependent on certain accomplishments or being the best.

We often affirm that God’s love for us is not because of our actions, yet I think we have a hard time really believing it.  We live with the subconscious notion that God’s love for us wavers depending on what we’re accomplishing for him.  Even within our family we can too often assume that we will be loved more if we do the right things.  Isaiah painted a beautiful picture for me of unconditional love that morning.  His statement, “I love you” stood distinct from the second part, “Keep trying.”

Real love grants permission to speak truth and be heard.

Though Isaiah’s love for me is not tied to how I do as a pastor, his love does motivate him to want the best for me and for our church.  It is out of his love for me that he was able to say what was true, not what was easy.  Out of his love and relationship with me he could tell me that I have room for improvement.  Though it wouldn’t be a correct response, if someone I wasn’t as close to told me that I would be immediately defensive.  Because I trust Isaiah’s love for me and have a deep relationship with him I took his critique as an encouragement to keep going.  In Ephesians 4:25 Paul encourages the church to speak truthfully to each other.  It is in the context of love and relationship that can happen effectively.

Real love wants the best for others.

Too often we assume that if people love us they won’t challenge us.  How could someone who loves me tell me I am sometimes rude to others, or that I am living in an unhealthy way, or that I should stop gossiping?  In reality that is real love and refraining from saying these things is not.  Real love wants the other to be formed into the full picture of humanity that is reflected in Jesus Christ, not to have them comfortably wallow in bondage to sin.  Isaiah wants me to keep growing because he loves me, and his willingness to express that was a godly act.

Real love is motivating.

The Sunday after Isaiah made me that picture I was preparing for the service in my office and I looked up and saw it.  It filled me with a deep desire to do exactly what he said and keep trying.  I want to be a good example to Isaiah not only of a faithful pastor, but also a godly man, father, and husband.  It reminded me that he is watching and what I do will have a part in shaping who he is and how he views God.  It is a heavy responsibility and one that I want to take on with joy and diligence.  His love and challenge continue to be a tremendous motivator in my life and ministry.

God teaches us about Himself and the nature of His kingdom in unexpected ways.  I’m thankful for my son and how God has used him in my life.

The Holy Act of Shutting Up

“Everyone should be quick to listen and slow to speak…” James 1:19

Ever been around someone who couldn’t stop talking?  They are so enraptured with what they are saying that they can’t even find time to take a breath.  After a while you stop hearing words and just hear the annoying hum of incessant talking.  In some cases this talking is understandable, especially in cases of people who are very lonely and spend most of their time without anyone to hear them.  However, in most cases incessant verbal vomiting isn’t quite as understandable, and it has some consequences.

Unfortunately, I have found this problem of endless talking to be common among pastors, especially young ones.  As a relatively young pastor myself, I also have become deeply aware of my own struggle against it.  Whenever I am not intentional about listening first I too spout off about all the things I want to say without any thought to whether the people I’m talking at are interested in them or not.  It is an area where I have improved but still have so far to go.  This issue is problematic for Christians, and maybe especially pastors, for a few reasons.

First, the personal root of endless talking without interaction in interpersonal settings betrays an underlying pride and vanity.  It communicates that what I have to say is inherently more important than what the other person or people in the group have to say.  In this approach a person situates themselves as the teacher and the others as learners.  In reality, conversations are often best when we place ourselves in the posture of learner.

Second, one-way diatribes entrench poor patterns of interpersonal interaction.  When a person is talked at for a long period of time in an interpersonal setting (not a lecture setting which is a monologue by nature) they will likely respond in one of two ways.  The first is to withdraw from the conversation, sending signals of annoyance or indifference to the one speaking.  This response doesn’t lead to deeper communication.  The second is to interrupt in order to be heard.  This leads to poor listening as you are primarily thinking of what you will say and looking for an opening where you can jump in.

Third, it is dehumanizing.  When I speak at you and do not listen, I am using you as an instrument for my need to be heard rather than engaging you as a person and understanding your perspective.  This monologuing method of conversation (which is not truly conversation) communicates that I don’t want a relationship with you, only an audience to hear me.  This reduces the other to less than he or she is meant to be.

Fourth, and especially important for pastors, it keeps you from being able to truly care for people or lead them toward spiritual growth.  I cannot really walk with someone in discipleship (whether for ten minutes or ten years) if I know nothing of them.  I may be able to impart some insight, but I will do it without any reference to how it will impact them.  True effectiveness comes with sensitivity to the Holy Spirit in the midst of listening to the other first and only speaking after that.  Monologuing is not an act of care but of domination.  That is especially problematic for pastors.

Shutting up can be a holy act.  Listening before seeking to be heard.  Expressing compassion and understanding before contributing or expecting something in return.  The posture of listening allows us to engage our world, friends, family, and even enemies in a more Christlike way.