After you read the following article, ask yourself where you are at in the continuum of abiding and abounding.
http://ctlibrary.com/le/2000/spring/2.28.html
To Abide Or To Abound?
April 1, 2000
My daughter Mallory loves Greek mythology. I once bet her that she did not know the twelve tasks of Hercules off the top of her head. I lost.
One of her favorite parts of The Iliad is when Odysseus navigates a narrow passage with a lethal rock on one side and a fatal whirlpool on the other. Steering between Scylla and Charybdis has been part of our vocabulary ever since.
In pastoral ministry I have my own Scylla and Charybdis to navigate, but their names are "Abound" and "Abide." Neither appears lethal. In fact, both are life-giving parts of my calling. But trying to experience both feels like a Homeric task.
Seize the day, and cease your workI want to abound, to devote myself to God's work: "Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be steadfast and immovable; always abounding fully in the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain" (1 Cor. 15:58).
I want to discover the deepest passions that God hard-wired into me. I want to develop whatever gifts I have to their fullest.
I want some fire in my belly. I want to experience such a level of motivation that sometimes when I think about the work of the Lord it keeps me awake at night.
I want to abound.
When Paul said: "I am being poured out like a drink offering," That's not a picture of casual, comfortable labor offered when my personal world makes it easy. Abounding is what Jesus asked us to do. Taking up a cross is not an easy thing. He is Lord of the cross.
But on the other side of my life is Jesus' statement in John 15:4: "Abide in me, and I will abide in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must abide. Neither can you bear fruit by yourself. You must abide."
Abide, Jesus says. This, too, is an important New Testament word: to remain, to dwell. In our day we would talk about this as having deep roots, or being centered.
I feel the power of this call as well, the call to be a man of deep prayer, to refuse to hydroplane over my emotional life but rather to experience joy and sorrow deeply. To live the way Jesus would live if he were in my place.
"Come to me, all you who labor, and are heavy laden," he says, "And I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matt. 11:28-30).
Gentle. That's how Jesus describes himself. The Lord of the cross is also the Lord of the easy yoke, the light burden.A holy tension
Do you feel the tension between abounding and abiding? I live with it every day. It's unending. Will it ever go away?
Jesus lived with it throughout his ministry. In Mark 1 Jesus withdrew into the desert to abide with his Father, then plunged into the city to abound in his work, then withdrew while it was still dark to abide, only to be accosted by Peter who's upset that Jesus didn't leave a pager number ("everyone is searching for you"). Jesus doesn't say: "Don't bother me—I'm abiding." He goes off to abound some more.
Some people resolve this tension by just abiding, not seriously troubled by a lack of effectiveness. Garrison Keillor wrote about a patronizing do-gooder who lived by the "If I can just help one fainting soul for a moment my work was not in vain" philosophy—a strategy, he noted, that makes it rather difficult to fail.
It is possible for a church to go 20, 30 years or more without producing fruit. People are not challenged, volunteers not trained, resources not well-stewarded—and no one complains. People just get used to not abounding.
I don't want to live like that.
On the other hand, some people run around in frenzied activity. They live in a chronic state of exhaustion and burnout. They may pile up impressive accomplishments, but their spiritual life is dry. They use people; they live with preoccupied souls. There is no depth, no mystery.
I don't want to live like that, either. I expect to wrestle with this tension till I die.
God didn't get his work done all at once. Why not?
It wouldn't have been hard for him.
What will make this work?
If I'm going to both abide and abound, I need to practice certain principles.
1. Focus on what matters most. Each morning I make a W.A.M.M. (What Activities Matter Most?) list. I need crystal clarity on what's important and what's peripheral.
Peter Drucker writes that recognizing what counts as a true contribution is the great challenge for people in work like ours. If I don't do this, it's embarrassing to me how much time I can waste.
Sloth, Frederich Buechner said, isn't necessarily incompatible with heavy activity. It's failing to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. Like the kamikaze pilot who flew 17 missions.
2. I need to be fully present. Jean Pierre de Caussade described the "Sacrament of the Present Moment." It means being fully present to God's call right now.
It means devoting myself fully to the task—writing or counseling or leading or speaking—with my whole being. It means when I come home I must learn the difficult art of leaving work behind, being fully present with my family.
Our family is in the stage where Nancy and I spend a fair amount of time as chauffeurs (roughly 100 hours a week). I used to complain about this. Then a friend told me how this could be great family time—the kids can't get away! If I'm fully present, these are wonderful opportunities for conversation.
I have learned that certain forces keep me from experiencing "the sacrament": ingratitude, irritability, tension, a chronic sense that there's never enough time.
It's not just that we wrestle with these forces; it's that we glorify them. Busyness, fatigue, over-scheduling become signs of being important. Dorothy Bass noted that the fourth commandment is the only one that people, even people in ministry, commonly boast about breaking.
3. I need rhythm. One striking aspect of the Creation narrative is that God didn't get all his work done at once. Why not? It wouldn't have been hard for him.
God was establishing a pattern, a rhythm, for people made in his image.
God worked. And when he was done, God rested. He called it a day. He celebrated what he had done. He never burned out. He never said, "Thank me it's Friday."
I need to make sure I have a rhythm that includes solitude. I remember when I first decided to try it. I waited for a free day to come along. Guess how long I waited? You have to schedule solitude, write it in the calendar, and protect it fiercely. Sometimes mine are brief periods of solitude: an hour at a nearby forest preserve. Sometimes they're longer—a half-day or a day. But my days for solitude never volunteer. They have to be drafted.
4. I need a plan for my leisure. Some time ago I noticed a pattern: my days off would come up, and I had no idea what I wanted to do with them. I have friends who sometimes have whole vacations available but don't give any thought to what will be life-giving and joy-producing. No wonder we wrestle with fatigue!
So I ask myself these days, "What activities will I both genuinely enjoy and will also give me a chance to be with my family?" Recently my 11-year-old son and I took up snowboarding. One of us is much better at it than the other (the other one is bruised enough from it that he is writing this article standing up), but it's been great to find an activity that allows us to bond over something we both enjoy.
5. I need to focus on abounding where God has gifted and placed me. Parker Palmer writes about being offered the presidency of a large educational institution. Because it was a step up the ladder for a teacher and writer, he was ready to say yes. As a Quaker he first called some friends for a "clearness committee" to help him discern if it was God's call.
Their first questions were easy to answer. Then someone asked: "What would you enjoy most about being president?"
"Well, I wouldn't like to quit teaching,'' Palmer said. "I wouldn't like the politics involved … I wouldn't like fund-raising."
"But what would you like?"
After a long pause, he said quietly, "I would like to have my picture in the paper with the word 'president' under it."
Parker, couldn't you find an easier way to get your picture in the paper?
To abide and abound I have to be very clear about the gifts and passions God has given me. And so often ego gets in the way.
It's one thing to embrace my gifts. It's another to embrace my limitations. But to take an unblinking look at my limitations is one of the greatest tests of character I know.
My guess is that all of us have at least one limitation that is especially painful to acknowledge. I know I do.
And every time I try to pursue a task as if I didn't have this limitation, I cease to abide and abound. Palmer notes that burnout isn't usually the result of trying to give too much. It's the result of trying to give what isn't really in me.
Performance review by God
At our church we've recently instituted a performance review process to help each other be as effective as possible. It can be a pretty sobering. But I remember that a performance review is coming one day that will make all my reviews on this side of life look pretty casual.
Here's what I'd love to hear God say when that day comes: "You abounded in my work. You took real risks, you dreamed honorable dreams, you rolled up your sleeves and sacrificed comfort and poured yourself out like a drink offering.
"And … you abided in my love. You sought to be transformed by my Spirit, to live in intimacy with me and authentic community with the people I love.
"You abounded and you abided."
Who doesn't want that?
John Ortberg is a senior pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, California, and previously served as teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church
Copyright © 2000 by John Ortberg or Christianity Today International/Leadership Journal.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
The Storage Room Meltdown
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2005/004/2.122.html
It was time to preach, but I had nothing to say.
by Rob Bell
I could feel my car keys in my pocket, and all I could think about was how far away I could be by 11 a.m. How much gas was in the tank? How fast could I drive?
Sitting on a chair in a storage room, I could hear the worship space filling up with people, and all I wanted to do was leave. What do you do when you're pastor of a church, it's Sunday morning, people are finding their seats, you're scheduled to preach, and you realize you have nothing to say?
How did it come to this? It started out so great …
One minute you have these ideas about how it could be, and the next minute you're leading this exploding church/event/monster.
My wife and I and several others started this church called Mars Hill in February 1999 with dreams of a revolutionary new kind of community. I was 28.
People who are starting churches, or want to someday, often ask me when I knew it was time to do it. And I actually have a coherent answer: I knew it was time when I no longer cared if it was "successful." I'm serious. I had this moment in October 1998 when I realized that if 13 people joined us, and that's all it ever was, that would be okay. This thing inside of me was so strong that I had to act on it. I felt if I didn't, I would be violating something … or somebody.
Better to try and fail … the worst thing would be to live wondering, What if?
The dream actually began years before when Kristen and I were living in Los Angeles. We visited a church called Christian Assembly, and what I saw changed everything for me. This community was exploding with creativity and life—it was like people woke up on Sunday morning and asked themselves, "What would I like to do today more than anything else? How about going to a church service?"
No amount of success can heal a person's soul. In fact, success makes it worse, because "Wherever you, there you are."
This concept was so fresh—people who gathered because they wanted to. There wasn't a trace of empty ritual or obligation anywhere in the place. It didn't matter how far away I had to park. The bond I had with the other people in the room. Not "I have to" but "I get to." Not obligation but celebration. Not duty but desire.
Kristen and I starting attending these services regularly, and then we'd go to Taco Bell and talk about what a church could be.
Desire.
Longing.
Come as you are.
Connection.
A group of people who can imagine nothing better than this.
And so several years, two internships, and a cross-country move later, we did it. We started a church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Now you have to understand that I started out playing in bands, back when alternative music was … alternative. I understood music to be this raw art form that comes from your guts. Do it yourself. Strip it down. Take away all the fluff and the hype.
This ethos heavily shaped my understanding of what a church should be like: strip everything away and get down to the most basic elements. A group of people desperate to experience God.
Please realize that to this day I have never read a book on church planting or church growth. I remember being told that a sign had been rented with the church name on it to go in front of the building where we were meeting. I was mortified and had them get rid of it. You can't put a sign out front, I argued; people have to want to find us. And so there were no advertisements, no promotions, and no signs.
The thought of the word church and the word marketing in the same sentence makes me sick.
We had these ideas and these dreams, and we went with them.
People would come in, there would be some singing, I would talk about God and Jesus and the Bible and life for about an hour, and then it would be over.
And the strangest thing happened: people came.
I remember that first Sunday like it was yesterday. Someone told me five minutes before the first service to look out the front windows. I was not prepared for what I saw. Cars everywhere. People were giving up trying to get through the traffic and just pulling over on the side of the road, parking, and walking the rest of the way. We ran out of chairs.
Chaos.
I loved it.
Unleashing a monster Now I am going to give you some numbers. I hesitate to do this because few things are more difficult to take than spiritual leaders who are always talking about how big their thing is. But it happened and it's true and it's part of my story.
There were over 1,000 people there the first Sunday. People in the aisles. People on the floor. I ended the message by inviting people to join us on this journey. I talked about the need to explore what a new kind of Christian faith looks like for the new world we find ourselves in. Whatever it was and wherever it led, we were going. "Join us."
The energy in the place was unreal.
The next morning I held a staff meeting. Which means I sat in my office and thought to myself, What have I gotten myself into? Followed closely by, Sunday's coming again.
More people came the next week.
Even more the following week.
I remember telling people we had no more chairs and if they wanted to bring their friends, they would need to buy chairs for them.
By September of that first year, we had to hold three services, pushing things to over 4,000 people.
A problem developed in the parking lot because people were losing their tempers when they had to wait so long to exit. I heard stories of harsh words being exchanged and people giving each other the finger.
So I stood up on Sunday and said, "If you are here and you aren't a Christian, we are thrilled to have you in our midst. We want you to feel right at home. But if you are here and you're a Christian and you can't even be a Christian in the parking lot, please don't go out into the world and tell people you're a Christian. You'll screw it up for the rest of us. And by the way, we could use your seat."
People cheered. The more honest, the more raw, the more people loved it.
We had no five-year plan. No vision statement. No "demographic."
All we cared about was trying to teach and live the way of Jesus. It's still all we care about it.
Around this time we were having problems with too many kids in the classrooms—there wasn't enough oxygen. And then the fire marshal showed up. Not good. Legal, but not good. He said we were over code, and we would have to start turning people away. We literally had to post people at the doors, and when the room was full, they had to tell people they weren't legally allowed into the service.
So we bought a mall. Actually, somebody gave us a mall, and we bought the parking lots surrounding it. We blew out the walls of the anchor store to make a room big enough to meet in and then turned the other stores into classrooms for kids. A guy came to one of the first services in the mall-turned-church, and said, "Hey, I used to shoplift in this exact spot."
We were growing. House churches were springing up, partnerships were beginning with other churches around the world, and people who had never been a part of a church were finding a home. Two years into it, around 10,000 people were coming to the three gatherings on Sundays.
In the middle of all this chaos was me, superpastor, doing weddings and funerals and giving spiritual direction and going to meetings and teaching and dealing with crises and visiting people in prison and at the hospital.
It was happening so fast. One minute you have these ideas about how it could be, and the next minute you are leading this exploding church/event/monster.
I tell you all this because there's a dark side. It's one thing to be an intern with dreams about how church should be. It's another thing to be the 30-year-old pastor of a massive church. And that is why I was sitting there thinking about how far I could be by 11 a.m. I escaped to the storage closet to be alone. I was moments away from leaving the whole thing. I just couldn't do it anymore.
People were asking me to write books on how to grow a progressive young church, and I wasn't even sure I was a Christian anymore. I didn't know if I wanted to be a Christian anymore.
I was exhausted. Full of doubt. I had nothing more to say.
And so I sat there with my keys in my hand, turning them over and over, hearing the room getting louder and louder and more and more full. At that moment I made some decisions.
Because without pain, we don't change, do we?
I could talk about the dangers of megachurches and what is wrong with Church Incorporated, but I realized that day that things were wrong with the whole way I was living my life. If I didn't change, I was not going to make it. In that abyss I broke and got help … because it's only when you hit bottom and are desperate enough that things start to get better.
This breakdown, of course, left me with difficult decisions to make. Mars Hill was alive and people were being transformed. Who would leave all that? I decided to be honest about my journey, and if people wanted to come along, great. But I was still going to have to take a new path. And a new journey began, one that has been very, very painful. And very, very freeing.
It was during this period that I learned that I have a soul.
Shalom The tzitzit (seet-see) first appear in Numbers 15 when God says to Moses, "Throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. You will have these tassels to look at and so you will remember all the commands of the Lord, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by chasing after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes. Then you will remember to obey all my commands."
God tells his people to attach tassels to the corners of their garments so they will be constantly visually reminded to live as he created them to live.
The word in Hebrew here for "corners" is kanaf. The word for "tassel" (or "fringe") is tzitzit.To this day, many Jews wear a prayer shawl to obey this text. The prayer shawl is also in a lot of interesting places throughout the Bible. One of the most significant is in the prophet Malachi's prediction about the coming Messiah: "The sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings." The word Malachi uses for wings is kanaf—the same word in Numbers that refers to the edge of a garment, to which the tassels were attached.
So a legend grew that when the Messiah came, there would be special healing powers in his kanaf, in the tassels of his prayer shawl.
Fast-forward to the time of Jesus: A woman has had an illness for twelve years and no one can cure her. She pushes her way through a crowd to get to Jesus, and when she gets close to him, she grabs the edge of his cloak. Jesus, a Torah—observant Jewish rabbi who keeps the Scripture commandments word for word, including passages like Numbers 15, would have been wearing a prayer shawl.
So when the woman grabs the edge of his cloak, she is demonstrating that she believes Jesus' tassels have healing powers. She believes that Jesus is who Malachi was talking about.
She touches his tassels and is healed, just like Malachi said.
But I don't think the physical healing is Jesus' point here. I think it is what Jesus says to her as they part ways. He says to her, "Go in peace." Shalom.
Shalom is an important word in the Bible, and it is not completely accurate to translate it simply as "peace." For many of us, we understand peace to be the absence of conflict. But the Hebraic understanding of shalom is far more. Shalom is the presence of the goodness of God. It's the presence of wholeness, completeness.
So when Jesus tells the woman to go in peace, he is placing the blessing of God on all of her. Not just her physical body. He is blessing her with God's presence on her entire being. For Jesus, being saved or reconciled to God involves far more than just the saving of your physical body or your soul—it involves all of you, living in harmony with him—body, soul, spirit, mind, emotions—every inch of our being.
Restoration There are many dimensions to living in harmony with God. In one sense, salvation is a legal transaction.
Humans are guilty because of our sin, and God is the judge who has to deal with our sin because he is holy and any act of sin goes against his core nature. He has to deal with it. Enter Jesus, who dies on the cross in our place. Jesus gets what we deserve; we get what Jesus deserved.
For Jesus, however, salvation is far more. It includes this understanding, but it is far more comprehensive—it is a way of life. To be saved or redeemed is to enter into a totally new way of living in harmony with God. The rabbis called harmony with God olam haba, which translates "life in the world to come." Salvation is living more and more in harmony with God, a process that will go on forever.
When we understand salvation from a legal-transaction perspective, then the point of the cross becomes what it has done for us. There is the once-and-for-all work of Jesus dying on the cross for our sins and saying, "It is finished."
Nothing more to be offered and nothing more to be sacrificed. We claim this truth as Christians. All has been forgiven. But let's also use a slightly different phrase: the work of the cross in us. The ongoing work of the cross in our hearts and minds and souls and lives. The ongoing need to return to the cross to be reminded of our brokenness and dependence on God. There is the healing we need from the cross every single day.
The point of the cross isn't just forgiveness. Forgiveness leads to something much bigger: restoration. It is not just the removal of what's being held against us; God wants to make us into the people we were originally created to be.
This restoration is why Jesus always orients his message around becoming the kind of people who are generous and loving and compassionate. The goal here isn't simply to not sin. Our purpose is to increase the shalom in this world. It is one thing to be forgiven; it is another thing to become more and more and more and more the person God made you to be. Not just for the life to come. But for now.
For Jesus, salvation is now.
I need a God for now.
I need healing now.
Yes, even greater things will happen someday.
But salvation is now.
This now leads to another danger of embracing only one dimension of salvation.
When faith is defined solely in legal terms, the dominant idea often becomes "inviting Jesus into my heart," a phrase that is not found in the Bible. That doesn't mean it is not legitimate; the problems come when salvation becomes all about me. Me being saved. Me being reconciled to God. The Bible paints a much larger picture of salvation. It describes all of creation being restored. The author of Ephesians writes that all things will be brought together under Jesus. Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker.
This has huge implications for how people present the message of Jesus. Yes, Jesus can come into our hearts. But we join a movement that is as wide and deep and big as the universe itself. Rocks and trees and birds and swamps and ecosystems. God's desire is to restore all of it.
The point is not me; it's God.
It is possible to be "saved" and not be a healthy, whole, life-giving person. It is possible for the cross to have done something for a person but not in them.
My soul That's what happened to me. I realized I believed in Jesus and thought of myself as "saved" and "reborn," yet massive areas of my life were unaffected. I learned that salvation is for all of me. And for Jesus to heal my soul, I had to stare my junk right in the face.
It has only just begun for me, but a few things have become quite clear.
First, no amount of success can heal a person's soul. In fact, success makes it worse. I started a church and lots of people were coming to hear me speak, but I had things I had never dealt with and they were still there. There is a great saying in the recovery movement: "Wherever you go, there you are." Success doesn't fix our problems and compulsions and addictions.
I started going to counseling to discover and address them. Part of my crash came from my failure to identify these forces until recently. I had been pushing myself and going and going and achieving and not even really knowing why. It is easier to keep going than to stop, face the pain, and begin diving into the root causes.
It is scary to hit the wall because you don't know what's going to happen. And you might get hurt.
But that's what happened to me in that storage room between the 9 and 11 a.m. services, and it was the best thing that could have happened. I couldn't go on. Usually, we can go on. And that's the problem.
We put on the mask, suck it up, and keep going, like it's no big deal.
But it is a big deal.
It's a sign that we are barely hanging on. And it is only when something deep within us snaps that we are ready to start over and get help. We have to let the game stop.
I realize this is not groundbreaking news, but when we get desperate and realize we cannot keep living this way, then we have to change. As I let all this come spewing forth the first time in my therapist's office, he interrupted me. I was making lists of all the people I was working to keep happy. He said it was clear that there were significant numbers of people I was working to please and that my issue was a simple one.
I was anticipating something quite profound as I got out my pen.
He said this: "Sin."
And then he said, in what has become a pivotal moment in my journey, "Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God has made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it."
The relentless pursuit of who God made me to be.
I started identifying how much of my life was about making sure the right people were pleased with me. And as this became more and more clear, I realized how less and less pleased I was with myself. I'd become so heavily oriented around the expectations of others that I was becoming more and more like them and less and less the person God made me to be.
I was split.
As the lights were turned on, I saw much of my pain was because I wasn't measuring up to the images in my head.
I am not superpastor. I don't do well in an office nine to five. I am institutionally challenged. But I am not defined by what I am not. And understanding this truth is a huge part of becoming whole. I had to stop living in reaction and start letting a vision for what lies ahead pull me forward.
I began to sort out with those around me what God did make me to do. What kept coming up was that my life work is fundamentally creative in nature. And creating has its own rhythms, its own pace. Inspiration comes because of discipline. And discipline comes when you organize your life in specific, intentional ways. And then sticking to it.
I had this false guilt and subsequent shame because I believed that I just wasn't working hard enough. I wasn't superpastor.
I went to the leaders of our church and shared with them my journey as it was unfolding. I told them that if they needed to release me and find superpastor, I understood. If we don't know who we are or where we're trying to go, we put the people around us in an uncomfortable position.
Healing I can't begin to tell you how much better my life is today than it was several years ago. I continue to dig things up and process new insights and learn about my insides. The journey continues.
I'm learning that very few people actually live from their heart. Very few live connected with their soul. And those few who do the difficult work, who stare their junk in the face, who get counsel, who let Jesus into all of the rooms in their soul that no one ever goes in, they make a difference. They are so different; they're coming from such a different place that their voices inevitably get heard above the others. They are pursuing wholeness and shalom, and it's contagious. They inspire me to keep going.
I was sitting in the storage room last week at Mars Hill. The room was filling up for the service at 11 a.m. And I couldn't wait for it to start.
Because Jesus is healing my soul.
Copyright 2005 by Rob Bell. Used by permission of The Zondervan Corporation.
It was time to preach, but I had nothing to say.
by Rob Bell
I could feel my car keys in my pocket, and all I could think about was how far away I could be by 11 a.m. How much gas was in the tank? How fast could I drive?
Sitting on a chair in a storage room, I could hear the worship space filling up with people, and all I wanted to do was leave. What do you do when you're pastor of a church, it's Sunday morning, people are finding their seats, you're scheduled to preach, and you realize you have nothing to say?
How did it come to this? It started out so great …
One minute you have these ideas about how it could be, and the next minute you're leading this exploding church/event/monster.
My wife and I and several others started this church called Mars Hill in February 1999 with dreams of a revolutionary new kind of community. I was 28.
People who are starting churches, or want to someday, often ask me when I knew it was time to do it. And I actually have a coherent answer: I knew it was time when I no longer cared if it was "successful." I'm serious. I had this moment in October 1998 when I realized that if 13 people joined us, and that's all it ever was, that would be okay. This thing inside of me was so strong that I had to act on it. I felt if I didn't, I would be violating something … or somebody.
Better to try and fail … the worst thing would be to live wondering, What if?
The dream actually began years before when Kristen and I were living in Los Angeles. We visited a church called Christian Assembly, and what I saw changed everything for me. This community was exploding with creativity and life—it was like people woke up on Sunday morning and asked themselves, "What would I like to do today more than anything else? How about going to a church service?"
No amount of success can heal a person's soul. In fact, success makes it worse, because "Wherever you, there you are."
This concept was so fresh—people who gathered because they wanted to. There wasn't a trace of empty ritual or obligation anywhere in the place. It didn't matter how far away I had to park. The bond I had with the other people in the room. Not "I have to" but "I get to." Not obligation but celebration. Not duty but desire.
Kristen and I starting attending these services regularly, and then we'd go to Taco Bell and talk about what a church could be.
Desire.
Longing.
Come as you are.
Connection.
A group of people who can imagine nothing better than this.
And so several years, two internships, and a cross-country move later, we did it. We started a church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Now you have to understand that I started out playing in bands, back when alternative music was … alternative. I understood music to be this raw art form that comes from your guts. Do it yourself. Strip it down. Take away all the fluff and the hype.
This ethos heavily shaped my understanding of what a church should be like: strip everything away and get down to the most basic elements. A group of people desperate to experience God.
Please realize that to this day I have never read a book on church planting or church growth. I remember being told that a sign had been rented with the church name on it to go in front of the building where we were meeting. I was mortified and had them get rid of it. You can't put a sign out front, I argued; people have to want to find us. And so there were no advertisements, no promotions, and no signs.
The thought of the word church and the word marketing in the same sentence makes me sick.
We had these ideas and these dreams, and we went with them.
People would come in, there would be some singing, I would talk about God and Jesus and the Bible and life for about an hour, and then it would be over.
And the strangest thing happened: people came.
I remember that first Sunday like it was yesterday. Someone told me five minutes before the first service to look out the front windows. I was not prepared for what I saw. Cars everywhere. People were giving up trying to get through the traffic and just pulling over on the side of the road, parking, and walking the rest of the way. We ran out of chairs.
Chaos.
I loved it.
Unleashing a monster Now I am going to give you some numbers. I hesitate to do this because few things are more difficult to take than spiritual leaders who are always talking about how big their thing is. But it happened and it's true and it's part of my story.
There were over 1,000 people there the first Sunday. People in the aisles. People on the floor. I ended the message by inviting people to join us on this journey. I talked about the need to explore what a new kind of Christian faith looks like for the new world we find ourselves in. Whatever it was and wherever it led, we were going. "Join us."
The energy in the place was unreal.
The next morning I held a staff meeting. Which means I sat in my office and thought to myself, What have I gotten myself into? Followed closely by, Sunday's coming again.
More people came the next week.
Even more the following week.
I remember telling people we had no more chairs and if they wanted to bring their friends, they would need to buy chairs for them.
By September of that first year, we had to hold three services, pushing things to over 4,000 people.
A problem developed in the parking lot because people were losing their tempers when they had to wait so long to exit. I heard stories of harsh words being exchanged and people giving each other the finger.
So I stood up on Sunday and said, "If you are here and you aren't a Christian, we are thrilled to have you in our midst. We want you to feel right at home. But if you are here and you're a Christian and you can't even be a Christian in the parking lot, please don't go out into the world and tell people you're a Christian. You'll screw it up for the rest of us. And by the way, we could use your seat."
People cheered. The more honest, the more raw, the more people loved it.
We had no five-year plan. No vision statement. No "demographic."
All we cared about was trying to teach and live the way of Jesus. It's still all we care about it.
Around this time we were having problems with too many kids in the classrooms—there wasn't enough oxygen. And then the fire marshal showed up. Not good. Legal, but not good. He said we were over code, and we would have to start turning people away. We literally had to post people at the doors, and when the room was full, they had to tell people they weren't legally allowed into the service.
So we bought a mall. Actually, somebody gave us a mall, and we bought the parking lots surrounding it. We blew out the walls of the anchor store to make a room big enough to meet in and then turned the other stores into classrooms for kids. A guy came to one of the first services in the mall-turned-church, and said, "Hey, I used to shoplift in this exact spot."
We were growing. House churches were springing up, partnerships were beginning with other churches around the world, and people who had never been a part of a church were finding a home. Two years into it, around 10,000 people were coming to the three gatherings on Sundays.
In the middle of all this chaos was me, superpastor, doing weddings and funerals and giving spiritual direction and going to meetings and teaching and dealing with crises and visiting people in prison and at the hospital.
It was happening so fast. One minute you have these ideas about how it could be, and the next minute you are leading this exploding church/event/monster.
I tell you all this because there's a dark side. It's one thing to be an intern with dreams about how church should be. It's another thing to be the 30-year-old pastor of a massive church. And that is why I was sitting there thinking about how far I could be by 11 a.m. I escaped to the storage closet to be alone. I was moments away from leaving the whole thing. I just couldn't do it anymore.
People were asking me to write books on how to grow a progressive young church, and I wasn't even sure I was a Christian anymore. I didn't know if I wanted to be a Christian anymore.
I was exhausted. Full of doubt. I had nothing more to say.
And so I sat there with my keys in my hand, turning them over and over, hearing the room getting louder and louder and more and more full. At that moment I made some decisions.
Because without pain, we don't change, do we?
I could talk about the dangers of megachurches and what is wrong with Church Incorporated, but I realized that day that things were wrong with the whole way I was living my life. If I didn't change, I was not going to make it. In that abyss I broke and got help … because it's only when you hit bottom and are desperate enough that things start to get better.
This breakdown, of course, left me with difficult decisions to make. Mars Hill was alive and people were being transformed. Who would leave all that? I decided to be honest about my journey, and if people wanted to come along, great. But I was still going to have to take a new path. And a new journey began, one that has been very, very painful. And very, very freeing.
It was during this period that I learned that I have a soul.
Shalom The tzitzit (seet-see) first appear in Numbers 15 when God says to Moses, "Throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. You will have these tassels to look at and so you will remember all the commands of the Lord, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by chasing after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes. Then you will remember to obey all my commands."
God tells his people to attach tassels to the corners of their garments so they will be constantly visually reminded to live as he created them to live.
The word in Hebrew here for "corners" is kanaf. The word for "tassel" (or "fringe") is tzitzit.To this day, many Jews wear a prayer shawl to obey this text. The prayer shawl is also in a lot of interesting places throughout the Bible. One of the most significant is in the prophet Malachi's prediction about the coming Messiah: "The sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings." The word Malachi uses for wings is kanaf—the same word in Numbers that refers to the edge of a garment, to which the tassels were attached.
So a legend grew that when the Messiah came, there would be special healing powers in his kanaf, in the tassels of his prayer shawl.
Fast-forward to the time of Jesus: A woman has had an illness for twelve years and no one can cure her. She pushes her way through a crowd to get to Jesus, and when she gets close to him, she grabs the edge of his cloak. Jesus, a Torah—observant Jewish rabbi who keeps the Scripture commandments word for word, including passages like Numbers 15, would have been wearing a prayer shawl.
So when the woman grabs the edge of his cloak, she is demonstrating that she believes Jesus' tassels have healing powers. She believes that Jesus is who Malachi was talking about.
She touches his tassels and is healed, just like Malachi said.
But I don't think the physical healing is Jesus' point here. I think it is what Jesus says to her as they part ways. He says to her, "Go in peace." Shalom.
Shalom is an important word in the Bible, and it is not completely accurate to translate it simply as "peace." For many of us, we understand peace to be the absence of conflict. But the Hebraic understanding of shalom is far more. Shalom is the presence of the goodness of God. It's the presence of wholeness, completeness.
So when Jesus tells the woman to go in peace, he is placing the blessing of God on all of her. Not just her physical body. He is blessing her with God's presence on her entire being. For Jesus, being saved or reconciled to God involves far more than just the saving of your physical body or your soul—it involves all of you, living in harmony with him—body, soul, spirit, mind, emotions—every inch of our being.
Restoration There are many dimensions to living in harmony with God. In one sense, salvation is a legal transaction.
Humans are guilty because of our sin, and God is the judge who has to deal with our sin because he is holy and any act of sin goes against his core nature. He has to deal with it. Enter Jesus, who dies on the cross in our place. Jesus gets what we deserve; we get what Jesus deserved.
For Jesus, however, salvation is far more. It includes this understanding, but it is far more comprehensive—it is a way of life. To be saved or redeemed is to enter into a totally new way of living in harmony with God. The rabbis called harmony with God olam haba, which translates "life in the world to come." Salvation is living more and more in harmony with God, a process that will go on forever.
When we understand salvation from a legal-transaction perspective, then the point of the cross becomes what it has done for us. There is the once-and-for-all work of Jesus dying on the cross for our sins and saying, "It is finished."
Nothing more to be offered and nothing more to be sacrificed. We claim this truth as Christians. All has been forgiven. But let's also use a slightly different phrase: the work of the cross in us. The ongoing work of the cross in our hearts and minds and souls and lives. The ongoing need to return to the cross to be reminded of our brokenness and dependence on God. There is the healing we need from the cross every single day.
The point of the cross isn't just forgiveness. Forgiveness leads to something much bigger: restoration. It is not just the removal of what's being held against us; God wants to make us into the people we were originally created to be.
This restoration is why Jesus always orients his message around becoming the kind of people who are generous and loving and compassionate. The goal here isn't simply to not sin. Our purpose is to increase the shalom in this world. It is one thing to be forgiven; it is another thing to become more and more and more and more the person God made you to be. Not just for the life to come. But for now.
For Jesus, salvation is now.
I need a God for now.
I need healing now.
Yes, even greater things will happen someday.
But salvation is now.
This now leads to another danger of embracing only one dimension of salvation.
When faith is defined solely in legal terms, the dominant idea often becomes "inviting Jesus into my heart," a phrase that is not found in the Bible. That doesn't mean it is not legitimate; the problems come when salvation becomes all about me. Me being saved. Me being reconciled to God. The Bible paints a much larger picture of salvation. It describes all of creation being restored. The author of Ephesians writes that all things will be brought together under Jesus. Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker.
This has huge implications for how people present the message of Jesus. Yes, Jesus can come into our hearts. But we join a movement that is as wide and deep and big as the universe itself. Rocks and trees and birds and swamps and ecosystems. God's desire is to restore all of it.
The point is not me; it's God.
It is possible to be "saved" and not be a healthy, whole, life-giving person. It is possible for the cross to have done something for a person but not in them.
My soul That's what happened to me. I realized I believed in Jesus and thought of myself as "saved" and "reborn," yet massive areas of my life were unaffected. I learned that salvation is for all of me. And for Jesus to heal my soul, I had to stare my junk right in the face.
It has only just begun for me, but a few things have become quite clear.
First, no amount of success can heal a person's soul. In fact, success makes it worse. I started a church and lots of people were coming to hear me speak, but I had things I had never dealt with and they were still there. There is a great saying in the recovery movement: "Wherever you go, there you are." Success doesn't fix our problems and compulsions and addictions.
I started going to counseling to discover and address them. Part of my crash came from my failure to identify these forces until recently. I had been pushing myself and going and going and achieving and not even really knowing why. It is easier to keep going than to stop, face the pain, and begin diving into the root causes.
It is scary to hit the wall because you don't know what's going to happen. And you might get hurt.
But that's what happened to me in that storage room between the 9 and 11 a.m. services, and it was the best thing that could have happened. I couldn't go on. Usually, we can go on. And that's the problem.
We put on the mask, suck it up, and keep going, like it's no big deal.
But it is a big deal.
It's a sign that we are barely hanging on. And it is only when something deep within us snaps that we are ready to start over and get help. We have to let the game stop.
I realize this is not groundbreaking news, but when we get desperate and realize we cannot keep living this way, then we have to change. As I let all this come spewing forth the first time in my therapist's office, he interrupted me. I was making lists of all the people I was working to keep happy. He said it was clear that there were significant numbers of people I was working to please and that my issue was a simple one.
I was anticipating something quite profound as I got out my pen.
He said this: "Sin."
And then he said, in what has become a pivotal moment in my journey, "Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God has made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it."
The relentless pursuit of who God made me to be.
I started identifying how much of my life was about making sure the right people were pleased with me. And as this became more and more clear, I realized how less and less pleased I was with myself. I'd become so heavily oriented around the expectations of others that I was becoming more and more like them and less and less the person God made me to be.
I was split.
As the lights were turned on, I saw much of my pain was because I wasn't measuring up to the images in my head.
I am not superpastor. I don't do well in an office nine to five. I am institutionally challenged. But I am not defined by what I am not. And understanding this truth is a huge part of becoming whole. I had to stop living in reaction and start letting a vision for what lies ahead pull me forward.
I began to sort out with those around me what God did make me to do. What kept coming up was that my life work is fundamentally creative in nature. And creating has its own rhythms, its own pace. Inspiration comes because of discipline. And discipline comes when you organize your life in specific, intentional ways. And then sticking to it.
I had this false guilt and subsequent shame because I believed that I just wasn't working hard enough. I wasn't superpastor.
I went to the leaders of our church and shared with them my journey as it was unfolding. I told them that if they needed to release me and find superpastor, I understood. If we don't know who we are or where we're trying to go, we put the people around us in an uncomfortable position.
Healing I can't begin to tell you how much better my life is today than it was several years ago. I continue to dig things up and process new insights and learn about my insides. The journey continues.
I'm learning that very few people actually live from their heart. Very few live connected with their soul. And those few who do the difficult work, who stare their junk in the face, who get counsel, who let Jesus into all of the rooms in their soul that no one ever goes in, they make a difference. They are so different; they're coming from such a different place that their voices inevitably get heard above the others. They are pursuing wholeness and shalom, and it's contagious. They inspire me to keep going.
I was sitting in the storage room last week at Mars Hill. The room was filling up for the service at 11 a.m. And I couldn't wait for it to start.
Because Jesus is healing my soul.
Copyright 2005 by Rob Bell. Used by permission of The Zondervan Corporation.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Salt and Light in the Arena
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/107/53.0.html
It's going to take more than a few good Christians to clean up sports.
by Mark Galli posted 02/18/2005 09:30 a.m.
In 1940 undefeated Cornell visited Dartmouth on a late-autumn afternoon with the hopes of securing the national championship of college football. Cornell hadn't lost in three years, and the Associated Press had ranked them No. 1 in the nation all year, and for good reason: they had pummeled all comers by an average score of 30-2.
Dartmouth was not about to roll over, though, and gave Cornell the fight of the season. The teams slogged it out in an exhausting defensive battle—until the fourth quarter when Dartmouth kicked a field goal to take a 3–0 lead.
By the time Cornell was able to drive to the Dartmouth 6-yard line, there were only 45 seconds left to play. Three running plays brought Cornell to within inches of the goal line. With nine second remaining and staring at a fourth down, Cornell called a timeout. But before they could get off the next play, they were flagged for delay of game and penalized five yards. For its final play, Cornell attempted a pass, which Dartmouth broke up—after which the refs huddled immediately. Because of the penalty, the refs were confused—did the previous play occur on third or fourth down? The hurried officials decided to give Cornell one more down. Now with three seconds left, Cornell threw a pass over the middle for a touchdown and the win.
Though there was no instant replay at the time, there was replay—but it took 24 hours to develop the film. The evidence was unmistakable: the refs had given Cornell an extra down. Given the rules, however, the refs were powerless to reverse the score.
But before the day was out, Cornell's coach and university president telegrammed Dartmouth: "We congratulate you on the victory of your fine team. The Cornell touchdown was scored on a fifth down, and we relinquish claim to the victory and extend congratulations to Dartmouth." The gesture of sportsmanship cost Cornell both the game and a national championship.
We were reminded of this noble story last week at a conference on sports law and ethics entitled "Winning at All Cost, Today's Addiction," sponsored by the Valparaiso University School of Law. There were talks and panels that included the likes of Bob Costas and Dick Patrick (USA Today), as well as dozens of lawyers whom I had never heard of (but whose infamous athlete clients I had). There was much talk about steroids and recruiting violations and fights both on the courts and in the stands, as well as talk about legal and medical issues. But I was most interested in what participants thought about the causes of the ethics crisis in sports.
A serious problem, of course, has complex causes. Take just one crisis: baseball's steroid scandal. Bob Costas said, "The media should have started talking about this in the mid-nineties." One lawyer pointed the finger at colleagues who overzealously defend clients they know have taken steroids. Baseball owners, player union representatives, and even clean players came under indictment—why start trouble when fans were once again finally streaming to the parks in record numbers to watch Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds hit home run after home run after home run. Steroids were "good" for baseball, no?
Bill Curry, former NFL lineman (with two Super Bowl rings), college coach, and now ESPN analyst, argued that the larger problem is cultural. He said that professional athletes are driven by fear of losing one's position and pride in competing with the best. When he was a pro, playing in the NFL was more important to him than "God, family, money, parties—anything." And he would do anything to stay competitive, to be one of the best in the world. That included using steroids, which he did for a short time (thanks to the intervention of his father, he stopped immediately).
That was when I began thinking that this is where the Christian can, uh, step up to the plate. After all, the Christian athlete knows that winning isn't everything. The Christian coach knows not to try to gain an unfair advantage in competition. What we need, I thought, is just more Christians in sports to bring salt and light to the arena.
And then I was reminded that the big, bright modern sports machine is bigger and darker than we sometimes imagine.
In the fall of 1990, fifty years after the Cornell-Dartmouth game, the now legendary Promise Keeper Bill McCartney coached the Colorado Buffaloes in a dramatic victory over Missouri 33-31 on the game's last play. Replays shown immediately after the game demonstrated clearly that Colorado had accidentally been given a fifth down, and it was on that fifth down that they had scored the winning touchdown.
McCartney had already established himself nationally as a dedicated Christian who tried to follow Jesus Christ in all righteousness. But when shown the irrefutable evidence of the refs' mistake, he defiantly refused to concede the game to Missouri. What made the incident more bitter for Missouri and much of the nation is that Colorado went on to become the national champion that year, an honor they would not have won had they lost that game.
Let's be fair. McCartney coached in the modern era, with that big, bright sports machine incessantly droning 24/7/365, "Winning is everything, winning is everything, winning is everything." In addition, many sports pundits across the land defended his decision. And last but not least, Colorado alumni, boosters, and administrators would have crucified McCartney had he handed the game to Missouri. (Then again, didn't Jesus say that following him entailed taking up one's cross?)
The point is not to single out or excuse McCartney. Instead, I suggest that righteous individuals, no matter how committed, are no match for the principalities and powers of American sports. Are sports corrupt through and through? Of course not. But where they are corrupt, they'll need more than a few heroic religious individuals to make a difference. Probably something on the order of a company of people, a people called out, set apart--a fellowship grounded in such a way that not even the gates of Hades will overcome it.
This article first appeared in the November 28 issue of Christianity Today. Used by permission of Christianity Today International, Carol Stream, IL 60188.
It's going to take more than a few good Christians to clean up sports.
by Mark Galli posted 02/18/2005 09:30 a.m.
In 1940 undefeated Cornell visited Dartmouth on a late-autumn afternoon with the hopes of securing the national championship of college football. Cornell hadn't lost in three years, and the Associated Press had ranked them No. 1 in the nation all year, and for good reason: they had pummeled all comers by an average score of 30-2.
Dartmouth was not about to roll over, though, and gave Cornell the fight of the season. The teams slogged it out in an exhausting defensive battle—until the fourth quarter when Dartmouth kicked a field goal to take a 3–0 lead.
By the time Cornell was able to drive to the Dartmouth 6-yard line, there were only 45 seconds left to play. Three running plays brought Cornell to within inches of the goal line. With nine second remaining and staring at a fourth down, Cornell called a timeout. But before they could get off the next play, they were flagged for delay of game and penalized five yards. For its final play, Cornell attempted a pass, which Dartmouth broke up—after which the refs huddled immediately. Because of the penalty, the refs were confused—did the previous play occur on third or fourth down? The hurried officials decided to give Cornell one more down. Now with three seconds left, Cornell threw a pass over the middle for a touchdown and the win.
Though there was no instant replay at the time, there was replay—but it took 24 hours to develop the film. The evidence was unmistakable: the refs had given Cornell an extra down. Given the rules, however, the refs were powerless to reverse the score.
But before the day was out, Cornell's coach and university president telegrammed Dartmouth: "We congratulate you on the victory of your fine team. The Cornell touchdown was scored on a fifth down, and we relinquish claim to the victory and extend congratulations to Dartmouth." The gesture of sportsmanship cost Cornell both the game and a national championship.
We were reminded of this noble story last week at a conference on sports law and ethics entitled "Winning at All Cost, Today's Addiction," sponsored by the Valparaiso University School of Law. There were talks and panels that included the likes of Bob Costas and Dick Patrick (USA Today), as well as dozens of lawyers whom I had never heard of (but whose infamous athlete clients I had). There was much talk about steroids and recruiting violations and fights both on the courts and in the stands, as well as talk about legal and medical issues. But I was most interested in what participants thought about the causes of the ethics crisis in sports.
A serious problem, of course, has complex causes. Take just one crisis: baseball's steroid scandal. Bob Costas said, "The media should have started talking about this in the mid-nineties." One lawyer pointed the finger at colleagues who overzealously defend clients they know have taken steroids. Baseball owners, player union representatives, and even clean players came under indictment—why start trouble when fans were once again finally streaming to the parks in record numbers to watch Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds hit home run after home run after home run. Steroids were "good" for baseball, no?
Bill Curry, former NFL lineman (with two Super Bowl rings), college coach, and now ESPN analyst, argued that the larger problem is cultural. He said that professional athletes are driven by fear of losing one's position and pride in competing with the best. When he was a pro, playing in the NFL was more important to him than "God, family, money, parties—anything." And he would do anything to stay competitive, to be one of the best in the world. That included using steroids, which he did for a short time (thanks to the intervention of his father, he stopped immediately).
That was when I began thinking that this is where the Christian can, uh, step up to the plate. After all, the Christian athlete knows that winning isn't everything. The Christian coach knows not to try to gain an unfair advantage in competition. What we need, I thought, is just more Christians in sports to bring salt and light to the arena.
And then I was reminded that the big, bright modern sports machine is bigger and darker than we sometimes imagine.
In the fall of 1990, fifty years after the Cornell-Dartmouth game, the now legendary Promise Keeper Bill McCartney coached the Colorado Buffaloes in a dramatic victory over Missouri 33-31 on the game's last play. Replays shown immediately after the game demonstrated clearly that Colorado had accidentally been given a fifth down, and it was on that fifth down that they had scored the winning touchdown.
McCartney had already established himself nationally as a dedicated Christian who tried to follow Jesus Christ in all righteousness. But when shown the irrefutable evidence of the refs' mistake, he defiantly refused to concede the game to Missouri. What made the incident more bitter for Missouri and much of the nation is that Colorado went on to become the national champion that year, an honor they would not have won had they lost that game.
Let's be fair. McCartney coached in the modern era, with that big, bright sports machine incessantly droning 24/7/365, "Winning is everything, winning is everything, winning is everything." In addition, many sports pundits across the land defended his decision. And last but not least, Colorado alumni, boosters, and administrators would have crucified McCartney had he handed the game to Missouri. (Then again, didn't Jesus say that following him entailed taking up one's cross?)
The point is not to single out or excuse McCartney. Instead, I suggest that righteous individuals, no matter how committed, are no match for the principalities and powers of American sports. Are sports corrupt through and through? Of course not. But where they are corrupt, they'll need more than a few heroic religious individuals to make a difference. Probably something on the order of a company of people, a people called out, set apart--a fellowship grounded in such a way that not even the gates of Hades will overcome it.
This article first appeared in the November 28 issue of Christianity Today. Used by permission of Christianity Today International, Carol Stream, IL 60188.
Transformed by a Left Hook
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/148/53.0.html
For one Anglican priest, boxing is a means of grace.
by Mark Galli posted 12/02/2005 10:00 a.m.
"There are few things more deeply satisfying than a good fight. A hard night in the ring is an enormous catharsis for a man who is struggling with life, but it's more than that too."
These are the words of Anglican priest David B. Smith, Sydney, Australia's "Fighting Father." When he writes about "struggling with life" and the need for catharsis, he knows whereof he speaks. Father Dave tells his story in Sex, the Ring, & the Eucharist: Reflections on Life, Ministry, & Fighting in the Inner City.
A number of years ago, he found himself separated from his wife, struggling for the right to see his daughter, drinking way too much, and increasingly obsessed with thoughts of self-destruction. He seemed to be losing his family, his vocation, and most of his friends. He even made what he calls "a half-hearted attempt" at suicide. At some point, he decided "not to go under, but to fight back." Literally.
So he made his way to Mundine's gym, located on "the roughest street in one of the roughest neighborhoods" just outside of Sydney. "They play hard at Mundine's," he writes. "No pretty boys. No glamour workouts. No white-collar boxercise sessions for indulgent professionals. Just bodies, sweat, testosterone, and blood." The ring stands at the center of the gym, a small ring, "made for brawlers." It was here that he began to transform his life.
"When you step into a ring," he writes, "you're making a decision to take control of your own destiny. The forces that oppose you are no longer vague powers that threaten to overwhelm you from a distance—the law, the courts, the system. No. Your opposition takes clear material form in the shape of the other man advancing on you from the other corner. To get into that ring and to stay in that ring is a decision to give it a go—to put your body on the line and to stand up to the punishment like a man."
Such talk makes some theologians nervous, as if he's advocating a rough-and-tumble, self-help gospel. But he's not so naïve. He's a priest. He knows where salvation comes from. And he knows that faith is not a passive thing.
Biblical faith is Jacob wrestling with an angel of the Lord until the breaking of the day, refusing to quit until he received the blessing (Gen. 32:24-28). It involves beating one's body into submission (1 Cor. 9:26). It is to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work." (Phil. 2:12-13).
Father Dave recognizes that boxing is like many human activities: It can become a sacramental act, the means by which one's prayers for recovery are answered. "Prayer and fighting," he says, "are a powerful combination."
It certainly was for Father Dave. "Fighting is more than a sport. It's a way of life. It is the defiant decision to confront your pain directly and not to be overcome by it. Mundine's gym taught me that, or at least it played a significant role."
He's taken that lesson and now tries to teach it to young men fighting inner demons of rage and despair, as well as demons that attack from without—drinking, drugs, gang warfare. His boxing club meets in an old church building and is a cross between Mundine's gym and Sunday worship. He includes prayer and stresses "the biblical values of courage, integrity, self-discipline, and teamwork." But it's mostly about fighting, and in the center of the room, "where the Holy Table" once stood, now "fight-club members come and lay their bodies on that altar."
"There has been many a holy war that has taken place within those walls over the last ten years or so," he writes wryly. "Many a haughty and arrogant young man has been brought to his knees in that place, with my own left hook often being the tool of transformation."
In my last column, I suggested that the controlled violence of sports can be redemptive and ennobling in many ways. I said I would elaborate how that looks, even in an activity as seemingly non-redemptive as boxing. As Father Dave puts it, "I've seen many a young man here lifted out of a drug-dependent and self-destructive lifestyle through application to the rigors of ring—fighting in this spiritual environment." Including himself.
Mark Galli is managing editor of Christianity Today. Play Ball appears every other week.
This article first appeared in the November 28 issue of Christianity Today. Used by permission of Christianity Today International, Carol Stream, IL 60188."
For one Anglican priest, boxing is a means of grace.
by Mark Galli posted 12/02/2005 10:00 a.m.
"There are few things more deeply satisfying than a good fight. A hard night in the ring is an enormous catharsis for a man who is struggling with life, but it's more than that too."
These are the words of Anglican priest David B. Smith, Sydney, Australia's "Fighting Father." When he writes about "struggling with life" and the need for catharsis, he knows whereof he speaks. Father Dave tells his story in Sex, the Ring, & the Eucharist: Reflections on Life, Ministry, & Fighting in the Inner City.
A number of years ago, he found himself separated from his wife, struggling for the right to see his daughter, drinking way too much, and increasingly obsessed with thoughts of self-destruction. He seemed to be losing his family, his vocation, and most of his friends. He even made what he calls "a half-hearted attempt" at suicide. At some point, he decided "not to go under, but to fight back." Literally.
So he made his way to Mundine's gym, located on "the roughest street in one of the roughest neighborhoods" just outside of Sydney. "They play hard at Mundine's," he writes. "No pretty boys. No glamour workouts. No white-collar boxercise sessions for indulgent professionals. Just bodies, sweat, testosterone, and blood." The ring stands at the center of the gym, a small ring, "made for brawlers." It was here that he began to transform his life.
"When you step into a ring," he writes, "you're making a decision to take control of your own destiny. The forces that oppose you are no longer vague powers that threaten to overwhelm you from a distance—the law, the courts, the system. No. Your opposition takes clear material form in the shape of the other man advancing on you from the other corner. To get into that ring and to stay in that ring is a decision to give it a go—to put your body on the line and to stand up to the punishment like a man."
Such talk makes some theologians nervous, as if he's advocating a rough-and-tumble, self-help gospel. But he's not so naïve. He's a priest. He knows where salvation comes from. And he knows that faith is not a passive thing.
Biblical faith is Jacob wrestling with an angel of the Lord until the breaking of the day, refusing to quit until he received the blessing (Gen. 32:24-28). It involves beating one's body into submission (1 Cor. 9:26). It is to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work." (Phil. 2:12-13).
Father Dave recognizes that boxing is like many human activities: It can become a sacramental act, the means by which one's prayers for recovery are answered. "Prayer and fighting," he says, "are a powerful combination."
It certainly was for Father Dave. "Fighting is more than a sport. It's a way of life. It is the defiant decision to confront your pain directly and not to be overcome by it. Mundine's gym taught me that, or at least it played a significant role."
He's taken that lesson and now tries to teach it to young men fighting inner demons of rage and despair, as well as demons that attack from without—drinking, drugs, gang warfare. His boxing club meets in an old church building and is a cross between Mundine's gym and Sunday worship. He includes prayer and stresses "the biblical values of courage, integrity, self-discipline, and teamwork." But it's mostly about fighting, and in the center of the room, "where the Holy Table" once stood, now "fight-club members come and lay their bodies on that altar."
"There has been many a holy war that has taken place within those walls over the last ten years or so," he writes wryly. "Many a haughty and arrogant young man has been brought to his knees in that place, with my own left hook often being the tool of transformation."
In my last column, I suggested that the controlled violence of sports can be redemptive and ennobling in many ways. I said I would elaborate how that looks, even in an activity as seemingly non-redemptive as boxing. As Father Dave puts it, "I've seen many a young man here lifted out of a drug-dependent and self-destructive lifestyle through application to the rigors of ring—fighting in this spiritual environment." Including himself.
Mark Galli is managing editor of Christianity Today. Play Ball appears every other week.
This article first appeared in the November 28 issue of Christianity Today. Used by permission of Christianity Today International, Carol Stream, IL 60188."
Friday, December 02, 2005
Sports Central in the BGC World
Here is an article about the golf tournament in September...
http://www.bgcworld.org/mag/1205bgc/10.pdf
http://www.bgcworld.org/mag/1205bgc/10.pdf
Thursday, December 01, 2005
How to keep your church passionate about real ministry
From a Leadership article on www.ChristianityToday.com
Vision Leaks
How do you keep the church's passion for ministry from deflating?Andy StanleyJanuary 1, 2004
Vision doesn't stick; it doesn't have natural adhesive. Instead, vision leaks. You've repeated the vision for your church a hundred times. Then someone will ask a question that makes you think, What happened? Didn't they hear what we've said over and over? Don't they know what this church is all about?
You can spot leakage by listening for three things:
1. Prayer requests. What people pray for will tell you more than anything else whether they are locked into the vision and priorities of the church. When you are in a leadership meeting, are the only prayer requests for sick people? When I'm in such a meeting, I say, "Whoa, is anybody in this group burdened for an unchurched or unsaved friend? Yes, let's pray for the sick people. Now, what else can we pray for?"
2. Stories of great things happening in people's lives. If there are no stories, then maybe the vision for life transformation has leaked.
3. What people complain about. If people are complaining about the wrong stuff, then vision is leaking. When they complain about the music, or the parking, or that the church is too big, or there are too many people they don't know, you can respond, "I know. God is blessing us." But it's a sign of vision leakage.
I am often tempted to get frustrated with the people who don't understand the vision, but I have to ask myself some important questions. What do I need to do to assure that we have a compelling vision as an organization, and what must I do to make sure it doesn't leak? If the vision is not communicated in a compelling way, then the organization is going to be unfocused. Wherever focus is lacking, only random activity is left. That's when you wake up and find you don't like the organization you're leading.
It's our job as leaders to get everyone oriented and focused on our main purpose.What causes leaks?
There are three reasons vision seeps away: success, failure, and everything in between.
Success means your options multiply. Size increases complexity, and complexity can confuse vision.
Our church was at its most efficient when there were just six of us sitting around the table. Everybody knew and understood everything. It was as smart and efficient as the organization has ever been. This efficiency leads to success, and success gives birth to complexity, the enemy of efficiency and vision. Many churches become successful organizations where everyone is busy, but they've lost connection with the vision.
Failure will also knock a hole in your vision, if you let it. When a plan or strategy fails, people are tempted to assume it was the wrong vision. Plans and strategies can always be changed and improved. But vision doesn't change. Visions are simply refined with time.
Our first fundraising campaign was a total failure. No money came in, and I didn't follow up or follow through. One day a wonderful lady in our church came up and asked, "Andy, how's it going with the fundraising?" I answered, "It's not going very well at all." She said, "Do you think God's trying to tell us something?"
She clearly was implying that since the plan wasn't working, then the vision for this church must be wrong.
But I knew the vision was right, so I said, "Yes, I think God is trying to tell us something. He's trying to tell us it was a terrible fundraising idea."
We don't have to change the vision because a plan doesn't work out.
You know what else is tough on vision? Life. Every single day of my life works against the vision. Vision is about what could be and should be; life is about right-this-minute. Life is about the kids and the laundry and the doctor and the house payment.
No wonder vision leaks. Monday comes along and rips it off the wall. The urgent and legitimate needs of today can cause us to lose our vision.
In church life, nothing unfocuses us faster than haphazard, "y'all come" programing. Everybody has a favorite program. But adding too many programs to the church schedule will de-focus your church like nothing else.
So we ask hard questions of each potential program: Is this event a step toward maturity, or just more programing? Unless it makes a clear contribution to maturity and life transformation, it will likely become a vision leak.
There are three things you need to do in order to make your vision stick.
Repetition: good, good, good
None of us casts vision enough. Why? Because we think we've already said these things.
Every time I do our January sermon series on vision, I try not to look at last year's notes, but it ends up being the same message anyway. As a communicator I feel the need to come up with something fresh and new. Yet originality is not needed here.
For vision to stick, it has to be cast over and over and over and over, and not just over and over.
Watch your timing
Be strategic about when you cast vision. Obviously, Labor Day weekend is not a good Sunday.
At North Point, we take two or three Sundays every January to reiterate what is vitally important and explain why we do what we're doing.
We also have a period in May or June, just before school is out, when we spend three weeks on "Strategic Service." I cast the vision for volunteers. I talk about mission, vision, values, and what's coming up next fall. It's also the time we recruit leaders for the upcoming school year.
Cast strategically
Whether it's across the table with a church leader, at a planning retreat, or talking to the whole church—every time you talk about what could be and should be, you're casting vision.
For instance, every one of my newsletter articles is vision oriented. I don't write devotional thoughts—those I can give on Sundays. If people are going to read a newsletter, I want every article to remind them of our mission and vision.
When we talk about the vision, it needs to be in a way that's clear and compelling to those we are addressing. Three components help me keep the vision compelling:
1. Define the problem. You must ask the question, What problem is my organization attempting to solve? There is something that will not get done if we don't do it. If we don't do what we do, there's a group of people that won't be reached. When you talk about vision, you need to begin by talking about why your church exists. What is the problem that God has called you to solve?
2. Offer a solution. Your vision is the solution to a problem, and when you can couple a problem that people feel emotionally with a clear solution, you are on your way to capturing their hearts. Then you can also capture a piece of their time and effort. Is your vision for your church a solution to a problem?
3. Present an urgent reason. In other words, answer the questions, Why must we do this? And why must we do it now?
I'll never forget when we started North Point. Most of the people who came to our initial meeting about starting a church passed about a dozen churches on their way. What do you say when you stand up in front of those people and tell them about starting another church?
Some natural questions have to be faced: Why in the world are you starting another church? What is it that's not being done that needs to be done? What can we do about it? And why are we the ones to move in that direction?
So I talked about the need for "relevant environments" where lost and disillusioned people could connect with their Heavenly Father. I explained that it wasn't God who turned people off, it was usually a person's previous experiences with the church. Our vision was to create a safe, relevant place for lost people and Christians to bring their lost friends. The reason for the now was simply the urgency for people to come to Christ, not knowing when He will return.
I had to answer those questions so clearly that everybody who heard me talk about starting this church knew "Andy's going to do it anyway."
With clear answers to those questions, something comes alive in people, and the vision drives them to contribute their time, talents, and treasure.
If you can develop a phrase that you can say over and over to your people, whether it's across the lunch table or in your sermons, then you are on your way to casting vision.
At North Point, we put it this way: "Our mission is to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ by creating environments where people are encouraged and equipped to pursue intimacy with God, community with insiders, and influence with outsiders."
Learn to celebrate the vision
Many churches never stop to celebrate, and they're missing a great—and fun—opportunity to reinforce the vision. Celebration is what puts skin on the vision. I received one of those great e-mails from a lady in our church. It brought tears to my eyes. She wrote: "In your talk last Sunday you spoke about the impact that small group leaders have on the children in their group. I wanted to let you know about my son's small group leader. My son Graham is in the fifth grade and his group leader is Greg.
"As you know, Greg was called into active service as a part of the Iraqi freedom mission. Greg was sent to Italy, then Turkey, and then to an aircraft carrier. But did that stop him from being concerned about the members of his small group? No. Greg sent e-mails from Turkey to the kids in his group, telling what was doing and asking how the kids were doing. He even went so far as to call Graham from Turkey."
Did that have an impact? It sure did! Greg cared enough about his small group members to keep in contact while in a war zone. It made me think. What do you do with an e-mail like that? You celebrate it!
So on Strategic Service Sunday, I talked about serving in the local church and the opportunity to get involved. I used all my persuasion skills because we needed to enlist lots of volunteers in the following three weeks to staff our fall programs.
During that service I said, "Let me read you an e-mail from one of our volunteers."
Since Greg was back home by then, I'd asked him to sit in the front row wearing his military uniform. I read the e-mail. People were visibly moved.
Then I said, "Greg, would you stand?" And people applauded. After that service, more people volunteered than we could have imagined.
Nothing gives definition to vision like celebrating victories.
Baptism is another great opportunity to celebrate. In order to be baptized in our church, in addition to acknowledging a personal Christian faith, each person must do a two to three-minute videotaped testimony that we play in the service right before the baptism.
This is their opportunity to tell their story to the whole congregation. We encourage them to share what God has done in their life. One will say, "I was lost and somebody invited me to North Point. I came, I trusted Christ, and now I'm in a small group." Then they are baptized, and their small group stands and cheers. That embodies the vision. Almost every Sunday we find a way to celebrate, hoot and holler, yell and scream.
Once a year isn't enough. Spontaneously isn't enough. You must celebrate the vision over and over.
Learn to live it
Your willingness to embody the vision of your organization has a direct impact on your credibility as a leader. The moment you begin to look for ways to celebrate something that's not happening in your own life, people will know. One of the things that my wife Sandra and I are committed to is developing relationships with unchurched friends.
My oldest son, Andrew, is 11. He was selected to be on an All-Star baseball team this spring. This community baseball team was our mission field, and we were there to be an influence, to connect with and pray for the kids on the team and their parents.
As the season went on, Andrew wasn't getting much playing time. Occasionally he'd be put in right field. The coaches promised to play him but rarely did. He tried to be strong, but his heart would break every time.
At one point, we had won enough games to qualify for the state finals. One night as they played the remaining, relatively meaningless, regular season game and were losing 12-3, Andrew was still warming the bench. Eventually the coach put him in right field. Then, just before Andrew was due to bat, the coach pulled him out for another batter.
There was my son, batting helmet on, having to trot back to the bench in a game that didn't matter.
I felt a level of anger I had never experienced as an adult.
I got up and went around to the other side of the ball field to nurse my anger. I was thinking of what I was going to say to the coaches. There was no excuse for this!
Then, just as the game was about to end, a guy behind me said, "Andy."
I turned around. He told me his name and started talking. I'm thinking, Look … I'm focused. I'm angry. I'm rehearsing my speech.
"Andy, I just got to tell you," he said, "I hadn't been to church in over 30 years. But my wife started going to North Point, and she started trying to get me to come."
As he's telling me this story, inside I'm thinking, Oh no you don't, Lord. I came over here to be mad! This may be Andrew's last game. Nobody treats my son this way! And you are not going to mess me up with this unchurched person.
He went on and on. The game was over. He shared about how he'd been coming to North Point and had begun to read his Bible, joined a small group Bible study, and his life had changed.
I know I was supposed to be happy, but I didn't want to hear it because I couldn't wait to go over and lecture the coach. But as he talked, I felt like God was embracing me. Remember why you're here. Remember. Remember.
After the game, both teams were supposed to go for ice cream. I was thinking, I'm not going. I can't face those coaches. But Andrew wanted to be with his team, so we got the whole family in the car. I was still steaming; I couldn't even talk.
Nine-year-old Garret picked up on my emotions. "I can't believe the coach," he said, "I can't believe it!"
I can't describe how close I was to losing it, but the reality of the situation finally dawned on me.
By God's grace I said to my family: "Didn't we decide this spring we're not here because of baseball? Right, Andrew? I think that maybe something good will come from this. We can't quit, because this isn't about baseball." And I made myself get some ice cream.
Not long ago I saw one of the coaches and his family in the third row of our church. In a meeting with the coaches and parents at the season's end, the coach praised Andrew for his attitude and said the rest of the team needed to have the same attitude.
But I can't describe how close I was to losing it that night.
Life is brutal on vision. It can cause serious vision leakage. But if we as leaders can live through the stuff of life to maintain a focus on the vision, our people will, too.
Andy Stanley is pastor of North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia.
Vision Leaks
How do you keep the church's passion for ministry from deflating?Andy StanleyJanuary 1, 2004
Vision doesn't stick; it doesn't have natural adhesive. Instead, vision leaks. You've repeated the vision for your church a hundred times. Then someone will ask a question that makes you think, What happened? Didn't they hear what we've said over and over? Don't they know what this church is all about?
You can spot leakage by listening for three things:
1. Prayer requests. What people pray for will tell you more than anything else whether they are locked into the vision and priorities of the church. When you are in a leadership meeting, are the only prayer requests for sick people? When I'm in such a meeting, I say, "Whoa, is anybody in this group burdened for an unchurched or unsaved friend? Yes, let's pray for the sick people. Now, what else can we pray for?"
2. Stories of great things happening in people's lives. If there are no stories, then maybe the vision for life transformation has leaked.
3. What people complain about. If people are complaining about the wrong stuff, then vision is leaking. When they complain about the music, or the parking, or that the church is too big, or there are too many people they don't know, you can respond, "I know. God is blessing us." But it's a sign of vision leakage.
I am often tempted to get frustrated with the people who don't understand the vision, but I have to ask myself some important questions. What do I need to do to assure that we have a compelling vision as an organization, and what must I do to make sure it doesn't leak? If the vision is not communicated in a compelling way, then the organization is going to be unfocused. Wherever focus is lacking, only random activity is left. That's when you wake up and find you don't like the organization you're leading.
It's our job as leaders to get everyone oriented and focused on our main purpose.What causes leaks?
There are three reasons vision seeps away: success, failure, and everything in between.
Success means your options multiply. Size increases complexity, and complexity can confuse vision.
Our church was at its most efficient when there were just six of us sitting around the table. Everybody knew and understood everything. It was as smart and efficient as the organization has ever been. This efficiency leads to success, and success gives birth to complexity, the enemy of efficiency and vision. Many churches become successful organizations where everyone is busy, but they've lost connection with the vision.
Failure will also knock a hole in your vision, if you let it. When a plan or strategy fails, people are tempted to assume it was the wrong vision. Plans and strategies can always be changed and improved. But vision doesn't change. Visions are simply refined with time.
Our first fundraising campaign was a total failure. No money came in, and I didn't follow up or follow through. One day a wonderful lady in our church came up and asked, "Andy, how's it going with the fundraising?" I answered, "It's not going very well at all." She said, "Do you think God's trying to tell us something?"
She clearly was implying that since the plan wasn't working, then the vision for this church must be wrong.
But I knew the vision was right, so I said, "Yes, I think God is trying to tell us something. He's trying to tell us it was a terrible fundraising idea."
We don't have to change the vision because a plan doesn't work out.
You know what else is tough on vision? Life. Every single day of my life works against the vision. Vision is about what could be and should be; life is about right-this-minute. Life is about the kids and the laundry and the doctor and the house payment.
No wonder vision leaks. Monday comes along and rips it off the wall. The urgent and legitimate needs of today can cause us to lose our vision.
In church life, nothing unfocuses us faster than haphazard, "y'all come" programing. Everybody has a favorite program. But adding too many programs to the church schedule will de-focus your church like nothing else.
So we ask hard questions of each potential program: Is this event a step toward maturity, or just more programing? Unless it makes a clear contribution to maturity and life transformation, it will likely become a vision leak.
There are three things you need to do in order to make your vision stick.
Repetition: good, good, good
None of us casts vision enough. Why? Because we think we've already said these things.
Every time I do our January sermon series on vision, I try not to look at last year's notes, but it ends up being the same message anyway. As a communicator I feel the need to come up with something fresh and new. Yet originality is not needed here.
For vision to stick, it has to be cast over and over and over and over, and not just over and over.
Watch your timing
Be strategic about when you cast vision. Obviously, Labor Day weekend is not a good Sunday.
At North Point, we take two or three Sundays every January to reiterate what is vitally important and explain why we do what we're doing.
We also have a period in May or June, just before school is out, when we spend three weeks on "Strategic Service." I cast the vision for volunteers. I talk about mission, vision, values, and what's coming up next fall. It's also the time we recruit leaders for the upcoming school year.
Cast strategically
Whether it's across the table with a church leader, at a planning retreat, or talking to the whole church—every time you talk about what could be and should be, you're casting vision.
For instance, every one of my newsletter articles is vision oriented. I don't write devotional thoughts—those I can give on Sundays. If people are going to read a newsletter, I want every article to remind them of our mission and vision.
When we talk about the vision, it needs to be in a way that's clear and compelling to those we are addressing. Three components help me keep the vision compelling:
1. Define the problem. You must ask the question, What problem is my organization attempting to solve? There is something that will not get done if we don't do it. If we don't do what we do, there's a group of people that won't be reached. When you talk about vision, you need to begin by talking about why your church exists. What is the problem that God has called you to solve?
2. Offer a solution. Your vision is the solution to a problem, and when you can couple a problem that people feel emotionally with a clear solution, you are on your way to capturing their hearts. Then you can also capture a piece of their time and effort. Is your vision for your church a solution to a problem?
3. Present an urgent reason. In other words, answer the questions, Why must we do this? And why must we do it now?
I'll never forget when we started North Point. Most of the people who came to our initial meeting about starting a church passed about a dozen churches on their way. What do you say when you stand up in front of those people and tell them about starting another church?
Some natural questions have to be faced: Why in the world are you starting another church? What is it that's not being done that needs to be done? What can we do about it? And why are we the ones to move in that direction?
So I talked about the need for "relevant environments" where lost and disillusioned people could connect with their Heavenly Father. I explained that it wasn't God who turned people off, it was usually a person's previous experiences with the church. Our vision was to create a safe, relevant place for lost people and Christians to bring their lost friends. The reason for the now was simply the urgency for people to come to Christ, not knowing when He will return.
I had to answer those questions so clearly that everybody who heard me talk about starting this church knew "Andy's going to do it anyway."
With clear answers to those questions, something comes alive in people, and the vision drives them to contribute their time, talents, and treasure.
If you can develop a phrase that you can say over and over to your people, whether it's across the lunch table or in your sermons, then you are on your way to casting vision.
At North Point, we put it this way: "Our mission is to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ by creating environments where people are encouraged and equipped to pursue intimacy with God, community with insiders, and influence with outsiders."
Learn to celebrate the vision
Many churches never stop to celebrate, and they're missing a great—and fun—opportunity to reinforce the vision. Celebration is what puts skin on the vision. I received one of those great e-mails from a lady in our church. It brought tears to my eyes. She wrote: "In your talk last Sunday you spoke about the impact that small group leaders have on the children in their group. I wanted to let you know about my son's small group leader. My son Graham is in the fifth grade and his group leader is Greg.
"As you know, Greg was called into active service as a part of the Iraqi freedom mission. Greg was sent to Italy, then Turkey, and then to an aircraft carrier. But did that stop him from being concerned about the members of his small group? No. Greg sent e-mails from Turkey to the kids in his group, telling what was doing and asking how the kids were doing. He even went so far as to call Graham from Turkey."
Did that have an impact? It sure did! Greg cared enough about his small group members to keep in contact while in a war zone. It made me think. What do you do with an e-mail like that? You celebrate it!
So on Strategic Service Sunday, I talked about serving in the local church and the opportunity to get involved. I used all my persuasion skills because we needed to enlist lots of volunteers in the following three weeks to staff our fall programs.
During that service I said, "Let me read you an e-mail from one of our volunteers."
Since Greg was back home by then, I'd asked him to sit in the front row wearing his military uniform. I read the e-mail. People were visibly moved.
Then I said, "Greg, would you stand?" And people applauded. After that service, more people volunteered than we could have imagined.
Nothing gives definition to vision like celebrating victories.
Baptism is another great opportunity to celebrate. In order to be baptized in our church, in addition to acknowledging a personal Christian faith, each person must do a two to three-minute videotaped testimony that we play in the service right before the baptism.
This is their opportunity to tell their story to the whole congregation. We encourage them to share what God has done in their life. One will say, "I was lost and somebody invited me to North Point. I came, I trusted Christ, and now I'm in a small group." Then they are baptized, and their small group stands and cheers. That embodies the vision. Almost every Sunday we find a way to celebrate, hoot and holler, yell and scream.
Once a year isn't enough. Spontaneously isn't enough. You must celebrate the vision over and over.
Learn to live it
Your willingness to embody the vision of your organization has a direct impact on your credibility as a leader. The moment you begin to look for ways to celebrate something that's not happening in your own life, people will know. One of the things that my wife Sandra and I are committed to is developing relationships with unchurched friends.
My oldest son, Andrew, is 11. He was selected to be on an All-Star baseball team this spring. This community baseball team was our mission field, and we were there to be an influence, to connect with and pray for the kids on the team and their parents.
As the season went on, Andrew wasn't getting much playing time. Occasionally he'd be put in right field. The coaches promised to play him but rarely did. He tried to be strong, but his heart would break every time.
At one point, we had won enough games to qualify for the state finals. One night as they played the remaining, relatively meaningless, regular season game and were losing 12-3, Andrew was still warming the bench. Eventually the coach put him in right field. Then, just before Andrew was due to bat, the coach pulled him out for another batter.
There was my son, batting helmet on, having to trot back to the bench in a game that didn't matter.
I felt a level of anger I had never experienced as an adult.
I got up and went around to the other side of the ball field to nurse my anger. I was thinking of what I was going to say to the coaches. There was no excuse for this!
Then, just as the game was about to end, a guy behind me said, "Andy."
I turned around. He told me his name and started talking. I'm thinking, Look … I'm focused. I'm angry. I'm rehearsing my speech.
"Andy, I just got to tell you," he said, "I hadn't been to church in over 30 years. But my wife started going to North Point, and she started trying to get me to come."
As he's telling me this story, inside I'm thinking, Oh no you don't, Lord. I came over here to be mad! This may be Andrew's last game. Nobody treats my son this way! And you are not going to mess me up with this unchurched person.
He went on and on. The game was over. He shared about how he'd been coming to North Point and had begun to read his Bible, joined a small group Bible study, and his life had changed.
I know I was supposed to be happy, but I didn't want to hear it because I couldn't wait to go over and lecture the coach. But as he talked, I felt like God was embracing me. Remember why you're here. Remember. Remember.
After the game, both teams were supposed to go for ice cream. I was thinking, I'm not going. I can't face those coaches. But Andrew wanted to be with his team, so we got the whole family in the car. I was still steaming; I couldn't even talk.
Nine-year-old Garret picked up on my emotions. "I can't believe the coach," he said, "I can't believe it!"
I can't describe how close I was to losing it, but the reality of the situation finally dawned on me.
By God's grace I said to my family: "Didn't we decide this spring we're not here because of baseball? Right, Andrew? I think that maybe something good will come from this. We can't quit, because this isn't about baseball." And I made myself get some ice cream.
Not long ago I saw one of the coaches and his family in the third row of our church. In a meeting with the coaches and parents at the season's end, the coach praised Andrew for his attitude and said the rest of the team needed to have the same attitude.
But I can't describe how close I was to losing it that night.
Life is brutal on vision. It can cause serious vision leakage. But if we as leaders can live through the stuff of life to maintain a focus on the vision, our people will, too.
Andy Stanley is pastor of North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)