This year for Lent I decided to give up soda. The spiritual activity that prepares us to truly celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the excruciating sacrificial death of being crucified ….and I am giving up soda! WOW!
You don’t need to tell me, I myself, feel such a wimp!
Even worse, I’m really struggling. I’ve lost count of how many lunch times I’ve craved a cold Diet Pepsi. We’re only just past half way and if I didn’t think God could see me – I’d quit.
Today I was reading of an older Christian guy from the US who moved to Kenya. He went there not as a pastor or as a church leader but simply as a helper. He and his wife gave up everything they had here and moved to Kenya just to help, to do whatever is needed. Due to what’s happened in Kenya over the past few weeks they are living as displaced persons in a foreign country with nothing. Although they could have come back to the US they have chosen to stay and stay because of Jesus. And I’m struggling to not have a Diet Pepsi!
[Check out this blog-site to keep you involved with an amazing Msafara by Kenyan pastors http://msafara.wordpress.com/ as they lead the healing and reconciliation in Kenya.]
This kind of story to highlight my wimpiness could be retold a thousand times and more by huge heroes of the faith.
So here’s the odd thing. I feel a wimp for just giving up soda. I feel a total wimp for struggling to give it up. Yet, every lunch time when I deny the urge and drink water with my Subway I receive this incredible spiritual high! (I hope it’s not because at my core I’m Scottish, and an ex-Scottish banker and the buck I’ve saved at lunch time is really my reason for this spiritual high.)
How strange is spiritual formation?!
How strange is the discipline of denial? It seems too relative!
Compared to what my friends displaced in Kenya are doing and giving, my wimpish Lent denial seems utterly nothing.
Yet, for us both at nearly the opposite ends of the denial spectrum …we meet the same God, we receive the same spiritual strengthening.
I know this to be true because I know of extreme times in our lives when Carolyn and I have given up huge things – family, country, and career. And the amazing thing – in giving up my Diet Pepsi the victory I sense from that gives me a similar spiritual experience as when we gave up our jobs to follow Christ.
Weird!
Or is it more - wonderful!!!
How neat is our God?
He views the ordinary and the extraordinary as both means of grace to reveal himself to us.
God meets us equally in the small as well as the big!
This is the theology of grace.
Jesus once told a parable that astounds everybody. Some guys are hanging out waiting for work and early in the morning they’re hired. Later in the day some other guys get hired – like the middle of the afternoon. At the end of the day – those who worked from early morning to sundown and the guys who work only a few hours – all get the same pay!
[Check out Matthew 20]
Grace is not only how we receive God’s salvation, it’s also how we live in His salvation.
It’s the theology of the body …..the hidden or small parts are of equal value to the prominent big parts!
This is God.
I love this about God.
You can experience God washing your pots and pans …as much as having done a 40 day prayer and fasting exercise.
You can experience God in the high of an intense worship service …but also singing in the shower.
You can experience God in giving up everything to go and serve him in some foreign country …..and also by struggling to give up soda for Lent.
It’s as if God is inviting all to experience him – at all times, everywhere, in everyway!
Friday, February 29, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Turns out that thorn in the flesh might be a good thing after all!
So I used to always think that when St Paul spoke of his “thorn in the flesh” that he was referring to something physical. Some illness he had, some problem he had that restricted him.
Of course commentators have had a field day trying to figure this one out – was it Paul’s way of speaking about his wife, or was it a sin he had that he couldn’t quit from – perhaps lust?
But as I sat and thought about this “thorn in the flesh” I was always coming up with something either tangible or something I could define. I was always analyzing this (and much of my theology) from the earth up.
But maybe Paul was thinking in the other direction.
Maybe this thorn in the flesh was not something of him – some sin, or weakness or even illness. Could the thorn in the flesh have been something of God that he couldn’t understand?
Was the thorn - his fleshly limitation to understanding what God was about?
Was the thorn in the flesh something that said more about God than about some weakness or shortcoming in Paul?
So I’ve gotten to thinking that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was Paul’s way of saying “I don’t understand what God is doing. I’m confused. And in this I don’t know, I can’t even claim to know what God is all doing.”
The amazing thing about this weakness is there is incredible strength!
But if I take this as a theological thought, it’s a theological thought that then begins to overflow into so much more of my life, my ministry, my calling.
This takes me back again to my last blog and the rethinking of vision versus values. This last ‘vision versus values’ blog has received the most responses back to me both on the blog and via calls and emails.
The strong vision way of leading takes us into a mindset that says – I know what God is doing and here is the vision to see that all happen here.
The second, value based leadership, embraces this ‘thorn in the flesh’ perplexion.
We don’t know what God is doing, or where God is taking us – but what we do know is something about who God is, what God is passionate about – values – and as long as we focus on raising up those values then we may not know where God is taking us but we know we won’t miss it.
And I think this is what we have to begin to think further on as leaders.
Too often out thinking is earth up.
Don Miller (of Blue Like Jazz and Searching For God Knows What notoriety) is about to release a book talking about the concept of story. Don Miller is going to hit here close to where I’m trying to hit.
We need to begin to think of our leadership more in terms of narrative and story rather than vision and goals.
God has invited us into a story. It’s a true story – in fact there is no truer story – but it is a story, a narrative. God never invited us into a strategic plan or some annual goals.
There are components of a good narrative - central character, plot, conflict …..and essential to a good story is it is never written linearly.
It’s not written predictably.
It’s not written that the reader knows where they are going!
The glue that holds it together is the characters.
Now to transliterate this into what I’m suggesting:
The characters in our story are the values that we know God holds and we need to hold. As long as we hold these values – not placed within some 5 year plan or some central strategic document – but held within the livingness of the story, constantly featuring in the story we are writing ……a great story will be written.
If postmodernity has settled.
If we are now in a new day of culture, thinking, engagement, it is held with new words.
Words such as story, but also words such as organic, organism, morph, texture, motion.
These are the new leadership words of the emerged cultured.
They are significantly different than the words of a decade ago – vision, purpose driven, goals, targets, strategic plan, mission statement.
So for a Senior Pastor our role is changing from always casting vision, hosting staff meetings talking about reaching our goals, hitting our targets or laying out our next mountain to take - to birthing of value, feeding, nurturing, tending, releasing - a different nuance to our leadership that we need to engage with.
Now here’s the really good thing about a good story.
In a good story there are always positive turns and negative turns.
In a vision driven style of leadership negative turns are disallowed.
But in story they are allowed.
In a vision driven church if you don’t make a goal or a hit a target or stick to the plan …..you’ve failed. But in a story whatever turn you take is still part of the story.
So my leadership is no longer going into my office, pulling out the master plan and making sure that I know exactly where we are on this plan.
It’s going into my office and taking the characters of the story – our values – and bringing them more alive in our story.
And here’s the best part – I go home at the end of the day not thinking about all the stuff that still needs to be done to reach this goal or that goal ….but I go home knowing that the values are living in the lives of each person who is part of our staff, our leadership, our church and the story is still being written even when I’ve put my pen down for that day!
Like true characters the values live …whereas a plan is only worked on.
There is a ‘thorn in the flesh’ like Paul that we as leaders must be content to live with.
Vision, goals and target leadership does not help that happen – values based leadership does.
Of course commentators have had a field day trying to figure this one out – was it Paul’s way of speaking about his wife, or was it a sin he had that he couldn’t quit from – perhaps lust?
But as I sat and thought about this “thorn in the flesh” I was always coming up with something either tangible or something I could define. I was always analyzing this (and much of my theology) from the earth up.
But maybe Paul was thinking in the other direction.
Maybe this thorn in the flesh was not something of him – some sin, or weakness or even illness. Could the thorn in the flesh have been something of God that he couldn’t understand?
Was the thorn - his fleshly limitation to understanding what God was about?
Was the thorn in the flesh something that said more about God than about some weakness or shortcoming in Paul?
So I’ve gotten to thinking that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was Paul’s way of saying “I don’t understand what God is doing. I’m confused. And in this I don’t know, I can’t even claim to know what God is all doing.”
The amazing thing about this weakness is there is incredible strength!
But if I take this as a theological thought, it’s a theological thought that then begins to overflow into so much more of my life, my ministry, my calling.
This takes me back again to my last blog and the rethinking of vision versus values. This last ‘vision versus values’ blog has received the most responses back to me both on the blog and via calls and emails.
The strong vision way of leading takes us into a mindset that says – I know what God is doing and here is the vision to see that all happen here.
The second, value based leadership, embraces this ‘thorn in the flesh’ perplexion.
We don’t know what God is doing, or where God is taking us – but what we do know is something about who God is, what God is passionate about – values – and as long as we focus on raising up those values then we may not know where God is taking us but we know we won’t miss it.
And I think this is what we have to begin to think further on as leaders.
Too often out thinking is earth up.
Don Miller (of Blue Like Jazz and Searching For God Knows What notoriety) is about to release a book talking about the concept of story. Don Miller is going to hit here close to where I’m trying to hit.
We need to begin to think of our leadership more in terms of narrative and story rather than vision and goals.
God has invited us into a story. It’s a true story – in fact there is no truer story – but it is a story, a narrative. God never invited us into a strategic plan or some annual goals.
There are components of a good narrative - central character, plot, conflict …..and essential to a good story is it is never written linearly.
It’s not written predictably.
It’s not written that the reader knows where they are going!
The glue that holds it together is the characters.
Now to transliterate this into what I’m suggesting:
The characters in our story are the values that we know God holds and we need to hold. As long as we hold these values – not placed within some 5 year plan or some central strategic document – but held within the livingness of the story, constantly featuring in the story we are writing ……a great story will be written.
If postmodernity has settled.
If we are now in a new day of culture, thinking, engagement, it is held with new words.
Words such as story, but also words such as organic, organism, morph, texture, motion.
These are the new leadership words of the emerged cultured.
They are significantly different than the words of a decade ago – vision, purpose driven, goals, targets, strategic plan, mission statement.
So for a Senior Pastor our role is changing from always casting vision, hosting staff meetings talking about reaching our goals, hitting our targets or laying out our next mountain to take - to birthing of value, feeding, nurturing, tending, releasing - a different nuance to our leadership that we need to engage with.
Now here’s the really good thing about a good story.
In a good story there are always positive turns and negative turns.
In a vision driven style of leadership negative turns are disallowed.
But in story they are allowed.
In a vision driven church if you don’t make a goal or a hit a target or stick to the plan …..you’ve failed. But in a story whatever turn you take is still part of the story.
So my leadership is no longer going into my office, pulling out the master plan and making sure that I know exactly where we are on this plan.
It’s going into my office and taking the characters of the story – our values – and bringing them more alive in our story.
And here’s the best part – I go home at the end of the day not thinking about all the stuff that still needs to be done to reach this goal or that goal ….but I go home knowing that the values are living in the lives of each person who is part of our staff, our leadership, our church and the story is still being written even when I’ve put my pen down for that day!
Like true characters the values live …whereas a plan is only worked on.
There is a ‘thorn in the flesh’ like Paul that we as leaders must be content to live with.
Vision, goals and target leadership does not help that happen – values based leadership does.
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