As leaders, we spend a lot of time talking about the tangible things we do to succeed. Communication. Programming. Team building. Ethics.
All of these are good things.
I have always attempted to put my spiritual journey first, and then let the leadership stuff come after.
What are you doing in your life to prepare yourself to set high spiritual standards?
Convenience.
We all cherish it. My friend older friend Robert accuses me of being born with a mouse in my hand. Yeah it’s true we do have the world at our fingertips with the internet.
I wouldn’t blame the internet and todays technology for our dependence on convenience. It’s more than that. Society progresses like crazy and it has become exponential. Progression makes the world smaller and more accessible. I think this is fine. But there is a byproduct of all the progression and convenience.
Wonder.
Is there a lack of wonder that has grown out of our quasi futuristic society?
Technology puts a lot of power in my hands and makes me feel big. When what I really need everyday is to feel small.
Today I will wonder.
I would love it if I could just be a spiritual giant all the time. Then I could post lots of cool and encouraging stuff to let you know how to achieve my elevated spiritual state that I constantly dwell in. People would tell each other how awesome I am.
But the truth is, sometimes I don’t have much to offer. I get too busy. Or something falls apart in my life.
This has been one of those weeks. Nothing dramatic or tragic, just the fact that my human needs have taken precedent over my spiritual needs. I know it sucks, but I have a family to feed and bills to pay. So I am gonna go for a long run and listen to God. Maybe I can be spiritual again.
Right Now, This all I have to give.
David Crowder Band | All I Can Say
I have spent some time with pastors at some other churches lately and the thing that has been on my heart has been solitude. I ask every pastor I have a chance to talk with if they are getting considerable solitude every week. Most are not.
If you are a slave to a program then getting solitude and focusing on your own spiritual growth isn’t that important, because programming itself isn’t spiritual. I know a lot of my readers who are in full time ministry are not pastors but fill a non-pastoral program type roll. That’s different. Although everyone should make it a point to seek solitude, pastors need to seek it on a whole other level.
Jesus was always breaking away to plug in and recharge. He knew the importance of spending time alone in solitude. He started his ministry with forty days alone. What I would give to be able to do that.
I believe pastors should make the effort to have a solitude day every week. We should take a full 8 hour day and get away from everything to pray an connect with God. No phone calls (except my wife), no email, no sermon prep. Just solitude, worship and prayer.
Solitude can’t happen at Starbucks or Panera. It needs to happen somewhere where you can get alone.
A perfect solitude day for me starts with a surf. I will paddle out at a ‘B’ wave without much of a lineup and literally soak in God’s creation and power. Or I will throw on my pack and hit a trail and escape into the wilderness. This is the listening part of the day. God speaks to me through is creation in a major way.
Next I will read the Bible for a couple hours and write in my journal. I try to avoid thinking too hard about vision and ministry stuff and focus more on me, my family and our core leadership.
Toward the end of the day I will crack open what ever book it is that I’m reading at the time, even if it’s a novel.
I spend the last part of the day presenting my requests to God…I like to get the last word in.
The hardest part is carving out the time. But as a pastor this should be at the very top of your to do list. So do it, please. You need it, and the people that you think you are helping by scheduling another meeting need you to do it even more.
We load up the kids on Saturday from time to time and head down to the farmer’s market to see what’s going on and to pick up some fresh fruits and veggies. The coolest thing about the farmer’s market is that you literally buy stuff right from the people that pulled it out of the ground or picked it off of a tree. The guy selling you the apples is passionate about apples and will tell you the differences in taste and explain the nuances of the inner soul of each and every apple. He probably has all his trees names and talks to them. He knows when they are doing well and when they need tender care.
The guy selling the artisan breads made them. He didn’t order them from a vendor and set them out to sell at a markup. He created each and every loaf. It’s the same across the whole market, people who are passionate and real and they are right there. From the guy dealing in Maui onions, to the lady selling weird turquoise jewelery. There is even a dude who sells worm poop, it’s for fertilizing your garden. You can have a real relationship with the guy who made the strawberry jam. Humans are involved.
It’s counter to the experience we are used to having in America. We go to a store and we like the fact that we can get in there and see the neatly packaged food with fancy logos and sexy people on the wrappers. We like the fact that the people that work there are clean and dressed nice and probably never been to a farm. We like the fact that we are ten people removed from who ever made the bread and the average item in the store traveled 1500 miles before landing in our shopping cart. The shopping experience has become very institutional, very impersonal, and the worst part is that we have grown to like it as a society. I know when I
The same thing has happened to church in America. It has lost it’s roots as a true community of people closely connected and become an institution. People have become used to ‘church’ being served up in a very refined and well packaged kit that markets well. It isn’t too offensive and it doesn’t risk too much to be different, and if it does, it is merely for shock value and the underlying motive is really to fill the seats. The programming is complete and doesn’t demand that I get involved and shift my life to implement the super cool vision statement and neatly listed purposes.
The farmer’s market church is different. The produce served is not aesthetically perfect but is pure of pesticides and other artificial crap. The offerings are seasonal and they might not have what you think you want when you want it. The farmer’s market church is organic and only exists and has identity based on who is there an what they bring. There is no fancy packaging to hide the imperfections. Best of all, you can have a relationship with the farmers and the community of the market.
I think this is what church used to look like, but has made a lot of changes through the industrial revolution and in the shadow of capitalism. It’s not the church’s fault that we have become like this, we are just trying to keep up with society and be relevant and there is nothing wrong with that. But I do see a shift happening. The baby boomer’s love the well packaged church, and we are quick to apply that knowledge to tap into their money. I see my generation as one that is over the ‘big show’ and I’m glad. The church has a great opportunity ahead of it to set the tone for our communities as we move away from the institutional church to a true community of believers.
Time will tell.
I poked my head in at the local CrusadeConcertHomeSchoolNotOfThisWorldFEST and had the chance to be bored to tears by the speaker presenting the gospel. Let me start off by saying that I think it is possible for an event like this to have an effect, but I have yet to meet someone who has pinned their spiritual journey on the experience.
The alter call is a tradition as old as drinking songs with biblical lyrics (hymns) and in America they are the main event, the final quarter, the ninth inning as it were. It has always been the job of the pastor, ex-gang member, sports star or who ever, to close the deal for the people we haul out to the cool bait and switch Christian event.This is starting to sound like the Catholic church where spirituality is the job of the clergy.
You know the ingredients – 3 parts emotion : 1 part logic : 2 parts Newsboys and a splash of made up stories and BAM, Christian outreach event.
I have been encouraged in recent years as Christian leaders start to get it. They are realizing that these events just don’t cut it. We are starting to remember that salvation is a journey and not a moment.
(more…)
I’ve been reading Dallas Willard’s Spirit of the Disciplines this week, I would have to say that it is right on the money for where I am at and where God has been taking me lately.dallas
“
By modest estimate, more than a quarter of the entire population of the United States have professed an evangelical conversion experience. William Iverson wryly observes that “A pound of meat would surely be affected by a quarter pound of salt. If this is real Christianity, the ‘salt of the earth,’ where is the effect of which Jesus spoke?”
What are you prepared to do?
I was sitting and talking with some friends yesterday about a trip they recently took up to the mountains with their kids. It was their 9 year old sons first time sledding and I was captivated by the description of how much fun he had. I can picture the look in his eyes as he flew down the hill, snow kicking up all around. As a nine year old boy he had tapped into his calling in that moment…to play.
Then it happened. A bump. A crash. A flip. A scrape.
