Looking Back: I Give Up!

2 12 2009

This morning, I am grateful for three weeks of good family visits and ministry time away from home (two weeks in the Dominican Republic, then one week in Sacramento for Thanksgiving and some ministry afterwards). I am also grateful to be flying back to Orange county where I’ll be staying put for a few more local ministry events, but more so for some writing time I’ll finally be blocking out in my schedule.

Meanwhile, I was enjoying some past entries in this blog and came across the one linked below on the four marks of true surrender as Gerald May described them in his book Care of Mind, Care of Spirit. It’s well worth the revisit.

LINK: “I Give Up!”

Buy a copy of Care of Mind/Care of Spirit on Amazon.com


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Categories : Gerald May, Journal, Spiritual Direction, Spiritual Reading, Surrender

The Power of Small Beginnings

1 12 2009

This morning, as I enjoyed some unhurried time with God in the early hours, I came across this from Elton Trueblood on how the kingdom of God grows as from a seed:

“The wonderful thing about seed is that it wants to get out. Near where this is being written is a toadstool that, in the night, broke through the asphalt surface of our parking lot, lifting into the air a disk of asphalt nearly three inches in diameter. This provides some hint of how the supposed conflict between pietism and activism is overcome. If the deep underground vitality is adequately nourished, i.e., if the life of devotion is genuine, it will be bound to crack the economic and political barriers. In fact, it cannot be stopped in its redemptive process. Like the mustard seed, it will produce “large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade’ (Mark 4:32). This is how the Kingdom grows. First a few people are deeply changed, then they sink their spiritual roots into the soil of God’s love, and then the conditions under which they and their brothers live are changed. Renewal begins on inside.” (Elton Trueblood. The New Man for Our Time. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1970, p. 68.)

When I was cycling the Oregon coast in July, I saw this. The sides of the highway were freshly asphalted, but sprouts of grass and weed had already broken through and threatened to take over. Life wins. Life breaks through barriers.

What are some of the small beginnings God is inviting you to make? In what ways are you tempted instead to make a big splash instead? (Splashes are quite exciting in the moment, but grow quiet rather quickly with little to show for the effort).


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Categories : Inner Life, Kingdom of God, Spiritual Formation, Spiritual Growth, seed

Looking Back: Sharing Real Fruit

30 11 2009

Today and tomorrow, I’m enjoying some meetings with pastors in the Sacramento area. I stayed on a couple days longer than Gem and the boys (who drove home yesterday). I was browsing some past posts here, and found this one on the theme of sharing a real encounter with God with others (rather than just ideas about God). It continues to challenge and encourage me:

LINK: A Good Word: Sharing Real Fruit

Buy a copy of In Search of the Beyond on Amazon.com


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Categories : Carlo Caretto, Contemplation and Work, Ministry, Spiritual Reading, Uncategorized

Advent: A Few Thoughts

29 11 2009

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the New Year’s Day of the Christian calendar. I’m sorry not to be able to enjoy most of it with Gem and the boys. They are leaving Sacramento early this morning to drive home to Mission Viejo. We’ve had a great Thanksgiving up here.

This morning, I will be visiting One Life Church in Lincoln, CA. The pastor is Troy Dean, who I met fifteen years ago as a fellow Fuller Seminary student who took The Leadership Institute’s course there. He asked to interview me with two simple questions:

  • What is an everyday definition of spiritual formation?
  • What is a practical suggestion about growing in spiritual formation in this Advent season?

As to the first, the one-line definition of spiritual formation that I was part of affirming in San Antonio this last July was:

Christian spiritual formation is the process of being shaped by the Spirit into the likeness of Christ, filled with love for God and the world.

Key here is:

  • “Process” – Spiritual formation sees the Christian life as an ongoing, developing, lifelong journey with God, not just as a one-time event.
  • “of being shaped” – Though this shaping has obvious implications for how I behave, what I do, and how I related to others, it begins with my mind, my heart and my soul – how I think, Who I trust, where my heart is at. It is a process of inward shaping.
  • “by the Spirit” – We are obviously cooperators in the process of our own spiritual formation, but the work of God’s Spirit is primary. We don’t transform ourselves, but are transformed by God’s Spirit.
  • “into the likeness of Christ” – We talk about becoming like Jesus as Christians, perhaps asking the question, “What Would Jesus Do?” Spiritual formation is the practical outworking of what Paul wrestles in prayer for in Galatians 4:19, “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” Paul is speaking to Christians who were being tempted to focus on outward rules, practices, ceremonies and observances. Spiritual formation focuses on the reality that the Christian life is Christ making Himself more truly and fully at home in our lives. There is an element of mystery here.
  • “filled with love for God and the world” – Spiritual formation is the process of growing in my life of love for God, for one another and for His world.

Spiritual formation remembers that the Christian life is a relationship with Christ that is deepening in me. It remembers that prayer is not so much something I do, but Someone I am with. The Scriptures are not just a book full of true principles about how life works, but a place of interactive relationship with God.

As for the second question about Advent, the most basic idea is that today is the New Year’s Day for Christians all over the world. It is the first day of the Christian calendar for many Christian churches. Advent just means “coming.” Christ came to make Himself at home among us. He took on a human life like ours. We remember Christ’s coming as Immanuel, God with us.

As a practical suggestion for living Advent in the next four weeks, I will suggest a couple of questions on the theme that I left with a group of pastors in the Dominican Republic two weeks ago. I took them to two scripture passages where Jesus uses the word “Come” as an invitation to His disciples.

In Matthew 11, Jesus invites, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” In Matthew 4, when He calls some of His first followers, He invites, “Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” Come to me. Come follow me.

As we enter a season to remember Christ’s coming to us, perhaps a good way to live it to take these two invitations of Jesus and turn them into questions that begin our day, and carry us through our day:

  • Jesus, how are You inviting me to come to You as I begin this new day?
  • Jesus, how are You inviting me to come follow You as I walk through this day?

Perhaps you’ll read a gospel this month with these two questions in mind. How are You inviting me to come to You and follow You in this passage?

By the way, Mark Roberts, scholar in residence at the Laity Lodge in Texas, has a great Advent series he posts every year on his blog. Here’s a link to his first post for today.


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Categories : Advent, Spiritual Formation, The Leadership Institute

Deep-Rooted Leadership

28 11 2009

One of our core themes in The Leadership Institute is holding the cultivation of the inner life (of prayer and communion with God) and the outer life (of ministry and leadership) in healthy tension. It’s easy to give attention to one and neglect the other.

One writer who spoke often on these themes was Elton Trueblood. Let me share a couple of paragraphs from him this morning (and forgive the lack of inclusive language. Trueblood was an inclusive soul who wrote at a time when the language hadn’t caught up).

“The man who supposes that he has no time to pray or to reflect, because the social tasks are numerous and urgent, will soon find that he has become fundamentally unproductive, because he will have separated his life from its roots. It will not then be surprising if, in his promotion of what seems to him to be a good cause, he becomes bitter in his condemnation of others. Without the concurrent cultivation of the inner and the outer life, it is almost inevitable that a man deeply involved in social action should become self-righteous.” (Elton Trueblood. The New Man for Our Time. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1970, p. 60-61.)

Fundamentally unproductive. Ouch! In our urgency to reach the unreached or care for the countless real needs around us, do we become so driven that we no longer actually have life to share? A plant that has become uprooted will not live for long. A Christian leader who doesn’t have time for regular communion with God will find that his or her ministry may remain very busy, but will become increasingly unfruitful.

And ministry that ceases to be deeply rooted in the One who called Himself “gentle and humble in heart” will gradually become harsh and self-righteous. We cannot live in communion with Christ without taking on the nature of Christ—the fruit of the Spirit.

“To work without praying and without listening,” continues Thielicke, “means only to grow and spread oneself upward, without striking roots and without an equivalent in the earth.” (Trueblood, p. 67.)

In the mid-1990s, one of my favorite places to go for my monthly unhurried day with Christ was the L. A. Arboretum in Arcadia. I had a favorite bench under a huge, decades-old live oak tree. One winter, there was a violent windstorm in the area. When I visited next, the oak had toppled. The root system was shallow, and the trunk was somewhat hollow. It became a warning for me.

Will I give enough attention to the health of my soul in Christ to remain deeply rooted in the midst of my broad ministry engagements? A tree with immense above-ground development, but a lack of proportionate underground development is in danger of falling. So with Christian leaders.

Buy a copy of The New Man for Our Time on Amazon.com


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Categories : Contemplation and Work, Elton Trueblood, Leadership, Ministry, Prayer, fruitfulness

Looking Back: Marks of a Good Spiritual Director

27 11 2009

On this day after Thanksgiving, our family will be driving up into the foothills above Sacramento (near Placerville) for our annual visit to a Christmas tree farm. Gem’s allergic, so we won’t be buying a tree, but we’ll enjoy the crisp mountain air, hot chocolate/cider/coffee, fresh baked goodies, walking through the forest and almost always having the surprise of seeing an old Sacramento area friend or two. It’s a tradition I love. (And my brother, Dan, and his family are there with us in spirit since they started the tradition. It would be a long commute from Beijing, China).

Today, I’m pointing you back to a post from two years ago about five marks of a wise, trustworthy spiritual mentor. It is my prayer that we are becoming these sort of people.


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Categories : Looking Back, Maturity, Spiritual Direction, Spiritual Formation, spiritual guidance, spiritual leadership

Thanksgiving: An Antidote for Many Ills

26 11 2009

Though I’ll post this on Thanksgiving Thursday morning, I’m writing on our Wednesday morning drive from Mission Viejo to Sacramento. Gem and I have made this annual drive now twenty-five times.

For Thanksgiving, I’ll share a thought on the theme from Brennan Manning. (I posted these lines on their own last month):

“The foremost quality of a trusting disciple is gratefulness. Gratitude arises from the lived perception, evaluation, and acceptance of all of life as grace—as an undeserved and unearned gift from the Father’s hand. Such recognition is itself the work of grace, and acceptance of the gift is implicitly an acknowledgement of the Giver.” (Brennan Manning. Ruthless Trust. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2000, p. 24-25.)

While I was in the Dominican Republic over the last two weeks, I had an interesting conversation with the director of YWAM for the Caribbean. He shared the insight he had heard that gratitude is an antidote for pride. How? Because gratitude is remembering in God’s presence that all that I am and all that I have is really a gift from God. My life is a gift of His creation and His redemption. Gratitude is acknowledging grace. It is a way of affirming that the best work in my life has been and is being done by Another hand.

For what are you grateful on this day? Here are some of my gratitudes:

  • I thank God for countless evidences of His hand at work in and through me in the Dominican Republic. I’m especially grateful for my friends, Samuel & Kendra Luna, who are extending the ministry of The Leadership Institute there among missionaries and Dominican pastors.
  • I am grateful for a good reunion with my bride and my boys, especially as we share this annual drive north together.
  • I am thanking God for many new insights into unhurried time with God that I’ve learned while I was away that I will be writing up in December.
  • I continue to thank God for places of soul healing I’m experiencing in a therapy journey over the last eighteen months.
  • I’m grateful that in the midst of a down economy and some challenging debts, we are wealthier than we’ll ever imagine. (I see in my mind’s eye the very simple way of life of many of my Dominican brothers and sisters.)
  • I keep thanking God for the privilege of leading leaders into His presence through many different kinds of retreat. Recent days of retreat have been especially encouraging in impact and fruit.

In the midst of your favorite Thanksgiving foods, how do you want to acknowledge your own debt to the generosity of God today?


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Categories : Brennan Manning, Gratitude, Thankfulness

Burnout Stats: Satisfaction of Prayer Life

25 11 2009

More statistical evidence of pastoral burnout from Anne Jackson’s Mad Church Disease.

  • 21 percent of pastors pray less than 15 minutes a day.
  • Those most satisfied with their prayer life spend almost an hour in prayer per day; those who are least satisfied with their prayer life average 21 minutes per day.

(Jackson includes other stats on the pastor’s satisfaction level with their prayer life in her book).

Buy a copy of Mad Church Disease: Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic on Amazon.com


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Categories : Burn-out, Ministry, Prayer, pastors

A Good Word: Listening When We Speak

24 11 2009

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“A sermon cannot reach the level which spiritual religion demands unless the preacher is continuously sensitive to the needs of those about him, so that he is ready to shift either subject matter or emphasis on a moment’s notice. The true minister is not simply one who comes to the end of his openness to the leadings of the Holy Spirit.” (Elton Trueblood. The Essence of Spiritual Religion. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1936, p. 132)

 

I think this is what I am learning in preparation for retreats and presentations. Often, in the midst of retreat speaking or church preaching, I will feel “Spirit-nudged off-topic” moments. I sometimes wish I could capture those insights, but I might be tempted to rely on past insights and wisdom rather than welcoming fresh insights for fresh circumstances.

Buy a copy of The Essence of Spiritual Religion on Amazon.com


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Categories : Elton Trueblood, Preaching, Retreat, listening to God

More Pictures from the Dominican Republic

23 11 2009

Later today, I will get back on a Copa Airlines jet to make my way home. It will be a long day as I get back the four hours I gave up on the way here 12 days ago. I’m very grateful for all that God did in me here, and all that He was kind enough to do through me. Engaging in His work is such great honor. Sometimes, in my busyness, I forget this.

Last night, I posted a few more pictures from the  last few days of my ministry here on my Facebook page. (If we aren’t already Facebook compadres, I’d be glad to have you in my social community).

Thanks so much to you who prayed for me here. God opened doors that had been shut. God opened eyes that had been closed. God opened ears that had been stopped. Only He could have done it. And yours prayers were a powerful acknowledgement of that reality!


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Categories : Dominican Republic, Prayer

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