All posts by Rod White

15 habits of success the rich stole from poor Jesus

Leadership, The Mission,

Kevin Kruse of Forbes recently interviewed over 200 ultra-productive people including seven billionaires, 13 Olympians, 20 straight-A students and over 200 entrepreneurs hungry for success. He asked a simple, open-ended question, “What is your number one secret to productivity?” After analyzing all of their responses, he coded their answers into the 15 unique ideas I’ve adapted for Jesus-followers who want to make a difference.

You might not be an entrepreneur, Olympian, or millionaire—or even want to be—but their secrets might help you to get more done in less time, and help you to stop feeling so overworked and overwhelmed. We church planters bite off more than we can chew as a matter of habit. In order to keep up with Jesus, we need to do the best we can with what we’ve got.

successful at being anxious

Make the most of your time

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. – Ephesians 5:15-16

Most of us are still working on organizing our days into hour and half-hour blocks on our calendar (if we can find the calendar!). Super successful people know there are 1,440 minutes in every day and there is nothing more valuable than time. Money can be lost and made again, but time spent can never be reclaimed. Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller says, “To this day, I keep a schedule that is almost minute by minute.” The idea is “You must master your minutes to master your life.” This is especially important if you want to be a super gymnast or millionaire. And it is especially relevant if you are your own master. But any human, locked in time for a while, knows that disciplining our time makes us more effective in accomplishing what we have been given to do.

Focus on one main thing.

But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. – Philippians 3:13-14

Our handhelds get us to multitask all day and soon the day has been like running ahead of a zillion demanding tasks. Productive people know their Most Important Task (MIT) and work on it for one to two hours each morning, without interruptions. (Those of us with children at home are fondly remembering such a time). Tom Ziglar, CEO of Ziglar Inc., shared, “Invest the first part of your day working on your number one priority that will help build your business.” What task will have the biggest impact on reaching your goal? We are interested in being whole people who reach the whole world with the whole gospel.  What needs to happen?

Get over to-do lists.

For I do not want to see you now and make only a passing visit; I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. But I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me, — Romans 16:7-9

Super effective capitalists schedule everything on their calendars. Maybe you don’t care about making money, but you would like to get something done. A study found that only 41% of items on to-do lists are ever actually done (if you make a to-do list, verify that).  And all those undone items lead to stress and insomnia because of the Zeigarnik effect. Highly productive people put everything on their calendar and then work and live from that calendar. “Use a calendar and schedule your entire day into 15-minute blocks. It sounds like a pain, but this will set you up,” advises Jordan Harbinger.

Imagine yourself overcoming procrastination

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.—Romans 1:13

Your future self can’t be trusted. That’s because we are “time inconsistent” (this used to be called, “fickle,” I think).  We buy veggies today because we think we’ll eat healthy salads all week; then we throw out green, rotting mush in the future. We buy a P90x because we want start exercising and the box sits unopened a year later. What can you do now to make sure your future self does the right thing? Anticipate how you will self-sabotage in the future, and come up with a solution to defeat your future self. Mentalizing about what you do to undermine yourself can turn those stumbling blocks into stepping stones.

Make it home for dinner.

I think it is necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, co-worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger, whom you sent to take care of my needs. For he longs for all of you and is distressed because you heard he was ill. – Philippians 2:25-26

There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done. If you can’t stop, you can never start. Successful people value more than work. Jesus followers value truth, community, worship along with family time, exercise, giving back. We must consciously allocate our 1,440 minutes a day to what we care about (i.e., put it on your calendar) and then stick to the schedule. If you don’t have a home, a dinner partner or a job, you have that many more disposable minutes; you don’t need to wait.

 Use a notebook.

 Take a scroll and write on it all the words I have spoken to you concerning Israel, Judah and all the other nations from the time I began speaking to you in the reign of Josiah till now. – Jeremiah 36:2

Richard Branson has said on more than one occasion that he wouldn’t have been able to build Virgin without a simple notebook, which he takes with him wherever he goes. In one interview, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis said, “Always carry a notebook. Write everything down…That is a million dollar lesson they don’t teach you in business school!” Ultra-productive people free their mind by writing everything down.

Process email only a few times a day.

Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice. – Psalm 55:17

Some of us don’t process email at all, even if we are important to a task or a loved one. So that’s another issue. If you check it all day, just note that productive people don’t do that. They don’t respond to each vibration or ding to see who has parachuted into their inbox. Instead, like everything else, they schedule time to process their email quickly and efficiently. For some that’s only once a day. For others it is morning, noon and evening. As far as Facebook and other social media, they might delegate that.

Keep meetings short.

For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is. – Colossians 2:5

Ideally, Jesus followers live in a perpetual “meeting” in the Spirit and are working in community, even when they are not in the same room. Our lives do not occur in our meetings, even though we love to meet. Love and truth is harder to achieve than profits, so sometimes a meeting will last all night. Mark Cuban says, “Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check” (but he also does Shark Tank). Meetings are notorious time eaters. They start late, have the wrong people in them, meander in their topics and run long. Many productive people avoid them whenever they can. Maybe you should hold fewer yourself, and if you do run a meeting, keep it short and pointed.

Say “no” – a lot.

Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. – Matthew 5:37

Billionaire Warren Buffet once said, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.” Another successful entrepreneur gives this tip: “If something is not a “hell, YEAH! Then it’s a “no!” There are only 1,440 minutes in every day. We make sure they count. Buffet is not that stingy about things, so feel free to disperse your minutes to the poor or however you are moved, just be sure to be moved.

Accept that things are often 80/20, not “fair.”

‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius?  Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’  “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” – Mathew 20:13-16

The Pareto Principle teaches that in most cases 80% of outcomes come from only 20% of activities. Ultra-productive people know which activities drive the greatest results, and focus on those and ignore the rest.  All tasks are not created equal. All people do not deserve the same honor for being effective; they have to show they are effective. We may love everyone, but we are wise about who we entrust with what counts.

Collaborate as much as possible, accept half a loaf.

There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. — 1 Corinthians 12:6

Ultra-productive people don’t ask, “How can I do this task?” Instead they ask, “How can this task get done?” They take the “I” out of it as much as possible. Ultra-productive people don’t have control issues and they are not micro-managers. In many cases good enough is, well, good enough. They take half a loaf if it feeds their next steps.

successful at oppressing

Theme days of the week.

But these people have stubborn and rebellious hearts;
they have turned aside and gone away.
They do not say to themselves,
‘Let us fear the Lord our God,
who gives autumn and spring rains in season,
who assures us of the regular weeks of harvest.’
Your wrongdoings have kept these away;
your sins have deprived you of good.

“Among my people are the wicked
who lie in wait like men who snare birds
and like those who set traps to catch people.
Like cages full of birds,
their houses are full of deceit;
they have become rich and powerful
and have grown fat and sleek.
Their evil deeds have no limit;
they do not seek justice.
They do not promote the case of the fatherless;
they do not defend the just cause of the poor. — Jeremiah 5:23-8

Jeremiah needs to get in here near the end, because some people may be deluded by the ultra-effective people Forbes set up as examples. There are many more people who are ultra-effective at loving God and others, caring for the poor and evangelism. Forbes does not care about them, but they would be better examples. Nevertheless, I don’t mind appreciating brilliance wherever I see it — even among the damned and the destructive. Why should we bow before their rapacity and not have their wisdom serve our ends? So let’s finish this up and see if any of it applies to our ambitious goals.

Forbes’ highly successful people often theme days of the week to focus on major areas. Kruse uses “Mondays for Meetings” and makes sure he’s doing one-on-one check-ins. His Fridays themed around facts and figures and getting things today for the next week. Maybe you’d like to hear about Jack Dorsey’s themes; he is so effective he can be the CEO of Twitter and Square at the same time.

 Touch things only once.

In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ,  which God will bring about in his own time — 1 Timothy 6:13-15

How many times have you opened a piece of regular mail—a bill perhaps—and then put it down only to deal with it again later? How often do you read an email, and then close it and leave it in your inbox to deal with later? Highly successful people try to “touch it once.” If it takes less than five or ten minutes—whatever it is—they’ll deal with it right then and there. It reduces stress since it won’t be in the back of their mind, and is more efficient since they won’t have to re-read or evaluate the item again in the future.

Practice a consistent morning routine.

In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice;
in the morning I lay my requests before you
and wait expectantly. – Psalm 5:3

It might surprise people that many of the highly successful people interviewed were eager to share their morning ritual. It is America in 2017, so someone figured out how to monetize what Psalm 5 has been giving away for free for about 2800 years and treat it as their own idea: Hal Elrod, author of The Miracle Morning, told Forbes, “While most people focus on ‘doing’ more to achieve more, The Miracle Morning is about focusing on ‘becoming’ more so that you can start doing less, to achieve more.”  Many of the successful agree. They start their day by nurturing their body with water, a healthy breakfast and light exercise. They nurture their minds with meditation or prayer, inspirational reading, and journaling. They are Jesus followers — most of them without Jesus, however.

Nurture your energy.

After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—Ephesians 5:29

You can’t make more minutes in the day, but you can increase your energy which will increase your attention, focus, decision making, and overall productivity. Highly successful people don’t skip meals, sleep or breaks in the pursuit of more, more, more. Instead, they view food as fuel, sleep as recovery, and pulse and pause with “work sprints.”

You have probably noticed the giant flaw in this thinking. Most of these highly successful people think they made all their wealth and power happen. The writer thinks following these common sense, biblical rules will make a person more successful like the super wealthy. It won’t hurt, of course. But millions of people are just as disciplined and wise, but are still poor and “unsuccessful” in the eyes of Forbes and the 1%. Some are just failures and will die trying to get into the club of capitalist proficiency experts. Others, like you, probably, just have different goals and your relationship to the world is different. We have an unhinged president who, by all accounts, is successful. You probably want to be less like him every day! But I can’t help thinking that we need to get better at doing the God-given things with which we are charged since people who are proficiently wicked rule us more efficiently all the time.

How to listen deeper: What is behind what people say?

Building community, Leadership, Psychological growth

We usually need to listen deeper. Bryce and I were talking one day and he said this little piece of wisdom might make for a good leadership team training: I told him I generally give people a “bye” on the first thing that comes out of their mouth. I don’t ignore them, I just reserve judgment. I assume I don’t know what they are talking about. The crazier it seems to me, the more likely I am to say, “I need to listen deeper. I must not know what is going on here, because what is on the surface can’t be all there is.”

My goal is to trust their heart, not their words, trust God at work in them, not parse their words in order to judge them. I certainly don’t want to get in a power struggle! I want to live in a condemnation-free zone, so I need to guard my feelings and  bridle my tongue. This gets harder the more intimate one is with someone, of course, since we often think we know what they are saying better than they do, and we are often poised to be offended, because what they say matters to us.

need to listen

When I told the leadership team this little bit of wisdom, an astute member immediately noted that brain chemistry backs me up. They noted Daniel Kahneman’ book Thinking Fast and Slow (2011). He shows how our minds react to stimuli with two intertwined systems: the automatic and effortful systems. My bit of wisdom is about slowing down and letting the effortful system get deeper than the snap judgments and illusions that can undermine loving responses from the automatic system. So here’s to brain research!

Slow down and listen again

When we have a large reaction to what someone is saying or feel suspicious about it, it is kind to slow down and see whether there is something else going on we can’t see yet.

There are a lot of different things that could be happening that we (and they) might not immediately see. For instance:

  • They are upset and I am feeling the upset behind what they are saying, even if they are not talking about it directly.
  • They are working something out verbally and they don’t really care what they are saying. They are not holding on to the thoughts I think are important.
  • They trust me and I am getting some very deep things that may or may not fit with the subject. They are putting a lot on the table that may not be sorted out yet.
  • They don’t know what they are talking about yet, but they want to appear like they do because they are afraid I might think they appear stupid or weak. They are speaking from their image, not their feelings.

We are often in challenging conversations in the church because we prize dialogue and are organized to make it happen.  But we are not all the same and we don’t always understand each other. So we need some effortful listening to avoid being tangled up all day or stirring up needless conflict. More love will happen if we demonstrate grace that really listens for anything good behind what people are doing and saying — especially when it seems like what we have heard so far is not so good! We want to find something good to trust. It is exactly like Paul telling the Philippians to dwell on whatever is good in Philippians 4.

This is not always easy. After the sunrise celebration on Easter, some women who like to evoke the dances of indigenous people groups made a circle and started dancing to the drums. My first reaction to what they communicated was, “There is that branding that makes quite a few people uncomfortable.” And “There is a circle that is excluding others — and they look like accessories to the worship team!”  I could have gone home and complained to Gwen in the car about it.

But, rather unconsciously I must admit, I went over and put myself in the circle for a little while. I did not dance like an indigenous person dancing, I danced like me, but I did connect with the dancers, one who is in my cell. I picked up on the deeper message in their dance and it feels good to remember the moment as I write. I understand why someone would dance on Easter Sunday — why wouldn’t everyone?! It felt good to connect with people expressing joy with their bodies and not just stuck in their head. They were not doing something wrong; they were happy!

Maybe everything that is happy seems like it is wrong to someone. And maybe we should be so free that we can express our happiness in ways that don’t run over people. My automatic thoughts were not wrong. But my effortful thoughts were better — and more connective. I tried to listen beyond my reactions, and sure enough it was possible – especially since these dancers were people I knew and loved.

Remember how you would like to be heard

Listen to someone as you would like them to listen to you. (Sounds like Jesus, right?). Think about it. How would you like someone to listen to you? Don’t we all long to express what we are thinking and feeling? How do you want someone to hear you? Do you always know what you are talking about? Aren’t you regularly wrong about what you assumed to be true about someone or some circumstance? Do you even know what you are feeling at a given moment? Chances are, we all have a lot to work through and some effortful listening from a loving person would be great. Too often we need to work something through and we end up dealing with someone’s first reactions more than what we are working through! Too much of that kind of dialogue and we stop trusting anyone enough to say much of anything!

We will make a safe place for faith, hope and love if we go for building trust. Find something good in what people are saying before you stick with your first reaction or make your point. They may say something you think is dumb, inaccurate, ill-considered, or flat out dangerous. Let that go by and look for the best thing about what they are saying. Find something you can affirm. If you can’t find it in their words, find it in them.  After all, if they are a Jesus follower, they have the Spirit of God in them! If they aren’t a follower yet, they are still made in God’s image! Affirming that goodness is the glue of love that keeps us together and makes us all healthier and happier.

15 fact-based reasons to accept the resurrection of Jesus

Doing Theology,

Faith may be more relevant than facts when it comes to following Jesus. But mastering the founding facts of the resurrection are a good way to give your faith some weight.

 is a blogger for Lifeteen, which is kind of the Roman Catholic Young Life. He wrote the basis of today’s post, in hope of helping skeptical teenagers in a skeptical world consider what it means to follow Jesus. I vividly remember my own skepticism and my own journey into faith as a teenager, and lists like this were very helpful to me. They convinced me that I might not be crazy to have faith. I had faith, but I suspected it might be delusional. I still needed to meet the resurrected Christ, person to person in the Spirit, to convince me I was on the right path. But getting hold of the facts helped me too — reasoning has a part in how we come to believe, too.

Many people tell Jesus followers, young and old, that “based on human logic” the resurrection of Jesus makes no sense. They have a point. But, of course, they could make the same point about many of the things “human logic” comes up with — supposed logic is not known for making consistent sense, either. Nevertheless, it is true, that though God has used every means possible to make sense to us, the Lord still admits that “My ways are not your ways, nor are my thoughts your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9). What is illogical is to think is that humans are the center of the universe. But people still bet their lives on that premise. The resurrection re-centers logic where it belongs: on God’s thoughts and way, not ours. But there is a lot of human reasoning that can help us get to faith in that.

Any conversation about God is a lot more involved than mere logic. Any talk about Jesus and his resurrection will need to include an assumption that humans are also spiritual beings and having faith is what we do. Considering the resurrection won’t get too far If we are not humble enough to admit that we don’t already know everything we might need to know.  One will at least we need to  assume “it is possible that God exists” and “I am not God.”

Resurrection icon
Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Icon) by Ryszard Sleczka ca 2014

When it comes to resurrection of Jesus, to say that there is no logical reason to believe it happened and it meant something is short on facts and somewhat absurd. But like I said, deciding whether the resurrection is logical or not will not be enough to move someone into faith — at least it was not enough for me. I had an entire spiritual territory that was unexplored and Jesus became my personal guide. But reasoning helped get me started. So maybe this post will reinforce some of the basic facts of faith in Jesus for you, too. To get started, here are 15 quick facts that validate the reality and meaning of the resurrection. These are not exhaustive or highly detailed; they are quick points that further strengthen what humble-hearted believers receive in faith:

1. There was an empty tomb

The founders of other “faiths” are buried in tombs or had their ashes sprinkled over foreign lands. Not Jesus. Modern scholars and CNN can claim what they want . . .  the truth is that the tomb was empty.

2. The tomb had a Roman seal

Clay was affixed to a rope (stretched across a rock) and to the tomb, itself. The Roman seal was pressed into the clay. Break the seal, you break the law; break the law –- you die.

3. The tomb had a Roman guard stationed there

The “guard” was at least four men, possibly more, of highly trained soldiers. These soldiers were experts in torture and in combat, not easily frightened off by a band of fishermen and tax collectors. Had they fallen asleep or left their post they would have violated the law, probably resulting in their execution.

4. The tomb had a stone in front of it

Most scholars put the weight of the stone at about 2 tons (4000 pounds), probably 6-8 feet high. This was definitely a “team lift” or “team roll,” not movable by just one or two men.

5. There were post-resurrection appearances, to hundreds

Over a span of six weeks after he rose, Jesus appeared to a variety of groups of various sizes in different locations. He appeared to over 500 at one point –- a huge number to be an outright fabrication. Not to mention, the people to whom he appeared didn’t just see Him, but ate with Him, walked with Him, touched Him. Jesus even made breakfast (John 21:9) at one point.

6. The martyrdom of witnesses offers proof

Would people leave their businesses, careers, homes and families, go to the ends of the earth, die horribly gruesome and painful deaths and forsake their previous religious beliefs about salvation all to protect a lie? Not one of them, while being beheaded, fed to lions, boiled in oil, crucified upside down or burned alive changed their story. Instead, they sang hymns of trust and praise, knowing that the Lord who defeated death would raise them up, too. People do weird stuff for religious reasons, of course, but their faith is compelling.

7. There is still a Church

If the resurrection were a lie it would have died off centuries ago, wouldn’t it? The Christian Church is the largest movement of any kind in the history of humanity. It began with the apostles being commissioned by the risen Lord, then filled with resurrection life on Pentecost. That life keeps undermining empires, withstanding attacks (from inside and out) and growing in spite of the sinfulness of its members. It is a testimony to the presence of the risen Lord, guided and protected by the Holy Spirit, a living body both human and divine, like Jesus.

8. Jesus prophesied that it was going to happen

Jesus told people he would rise from the dead. It didn’t take Him by surprise. And He didn’t just say “I’m going to be killed” (which others might have seen coming) but also that “I’m going to rise on the third day.” Those details aren’t ironic, coincidental or fortune-telling — they’re prophecy and prophets speak from God. We are called to test whether what they claim is true.

9. It was prophesied in the Old Testament

The resurrection was foretold centuries before Jesus was born. Hundreds of prophecies about the Messiah: what He would say, do, how he would live and how He would die, were offered centuries by a variety of prophets over centuries. David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, Hosea, and Micah all pointed to the Christ’s death and resurrection hundreds of years before they occurred.

10. The day of worship changed

Following the resurrection, tens of thousands of Jews (almost overnight) abandoned the centuries-old tradition of celebrating the Sabbath on the last day of the week and began worshiping on the first day of the week, the day on which the Lord, the Christ, beat death sealing the new and final covenant with God. That was a huge thing for them and marks their belief in the event that changed everything.

11. The practices of sacrifice changed

Jews were always taught (and taught their children… Deuteronomy 6) that they needed to offer an animal sacrifice once a year, to atone for their sins. After the resurrection, t0he Jewish converts of the time, throngs of them, stopped offering animal sacrifices to God. Not only had the ultimate sacrifice been offered, the resurrection sealed their forgiveness and their own hope of resurrection.

12. It is unique among other world religions

Most of the religions of the world have elements of them that point toward Jesus; they represent the same deep desire we all have to be saved from death and freed from sin. But no other religious leader of any consequence ever actually claimed to be God, except Jesus. No other religious leader ever did the things Christ did. No other religious leader ever backed up their “religious voice” with resurrection. Confucius died. Lao-tse died. Buddha died. Mohammed died. Joseph Smith died. Christ rose from the dead. That “scandalous” thought continues to trip people up and continues to guide their steps into eternity.

13. The message is self-authenticating

This proof goes back to the original point, namely, that a humble heart is enlightened and illuminated by far more than logic or reason. A true believer doesn’t need all the facts to believe in the resurrection, because the Holy Spirit reveals Christ to us, intimately and powerfully. St. Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians 4. Blind and hardened hearts will never see God, not until they acknowledge that they are not God. Obviously, people can use this argument to believe in anything about which they feel deeply. But without this experience of confirmation in relationship to God, mere logic is usually less than convincing.

14. The miraculous ending fits a miraculous life

You want logic? Christ healed the blind, the deaf and the dumb. He fed the masses, cured the lepers, and forgave the sinners. He made the lame walk and brought others back to life. He multiplied food, walked on water, and calmed storms with His mere voice. The miracle that happened during the crucifixion is that He did not preform a miracle. He died. The miracle followed: Jesus rose from the dead. it was a miraculous completion of a miraculous life, exactly what one would expect.

15. Maybe the only reason we need: Jesus is still rising

The world suffers and we all experience it and do something about it. We ignore it, lament it, debate it, bomb it, and medicate it . . .  but we can’t find the cure for it or the point of it as long as we are separated from Jesus Christ. In Christ, our suffering has a point and it has worth just as his did. Apart from Christ, suffering is relatively pointless and fruitless. There is no fountain of youth. There is no miracle drug. There is no cure for death except Jesus Christ. What is illogical is to think that the God of life would not want us to live eternally.

If you are convinced this life is your only one, then the resurrection will not fit into your logic. This little blog probably won’t convince you to change your mind, either. But hopefully, this quick reminder the day after Easter gives a few believers some encouragement that  the resurrection is not illogical. That being said, I hope it also encourages you to know that it is far from merely logical, as well.  It is the work of God, which is far more that we could imagine. But since we are the work of God, too, it resonates in places in us that are longing for life.

”How can some among you say there is no resurrection? If Christ has not been raised, then empty is our preaching; empty, too, your faith; if Christ has not been raised than your faith is in vain; you are still in your sins.” (1 Corinthians 15:12-18)

Brothers and sisters, because of what happened in that Upper Room, on that cross, and in that tomb nearly 2000 years ago, we know God the Father intimately, we walk with Christ daily, and we are guided by the Holy Spirit eternally. That’s the truth, and it is beautiful (John 8:32). When I was first becoming a Jesus follower, I just barely believed  it. But my mind led me to my feelings, and then both led me to my spiritual capacity which enlivened the heart of me so I could walk by faith. I am risen with Christ myself! That’s a beautiful truth, too.

Chaos and creation for Holy Week: Demise and rise of your institution

Building community, Leadership, The Mission, , , , , , ,

No metrics exist to measure life without institutions, because they’ve been around as long as humankind. The first institution was the first family. The tribe was the first community. The first tribe’s leader was the first politician, and its elders were the first legislature. Its guards, the first police force. Its storyteller, a teacher. Humans are coded to create communities, and communities beget institutions.

So what institutions are being created now?

Look out Pizza Dads!

When the present disaster is over, what institutions will have been created? Something is happening. CBS Sunday Morning suggested it might be created by robots. Gwen and I suggested it might be creating more anxiety and depression, the life disorders that can be associated with severe self-interest, a turning in on oneself, the mental illnesses of being alone.

Social prophets keep talking about chaos syndrome as the trickle down contribution of our present elites. In general, the idea identifies a chronic decline in  a system’s capacity for self-organization, especially the political system. It begins with the weakening of the institutions and brokers—political parties, career politicians, and congressional leaders and committees—that have historically held politicians accountable to one another and prevented everyone in the system from pursuing naked self-interest all the time. As these intermediaries’ influence fades, politicians, activists, and voters all become more individualistic and unaccountable (and anxious and depressed!). The system atomizes. Chaos becomes the new normal—both in campaigns like Donald Trump’s and in government actions like the House of Representatives considering healthcare.

Government is all most people think we have for an institution, but there are a lot more disintegrating before our eyes. There are four ex-Catholics for every new one in the United States, for instance. Local schools cope with chaos every day. We had people deployed to pray on the steps of our governments last night in honor of Jesus doing the same; it was very hard to find any radicals to believe in prayer, to believe in extravagant gestures of prophecy, or to believe they should even think about what disintegrating institutions are creating.

What is the solution to a disintegrating institution?

Frustrated people are trying to fill the vacuum left by disintegration. We don’t trust any news outlets, so like-minded “followers” and “friends” feed us news online. People sometimes barter on eBay, even start local businesses rather than bow to Amazon. Parents increasingly homeschool their children rather than expose them to under-supported public schools. But most of that is coping, not creating nourishing institutions. Any Sociology 1 student can tell you we need the organizing institutions provide; it’s how things get done. But by Sociology 2 they can probably cite a study that shows how many people despise all institutions; they even hate their church if they think it is institutional, since they don’t like “institutionalized” religion.

When people trust their institutions (you may not remember such a time), they’re better able to solve common problems. Research shows that school principals are much more likely to improve struggling  schools where people have a history of working together and getting involved in their children’s education. Communities bonded by friendships formed at church are more likely to vote, volunteer, and perform everyday good deeds like helping someone find a job. And governments find it easier to persuade the public to make sacrifices for the common good when people trust that their political leaders have the community’s best interests at heart. Institutions — even dysfunctional ones — are why we don’t experience common chaos.

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At least for a while we may not experience total chaos. I pray chaos does not engulf us. Which brings me to praying during this holy week. Some people  probably saw Jesus riding into Jerusalem yesterday as the perfect agent of much-needed, anti-institutional fervor. They will follow his movement all week as he upends retail business on Monday, invades higher learning on Tuesday, subverts family and social norms on Wednesday, performs alternative religious rites on Thursday with his subversive cell, defies government authority on Friday and undermines the supposed laws of nature on Sunday. They see him as a big ball of chaos. I agree that he is the great disrupter.

But all through this holy week  Jesus is doing a lot more than being an amazing individual who can stand against all forces, alone and in control. Much deeper, what is happening all week is this: Jesus is God, again brooding over the chaos and exercising his redemptive creative touch. What Jesus is doing, for anyone with eyes to see, is creating something new in the chaos of the fallen institutions. The main new institution he is creating is the church. One will not be able to summarize what he is doing in a sociology book; he is not institutionalizing something alongside all the other institutions. He is the metric by which life is measured — and his grace is new every morning, like this one. He is happening no matter what happens.

Last night our reps in Washington DC, Harrisburg, Trenton and Philadelphia prayed a common liturgy that restated the heart of our revelation in these troubling times. It ended with:

It all happens on a cross
it all happens at a state execution
where the governor did not commute the sentence
it all happens at the hands of an empire
that has captured our imagination
it all happens through blood
not through a power grab by the sovereign one
it all happens in embraced pain
for the sake of others
it all happens on a cross
arms outstretched in embrace
and this is the image of the invisible God
this is the body of Christ.

But can anyone still be part of the body of Christ? Are we so reduced we can’t connect? can’t covenant? can’t marry? can’t build anything together? Our church is living proof that is not so. We are doing it. But the chaos does not stop undermining us. Each Holy Week is a test of our capacity for living. If there are no holy people to experience the Holy Week, if no one makes the connection between what Jesus did and what He is creating through us, our institution isn’t the body of Christ, it is just one more thing we mistrust and destroy.

The teaching of a 90-year-old capitalist: Can we be alternative?

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What does it mean to love in an era when people have been reduced to “human resources?” I wish it seemed obvious to state that the culture of capitalism dramatically affects how people understand themselves and one another. But I don’t think it is obvious; thus, this blog post.

Is Capitalism the best system?

Not long ago I was watching one of the news channels and tuned in to an interview of a 90-year-old billionaire. He interrupted his young interviewer at one point so he could make sure to say what he wanted to teach. He said, “There is one thing everyone needs to understand. Capitalism is the best system. We tried communism, or at least some did, and it failed. We tried socialism and that does not work.”

The interviewer did not say, “What do you mean by ‘working?’ Are you talking about ‘achieving the most profit with as little expenditure as possible for the shareholders or owners of an enterprise?'” Instead, she just moved on, either swallowing what everyone has been taught or being afraid to contradict it.

I think 90% of the people who enter a Sunday meeting  react about the same way as the interviewer every day. They spend the week moving along with capitalism and the billionaires who run it — and preparing their children to do the same. But are the goals of capitalism and the 1% the goals of Jesus? You can already tell that I am going to say “No.” But do I have a leg to stand on?

 

The secret philosophy that runs us all

Last April George Monbiot summarized his book for the Guardian. He identified the secret philosophy that drives what most of us do all week and infects what we do on Sunday, too. He says, Today’s capitalism

  • sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations.
  • redefines citizens as “consumers“ whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling.
  • teaches that buying and selling has its own morality that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency.
  • maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

People are fighting about how to apply this philosophy in Congress right now. Will a generous version of today’s capitalism (like Obamacare) rule our healthcare or will a radical version rule (like in Trump/Ryan care)?

Monbiot says today’s capitalism fights any attempts to limit competition and labels any question of limits an assault on freedom. It teaches:

  • Taxes and regulations should be minimized, public services should be privatized.
  • The organization of labor and collective bargaining by trade unions are are market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers.
  • Inequality is virtuous: a reward for being effective and a generating wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone.
  • Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

You may have heard those last four bullet points preached from a pulpit somewhere (other than Circle of Hope). Or maybe you just know the viewpoint is assumed, a moot point, in your evangelical church. I have experienced both the preaching and the assumption. For instance, if a variant viewpoint is raised on the BIC-List (our denomination’s listserve), men will come out of the woodwork to reinforce those bullets, as if they were a 90-year-old billionaire interrupting some foolish youngster. They will even marshal the Bible to help make their point, even though everyone knows neoliberalism was not invented by Christians.

 

Last summer the pope explained this while on a flight from Krakow to Vatican City. He surprised journalists when he told them Muslim attacks on a priest in France were basically caused by neoliberalism. He said, “Terrorism grows when there is no other option, and as long as the world economy has at its center the god of money and not the person…This is fundamental terrorism, against all humanity.” At the time, Americans were in the middle of an election campaign, so they probably did not hear the Pope over all the hubbub about Trump’s tweets. Evangelical Christians were about to overwhelmingly vote for Donald Trump, the epitome of what neoliberal capitalism created since Ronald Reagan.

Are we actually pawns in the philosophy’s system?

What if we Christians, we who are bound and determined to follow Jesus in his suffering and transform humanity, become the unwitting pawns of capitalist deformation of humanity in the image of neoliberal capitalism? Our lives teach. The content of our dialogue sets the contours of the culture are always building!

Can a Christian merely exist in the pluralistic, postmodern capitalist landscape? Does capitalism offer a home for Christians? No. Without Christians creating an alternative, capitalism subjects everyone to its will. We still fundamentally believe, don’t we, that one cannot serve two masters? We might normally think about not serving Mammon within the framework of capitalism and consider how to allow Jesus to be the Lord of how we do capitalism. But what if capitalism is, in effect, the alternative god?

Capitalism makes desire an end in itself and diverts our desire from communion with God. That sin causes us to stray from God’s will and design for us. God’s design for us is to desire God and our true selves. Unfortunately, the economic modalities around us pervert that desire. We cannot serve both our capitalism-perverted desire and God’s desire. We must go back to God, which means rejecting the capitalist way. The two are incompatible.

We need to talk about this, because everyone who comes to our Sunday meeting is feeling desire. Assuming that their desires, dominated by capitalism, are healthy and not a cause of their general illness is wrong. If a person is constantly making a deal and can’t make a covenant with God’s people, if they are trained for desiring what they don’t yet have, if they protect their autonomy and freedom at the expense of their faith, should they not learn that comes from neoliberalism and not God, not even from themselves?

Image result for homo economicus

Capitalism creates homo economicus in its image. That being, by its nature, is:

  • Not in community, not collective.
  • Free to choose. Amidst millions of consumer options, we are free to choose what to do (of course, within the confines of capitalism)
  • Self-interested
  • Driven by Insatiable Desire.
  • Competitive.
  • Reduced to thinking Justice is only about fair exchange regulated by contracts and laws. In capitalism, social justice doesn’t exist because the market is beyond justice.

I think most people who read this far are probably trying to figure out how to be the alternative to what is killing humanity. When people come to the Sunday meeting they come as people condemned to being homo economicus. Is there a way out? If we force them to perform within that bondage, aren’t we preparing them to be consumed consumers? Couldn’t we condemn our children in the name of helping them?

Somehow, we need to risk acting according to the Lord’s economy that is

  • Spirit formed
  • Communal
  • Self-giving
  • Generous out of eternal abundance

After all this theoretical sounding writing, it may seem difficult to think about how to apply it. So will we just go back to being led around by the invisible hand and letting our faith be invisibilized by living under its shelter? Obviously, I hope not. Let’s keep exposing the powers for who they are in the spirit of today’s image of the atonement: Christus Victor. Jesus is our leader in that, present with us, every day.

Lent alternativity: We gave up doing basically nothing for the season

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All the guides to Lent (including most of mine) have to do with applying some good thinking from the ancient and medieval church. It is so great. I am doing it.

The idea is so old, so someone else’s, so demanding, the vast majority of Christ followers, radical or nominal, are ignoring it — for all practical purposes, at least. Their loss.

That being said, I think we may have stumbled on to another discipline that we don’t need a lot of prayers, plans, meetings, guidebooks or history books to do: we just do stuff. We gave up not making a difference a long time ago. But this Lent, in particular, We seem to have given up giving up doing nothing all over again. We are kind of over freaking out about Trump, and are back to being the alternative we have always been to neoliberalism, now turning toward totalitarianism. We don’t sit around.

1. We build the church

Jerome began a cell last week with a set of mostly-new people. They all went against the grain and sat down to community. Our congregation in the Northwest is seven-months old and already show signs of taking its first toddler steps! This keeps happening.

The main thing the world needs is an alternative. Democracy is great and needs to be expanded, but it obviously is not saving the world. People have elected the worst government in my memory — for the most part they let their reps buy their position so 1% capitalism would be preserved. What people really need, as they always have, is not more info, power, and government largesse, they need to be a responsible part of their own people, culturing a common life with Jesus at the head. We are making that community, whether we are 20 or 60, new believer or old salt. We do it very simply by forming cells where we deliver our spiritual gifts face to face and by holding weekly, public gatherings where we worship, teach and incorporate people looking for Jesus. Those simple acts of building an alternative community in Christ spawn all sorts of other amazements! We map  our direction our ourselves, not just apply someone else’s thinking. We fund it all ourselves, not living off our business profits or grants from the fat cats. We keep inventing it ourselves, it does not belong to our leaders or our founders, it is us.

2. We pray

A lot of us never pray, it must be admitted. They are missing out. But most of us do, and we don’t think it is doing nothing, because we actually believe God responds to our prayers. We don’t run the universe with our intercession, but we participate in what the Holy Spirit can do. Plus, of course, praying people become more accustomed to their supernatural capabilities and become answers to their own prayers, so that is a bonus.

Art started organizing prayer walks around our new site in South Philly. People are out on the street praying, discerning, letting love flow. When we move through the stations of the cross in our neighborhoods on Good Friday, it will be about as obvious as we can make it that we believe Jesus is dying and rising right here, right now, among us and in our neighborhoods.

3. We form teams that express our passion

The Community Workshop Team decided that lightly or illegally employed people could learn woodworking. The Watershed Discipleship Team saw the threat to the world and to the Delaware River Watershed and decided they could not let the planet die without doing something. The Solidarity Beyond Borders team was revived when Trump stirred up anti-immigrant sentiments and challenged Philadelphia’s right to be a sanctuary, so they got an alliance going with local Mexicans, in particular, and started strategizing.

At this point, we kind of take making these teams for granted. When Jonny was telling someone about them last week, the person was flabbergasted to learn that there are still Christians in the world who do something. Most of them seem to be settled into resenting the obligation to go to church on Sundays (as if anyone could GO to church when they ARE the church!).

4. We make good business

This is kind of new. Yes, it is old, too, because we have had our successful Circle Thrift stores and we partner with Circle Counseling. Both these businesses began as compassion teams. But now we are moving into the next flowering of this idea, it appears.

We bought the new South Broad building thinking we would put Circle Thrift down there. But as it turns out the congregation doesn’t really need all that income to support the building and the space for the store is probably too small. We thought a NEW business there would be better: a childcare business (we’re talking that over tonight). The whole neighborhood is on a waiting list for childcare; we have the talent (if people want to use it), and we think we have a good space.

This development in our thinking about 2212 S. Broad made us think we should KEEP 1125 South Broad, which we had just decided to desert! We are thinking we should keep the store in place and create our long-held dream of a space rental/events business. These ideas presented themselves and we decided to go for it, in terms of planning, at least. Approval is not settled yet.

 

Lent is a great time to sit around and do “nothing” as we meditate on what Jesus has done and learn the basic spiritual disciplines that sustain our life in Christ. Please figure out how to fast! Learn what is on the other side of silence! Study and pray!

That being said, I don’t want to undercut what our actual spiritual strength might already be. We don’t sit around and do nothing while the world goes to hell in a handbasket (as my mother used to say, for some reason). We build the alternative. We are alternativity, itself! That is a good way to spend every day, especially as we look so carefully at Jesus, the alternative to sin and death, being it and living it during Lent!

Quacks in the White House and egg hunts: Why I am reduced to prayer

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Some days it becomes obvious that I don’t get out much – at least out in “church world.” You’d think I would remember that I’ve been part of a boutique denomination connected to a minority movement within Christianity who helped me plant a radical expression of the church in a blue-state city. You’d think I’d remember, but I don’t. I regularly, maybe daily, forget where Jesus has led me. I somehow think most people, much more most Christians, are basically like me. They are and they aren’t, but mostly aren’t, at least when it comes to faith or maybe prayer.

Millionaires and egg hunts

For instance, we were mutually amazed last night when we were talking in a small group of our Leadership Team and one of us mentioned how she had just had a conversation with some of the “girls back home” about the megachurch she used to attend. She noted that all the elders were millionaire men. She noted to us that if we had “elders” she would be one of them and she is a broke, brown woman. I honestly did not think we were that odd. I guess we are.

Then one of our pastors was considering whether to have an Easter egg hunt in order to meet some of the neighbors and stir up some fun. This would be unusual for us. We are much more likely to advertise the discussion on the antiracist book we’ve been passing around, than think of having an egg hunt. Come to find out, another church in town has had egg hunts that attract 1000’s of people. I never even heard about it and 1000’s of people were involved — an egg hunt! I remembered Gwen standing in front of our youth group with our meat tenderizer, setting a chocolate bunny up on the table and smashing pagan fertility symbols as a visual aid. I guess not everyone does that. I forget.

Success would be nice

Some days it also becomes obvious that I don’t want to get out much. One day last week I recalled for my journal that I felt very unsuccessful. My initiatives were resisted; my appointments were cancelled; I felt tired. So I asked the Lord what was going on. Most of my feelings seemed to focus on the challenges. I did not really want to face any. What I really wanted (and expected) was everything to work out, at least not have everything go wrong. I felt like I should be honored, my value appreciated, my work received with thanks, my love understood and received (without any need to prove it), my enthusiasm and hope matched, my personality twinned, my time unwasted; it went on. I realized how demanding I am. But don’t you want all that? I did not fully realize how much I wanted it all until I did not succeed at getting it and was reduced to prayer.

Now this week I find out that millionaire elders put their resources into egg hunts and it works. Churches are full of egg hunters. No wonder  I am not nearly as successful as I’d like. (I know, I am more successful than I deserve). But it would be really great to succeed. I suppose I will have to face some challenges: all those unnecessary, unwarranted, unwelcome challenges, again (and again).

Image result for trump cabinet march 2017
Cabinet meeting

Lack of success reduces me to prayer

Today I was drawn back to my old favorite, Luke 8:1-8.  Jesus reminded me again to pray and not lose heart, not faint. At the end of the day, Jesus is not looking for my success, he is looking for faith that trusts him for life no matter what the circumstances seem to be saying. Hopefully, I will not just be looking for success while He is looking for me! His justice will arrive like an unexpected storm, “and yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

In 1904 Alexander McClaren wrote about these verses as the era of the “robber barons” was coming to a close (so this may sound familiar):

“An epoch of materialism in philosophic thought has always been followed by violent reaction, in which quacks and fanatics have reaped rich harvests. If the dark is not peopled with one loved Face, our busy imagination will fill it with a crowd of horrible ones.

Just as a sailor, looking out into the night over a solitary, islandless sea, sees shapes; intolerant of the islandless expanse, makes land out of fogbanks; and, sick of silence, hears ‘airy tongues’ in the moanings of the wind and the slow roll of the waves, so [people] shudderingly look into the dark unknown, and if they see not their Father there, will either shut their eyes or strain them in gazing it into shape.”

I did not need to spend much time peering into my fog this morning before I saw the loved Face. But we are still sailing through an islandless sea in an era full of quacks and fanatics. Easter egg hunts work. “Black lives matter” seems like a radical statement rather than a moot point. I lament my relative lack of success.  Maybe we should have an egg hunt. Maybe we should keep saying black lives matter. Maybe I should get over myself.

And maybe we should remember Jesus lamenting his relative lack of success. He taught his followers to keep “bothering” God with their demands for a response to their just requests, like: save me from quacks, Trumps, heartless millionaires, mega-whatever and my own impatience and self-criticism! But Jesus had to wonder whether when he returned,  he would still find anyone faithful, still praying, still hanging in there to receive just what they longed for, or not.

Contemplation: Be still. Become aware.

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When things were not working out for you, did a well-meaning person ever counsel you to “Walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7)? That’s a popular snippet of the Bible which people use as an encouraging piece of self-talk: “Settle down. God is not done with you yet.” If you take their counsel, you might develop a new conviction: “I am moving ahead, hoping for the best. I am walking by faith, not by sight.” That is good.

the way of contemplation

I think there is something even more immediate that scripture is teaching. I have learned it through the prayer of contemplation. “Walk by faith, not by sight” is also about becoming aware of the unseen things God is doing in the present moment. It is not just looking ahead, it should also be looking in. “I am walking by the Light of the World, not just by the light of day, by faith, not sight.”

Prayer amounts to faithing. Just call walking by faith “faithing.” Faith is an action not an idea; it is relating, not just thinking about principles. And prayer is the basic place we faith. Prayer is how we develop the sense of being guided by the Holy Spirit of God and learn to see and react with more than just our physical senses. God is with us, right now; prayer helps us be with God right now.

When I say “contemplative prayer” you might think of mindfulness techniques that people are teaching to jr. highers to help them settle down. That’s a beginning, but that’s not the prayer of contemplation. The prayer of contemplation includes the techniques for reducing anxiety, but it is more. Contemplative prayer, and any spiritual discipline, disposes us to allow something to take place. The main thing that happens is love. If you find something else in the silence, you might be in the wrong place. Contemplation makes us available for relating to God. We don’t always pray in order to get God to do something for us; contemplative prayer is not about making something happen, necessarily. We are making ourselves available for communion with God. We are becoming open to experience Love, heart to Heart.

It is like this: A gardener does not actually grow plants. She practices skills that facilitate growth that is beyond her control. Prayer is like that. A sailor does not produce the necessary wind to move the boat. He appropriates the gift of wind by exercising skills that can get him home. Prayer is like that.

The basic skill of contemplative prayer that facilitates growth and appropriates gifts is inner silence. There are two practices that are very important to exercising this skill: stillness and awareness.

Stillness

When we attempt to be silent, we need to consider how to face the inner noise with which we struggle. Sometimes we do noisy things when we pray, too, of course; we are embodied spirits, after all. But at the center of us is the silent place where God is simply giving himself to us and we are communing spirit to Spirit. We long to carry this silence with us in the midst of the noisy world and be content that we are in Christ and Christ is in us. We want to feel at home. One of the early teachers of the church said, that in this center, we are constantly being called home, away from the noise that is around us to the joys that are silent. He said, “Why do we rush about looking for God who is here at home with us, if all we want is to be with him?”

Martin Laird, a teacher from Villanova who wrote a book called Into the Silent Lands, tells a story about a prisoner who was accustomed to cutting himself or burning himself so that his inner pain would be in a different place: on the outside of him. This suffering man had come upon some people whose mission was to teach prisoners to pray and turn their prison cells into monastic cells. The prisoner learned from them, and after several weeks of meditating twice a day he said, “I just want you to know that after only four weeks of meditating half an hour in the morning and night, the pain is not so bad, and for the first time in my life, I can see a tiny spark of something within myself I can like.” That is the home we are talking about.

contemplation in Rittenhouse
Stillness in Rittenhouse Square

Awareness

Our sense of separation from God is often a matter of our broken perception. We can’t feel God. We have an idea of what we should feel and we don’t feel it. Contemplative prayer is the place we let go of our perceptions and become aware of God with us, as the scripture guides us:

  •  My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him (Psalm 62:5).
  • I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you (Jesus in John 14:20).
  • I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me (Galatians 3:20).

From the perspective of our everyday life on planet earth, we are separate from God. But from the perspective of our inner awareness, we see Christ with us. When we pray, we are not merely becoming aware of our thoughts and feelings (although that is good!), we are learning to be aware of God and to be with God who is with us.

It is like this: A man was taking his dog to a field where the animal could run and he ran into another man walking four dogs. They got to the open field and let their dogs go so they could enjoy running around in a big free space. But one the dogs was off to the side running is relatively tight circles and did not join in with the other dogs. The man asked his new friend, “What’s with your dog?” The man answered. “Before I got this dog, he had spent years living in a cage. He was used to getting all his exercise, just as you see. He has the field, but he is trained for the cage.” I did not see this dog do this personally, so I can’t prove to you that dogs do this, but I do know myself and many of you. We have the wide open field of grace and freedom to romp in but we run in the contours of our former cage. The prayer of contemplation is retraining our hearts to roam the wide open spaces of eternity freely.

  • My heart is like a bird that has escaped from the snare of the fowler (Psalm 123:7).

Our minds tend to run in the obsessive tight circles of our mental cage. We believe we are separate from God, and we were. So now we need to become aware of something else. I heard something shocking from a friend not long ago. When he was a child his father sang a little ditty that he thought was funny: “Charlie Wilkins is no good. Let’s chop him up like so much wood.” I know this little boy as an old man and you can still see that putrid song playing in his head. Just like that, we may believe we are condemned by God. So now we need to learn freedom. Prayer is the training ground.

When we think about things, we have a cage of thoughts that guide us. Contemplative prayer helps us go beyond that cage and enter into the wide-open fields of silence where we don’t merely think about things, we commune with God. We concentrate attention in our heart to the place of knowing, the place of awareness that is not full of the cacophony of our mind and surroundings but is full of the Spirit of God. It seems like we are just sitting there doing nothing when we pray this way, and that is exactly right and exactly good. In that nothing of ourselves and our surroundings we enter the silent land of our true being with God.

This post tells you more about how to practice contemplative prayer. But we don’t need perfect techniques to pray as much as we need to access the skills that are built into our beings by our loving Father. Be silent and turn your heart to God whether you think you know what you are doing or not. Take a step of walking by faith, not by sight. You’ll have a good time with God.

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The contemplative prayer of imagination: Resist and restore

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What if you want to use Lent to get out of your head and into your heart? What if you want to explore the depths of your life: mind, heart, soul, strength and have a meaningful life that resists the forces that try to consume it? Last Saturday during our retreat, one of the answers was: learn to pray — and learn to use your imagination. Life in Christ is bigger than such an “answer” of course. But developing a spiritual life is the key to meaning, key to surviving.

Morton Kelsey offered a checklist for venturing inward. It is a good one, since it does not skip to “what I can do on my own,” but attends to our context and community, which are so crucial. To venture inward: 1) attend to the regular disciplines of your community (cell, Sunday meeting, team), 2) keep a spiritual journal, 3) talk about your inner life, 4) receive spiritual direction (could be formal or friendship), 5) learn to become quiet, 6) unleash your imagination.

peering into the inner life

Be quiet. Contemplation is the core prayer

Prayer takes many forms. In every form it is communing with God, relating Spirit to spirit. We intercede and move God. We worship and praise God. We confess and reconcile with God. We have conversations that are full of complaining and questioning. But until we learn to be quiet and find out what is on the other side of silence, our prayer is a bit superficial and missing the deep experiences of connection we crave. The core prayer we need to learn might be summed up with the word contemplation: the basic yearning of our hearts turned to seeking, our innate spiritual capacity stepping toward connection.

Via negativa contemplation

There are two intertwining roads in contemplative prayer; one is often emphasized more by one group than another. First, there is the via negativa, the apophatic way, (the word means “other than speaking,” or “denial”). This way stresses how God is best known by negation, elimination, forgetting, unknowing, without images and symbols, and in darkness. God is other than humanity. God is “not this, not that.”

On this way all images, thoughts, symbols, etc. must be eliminated, because, as St. John of the Cross points out, “all the being of creatures compared with the infinite being of God is nothing. Nothing which could possibly be imagined or comprehended in this life can be a proximate means of union with God.” We enter this nothingness to meet God.

Learning to be quiet needs to travel on this way, since we need to turn away from our self-controlled, world-controlled existence to meet God. In prayer, we need to deal with the distractions that inhibit our solitude.

Via affirmativa contemplation

The other road is the via affirmativa, the kataphatic way, (the word means “much speaking,” or “affirmation”). This way underscores how we can find God in all people, in all experiences, in all things.

It emphasizes a definite similarity between God and creatures. We are made in God’s image, male and female. The world is an expression of God’s character. As Paul taught the Athenians:  “In God we live and move and have our being.” God can be reached by creatures, images, and symbols, because the Lord is manifested in creation and salvation history. The incarnation of God in Christ forces us to take our own experiences as relevant, symbolic and part of an ongoing story of salvation. We are God’s workmanship and Jesus not only symbolizes this blessing, He remains with us to bring about its fullness.

The goal of contemplation is love

All humans are made to seek. We are lonely for God. So very few are spirituality-free. In most Hindu and Buddhist practices, people are taught that the universe is, ultimately, impersonal mind (as in “may the force be with you”). Jesus-followers see the universe as lover. God is so interested in the created world that s/he became incarnate, so interested in humans that Jesus died for us. God enables us to be companions and fellow workers by meeting us Spirit to spirit. The context of our meeting is love; the ultimate goal of meditation is love, even when it is apophatic.

Our communion with God in prayer is, in itself, resistance to the forces that attempt to usurp God’s proper place in the world and on our lives. If you are alone in solitude with God, that relationship has an impact, even if you don’t take much action as a result. It is likely we will take action, however,  since our contemplation regularly gives us our direction and stokes our courage to act. Contemplation allows us to fight evil that arises in us and outside us. We each do this in our own way, but in similar fashion. One’s experience of the world of the Spirit depends on their psychology, which can be understood and developed, and on their world view, which can change. So contemplation is unique to each one who practices, but is unified in the One who meets each of us where we are beginning today.

The kataphatic prayer of imagination

On Saturday, we offered two suggestions for praying in a more “kataphatic” way, making full use of symbols, dreams and the art of imagination.  One way to experience inner meaning is meditating on your inner experiences: coming to silence, going back into the images of your dreams and fantasies, first consciously, then allowing them to go as they will. We noted that most of our spiritual guidance comes from our conscious experience, which is the tip of the iceberg of us. We were trying to learn more about how to receive direction from our inner experience of what is normally unconscious. Many people avoid this territory because it seems vast and dark. But we are not to be absorbed into it, we are to encounter love in it. We have a basic direction for our contemplation – Jesus describes God as the loving father of a returning prodigal. It is clear who is the object of our prayer and who we are.

God’s character

So our conscious minds can lead us and our unconscious, our dreams, can lead us. When people describe their unconscious experience it is as varied as they are. But for everyone, using our imaginations to explore our inner depths starts with two simple things: 1) one must be convinced that thinking and feeling in images is important, 2) one must spend enough time to break away from the concerns of the waking realm. We explored this path in two ways last Saturday. I thought you might like some of the teaching to encourage your journey through Lent.

Ignatius and praying the Bible. 

Try Ignatius of Loyola‘s approach to praying the Bible through imagination and entering into a deeper connection with God as a result.

Matthew 19:13-15 – Jesus and the children

Allow twenty to thirty minutes for the exercise.

  1. As the passage is read for the first time, try to hear it as if it is fresh and new—as if you are hearing it for the first time. Read Mt. 19:13-15 slowly
  2. As the passage is read for the second time, enter in to the event Place yourself as a child in the scene as it is read. Read passage again in a slow, meditative manner
  3. Answer the following questions: How do you feel as you walked through the crowd? Are you warm? Do you feel a breeze? Can you feel the hand of your parent or adult as you walk toward Jesus? What do you hear? Birds? Animal sounds? The voice of Jesus? The disciples trying to send you away? What do you smell? Is it a dusty day? Can you smell the animals? The body odor of the crowd? What do you see? Can you see the legs of the people in front of you? Can you see Jesus? The other children?
  4. Go to Jesus and hear him tell the disciples that he wants to be with you
  5. Climb up in the lap of Jesus or sit beside him and let him embrace you
  6. Experience the deep love that is offered to you a. Let it wash over you and rest in the places that you are experiencing some type of emotional pain Let it be a balm to the rejection or abandonment that you have experienced Let it be to you the love that you desire, yet have never experienced to this extreme. Rest in that love for a while
  7. If you want to talk with Jesus, you may
  8. Otherwise, just sit and let Jesus embrace you.

Morton Kelsey and the prayer of waking dreams

Try Morton’s Kelsey’s explanation of imaging prayer.

In The Other Side of Silence (and elsewhere), Morton Kelsey points out when we are still, images will appear naturally, as they do in our dreams. There is a vast, mostly unexplored territory in our unconscious, that impacts us deeply. It is a territory where God is much needed and very available. We can follow the revelations in our literal dreams or our waking dreams, listen to them, and find meaning in what they reveal about our deep places where God is relating to us Spirit to spirit. On the way to being quiet, we will need to dismiss many distractions. But we can recognize deeper images that arise from a place where we are communing with God.

God be with you on the journey! It is a step by step process and each step along the way is moving through eternity. God is with us and we are learning to become fully present to God. Your way is uniquely your own,  but it is also connected to everyone alive with the Spirit, and deeply connected to our Creator.

On the apostolic edge: Your grace might feel sharper than you think.

Building community, , , ,
Light Story by Ilya Rashap

If you ever visit the apostolic edge of Circle of Hope, you might need a discerning set of eyes and a some gracious reactions for those you meet.

An apostle (like the Apostle Paul) is someone called and gifted to carry the news and life of Jesus into places it is not known. The apostolic edge is the boundary between known and unknown, present and next, content and compelled. We have people among us who are apostles. As a church, we have, as a whole, the gift and calling to keep pressing outward to meet the next generation of Jesus followers amassed on the edge of our cultivated spiritual territory. We even have a leadership team (the Church Planting Core Team) to keep us on that edge.

Our “apostolic edge” is the invisible boundary over which our community of love in Jesus crosses to enter the next place we are being led: the territories of unbelieving people, the places where our compassion is needed, the next era of thinking that needs our Truth. From our side looking out, that edge is soft, even inviting. But from the other side looking in it might feel sharp or frightening, even taboo — many people looking over it from the outside might see things that feel very distant from everything that seems normal to them.

Our unique edge

For instance, Ben recently wrote the to the Covenant List and enthusiastically reiterated the Leadership Team’s list of things that make Circle of Hope unique — things they thought would make many people glad to connect, just like they feel. It is hard to see, from the inside looking out, why anyone would not cherish the things on their list, we are such a great thing God has made! — but it happens.

I don’t think they were just being self-congratulating when they came up with their list, just happy. You decide. Here’s what he shared:

“At the leadership Team Training last night I was so encouraged by all the things people were saying I whipped out my phone and furiously started thumb typing them. We were on a roll answering Nate Hulfish’s question: As far as your experience goes, what makes Circle of Hope unique compared to other churches and organizations? Here are as many responses as I could write down:

  • Nate Hulfish. (We laughed, but it’s true!)
  • There is a willingness to be vulnerable. (We are safe.)
  • Everyone wants each other’s wholeness. (There is genuine concern and mutuality.)
  • We are honest and not transactional. (We have a purpose and it is not my ego.)
  • There is an uncanny lack of self interest.
  • We are encouraged to live a life of worship. The rhythm of my day and the focus of my thoughts are in sync. It’s almost monastic.
  • We receive transparency from our leaders.
  • There is flexibility — not just wanting to do what’s next with the Spirit  but relying on the Spirit for what will happen.
  • I can have a knit together life. We have broken out of capitalist compartmentalizations.
  • We trust that people will have a face to face conflict — not online, not behind my back.
  • We are a real place of belonging — more home than what other home I’ve experienced.
  • There is more grace than I know what to do with sometimes.
  • I sense the purpose and joy of Jesus — a purity of heart that is not weird. I have a people to be that devoted with.
  • The leaders are followable. (They are not too lofty — no inflated sense of importance at “the top”)
  • There are so many leaders, along with a constant expectation of deploying the next leader.
  • We have a rare sense of tribe with Jesus leading us. We are a part of something bigger than ourselves.
  • We have the freedom to fail.
  • Circle of Hope is what I was always looking for but never thought I’d find.”

I thank God for the great blessing of being part of an authentic, growing, expressive church!

What is happening on our unique apostolic edge?

A few days later, Megan and I were talking in the surreal, sunny-February atmosphere of Miel. Pleasant, Frenchified music played in the background as we wondered about what is happening on the apostolic edge of our mission. (Yes, that’s exactly what we talk about over little sandwiches).

We could think of many reasons why Trumped-down people would want to meet Jesus and his people (as in the great list above!). But we could also imagine a few good reasons why people would avoid us without more than a glance.  If I could hear the script playing in those people’s minds, I think there would be several themes in what was being said about us:

  • This feels way too close.
  • Oh my, this is demanding. Not only am I singing, they expect me to feel things.
  • These people are very ambitious. What a lot of work!
  • I’ve got a feeling they expect me to be reading this blog post. They will probably be upset if I don’t read their email. Way too personal.
  • I have heard three people tell a personal story. I hope they don’t call on me.
  • Did they just say I should get therapy?
  • Uh oh. Here comes the part about money.
  • I’ve got a feeling they are going to sign me up any minute.
  • Can everyone articulate exactly what they believe?

It goes on.

I am not trying to make the alt-list to the one the Leadership Team made. I just want to have sympathy for people who would read (or intuit) such a list and feel like they were running into it, like it was the edge of something, something to cross over. When it comes to faith, people stand at the door a long time, some of them, and inch their way over the threshold if they move at all, if they ever notice the threshold! Very few people hear a compelling speech or meet a compelling person and automatically change their direction. I do psychotherapy, so I know firsthand how incrementally people change when they feel desperate for change, and are paying good money to change! Our apostolic edge is crowded with people who are more ambivalent or paralyzed than antagonistic or indifferent. We should be patient, confident in what we have been given, but aware that people on the other side might not be aware of those gifts, yet — or even the possibility of them. We can make them aware, but we can’t rush their response. We need to remain confident, knowing that Jesus is knocking on their door, not just us. We can wait — he is.

One time a woman was honest enough to say to me, “I just want to go to church. You guys are just too much.” So she went to church. That’s going to happen and that is OK. That doesn’t mean we aren’t God’s gift to the Philadelphia region or we can’t be pleased with exactly who we have become. But that memory reminds me to be discerning and patient before I think people don’t like me because I follow Jesus, before I think they have rejected me because they don’t want to come to my meeting. Jesus loves them right where they are, and he is with them, helping them over the threshold into all the graces we are receiving, and maybe even into some meeting that will feel life-giving and not so uncomfortable in  a year or so.