Older (RePost)

I’m 30 and I still quote from dumb and dumber quite often. But I work with a population that was not even in grade school when this movie was in theaters!

They say you are most effective, in ministry, with those ten-years older and younger than you. I think about that from time to time, especially when kids are talking about some youtube video, or a new gadget that I have never heard of and for sure will not know how to use.

I also grow weary with some of the drama that comes with the territory. Whether you take bio 102a or 103b, or whether or not so and so dropped you as a facebook friend, is not always the most interesting conversation for me. However, at one point, I was that student, consumed by what I was supposed to be doing with my life and all emo-ed out with girl problems and the weight of the world.

I find myself wanting to tell students all the time: “It’s ok, this is the easy part, enjoy it, everything is going to be fine.” That’s me at 30: Mr. Cliche.

But I don’t want to be mr. cliché. I find myself circling back to the wise words of Henri Nouwen. In his excellent book, In the Name of Jesus, Nouwen tackles some of the common temptations of leaders. One of them is the temptation to be relevant.

“The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows them to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success, and to bring the light of Jesus there.”

I love the line “the anguish underlying all the glitter of success,” because that describes the condition of the modern college student so well. Nouwen prescribes contemplative prayer as the antidote to the temptation of relevance. It is in listening to “the voice of love” again and again and that we find the answers to the issues of the day, to the underlying anguish, to the pain.

The best thing about getting old, at least so far, is that you realize that what you have offer the next generation is not coolness (you will never out cool them), is not stuff, is not even life lessons, but hopefully love. Nothing that I do or create or think up will be as cool as what they can find on tv but who will love them well?

As I get older that’s the question that keeps me up at night.

New Is Always Better (RePost)

Amy and I enjoy the show “How I Met Your Mother”. (For those not familiar with the show, it’s a sort of “Friends” for millennials). One of the main characters is an extreme philanderer named Barney. Barney is prone to outlandish statements and proclamations of ridiculous rules that explain the world from his perspective. One of his favorite sayings is “new is always better.” (I try to invoke this rule with my wife when I get tempted to buy some new piece of technology…it doesn’t really work).

A few weeks ago someone was telling me about a situation he was dealing with. Another someone had a brand new “theological” insight regarding a controversial issue within the church.

As I was listening my intellectual side was tracking with the argument…even though it was new, it kind of made sense, and I could follow the logic (to a degree) that had led to the conclusion.

But something didn’t sit well with me.

I couldn’t figure it out for a while, and I felt like the only response I had was “well that’s wrong,” or “we don’t do it that way.” The issue came up again recently in a conversation about the passage in Luke on new and old wine skins.

Admittedly, I gravitate towards the new most of the time. I like new ideas, new gadgets, new books, new music, etc.

But the rhetoric that goes along with new (i.e. progressive) ideas is often one of convenience. As in: how convenient that you found this new idea that justifies your world view, that’s awesome!

But convenience is never the path that Jesus took, and that is ultimately what didn’t sit right with me as I listened to my friend. The new idea was cool and interesting and definitely worth a serious conversation.

But it lacked sacrifice. There was no laying down of lives or taking up of crosses. Stories of convenience lack any kind of power. Stories of sacrifice stir the soul and inspire action.

It wasn’t even about whether the issue at hand was right or wrong (at least for me)…the serious point that was being missed was the exchange of sacrifice for convenience.

There is a part of me that wants to declare “new is always better,” but I am learning to weigh the “new” with a lens (a hermeneutic) of sacrifice and cross bearing. Of course, on this point, I can always be accused of spiritual masochism or a joyless theology, so I will acknowledge that danger. But I will always trust “new” ideas that have passed through the crucible of suffering and sacrifice and life-laid-down-experience over a theology of convenience.

Some Thoughts on Grief (or how not to be helpful)

I spoke on Grief at REUNION on Sunday, part of our series called “UnDone”. You can listen to it here. I was able to spend a few minute talking about how those who are on the comforting side of the grief process can fall into a couple of dangers.

One of those is dangers is to default to clichéd advice like: “everything will be ok, time will heal all wounds.”

I think we have spiritual ways of sending a similar message. Not liking the messiness of the middle of the grieving process we say things like: “I’m sure God has a plan for all of this,” or “He will work it all out in the end.” That stuff sounds nice, and yes there are moments when we need to be reminded that something bigger than our situation is in control, but most of the time it isn’t very helpful in the moment.

And even more insidious is when this kind of advice gets thrown back on us later on down the road. Maybe things did sort of work out. Maybe you lost a job and ended up with a better one, or a relationship ended and that opened the possibility of something new and deeper. What happens here is that a helpful friend comes along and says: “See this is how it was supposed to work all along, isn’t God good.” They slap God’s approval on the whole thing, and suddenly you have no way to respond to that. Can’t argue with God.

But, that situation, whatever it was, HURT. And yes, things are working out and that is worth celebrating, but what ends up happening here is that those feelings become invalid. Now you have to pretend like that never hurt in the first place. Somehow you are less spiritual and in tune with how God works if you continue to name the pain and call it what it is.

But to truly heal (and to be fully human) you have to be able to say: “that hurt.” And if even something beautiful comes on the other end of it, it is all the more beautiful because it was born out of pain. But that thing was still painful…it doesn’t just disappear.

And, that, I think, is really important to remember.

Decompression

Amy and I enjoyed our first, true three-day weekend in a long, long time. Actually, we can’t remember having such a relaxing weekend, which is pretty bad. Because of our schedules, this past semester we had an afternoon off here, and a couple of hours there. We were bad.

One of the definitions of decompress is: “ To bring (a person exposed to conditions of increased pressure) gradually back to normal atmospheric pressure.” Yes, that is exactly what this weekend felt like.

Here are some of the synonyms for compress: squeeze, crush, press, crowd, squash, constrict, shorten, abbreviate. Unfortunately, those are all words that I can relate to. This last semester did something to me that feels a lot like being squeezed, and I will not let it happen again.

So, for us, this three-day weekend was a gift. A time to recalibrate back to normal atmospheric pressure. We hung out with close friends, slept in, made breakfast, read books, worked on some fun projects, went on walks, exercised, and watched baseball. My soul feels bigger than its felt in a long while. And for this I am very grateful.

Acts, Church, Tension, Beauty, etc

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Acts recently (see yesterday’s post). A common reaction to Acts is to look at all the exciting and crazy things that happen (3000 people joining the movement, healings in Jesus’ name, angels letting people out of jail) and to ask: “Why doesn’t the church look more like this today?”

I can sympathize with that a bit. But, I also am overwhelmed with how little has changed. People fight, disagree over little things, lie, criticize, and quit. The mission is always in danger of getting derailed by something that, in the grand scheme of things, is not all that important.

When I look around today and hear some of the criticisms about the church, I hear, at times, the “We just need to go back to Acts” sentiment. To people who say that, I ask: “Have you been involved in a church lately?”

When you are deeply involved in a community, and when you are a healthy person, you should see both sides of the Acts coin…the good and the bad…the beautiful and the ugly. Churches can be amazing: people finding their way back to God, great stories of transformation, miracles, serving the community, and on and on. But church can also be agonizing: fights, losing the mission, distractions, criticisms, and on and on.

Acts makes it clear that both of these realities are true of the church in a broken world. The challenge for me, as Acts has reminded me, is not to let idealism or cynicism win the day. The beauty is in holding the tension of these two realities. Church is where the miraculous happens and it can break your heart. God help me to live in to that truth.

Trees

Someone asked me the other day if there has been something from Scripture that I have found sustaining and life-giving over the past school year. For me, it has been Psalm 1. I read this Psalm a couple of times a week and pray fervently that I would be “a tree planted by streams of water.”

In my mind the Psalm conjures up an image of an old oak tree that one might find in central California. An old tree has seen a lot of things, has lived through a lot of storms, and has developed a certain amount of “sway” (the ability to flex and bend but not break in the face of winds and all kinds of weather).

Verse one of the Psalms describes the ways we get sucked into sinful and dysfunctional patters (walk, stand, sit). It feels unsettled when compared to a deeply rooted tree. The key, in verse two, is to meditate on the law of the Lord.

I want to be like an old oak tree, but I don’t feel that way very often. I feel a lot more like a sapling with shallow roots, or an unsettled tree that is too far from streams of water and has become brittle. My branches feel too easily broken.

My prayer is that I grow to be a tree deeply rooted by streams of water.

1 Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
²but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
³That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.

⁴Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
⁵Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

⁶For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

Surprising Good Gifts

On Sunday night, Amy and I hung out with a celebrity couple. Not huge celebrities, but these people are way cooler than we are. Except they are totally normal, and we have a ton of things in common.

Superficial things in common (Amy said both couples can be described as tall white guys with “ethnic” wives =).

But deep things in common too: growing up in ministry families, similar journeys to parenthood, jobs that have strange hours and difficult demands. The list goes on.

Someone said that two of the most powerful words in the English language are “me too.” We had “me too” moments again and again. At one point, during a pause in the conversation, we all kind of laughed about the similarities in our stories.

I thought it would be really fun and interesting to hang out with this couple and to ask them a million questions. Turns out they ministered to us in a beautiful and profound way.

Good gifts are all around us, all the time, I believe. The question is: are we paying attention enough to see them and to recognize them for what they are. Jesus said a lot, “Let those who have ears to hear, hear.” (Or eyes to see).

Do we have the eyes and ears to recognize good gifts when they come our way?

Conferences and Coming Home

Things I dislike about conferences:

People that brag about all the great things they’ve done
People who don’t ask questions
Activities organized by extroverts that make everyone talk
Listening to bad presentations
Being away from home

Things I like about conferences:

Space to dream
Interaction with ideas
Creativity and thinking
Listening to great presentations
Coming home and seeing Amy after being gone for 3 days!

Some Thoughts on Running

I have found there to be an inextricable link between how I feel (emotionally, mentally, spiritual) and how much I exercise. When I moved to Colorado six years ago I quickly got into trail running, which has evolved into urban/street running here in Boston.

Good weeks and bad weeks have an eery correlation to how many runs I can get in.

Is the connection simply a matter of exercise versus no (or little) exercise? Or is there more to it than that? I’ve thought about this a lot, but a conversation I had on Sunday put words to a truth I had known but not been able to express.

I was talking to a visitor at REUNION who was in town to watch a friend run the Boston Marathon. We chatted for a while about running and I mentioned how I used to hate running. Even as a soccer player I struggled to find motivation to get out there and run. It wasn’t until I was about 26 that running even became remotely enjoyable (and a lot of that had to do with the beauty of Durango).

After I mentioned that my new friend said this: “Well, when you are younger, running is a struggle because we don’t like to be alone with ourselves for too long.”

Oh man! How true is that. And that put to words something I’ve been feeling for a while: running is not just good for me physically it provides one of the rare spaces where there is no phone, no music, no computer, no conversations, no books, no tv, no distractions.

Just me and myself. Just me and God.

More and more I see that people (of all ages) struggle with this. We are always “on”, we are always connected. We don’t like to be alone. We really don’t like to be alone with ourselves.

But my soul craves this space, and so I run not just to exercise but to get to know myself better, to disconnect, and hopefully to hear from God. That’s why I run.

Finish Strong

It’s the final month of school for most of our students and people are starting to think about finals, summer jobs, traveling, internships, and all that good stuff. And, it is a super busy season for us…readying new leaders, finishing well relationally, planning new things, evaluating the year, etc, etc, etc. All on top of the normal rhythms of groups and one-on-ones and meetings.

I’m ready for vacation.

But I don’t want to check out early. At our last leadership community I shared with our students the story of Caleb. I always come back to Caleb when I think about finishing well, finishing strong.

Consider Caleb’s example (you can read about him in Numbers 13 and 14)…

He was one of only two Israelite spies (Joshua was the other) who saw how good the promised land was and believed the people could take it over.
He was sold out by the other 10 spies who freaked out because of the “giants in the land” and their weapons.
He and Joshua were the only two people from his generation allowed to enter the promised land.
He had to wander around the desert while his contemporaries died out, all the while knowing the good things he was missing out on. He had to question his fate a ton, I would think.
He went to a lot of funerals and dug a lot of graves.
And then, God picked Joshua to be the leader to take over from Moses. Joshua got the book deal, the twitter followers, the big church. Caleb had his life and his family and a hope for a plot of land.

If anyone had an excuse to give up, to lose hope, to become cynical or bitter or entitled or frustrated or angry or to quit, it was Caleb.

We don’t know much about what Caleb did for those 40 years, but we know how his story ends. He shows up again in Joshua 14. Everyone else had received their allotment of land, and finally Caleb says, “It’s time for me to take mine.”

And we read this:

⁶ Now the people of Judah approached Joshua at Gilgal, and Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, “You know what the LORD said to Moses the man of God at Kadesh Barnea about you and me. ⁷ I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought him back a report according to my convictions, ⁸ but my fellow Israelites who went up with me made the hearts of the people melt in fear. I, however, followed the LORD my God wholeheartedly. ⁹ So on that day Moses swore to me, ‘The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have followed the LORD my God wholeheartedly.’

¹⁰ “Now then, just as the LORD promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! ¹¹ I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. ¹²Now give me this hill country that the LORD promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the LORD helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.”

¹³ Then Joshua blessed Caleb son of Jephunneh and gave him Hebron as his inheritance. ¹⁴ So Hebron has belonged to Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite ever since, because he followed the LORD, the God of Israel, wholeheartedly. ¹⁵ (Hebron used to be called Kiriath Arba after Arba, who was the greatest man among the Anakites.)

Then the land had rest from war.

Somehow, through all that, he still followed God wholeheartedly. He finished strong.

I love that image of 85-year-old Caleb still looking for a fight, still ready to go, still throwing himself fully into the work God had asked him to do. And somehow all of that contributed to peace in the land.

When I get tired I think about Caleb…I want to finish strong too.