Spiritual Renewal

The last two days, I’ve been blessed to be at the Clergy Day Apart (an annual one day retreat for spiritual nourishment of the Central Texas Conference). Tom Albin from the Upper Room (a part of the United Methodist Church’s Board of Discipleship) was the key note speaker. Listening to him I was reminded of the old Aqua Velva aftershave commercial. In the commercial Aqua Velva was compared to a wakeup slap in the face followed by the tag line; “Thanks, I needed that.” I live my life at too fast a pace. I know this truth and yet like someone addicted to alcohol I seem to find myself almost powerless to stop. The Clergy Day Apart is a wakeup call. Tom’s thoughtful insightfulness pierced me with both judgment and grace. He spoke about love for God and neighbor. Love for God (as I understood him) was expressed in worship, prayer and praise. Tom talked about this as oxygen for our soul. He noted that we often function on spiritual oxygen deficiency. I find this true in my life. My spiritual oxygenation seems to rise and fall based on the time I spend in worship, prayer and praise. Quoting Bishop Ruben Job, he talked about our need for 1 hour of prayer a day, one day set aside for spiritual quite & prayer a month, and one week a year for spiritual retreat. I am convicted. My most generous estimate has about 30 minutes a day for prayer. Bill Hybels book (which I read over a decade ago) Too Busy NOT to Pray comes to mind. I regularly set aside a day a month for quiet time. I call it my Q day and got the idea from John Stott who did so for years. I am convicted again because I far too routinely allow things to impinge on the schedule. Lately I have been setting aside a week a year as a part of my study leave. Even there I have to fight my tendency to compromise the time. How about you? Do you regularly love God through spiritual renewal in worship, prayer and praise? Tom also spoke powerfully of love of neighbor expressed in evangelical witness and social justice. Using the image of a cross, he noted that for many Methodists we have a small vertical axis and an elongated horizontal axis. There is much food for thought in that image. Biblically he tied his presentation to John 15. It is worthy of meditation. May God bless and keep you.

Unity and Mission

Last night I spoke at the Tarrant Area Community of Churches along with Commissioner Roy Brooks (a member of Morningside UMC). I could not help but be struck by the fact that when I was a child such events were unheard of. Today they are so common place that they are taken for granted. I made the glaringly obvious case that unity is for the purpose of mission. Jesus' prayer for the disciples (that us!) in John 17 lays out the importance of unity in and for mission for all Christians everywhere. In fact the biblical theme for the evening came from the resurrection story of the road to Emmaus in the 24th chapter of Luke’s gospel. “You are witnesses of these things.” (Luke 24:48) This theme was chosen in Scotland during the planning phase of the anniversary of the 1910 World Mission Conference which marked the beginnings of the modern ecumenical movement. It was chosen rightly for it calls us to something central to the gospel –our essential unity in Christ. But it does not call us to unity (“oneness”) because that is nice or good thing (though it may be both of those). Instead we are called into unity by the very resurrection of Jesus who rising conquerors the powers of sin, hell, and death. We are to be one for His mission “so that the world may believe that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”(John 17:23 In my reading of the gathering, the auidance was far more interested in mission than in unity. Unity in mission seemed virtually taken for granted. A part of me celebrates this and a part of me is deeply concerned. My childhood taught me that it should not be taken for granted. My adult life in ministry constantly reminds me that when our theological and biblical underpinnings are not constantly reinformce we gradually drift from the convictions that once made us strong. I thank God for the work in Christian unity going on through groups like the Tarrant Area Community of Churches. I also believe there is much more careful and thoughtful dialogue needed about genuine deep unity as Christ followers.

Pursuing Excellence

I recently read a fascinating article entitled "The Mundanity of Excellence" by Daniel F. Chambliss. Chambliss reported on a detaled study of excellence in swimming. The results are both surprising and facinating. They transfer to insights for other occupations including pastoral ministry. First, he notes what does not produce excellence. 1) Excellence is not the result of unusual personality characteristics. 2) Excellence is not the result of quantitative changes in behavior. (Though the work of Malcom Gladwell in Outliers seems to suggest otherwise.) 3) Excellence is not the result of some "inner quality" or natural ability. Excellence is the result of "qualitative differentiation." Chambliss illustrates it this way. "For a swimmer doing the breaststroke a qualitative change might be a change from pulling straight back with teh arms to sculling them outwards, to the sides." The Bible speaks of excellence in ministry as an act of faithfulness in response to God. Hebrews 8:6 describes Jesus ministry as now a "more excellent ministry." Dean Greg Jones (at Duke Divinity School) has written about the need for excelence in ministry. Chambliss noted three areas of change -- technique, discipline, attitude. I found myself wrestling with what Chambliss' insight represent for ministry in the local church. For instance, in preaching, excellence may be presented by the step up to the next level of through more carefully writing out sermons and then practicing delivery before preaching. I suspect that one of the major differences in preaching levels has to do with the level of preparation discipline. In missions, what are the intentional behavior changes that move a church from good to excellent? Excellence comes not from a quantitative leap, nor from some innate inner talent or luck (a debatable concept for Christians) but rather from discrete incremental factors that drive mission and ministry in the practices of fruitful ministry. Chambliss writes: " Excellence is mundane. Superlateive performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then fitted together in a synthesized whole." So it is with good preaching, great missional outreach, life changing evangelism and the list could (and should) go on.

The Hedgehog Concept

Last summer I read Jim Collins newest book How the Mighty Fall. It was a fascinating reprise to his marvelous earlier works Built to Last and Good to Great (including the added monograph Good to Great for Social Sectors). Recently I had the opportunity to revisit this work with others. In Collins’ work he talks about the “Hedgehog Principle.” In a summary he writes: “Greatness comes about by a series of good decisions consistent with a simple, coherent concept – a ‘hedgehog’. The hedgehog concept is an operating model that reflects understanding of three intersecting circles: what you can be the best in the world at, what you are deeply passionate about, and what best drives your economic or resource engine.” (Jim Collins, How the Mighty Fall, p. 181)

I am mindful that churches are very different from businesses. Our mission is biblically and theologically defined. The power and presence of the Holy Spirit cannot be over estimated. At the same time (and not in contradiction), business models are helpful tools. They can guide the clarity of our thinking about our divinely called mission.

Bearing the above in mind, I am convinced that a significant question to ask is – what is our Hedgehog Concept? This applies to churches and conferences. It is also important to separate what we think our current Hedgehog Concept is versus what our Hedgehog Concept ought to be (reality verses aspiration). While I wrestle with both, I think at our best Methodism has lived with some version (you can argue about exact phrasing until the cows come home!) of the following Hedgehog Concept.

1. We are best at being (originally) at intentional Christian discipleship development (hence the name Methodist coming from being “methodical” about discipleship growth and development). 2. Our passion is to transform people and the world. 3. Our economic or resource engine (meaning more than just where does the money comes from but rather what drives our best development and transformational efforts) is the local church.

Now the big question is how big is the gap between reality and aspiration?

As I begin this Year of Our Lord 2010 (A.D.), I offer a new blog. I’ve entitled it This Focused Center based on The Message (a paraphrased translation of the Bible by Eugene Peterson) version of II Corinthians 5:14-15. “Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.”

My subtitle is Reflections on Christ and His Church. As I wrote in my Wilderness Way #28 column, I hope to share what I am reading and wrestling with. Together I hope and pray that we can live out of the focused center of life with Christ. Truly he came for all and he came to include us “in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.” I offer this blog out of a conviction that we need to turn and return to a deeply Trinitarian expression of the Christian faith. More explicitly, it appears to me that much of contemporary mainline theological/cultural reflection appears to have a vague sense of God, a passing acquaintance with Jesus as Lord, and little conception of the work of the Holy Spirit. I want to invite us to be focused as explicitly Christian; that is to say, living out of the focused center of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior – crucified and risen for all!

Three quotes I ran into in my reading last fall stick with me. First, somewhere Philip Yancey wrote: “How would telling people to be nice to one another get a man crucified? What government would execute Mister Rogers or Captain Kangaroo?” I think was C. S. Lewis who said about Christ as our focused center: “Safe? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” In meanderings through Willie the Shake (William Shakespeare that is) there is a line from Henry V which clings to my soul. ““This is a stem / Of that victorious stock, and let us fear / The native mightiness and fate of him.” I may have the quotes wrong but they ring of truth for me. We are called to live from this Focused Center. I will try to write ever 3 days or so. You are invited to share a comment or thought.

Given the hectic-ness of my schedule I will only be able to reply spasmodically. Together as we wrestle and reflect on the truth of life and the truth of Christ and the truth of the Great God three in One – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I pray we can live the resurrection life, “a far better life than people every lived on their own.”