Grace & Gratitude; Competition, NOT Comparison

            I’ll be taking a 4-month sabbatical from my daily and weekly ministry activities in 2017.  I am excited and a bit apprehensive.  It’s like I am just taking a break and releasing control of my church (as if I have control now).  My associate pastor has repeatedly told me this sabbatical is part of my vocation.  While I am not preaching sermons, leading meetings, counseling members, and casting a vision for our church, I am still within my calling while on sabbatical.  And the church is what it has always been: God’s not mine.

            In order to prepare to adjust my daily rhythms from work to rest, I have begun seeing a spiritual adviser and she has me praying the prayer of examen.  In this approach to daily prayer, the one praying begins in silence building awareness of and attentiveness to the presence of God.  I do the best I can to silence all other outside noise (actual audible noise and the noise in my head).  I just get quiet and focus on the present God.  This is usually 2-5 minutes, though I would like to work up to longer periods.

I have done this before, but the examen has been particularly beautiful for me with what comes next.  The second step is to express gratitude.   I usually do the examen when I first arrive at my office, about 7:30AM.  In my mind, I go back through the previous 24 hours and note all the moments of thankfulness, all the things of life for which I am thankful.  This has been amazing! 

Before this discipline, I rarely paused to reflect on the past (in this case the most immediate past – just 24 hours).  I was not aware at how much my life is just charge ahead. I live directionally – forward!  My life question seems to be “What’s next?”  It has been a refreshing blessing to stop, look back, and thank God.  I have always known how important it is to live in gratitude.  Prior to examen I had a thanksgiving practice, one done with my wife.  Before going to sleep each night, she and I list three things each that we’re thankful for.  This exercise centers us, forces us to go to bed in gratitude and not some other emotion (anger, bitterness, etc.).  Sometimes we have to force it, but it is worth it to keep up the habit. 

The examen prayer of gratitude has taken my discipline of living thankfully to another dimension.  My wife and I still do our thanks, but now, I am starting the day aware that I have much to thank God for.  I am a blessed guy.  I am a graced guy.  When I miss the examen on busy, rushed mornings, I feel like I have missed something very important.  I have skipped a part of my morning that normally pours life into me. 

Another effect examen has had on me is a tendency to recall why I am thankful throughout the day.  When I want to get frustrated, a voice in my head (the Holy Spirit?) reminds me to be thankful because so much grace has been poured on me and into me.  Because of the examen and my nightly ritual of gratitude (with my wife), saying thanks to God is slowly becoming a default response for me. 

A couple of ways of seeing life emerge from living with an eye toward gratitude.  First, I know my life is a result of grace.  I am because of God’s grace.  I have blessings because of God’s grace.  I serve as pastor in a wonderful church because of God’s grace.  Saying this does not negate my own hard work and accomplishment.  I put forth a lot of effort and stretching outside my comfort zone to earn a doctorate of ministry.  That degree (with a focus in counseling) equipped me as a pastor and made my resume more attractive.  I have labored for over 2o years in 4 different churches in pastoral work.  It has been a joy and at times an arduous journey. 

But, I can’t fall into a trap of taking credit for anything.  I work hard and commit myself fully to ministry because that is an appropriate response to the grace God has given.  Also, let me not exaggerate my own work ethic.  I have lazy days.  I mess up.  Whether by my good or in spite of my failure, I acknowledge that I appreciate where I am and I thank God for my life.  I pray that if extremely hard times hit, I will have the spiritual wherewithal to continue giving God glory.  I don’t know that I could do that in the face of unspeakable personal loss.  I pray that I could.

Acknowledging that my life is graced and basking in God’s grace is a first way of seeing life that comes out of living in gratitude.  A second way of seeing might seem more surprising.  My gratitude compels me to be competitive.  That’s right!  I think Christians and pastors should compete hard, the way a Michigan running back leans toward the end zone or the way my beloved Detroit Lions race to be the first to clean out their lockers after yet another season without the playoffs.

Here’s what I mean by competition.  When I attend a conference and hear about what other pastors are doing, or I talk with pastors in our area and find out churches and ministries that doing great works of compassion or Kingdom pronouncement, it should inspire me to strive for greatness in our ministry at HillSong.  We should try to help people with such effectiveness that people in our community say, “Oh, you know that HillSong, they help people.”  Our ministry should equip believers in such a way that when people in the community meet our folks out and about and marvel at how loving they are and how grace-filled and compassionate they are and then discover they are HillSong people, they say, “Of course!  That’s the type of person that comes out of HillSong.  That’s what we expect from HillSong.”

We should compete to be outstanding ministers of the gospels, disciples of the Master, and proclaimers of the word.  We live missionally and as disciples for the sake of dying to self and rising in Christ.  We become so filled with grace and with the Spirit that the Gospel pours out of us in a torrent.

However, competition should not breed comparison.  If the church up the road preaches a robust gospel and doubles its membership and begins ministries that actually reduce hunger in our community, we must not compare ourselves to that church.  We should rejoice in what’s happening there.  I must not compare myself to that pastor.  The comparison will eat me up.  In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), Jesus did not critique the one who had 4 talents (v.22-23).  Jesus praised that one.  He did not say, “Why didn’t you reproduce as much as the one who had 10?”  Jesus commended him for growing from the grace he had been given.  And Jesus said to him, “Enter the joy of your master.” 

We must not become jealous if the church up the road outpaces us in membership.  I cannot be down on myself because I don’t lead a ministry that is as “big” as the one led by the pastor on the magazine cover.  There are many ways a ministry can be big, and God can do big things while working through small groups.  God has lead me to my role as disciple, husband, father, pastor, and friend.  I appreciate the grace God has given me and I compete to make my 2 talents become 4, and then the 4 to become 8.  When I think of myself, it is not a downplaying of what I have done.  Come on Rob!  Why aren’t you as “successful” as that pastor 10 years younger than you who leads a 1000-member church?  No, it cannot be that.  Such a posture of jealousy would mock the grace God has blessed me to receive. 

I want to live in constant gratitude, aware that my life is full of grace.  And aware of that, I want to compete hard in all the roles I fill, so that my 1 talent becomes 2, and then 2 becomes 4, and so on.  For me this approach to discipleship is challenging, satisfying, and joy-producing.  Moreover, it lands me in the middle of God’s work in the world.

A Pastor's Mind during Holy Week

                I don’t know why I cannot sleep.  More and more lately, I have found myself awake at times when I ought to be sleeping, like now, 11:25PM.  Last night, from 2-4AM, it was fitful, odd dreams, waking every 20-30 minutes.  I have consumed a lot of coffee lately, but at other times in life, I have drunk just as much and without the sleep problems.  Am I (at 44) getting older and processing caffeine differently?  My 70-year-old father drinks coffee like water and it seems to have no effect on him.  I don’t get it.  I don’t know if it is the coffee.  I don’t know what it is.

          I know I am having real anticipation regarding Easter.  I have spent the last year reading a lot of the writing of N.T. Wright, and in the process, I have re-read many passages of scripture.  I think Wright is right (I had to!).  Christianity is not about ‘going to Heaven when we die.’  It is about declaring Jesus is Lord and living in the Kingdom of God as made possible by Jesus’ coming.  I don’t know if Wright would say it exactly that way.  I do think though that his writings clearly determine the pivotal event to be Jesus’ bodily resurrection.  For Wright, and he believes for the Apostle Paul, the resurrection has to be a bodily resuscitation, one fully dead then fully alive in a risen body that cannot die again.  And the resurrection of Jesus changes everything. 

          We live differently because the future (we followers of Jesus being resurrected) breaks into the now.  Jesus has been raised so we can live as raised people and we must, even though our resurrection is a future event.  I have been thinking a lot about this, trying to preach it, and I don’t understand it.

          I do know this, though.  All this pondering of resurrection, Jesus’, and because of his my own, leads me to long for it.  It also colors my mind in the days leading to Easter.  For me Easter is more of a New Year’s celebration than January 1.

          The dictionary reference website defines the word ‘new’ in many ways including the following: “unfamiliar or strange;” “occurring afresh;” “other than the former or old.”  If these descriptions were tacked onto the word life, they would describe resurrected life.  It is not like the old and it is quite strange.  I fully believe in resurrection, something I was not there to see and have not yet understood.  Increasingly, I understand my own life in terms of resurrection.  And Easter is a time for me to rethink about what it means to live resurrected even though my own future life is just that, in the future.

          It’s almost like experimenting, almost.  I recall being engaged.  My fiancé and I ate meals together.  We cuddled on the couch together.  There was hand holding and kissing.  We did not go beyond that until our wedding night, but beside being in love and thoroughly enjoying every second together, we were practicing our future lives together.  We were anticipating our lives together.  Being engaged was almost like being married, almost.

          Yet, it was nothing like being married.  After the wedding, when the evening ended, I did not return to my apartment.  We went to bed together.  After the wedding, I did not wonder what life with her would be like.  I discovered it.  And what a time of discovery it has been and continues to be.

          I imagine that step from anticipating life together to living it serves as small hint of anticipating life in the resurrection and then living into it.  Of course my metaphor may be woefully off.  I can’t know until I die and am then raised.  But I am so convinced that it will go that way and that I and all who follow Jesus will be resurrected, that as I know think toward Easter, I am full of excitement. 

          The excitement is not for all the worship services.  At our church, there are three worships times we do not normally have and I am eager for each.  I think they will be special and I am giving my own effort to be at my best for each.  Anticipating these extra times, times when the people of the church seek an extra special worship experience, probably is one reason I am struggling to sleep.  But it cannot be the only reason because this is my 17^th holy week as a senior pastor.  It is always an adrenalin time for me, but one I have been through before.

          The anticipation is maybe a minor cause for my insomnia, but only a minor cause.  The excitement of resurrection, I think, is a bigger matter for me.  What will it be like?  I don’t know.  Yet, I think it is the biggest news we have and I want to tell it.  As a pastor, I preach weekly, so I have the opportunity to tell it.  How do you tell something you think is more important than anything else and yet you don’t understand it?  How do you do that?

          I don’t know. 

          It is 11:50PM.  My kids will be up for school in about 6 hours.  I am going to go and try to sleep.  Maybe God will give me Easter dreams.  

I am Embarrassed as I look to God

I am a pastor, and at the moment, an embarrassed pastor. I want to state from the beginning that I messed up. And I have to stand before God and admit that I failed to represent Jesus well.

Monday, a church member came in with great concern that our church is not growing. She sees another church in our area that's only been around less than 10 years. They probably number in the 1000's. They've started a couple of satellite and are looking to open another one. Some of our members, have left our congregation to attend this hot, new church. While this church is one of the hottest things around, we average 120-140 in weekly attendance. That's about the same number we've averaged for 5 years.

I was actually thrilled with our conversation. She wants us to do the things this other, fast-growing church is doing. She wants to see that kind of excitement in our body.

I happen to think a lot of exciting things are happening at HillSong: mission trips, children & teens growing in the faith, new families becoming a part of our ministry, local mission projects. But, as we have many grad students in our body, we see a lot of transition. The incoming new folks don't outnumber the outgoing folks (90% of whom leave because they are leaving the area). The result is our numbers pretty much stay the same, and the woman who came to my office interpreted this as a failure on the part of our church (and maybe on my part as the pastor).

I like our conversation because it shows her passion for seeing the church grow and the lost come to Jesus. It does put some pressure on me but that comes with the job.

Tuesday - a different member came in to tell me about a personality conflict between two people in the church. Of course in the long run, our conversation was ineffective because neither of the participants in the personality clash were present. This concerned member and I were third and fourth parties. But everyone involved, the two conflicting members, the concerned one who came to me, and of course me are high-level leaders in the church. Our discussion was good, but in the end all I am left with is the knowledge that two of our leaders are at each other, and one won't talk to me and the other isn't aware of a problem.

This kind of tension exists for all pastors everywhere, it is just that it is near the forefront at the moment. It will either be dealt with or subside, but right now it's on my mind.

And then there's my home life. My wife and kids are awesome. They are my absolute joy. The only problem is we are in a season of life where sleep is in short supply. I won't go into the details, but most nights, my wife and I are awakened sometime between midnight and 3AM. And then, I am again awakened between 4:45 and 5:30AM. That's the norm.

Millions of parents deal with the sleep loss I am describing here and we are adoptive parents so this is totally of our own making. Still, it renders me tired much of the time.

All of what I've described above leads me to Wednesday. I am driving with my 4-year-old son. We're going about 50mph in a 45 zone. A car comes zooming up on us, really tailgating. And I get mad. So I slow down. About 46mph, the guy zooms by and makes a gesture as he does. Now I am steamed.

Then the guy has to stop at the stop light. And within 3 seconds, I am beside him at the stop light. He makes another gesture. So I roll my window down and begin speaking forcefully (maybe I was yelling, but I don't think so). Repeatedly, I look him in the eye and I say, "Roll your window down." I am sure I have an extremely angry look in my eyes. The guy and his passenger, both men about 55 or so, occasionally look at me in disgust and then look ahead. I know they were uncomfortable.

Finally after an interminable time and me shouting "Roll your window down" about 50 times, the light turns green and we go. At my turn, the other driver and I part ways. And then I hear a 4-year-old voice say, "Why roll window down, Dad?" I respond about how the other driver did something wrong. But, I can feel the Holy Spirit creeping in saying, "Rob, did you represent Jesus well, just now?"

Obviously I did not. I sinned in my anger, in my actions, and in my words. To God, I have to honestly say, "I am sorry that I, a disciple of Jesus, behaved in that way." I am feeling some stress this week. I am very tired and this is at the start of my sermon-research day. And none of that is an excuse for me to be screaming at another driver. What did I teach my son? What did I, a representative of Jesus, model for the world?

In stressful moments when we are tired, we reveal our true selves. I want to be someone who points others to Jesus. Sometimes I succeed. This morning I failed.

I pray for the man in the other car and his passenger. I pray that they would see Jesus today.

I pray for my son. I pray God would help me teach my son how to handle conflict and stress the way Jesus handles conflict and stress.

And I pray for myself. I pray that God would help me grow from this moment. I pray that God would replace the old sinful self with a new creation and that I would die to self and not feel self-righteous anger that turns into sinful rage.

I also pray that God would fill me with grace and love and wisdom and knowledge. I probably won't see those guys who were in the other car again. But I will see the church members I mentioned earlier, along with about 120 others who will worship at our church this Sunday. I need to share with them the word of God and today I begin working on what I will say. I pray God will inspire me so that the sermon I offer contributes to the spiritual growth of all who hear it.

That's my confession.