Wading past the jargon

I have friends who are much more abreast of certain technical issues than I am. They can explain the significance of an RSS feed. They can walk me through the process of portioning a hard drive. They can explain “VPN” connections. They know about smtp-outgoing mail servers and a myriad of other technical things I just take for granted. I trust that their answers are right and sound.

Leaders, spiritual leaders are in a similar position. Everyday people around us expect us to know the answers and to be able to demonstrate and explain spiritual truths. They may never understand the answers as well as we do, but they trust us for the answers.

Therefore it’s important for us to stay up to date! Just as I.T. Techs and Technology Directors keep studying and keep learning so should every leader keep on the grow. People will always expect us to have greater understanding, greater knowledge.

It comes with the mantel.

There is no such thing as a leader who does not keep growing.

Are you ready for the next question?

The nature of the crowd

I had one of those major thought threads today. You know what they are like. You read one thing, hear one thing and begin to muse on it and you follow the thread in your mind as it unwinds, not quite sure where it is going. Then all of a sudden a major truth hits you between the eyes.

I had one today. Follow this with me.

I was thinking about the crowd in Mark. It’s a major player in the book. The crowd is everywhere. That led me to start thinking about the crowd, how it had one time raced around a lake to beat Jesus to the shore so they could hear more, experience more. Then I was thinking about how this crowd could so easily betray him later. How?

Then I was thinking about the nature of a crowd, any crowd. People in a crowd are different. They act differently then when they are alone.

 Together in a crowd you can hide, acting alone you can be seen.
 In a crowd you can embrace evil, alone you know accountability. Everyone is doing it; you can get away with it. Why not throw the stone?
 In a crowd you can excuse apathy, after all someone else can always respond. But when we are alone we feel compelled to respond.
 Together it is easy to blame others, alone we face responsibility.

In essence, I was being reminded that in a crowd it’s easy to hide from my individual responsibility.

Then I got to thinking about our passion for church growth. We want to see healthy thriving churches, but as the church grows does it just turn into a Christian crowd? One where it’s easy to be apathetic, easy to blame others, easy to shirk responsibility.

Then it hit me hard. We “live this call together”, but we are held individually responsible. The reckoning is not faced in the crowd. The judgment seat of Christ is not a corporate lawsuit. It’s the ultimate day of individual accounting. No hiding in the crowd that day. Standing unclothed from the trappings of the church, the crowd we so often hide in, we will individually be held accountable.

Have I (not we) lived the call? Have I known Him AND made Him known?

Beware the crowd!

Lessons from My Father’s Feet, Part 3

The Return of Joy

I’ve been learning another lesson these days. It’s an interesting one. You see my dad and I were often like oil and water. We didn’t mix well. By the time I was a teen, the fond memories of baseballs hit in the yard, footballs kicked, sun fish caught had all but been forgotten. Replaced instead with arguments over chores, privileges, failures, and my own laziness. Add to those the strife of a home in conflict, a man struggling with the death of his own parents, his own demons of alcohol, l and any joy in our relationship was lost. Gone were the days when at five or six I would wait on the porch for the first glimpse of my dad walking up the street and run just to walk the rest of the way home with him.

Here is my lesson. The enemy steals so much from us. He multiplies the hurts of the past and infects them until they taint every moment of the present But when we allow God to heal the hurt, He changes the inside of our lives and a marvelous thing occurs. Joy returns.

A lot of healing has taken place. Years ago mine began as I embraced the
transforming Savior. Slowly the hurts were healed, the pain released and the whole man emerged. Dad began his transformation years ago. He did what he could. Soberness was embraced. He fathered a grandson with an absent father. He never missed a game, an event. And when he could transform nothing else, last year he open himself to the Forgiver. Two men both carrying great hurts, both who once hurt each other, so easily are healed. Joy returned.

My dad and I fished with a friend yesterday. He sat in a golf cart and rode around as we cast our flies on the water. He held a pole, he landed fish. And he and I glowed with joy. No anger about the past, no regrets, just joy moments in the present.

The lesson being reinforced in me is this: our God is a God of the present. And when He does His transforming work, He can restore joy even where the past was often dark with sorrow.

Lessons from my Father’s Feet, part 2

My dad was a steel worker for most of my life. I remember the heavy boots he wore everyday. Big heavy boots with steel safety plates across the front. As soon as he would get home, those boots would come off and most of the year his gardening boots went on. Late in the evening when he finally settled into a chair in front of the TV, those boots and his socks would come off.

There they were-his calloused, sweaty, gnarly feet. I thought they were the most disgusting things I had ever seen. I hated it when he would ask me to carry his socks to the hamper. I’d pick them up by the top edge, hold them at arms distance, and hold my nose and carry them to the hallway hamper. I can still remember my revulsion.

Now most mornings between my quiet time and the start of my office hours, I help my father get around for the day. He’s slow, but most of his morning routine he accomplishes on his own. Except that he can no longer reach his feet. So every morning I find myself, cloth in hand, washing my father’s feet. After breakfast I’m on my knees and I help him into his socks and shoes. If you told me growing up I would one day be doing this, I would have laughed.

I have come to cherish the routine: honoring my father by washing his feet, even though he was not always the most honorable man. It is a joy to hear him sigh with contentment that it feels good when we’re done. It’s a unique thing that is going on. We talk about the day. He asks about my schedule, about my ministry, about what’s ahead. We talk about people he has met, sports, fishing, life. The most amazing thing is taking place in the mornings. My father’s feet are drawing us closer together.

Here is the lesson. Sometimes we focus on what repulses us in a relationship and it pushes us away. Or we choose to avoid the ugly, the repulsive, the uncomfortable in our relationships with each other, and push each other away. Perhaps we should look for ways in which our brokenness, our imperfections can draw us together.

Lessons at my Father's feet

Some leaders often write with warm affection of the lessons learned as a child or a teenager at their father’s feet. Dad taught me to fish. Dad taught me how to face adversity. Dad taught what it means to be a man.

I heard the stories in sermons, in books I’ve read, Stu Webber, John Eldridge, James Dobson, and Ed Young. It is true many leaders learn lessons sitting at their Father’s feet.

I was different.

Without tearing him down let’s first say my dad and I were never really close. The dysfunctions of our family dominated my childhood and teen years. Our enmity continued often in visits home as an adult.

But a number of years ago the Forgiver did two great things in my relationship with my dad. He reminded me that I had grace, I knew truth, I walked in light, and to whom much is given, much would be required. God placed the burden for peace in our relationship upon me.

The second thing God did is he increased ten-fold my love for my father. Now our relationship is different. Since those changes I have seen him change. I have watched faith be born in him. I have seen him at peace.

A week ago I moved my dad in with us. It’s for at least a month, maybe more. He and my mom have been using walkers for years. After a recent fall, mom is in rehabilitative care. Dad needs help. Living alone is no longer possible so he’s with us. It has been good.

Here’s the first lesson from my father’s feet:
No relationship is so estranged that the Forgiver cannot mend; when those who claim His name humbly allow Him to work.

True Christmas

I’ve been driving around amid all the houses decorated for Christmas. Some reveal incredible amounts of work and expense. Tiny lights hang in trees, line eaves and adorn fence rows and garage doors. Lawns are decked with miniature scenes: The Wisemen journey, elves work, reindeer frolic. Many of the scenes required not just an afternoon of work, some called for much more time to achieve their winter wonderland.

But I wonder how many of those pretty houses hide homes in shambles. How many families are celebrating their last Christmas before the “separation”, the “divorce”. I wonder how many sequester the wounded spirit that will end it all come January. Which ones are the ones filled with anger and abuse? Which are the homes with estranged loved ones? Sons and daughters adrift? For how many is peace on earth just a sign on the lawn, a decoration on the wall?

True Christmas celebrating will not be judged just by the outward decorations, by the externals. If He is to be experienced this year, He will be experienced internally at the core of our being.

Leaders who follow the Forgiver know this Christmas isn’t about the externals. It’s always about the internals.

As you celebrate, lead, teach, administrate may the inside stuff of Christmas radiate through you!

The Shout of Christmas

Christmas began in a whisper but now comes with a shout. Jesus’ entrance into our world was quiet and unassuming. The Almighty emptied Himself of glory to be born in a manger. It would have gone unnoticed if it weren’t for the announcement to shepherds.

Now Christmas comes with a Shout. I’m not referring to the pre-November commercial build-up to the season. And I am not referring to the madness of trying to do all we do each year. The shout of Christmas is different. Christmas shouts to us as we count the years by its passing.

The wonder of childhood Christmases gives way to the polite co-operation of teen years. Those pass into homecoming Christmases with the return of college students. Morphed again Christmas is expanded as new young families are united and daughters and sons-in-law are welcomed into the celebration.
The arrival of grandchildren changes it all again. We watch the cycle repeat as the new little ones grow. Through-out each of these changes Christmas shouts to us.

Our years are passing. The days are fleeting. Things will change, the nest will empty, and the celebration will evolve. We cannot stop the passage of time and each Christmas reminds us of another year passed. It shouts to us of our mortality.

Yet in the midst of this defining event, on our annual calendar a clarion call is heard. It rings forth year after year. Hear it now as you celebrate the season. It is a simple message that reminds us of one amazing thing year after year.

“God so loved the world. . .”

Hear the shout.

“God so loved. . .”