Sabbath, noun, a period of rest.
For the past 15 years I have enjoyed what I call “distance leadership” roles. Ministering over geographic and cultural distance taps into my gifts and passions. It also demands a lot of travel and emotional energy.
In 2002 a number of challenges led to me to begin taking a regular weekly Sabbath. My goal was simple: no email, no phone, and no wristwatch for 24 hours each week. Since that time I’d say I’ve averaged about 35-40 good Sabbaths each year. Not perfect, but definitely profitable. I’ve also managed to squeeze in one or two “mini-sabbatical” weeks each year which have been devoted to reading, reflection and prayer.
Last August the Lord showed me that my soul needs to take an extended rest from ministry. There’s a subtle temptation, almost unnoticeable, that creeps in when one is constantly positioned to help others enjoy Jesus: we can stop enjoying Jesus for ourselves. When this happens we can be in danger of drying up as a branch, or worse, losing our First Love. To combat this condition, most missions organizations provide for regular sabbaticals to refresh one’s soul. It might help to think of this period as an athlete looks at off-season. In off-season, athletes continue to work out and to cross-train, but their bodies enjoy a break from intense competition. It’s a chance for the body to recover and for the mind to gain new perspectives on its craft.
Campus Crusade offers senior staff members one month of sabbatical for every four years served. Stunningly, very few people take this gift. We talk about how we long for rest, but we’re too busy to take it.
In his eternal wisdom, God has provided for us regular periods of rest. It began with creation (“on the seventh day, God rested from his work.”) It continues throughout Scripture. Here are a few passages of the many that highlight our need for regular celebration and rest:
- See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath. (Exodus 16:29)
- Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. (Exodus 20:8)
- Be still, and know that I am God. (Psalm 46:10)
- And Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27)
- So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. (Hebrews 4:9)
- Draw near to God, he will draw near to you. (James 4:8)
In March I will be taking a one-month Sabbatical. My goal is simple: To draw near to Jesus in fresh, unhindered ways so I can experience fresh power and fruitfulness in the next season of ministry.
This is a HUGE step of faith for me at this time. For the next 31 days I will not be answering any work-related email or phone calls. No ministry-related travel. No meetings. No trips to the office. Nothing. Nada. Everything has been placed in the capable hands of my Lord and my team. I am fairly confident the world will continue to spin without my help.
It requires faith to believe God works even when we don’t. I’ve learned that in Scripture, and in life, Sabbath is not so much a day off, but a day with. It’s a time to be with the Lord and with special people who restore our passion for living and loving well.
As the Lord prompts you, would you pray for me during March? Pray those verses above for me. Ask that Jesus would give me the discipline to wean myself from work, from Facebook and Twitter, and from other cultural white noise that clutters my soul. Pray that my Father the Vinedresser would prune me so that I could bear much more fruit. Ask that I would return on April 1 like Moses, whose face shone after he had been with God.
Thanks, and feel free to take the rest of the day off.
Suggested resources: The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan and Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership by Ruth Haley Barton.
Recently my friend Craig recommended the book “I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus.” Craig plants postmodern churches that are raised out of the surrounding culture. He helped envision and coach 12 plants in the past three years. Craig knows what he’s talking about. So I Kindled the book and sat down to read it today.
The book provides an excellent overview of leading people to Jesus. Authors Doug Schaupp and Don Everts work with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. In the past 10 years they (and many friends) have seen more than 2,000 college students choose to follow Jesus Christ. I like their emphasis on the path being both mysterious and organic. This is in stark contrast to the traditional/modernistic approach of classical apologetics and truth-based certainty.
They have debriefed many of these students to get inside their heads and find out what barriers they faced in coming to know Jesus. Five thresholds that postmoderns must cross include:
- from distrust to trust. Somewhere along the line they learned to trust a Christian.
- from complacent to curious.
- from being closed to change to being open to change in their life. This usually proved to be the hardest.
- from meandering to seeking. There is a big difference between the curious investigator and someone who actively, purposefully, even urgently seeks God.
- and finally crossing the threshold of the kingdom itself. They needed to repent and believe and give their life to Jesus.
We serve our friends by sticking with them through each stage and helping them identify where they are on their journey toward God. Though I don’t believe each stage is as clear-cut as the book suggests, the authors’ framework will help anyone who genuinely desires to nudge, guide and lead someone else to connect with Jesus.
Howdy from Austin, Texas. This is God’s country. Last night I enjoyed some fantastic enchiladas at Trudy’s Texas Star Cafe with my old friend John Hand. Hard to believe we pledged a fraternity here 28 years ago. So much has changed as this classic college town has grown, no, exploded, from about 300,000 residents in 1980 to nearly 2 million today.
Local t-shirts on sale everywhere capture the emotion of people locked in constant change: Keep Austin Weird.
Each of us is living, loving and leading through constant change today. Here are four great links I came across in the past week that ignited my imagination and courage.
1. Stand up (or sit down) for what’s right. Fifty years ago today four black college students changed their world by sitting down for lunch at an all-white lunch counter. Their action stoked a movement that still lives on today. USA Today story here.
2. Relevant ministry is about meeting people’s real needs. Usually it begins by giving people what they are asking for now, not by continuing to offer them what worked for the last generation. The half-life of today’s student generation is about 9 months. Are we connecting? Read Russ Martin’s excellent blog post Student: I Want Video Clips.
3. Thots on Change, the Sense of Urgency and the Long Haul of Cultural Transformation. Jay Lorenzen’s recent post distills wisdom from John Kotter (Harvard professor) and Michael Hyatt (CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers).
The big idea: Urgency is an essential asset that must be created and re-created in the organization…. More often than not, small companies have a sense of urgency. Why? Because their very survival is at stake. If they don’t move quickly, they get squashed by larger, more established competitors.
On the other hand, it is rare to find large companies that truly have a sense of urgency. Their circumstances rarely demand it. They can continue with business-as-usual and do pretty well. Nothing has to be done today or even this week. Nothing is really at stake—or so they think. Often, by the time they wake up, it’s too late.
4. Are you a Linchpin for your organization? You don’t have to be the president or CEO to initiate, create opportunities for others and solve problems that aren’t necessarily in your job description. Here’ s a great interview with Seth Godin talking about his new book, Linchpin. I highly recommend listening to Part 1 of the interview (about 9 minutes). Big idea: Linchpins are the essential building blocks of great organizations. And in today’s world, they get the best jobs and the most freedom.
Go for it!
Humility stinks.
Humility is one of those core virtues that we hate to learn but love to possess. That’s because learning humility is too often, well, humiliating.
Last year provided many opportunities for me to grow in humility. A pointed quote from Mark Driscoll helped kick start the process: “When we preach the gospel, we must call sinners to repent of their sin and religious people to repent of their righteousness.”
Here’s one way this plays out in my life. I’ve noticed that once I’ve been leading something for a while I develop a certain intuition or instinct about how things should be done and how people will respond in certain situations. That’s good. The bad part is that I can begin to look down on others who don’t possess that same sense of intuition, or don’t see the same problems I see, or those who aren’t moving at a fast enough pace, or… you get the idea.
The Dead Giveaway
When I begin looking down on others for whatever reason, I cluck. This cluck is something my mouth does involuntarily. It’s probably imperceptible to most people. But I know I’m doing it. It’s a disdainful smack that reeks of contempt. I hate to admit it. It’s not like I do it everyday, but it happens often enough that I realize it’s an issue of the heart. I’m telling you because this is a growth area for me. And it’s a bit humiliating.
In the gospels Jesus spent a lot of time talking about people who clucked and looked down on others. He did not view them kindly. They were the Pharisees, the best leaders that organized religion had to offer. Jesus called them to repent of thinking their way was better than others. He called them to humility.
The apostle Paul, a Pharisee of Pharisees who experienced God’s amazing grace, offered this cure for clucking:
“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” (Romans 12:3)
Where are you growing in humility (or humiliation)?
Love. Humility. Zeal. Knowledge.
These four words provided stepstones for my personal development path in 2009. They came to me during an extended day with the Lord in June, a day when I was asking Jesus what specific areas he wanted me to pursue for the next season of my life. So, over the past half year most of my close friends know that I’ve been hovering around these four ideas, seeking insight on their implications for my own growth, service and leadership. What follows is a snapshot of what I’m learning.
LOVE. Some time ago a mentor asked me “Where do you want to grow, Ken?” I replied: Soft people skills. The next time we were together he brought that up, saying, “Ken, you know, in Christian leadership there’s no such thing as soft people skills. It’s called LOVE.” Jesus spoke often of love. So did Peter and Paul. Love one another, we are urged. Greater love has no one than this, that she lay down his life for her friends. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude; it does not seek its own. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Make every effort to add to your faith… love. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself… and so on.
I spend an inordinate amount of time in various leadership settings around the world. It pains me to say that if we made podcasts of all of these discussions and played them back, we wouldn’t hear the word “love” pop up nearly as frequently as we’d like to think. If three of the world’s greatest spiritual leaders spoke so often of love, I should definitely pay more attention to this. For me this means forgiving people more readily when their mistakes cost me time, extra effort or loss of face. It means growing in p a t i e n c e. It means constantly depending on the Holy Spirit for discernment on when I should intervene as a leader and when I should allow others’ decisions to play out over time. I am usually too quick to rush to judgment or leap in to save. Yep. Still learning, still growing here.
Next up: HUMILITY.
Lord, you are God and there is no other.
This morning’s rising sun declares your glory and reminds me of your Word and your Spirit. Nothing is hidden from their light and heat.
You are compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness and truth. I am so glad that you are God and I am not.
Lord, I feel compressed. The pressures, the demands, the expectations of my leadership role squeeze me like a vise. This is a high season of ministry to others. You have led me to make commitments: to travel, to speak, to observe, to listen, to coach, to serve, to support others in their high calling of following you. I have been careful to seek your leading for each commitment. Now it’s game time. No one else understands or can fully appreciate the path I must walk for the next two months… except for you. Lord, take me by the hand and lead me. I am your trusting child. Help me fulfill my commitments and bear fruit that glorifies your name.
Lord, I feel tension. Like everyone else, I experience tensions between being and doing, people and production, cause and community, quantity and quality, running hard and resting in you. Your servant captures my heartfelt sentiments:
There is the tension between the need for organizational hierarchy with all the power dynamics this creates and the mutuality and inter-dependence of life in community to which we as Christians are called. There is the tension of knowing how to “work the system” and entering into trustworthy relationships characterized by trust and a commitment to one another’s well-being. There is the tension between the need for an easy discipleship process through which we can efficiently herd lots of people and the patient, plodding and ultimately mysterious nature of the spiritual transformation process. And then there is the challenge of knowing how to speak of these things in fruitful ways inside places of power without becoming polarized in our relationships with one another.
Compression and tension. Aren’t those the same two opposing forces that allow architects to erect their masterpieces of concrete and steel? Is not this dynamic interaction the source of strength for the human body, with the skeleton allowing for compression while the muscles and sinews work in tension? Does not the studied, disciplined training of these opposing forces allow the athlete to gracefully run and jump? The painter to draw out the most delicate brushstrokes from the palette? The musician to ply and pluck her notes with power and sensitivity?
Ah, yes, Lord. They are one and the same. My soul resonates with the song of your servant David:
For who is God, but the Lord?
and who is a rock, except our God?
The God who equipped me with strength
and made my way blameless.
He made my feet like the feet of a deer
and set me secure on the heights.
He trains my hands for war,
so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.
Bring it on, Lord! Today awaits us!
Sources: Ruth Haley Barton’s Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, Psalm 18:31-34
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I had the wonderful privilege of spending my week near Antalya, Turkey with 170 associates from 37 countries at the MinistryNet09 Conference. Very cool. We immersed ourselves in collaborative workgroups focused on one thing: effectively leveraging the web and social networks to glorify God and help fulfill the Great Commission.
Yesterday an optional outing took us to Perga where Paul and Barnabas “preached the Word” on their first missionary journey as they were returning to Antioch (Acts 14:25). A theater, a sports stadium and the expansive agora market remain visible in the old city center, the long-silent hub of her citizens’ ancient social networks.
As we wandered among the broken columns and fallen stones, I wondered aloud with my friends David and Mark about the lasting value of stuff. Hans joined us for cappuccinos and a robust discussion of church-planting theory and practice as we watched the sun drop into the Mediterranean Sea.
Leadership Lesson: Build Men, not Monuments.
