Monthly Archives: June 2012

Jun 25 2012
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Formation, Personal

Last Post from the Short-side of Thirty

Tomorrow I turn 30.

Given the long process God has been leading Ann and I through over the last year, I don’t have any sort of major existential angst about this, but my guess is that is mainly due to the fact that my tank of existential angst is tapped out already.

The last year has been filled with God breaking into my life in profoundly significant ways. I’m still working through them, learning how to ‘walk them out’ into my life. So, as part of that, I thought I would share some of the ‘lessons’ God is dealing with me on as a way of marking the last day of my twenties. Here goes…all this is in process. I invite you to reflect with me on the process God is working out in you.

I’m realizing that…

  1. Being offered ‘big’ roles/responsibilities is like a drug to me.

I’m ‘Mr. Responsible.’ Always have been. As such, I’ve gotten used to being tabbed for roles that are bigger than what you might expect a person my age to have. I’ve grown accustomed to being someone everyone else thinks ‘can handle it.’ Truth is, in most of the measurable ways, I can ‘handle it.’ I don’t know exactly why this is, but it seems to be true. God has been showing me though that, over time, I have unintentionally allowed this reputation (is that the right word here? I’m not sure) to shape much of my sense of ‘who I am,’ to the point where far too much of my self-worth is dependent on my capacity to hit ‘home runs’ in clutch moments.

As a result, I have an affinity for big situations. Like a moth, I guess, I’d rather be where the light is shining. Over the last few years of living as a pastor, God has started to show me that very often his Kingdom is not taking root where the spotlights are fixated. His Kingdom isn’t stealing the show and making the cover of the movement magazine. His Kingdom is far too often unrecognized, so small (like a mustard seed?) that I have a tendency to walk right by it as the limelight sucks me in like a tractor beam.

God has been doing a major renovation of my character in this area over the last year. I have a long way to go, but I’m thankful for the (lets face it) painful process I’m going through on this.

          2.    I’m realizing my limits.

Richard Rohr refers to this as the death of a person’s ‘infantile grandiosity.’ Others might call it a ‘messianic complex.’ Whatever you call it, I’m realizing that I have lived much of the last 10 years believing that I would succeed at whatever I set my hand to do. I’ve had a lot of conversations with a lot of friends who find themselves in a similar line of work as I and I am starting to see that I’m not alone on this either. I suppose you have to call this arrogance and pride, but it doesn’t feel so sinister when its at work in you. It just feels like a quiet belief in your ability to think, speak and act in the right way and that those actions will produce results you would deem successful.

God has been dismantling this foundation that I’ve used to prop myself up. I’m seeing that the combination of my gifts, passions, charisma and vision won’t actually usher in any form of utopia anywhere. There is a world full of things I WON’T ACCOMPLISH in my lifetime. The record of my achievement will, in the long run, be extraordinarily small. However long it may be, it will certainly be shorter than my record of failures.

My friend J.R. Briggs convened a little gathering a couple years ago called the EPIC FAIL conference. An open, safe, and honest space where pastors could talk about failure (as opposed to the plethora of conferences that celebrate the big, bright and beautiful amongst us). I loved the idea, but as I reflect on it, this also uncovered a deep fear in me. I’ve realized that one of my greatest fears is that I might become a perfect candidate for the speaker list at the Epic Fail conference.

There is deep incongruity there and I’m thankful that God is revealing it and beginning to work with me on this. I’m convinced that the recognition of my limitations will be one of the most freeing things for my life. I can’t do everything, but I can do the work God has given me to do.

3.    I can’t have a mission shaped ministry life if my family life isn’t mission shaped, because they are the same life.

I started to write here that If I have a successful ministry but my family life is broken, its all a waste. I stopped when I realized that the statement reinforces the ugly dichotomy between family and ‘ministry’ that God has been teaching me about in the first place. As we are stepping into a new phase of ministry that is so focused on equipping churches and Christians to have a life that is shaped by the mission of God in the world, I’m learning just how critical it is that family and ministry not be compartmentalized.

My friend Ryan Flanigan has been teaching me about this a lot. I’ve been struck by how he is processing the way in which his participation in God’s mission is rooted in the way his family lives in the world. He isn’t making distinctions between home and ministry, instead, he is modeling for me what it looks like to integrate the two. The Flanigans are a family on mission. Each person has distinct arenas where they work that out but it all takes shape in their life together as a family.

I sense that a major part of our next phase as a family is a season of abiding in this, allowing God to prune us and work this reality into the Gustines.

____________

So there you have it, 3 lessons, one for each decade thus far. I come into this next chapter with a great deal of gratitude for the clear hand of God at work in and around me and with equally great expectation for His continued work.

I’m wondering, does any of this strike a chord for you? What is God working out in your life?

Jun 22 2012
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Uncategorized

Real Christianity

Someone sent me a quote this week that reminded them of the spirit of this blog… Thought I would share it with you here… Don’t get tripped up on the word spirituality… Engage what its trying to say.

“… Genuine spirituality is not cozy, and seldom makes you comfortable. It challenges, disturbs, unsettles, and leaves you feeling like someone is at the center of your existence on a major remodeling mission. …spirituality is also meant to change you. If it doesn’t, it is something less than spirituality.”- Daniel Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt: Radical Hospitality

What you do think?

Jun 19 2012
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Uncategorized

On a ‘hermeneutics of repentance”

I don’t know if you read Andrew’s last post on Cultural Intelligence but you should. Its an insightful reflection on how many of us within a dominant cultural worldview can, inadvertently, fall into patterns of thinking that our way of thinking is the ONLY RIGHT way of thinking.

Andrew wrote this, As a product of the historically dominant culture, I’ve moved through life easily believing that the standards of “my world” were the gold standard for all behavior.

What Andrew is writing about here is something folks call colonialism. Its a way of thinking that tends to see itself as the right, good and true way of thinking. “Everyone else needs to, sort of, fall in line to my way of thinking.” Imagine the good intentions of European explorers wanting to bring “civilization” to “exotic” lands…remember the way they forced their way of life on the people who lived there already…now you are starting to get a sense of what we are talking about.

This kind of thing happens in the way we read the Bible too. Its pretty easy to think that the way we read the Bible is the only right, good and true way to read it, so we don’t presume to have much to learn from someone who comes from a different cultural background than us. Its sort of natural to assume that if a person is reading the Bible ‘correctly’ they will end up with the same conclusions about a passage’s meaning as you did.

But what if even the way we read the Bible is influenced by our culture? How would that change the way we read the Scriptures? 

Does that mean that we can never be sure about the meaning of a text? Does this just leave us open to endless speculation? I don’t think so, but I do think it changes the way we engage in the study of the Bible.

So, one move I’d like to suggest is what we could call the ‘hermeneutics of repentance.’ If the word ‘hermeneutics’ is new to you, its a word that means ‘interpretation.’ So we could also call this, interpreting the Bible toward repentance. One of my teachers, Manny Ortiz, has spoken about this as the appropriate posture for the doing of theology.

In this approach to the study of Scriptures, the primary aim of theology is to unearth better questions.

While this assumes a growth in understanding (i.e. the finding of ‘answers’) the orientation is in the process of learning how to ask more insightful questions, because a question takes a person deeper into study and reflection. Ortiz argues that, as a person takes this posture and discovers a deeper question, the resulting response is almost always personal repentance. When one discovers how to ask a more penetrating question, that person is also confronted with the blindspots that made that question previously unaccessible. In coming to a place of personal repentance, that person is propelled toward even more questions that drive their study. This posture never presumes to  have fully apprehended the answers and, in so doing, cultivates a humble spirit in studying the Bible.

I’ve thought about this for a long time, and admittedly, its one way to look at the study of the Bible. But I’m more and more convinced its a profoundly good way to do so. It challenges me a lot, and is very stretching for someone who seeks to proclaim God’s Word weekly. And yet, this subtle move, to the extent that I embrace it, has opened me up to God teaching me many things through sisters and brothers that I probably would not have had the ears to hear from prior.

What do you think? Is there something missing here?

What would change about the way you read the Bible if you practiced a ‘hermeneutics of repentance?’

Jun 13 2012
9 Comments
Culture, Personal

Cultural Intelligence at an 8th Grade Recognition

It’s graduation season. Last week I attended my daughter’s kindergarten graduation {attempting to hold back tears}.

{wiping away tears, composing myself}

I also attended an 8th Grade Recognition program at a local school, a celebration for all the middle school students who are moving up to high school. These are great moments in the lives of young people and their families. Many students face great adversity on their way to these graduations, and it is a privilege to bear witness to their achievement.

The event was loud. The atmosphere was celebratory. It started 15 miutes late. Loud cheers accompanied the reading of each name. Some students danced, others stood and pumped their fists old-school-Arsenio-style. Students were up and down, even walking around. To be honest, my first thought was that this was barely organized chaos. Where’s the respect, the reverence, the decorum?

Then my thoughts went to the book I had just begun reading: Many Colors: Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church by one of my favorite seminary professors, Soong-Chan Rah. 8th Grade Recognition was an event celebrating people from a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds. I was approaching the event from the dominant culture perspective of western academia. In my world, we wait until every student is done walking across the stage, then cheer for everyone…at the end. In my world, everyone remains seated until their name is called. As a product of the historically dominant culture, I’ve moved through life easily believing that the standards of “my world” were the gold standard for all behavior.

Many Colors freed me to reconsider whether my European-American standards must always be considered normative. I was witnessing an event where my paradigm was being challenged, and I felt a bit threatened by it until I recalled the language of Soong-Chan’s book: this was an opportunity to grow in cultural intelligence. With my norms challenged, I was faced with a choice: do I cling steadfastly to my understanding of what should be normative or do I openly consider the good in what other cultures bring to the table?

As I sat at 8th Grade Recognition, I experienced a sort of cultural conversion. I saw families much different than mine free to celebrate their children in a way that suits their natural modes of expression. I saw students experiencing the joy of their accomplishments in an embodied way. It was a beautiful moment, and I’m glad I didn’t waste it by sitting in judgment. Besides, in my repressed Swedish-American heritage, who am I to sit in judgment on how others celebrate? I need other cultures to teach me how to celebrate well!

How does the idea of cultural intelligence sound to you? Natural? Threatening?

How do you experience cultural resistance?

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