Don't Miss Any of the Conversation

Don't miss any of the conversation! Join us at the new home of the Ancient Journey Blog

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Snowmageddon 2011

The Ticket (AM 1310) dubbed it “Snowmageddon 2011.” A record-breaking 3-4 inches of snow in a select few parts of the dfw metroplex which mercilessly ground productivity to a halt on the morning of January 10. You could almost hear creation groaning as the temperature dipped to a startling 31 degrees. Who could have predicted such a devastating occurrence?


It took 2 hours and 20 minutes (that’s 8,400 seconds) to travel 18 miles from I-20 to SMU that morning. When I made it to Dallas County by 7am, I hoped I’d be okay. Yet, as soon as I saw the cars literally parked on the Hwy 67 overpass, I knew there was no hope.


I had to make a snap decision (survival situations of this magnitude require quick thinking). I knew that this decision, much like a shipwreck survivor choosing whether to seek shelter or remain on the beach, could be the difference between life and a slow, miserable death. I knew what I had to do.


I would have to resign myself to being late for class.


Once the decision was made, my surroundings immediately appeared less hostile. I realized that the glowing eyes in the bushes were just a curious raccoon, the large shadow monster was a tree blowing in the wind and the strange sound snapping twigs was probably just a chupacabra...


I’m not livestock, so it probably wouldn’t attack me and drain my blood.


I realized that that the millions, nay billions, of similarly stranded travelers were also in the process of making, or not making, similar decisions. One man angrily got out of his company van and began raking the snow from his hood as though each handful were a dreadful Communist deserving of such treatment. The veins sticking out in his neck and newly discovered color of red on his face were indicators that he had not chosen wisely and death was setting in.


A young woman in a Jetta was dancing (all the more impressive because she still had on her seatbelt) and singing along with her powerful Volks Wagon stock stereo system. Somehow she also reached deep into her inner well of talent and found time (while still dancing) to check facebook on her iPhone...funny what you can see when traveling at a blinding 5 mph. While the veins in her neck were in remarkably better shape than the poor dying man, I hope the addition of facebook didn’t come back to haunt her.


A couple middle-age women in a Nissan Sentra were engaged in a lively conversation, their laughter nearly audible over the relaxing sounds of my AM sports talk-show. I was glad for them that they were not stranded alone. A companion completely changes these survival situations. Plus, their carpooling was saving the environment even while the environment was trying to destroy us all. Good for them.


The young man in multi-colored car I couldn’t identify seemed to like the Jetta-Facebook-Dancing-Queen’s idea of listening to soothing music...however, as he sang along his face did not look very peaceful. I think it was some of that angry music. To each his own, I guess.


Then there was the elderly man, gripping tightly to his steering wheel. He didn’t seem to mind how slow we were going, in fact, I think it suited him just fine. This situation wasn’t going to be tough for him to weather...Way to go sir!


Another lady was quite upset when a 15 passenger van decided to move over and share her lane - didn’t our parents teach us that sharing was a good thing? I could actually hear her screaming at him over the sound of her horn. Odd to watch. A little like watching that guy get run over by the snail-paced steamroller on Austin Powers.


Interestingly enough, the driver of the van seemed to have much better manners. He just smiled and waved, as if to say, “I forgive you for saying those mean things to me.” What a great guy.


In addition to these noteworthy travel companions, there was another terror traversing our wintry hell-scape. There were zombies. Actual zombies driving motor-vehicles. I’ve seen the movies, I know what to look for. Glazed over eyes staring into nothingness, unnatural movements attempting to mimic the routines of live before death. And of course the unquenchable hunger for brains. Admittedly, that one's a little harder to notice until they come after you...but I’m sure it was there.


These zombies didn’t look around, didn’t smile and didn’t frown. They were just shells of their former humanity. I was impressed that they still had the fine motor skills (get it?) to start and stop their cars’ forward progress without hitting the vehicle in front of them. But there was no life in their eyes...just an empty stare.


Victor Frankl, a Jewish prisoner in the WWII Nazi death camps said in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, that the one thing our captors can never take from us is our ability to choose how we will respond to our situation. No one can make us angry at the traffic (or the snow on our hood), that is an ability that resides solely within. Our ability to choose our response to a situation may or may not impact our survival, but it will certainly impact the time we have until our end is realized.


I wonder how often we mindlessly hand over this power to the situation? When we abdicate our God-given ability to respond, very rarely are we rewarded with a healthy perspective from our captors - be they human or circumstance.


Without an intentional process of introspection it is likely that we will continue on auto-pilot at best. And yet Paul, through the example of Christ, teaches us that even in suffering we can choice to rejoice because we know (among other things) that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character and character, hope. I pray that today we will fix our eyes on Christ so that Snowmageddon or whatever ill lies around the next corner, will have no power over our response. Hopefully it will protect us from the zombies too.

Friday, January 7, 2011

To Lead or Not to Lead.

Recently there have been a number of conversations floating around the internet and blogosphere regarding the issue of leadership vs discipleship. It isn’t always couched as a competition...sometimes its just about whether or not leadership is Biblical at all.


The points are well made (for the most part) and highlight the dangers of taking on the dominant culture’s understanding of power and leadership. I get that. However, I remain thoroughly unconvinced that we should do away with the concept of leadership. The following was my response to one of the more healthy of these conversations. Surprise, surprise, my response ended up being too long to post in the comments section...

---


John Perkins says that the response to bad leadership isn’t NO leadership, its good leadership. I tend to agree. For Perkins, good leadership is characterized by following Christ well (healthy discipleship) in the midst of community (check out Follow Me to Freedom, which he coauthored with Shane Claiborne).


This posture of leadership allows us to remain alongside others as we follow Christ together, but also recognizes that some people have an apostolic calling: they take risks and step out on faith while others are waiting for someone else to step first. I know the answer we often give is that Jesus took the first step. That’s true, and for most of us in this conversation, who have that apostolic gift, it seems simple enough. Trust God. Follow Jesus. See the good you’re called to and go do it.


But not everyone has that same risk-taker personality, and not everyone has that prophetic imagination. That isn’t to say they’re less committed, less called or less anything. But those with the gift of prophetic imagination are called to help others begin to picture what life could look like if get swept up in God’s advancing Kingdom. This doesn’t have to be the top down, power driven leadership we see in corporate America. I’ve read the conversations you mentioned above and I appreciate the critique of putting a Jesus t-shirt on the business model and calling it Christian leadership.


However, I’m concerned about where we end up when we completely eschew leadership. In a sense, it is its own form of elitism because it basically makes Christianity something that only the risk takers and self-starters can participate in. That’s a bit overstated, I know, but I don’t think we need to get into an either/or battle with leadership and discipleship. Both are necessary. Without discipleship, as has been pointed out, we have another business organization replete with power dynamics, coercion, manipulation and a continued favoring of the wealthy over the poor and insignificant. This is bad. We must not allow this to continue.


Without leadership though, we may end up with a loosely connected group of individuals, some of whom are involved in great discipleship experiences while others are wondering what happens next. We may miss out on the synergy and cohesion of a truly vibrant community of faith held together by a shared mission (communitas).


I agree, good leadership should be marked by person(s) who have been discipled well and are currently engaged in discipling others. Good leadership should also include the willingness to step out in faith and ignite the imagination of others to do the same. When we have no leadership our discipleship risks becoming increasingly individualized. The role of a good leader includes helping the group continue moving together.


Leadership can never serve as a replacement for disciple-making. But unless we want to declare the church useless, as some have chosen to do, leadership is still an important part of our group dynamic. It helps us function as a community of disciples who are joined together by a larger mission. A mission that is much larger than our personal salvation, larger even than our personal discipleship experiences.


We’ve seen bad leadership often enough that many of us want to distance ourselves from it. I COMPLETELY understand. But when we abdicate our calling to lead others we can (I’m speaking from experience) begin to resent them for not responding to that leadership vacuum by stepping up and leading themselves. In other words, we resent them for being themselves, rather than being us. Not only is that not fair, its incredibly arrogant.


I appreciate this conversation and I realize I’m responding to way more than what has been said here. I hope we can continue wrestling through these issues. I appreciate your leadership in the conversation ;)

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Its Time

I am tired of being just another religious person. So often it seems that Christianity is just another thing that I’m a part of. Even as a church planter, as someone who left behind the illusion of stability to attempt something risky for the kingdom, it still often feels like I’m just another man who happens to be a Christian.


As a man I can be corrupted, co-opted, ignored and discarded. So I must become more than a man. I cannot do that alone, in isolation, by my own creativity and power. I can only accomplish this as part of something bigger than myself; bigger than a man; bigger even than humanity. And yet it must be intensely and fully human. Fully human in a way that few of us have experienced.


We must become more than a group of friends, more than a congregation. We must become a symbol of something bigger. It must be bigger than an empire, it must be representative of a whole world. A world beyond this world, greater than this world, different from this world. And yet it will bear a strange familiarity because it is the essence from which this world was formed and that which this world dreams of becoming.


We must be more than just another religious group. We must be symbols of this other world. We must be citizens and participants in the reality of this new world. And yet because we know (at least to some degree) why this new world seems so familiar, even in its strangeness, we cannot leave the present world behind. We are a symbol of the new world because we are also locals who have been named ambassadors and harbingers of its coming.


This “something bigger” we are part of is nothing less than the remaking of creation. It is the transformation of this world into the new world it has always been destined to become. But we cannot believe that it is our world to make. We cannot fall into the trap of arrogantly assuming this world will appear when we reach our own perfection. If the world and the symbol are of our own making, they can be corrupted. They can be controlled, conquered and bought. The world we anticipate, represent and experience is a world beyond this world and we have been invited to take our place in its rightful arrival.


BUT...


To become this symbol and to participate in this new reality we must be radically committed to the small local reality. We must not forget that we were chosen to serve as heralds precisely because we are inhabitants of the present world. Those chosen as ambassadors of this new reality are the people next door, not strangers from a foreign country. We must be fully present where we are. For us the symbol must be more than a symbol, it must be concrete...even mundane.


We must maintain the realization that we now carry dual citizenship. If we forget the new world we represent, our eyes will be darkened and we will be fighting a battle with insurmountable odds. However, if we forget the world in which we were first born, to whom will we serve as a symbol? We will lose touch. We will lose our voice in this place.


To accomplish this we must do more than good deeds, though they are part of the whole to be sure. Beyond good deeds we must become the change our good deeds point to. This cannot happen unless we are radically committed to our shared mission...and to one another.


This includes reordering our commitments so that we do not experience long periods of isolation in work and other routines. This will mean sacrifice. It will mean thinking of family and community in ways that seem foreign or even foolish to more...sensible minds, even “Christian” ones.


This includes actively inviting others to come and see what the new world holds, and so it must also mean experiencing the new world as a reality worth inviting others to investigate. If we do not live the life, we are no symbol at all, merely theorists or thespians. If we do not invite others to see, we are no symbol at all, merely separatists.


If we do great deeds without proclaiming the source of all that is good, we are just another corruptible and forgettable human institution. If we proclaim the source of all that is good without exemplifying the new life available from that source, our symbol has no substance.


To speak directly, if we believe that we have been called to join in the mission of God then (among others) three things must be true. First we must experience the healing and reconcilliation of the Kingdom ourselves. This means that where distrust and isolation were the norm, deep connection and relationship (with God, one another and the “other”) must become the new normal. If it isn’t at least becoming true for us, how can we claim it is something real and worth exploring?


Second, we must be engaged in the ministry of reconciliation. We must actively seek out the dark places in our society and shed light and hope. We should be working against oppression, isolation, poverty, violence, neglect and abuse of power. This is the calling. Wherever we find examples of brokenness and darkness in this world, we can trust that God is at work there...we should join in that work.


And third, we must be inviting others to experience the same call in their lives. It is not enough to simply do good, just as it is not enough to fail to do good. We have to be intentional about introducing others to the hope we have. They don’t have to become disciples of Jesus in order to receive kindness, but they certainly shouldn’t be denied the opportunity because we failed to invite them to come and see.


The time has come to move beyond talking about this kingdom and to live as though it were a present (though still arriving) reality. None of us can do this alone, but none of us have to wait for an organization to tell us to begin. This kingdom has been among us for millennia...Its time.