Over time I have become more convinced, not less, of the application of the radical simplicity of the Desert Fathers of the 3rd t0 5th centuries.  They fled to the desert in order to seek God and eventually serve as a life raft for a church that had become almost indistingishable from the world.

The church in the West is in a very similar state. The answer begins with us as pastors and leaders of God’s flock, I believe. As Tolstoy once said, “Everybody wants to change the world, but noone thinks of changing himself.” I think he was right.

There is only one pathway - the pathway of Jesus.  Ronald Rolheiser in The Holy Longing outlines this as the only way to profound transformation. We repeat it over and over again in our walks with Christ.

1. Name your deaths   (Good Friday)
2. Claim your births    (Easter)
3. Grieve for what you have lost and adjust to the new reality (40 days)
4. Don’t cling to the old. Let old ascend and give you its blessing.  (Ascension)
5. Receive the Holy Spirit for the new God has for you. (Pentecost)

The death is to leave what we have been taught about a consumer Christianity that caters to numbers, growth, the “American Dream” and gifts over character. We cannot give what we do not possess. “What profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his/her soul”  (Mk. 8:26ff). 

Who has time to even reflect on these things without our own modern “cells” in our own “deserts” we create? The process outlined above requires a life of reflection? Who has time for grieving? Letting go? Letting the old ascend to bless us? Let us battle together to resist the beast outside and inside of us, pulling us downward to a Christianity that is far from Scripture.

I leave you with two sayings from the Desert Fathers:

Antony said, “Fish die if they stay on dry land, and in the same way  monks who stay outside their cell or remain with secular people fall away from their vow of quiet. As a fish must return to the sea, so must we to our cell, in case by staying outside, we forget to watch inside.”

In Scetis a brother went to Moses to ask for advice. He said to him, “Go and sit  in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”

What are creative ways we can create deserts (assuming you agree we need them) in our present Western reality?

I cancelled my blackberry internet service yesterday.

For the last year I have been able to receive e-mails at any time of the day or night. I was told it would make me more productive, effective. It would save me time.

No one talked about its impact on my soul and rhythm.

Actually, it hasn’t worked for the last month and I realized how much I loved not having it. I loved not checking e-mails during my daughter’s soccer practice as I waited in the car. (She is in junior high and prefers that her ‘uncool’ Dad keep a very low profile). I loved not looking at it in traffic. I loved not looking at it in the office. If it was the time to check e-mail, I simply chose to look at it during work hours.

If we are going to follow Jesus in the 21st century as leaders and model a contemplative life, we need to appropriate the grace to renounce all that keeps us from him. For some it is marriage, possessions, money, or position. For me it now includes my blackberry. I recognize the discipline and work I needed to NOT look at e-mails was tiring.

I want to start work when I start, and surely do not want to do e-mail before I go to bed or when I wake up. I want God on in my thoughts and mind in my free moments, not ministry and work.

We got rid of our TV in our home in 2000. We do have a DVD player and watch movies, but we never regretted that decision for a moment   

Might this be a larger issue than we realize for us and our walks with God?

“If there aren’t specific goals and steps to follow in sequence,  there won’t be a goal, only a wish.”  Michael Yapko

        My greatest growing edge in both maturity and spirituality (as if they could be separated) revolves around thinking. Yes – thinking and not following my emotions as I lead NLF, parent, and make decisions.
         This is, I am finding, easy to understand, but quite challenging to do. It takes time, prudence, patience, and character especially if it is done prayerfully and before the Lord. Proverbs is full of insight on this. It is the sacred, holy work of leadership.
        Few do it well. It is not simply a skill but a level of character that is required so that I can do appropriate introspection as to motives and past material in my life that is impacting the present. It all comes out in the pressure cooker of leadership.
          For example, as I meet with different of our staff today, the question is: “What are my goals for our time together? What are my steps to get there?” I find that it is very easy to become vague with myself and carried away by opportunities, reactions, and feelings. And as they consider new initiatives, what are their goals, time commitments, time line?
          In emotionally healthy spirituality, it really is the dynamic of both thoughts and feelings that makes for solid differentiation and solid leadership
         I think it could be said that to attain “greatness” or go the next level, you have to do what you don’t want. In other words, you need to tolerate discomfort for growth.
      Becoming your true self in Christ is hard work. It requires the constant learning of new skills and the courage to be reflective about our inner heart before the Lord. This goes beyond temperment, Myers-Briggs, DISC and the Enneagram. It goes to the heart of our character.

    Why else do you think so few leaders lead well?

I think I am finally learning to lead. I am humbled to say that but it is true. I spent the last two days leading our pastoral staff (eleven of us in total) on our yearly Fall retreat. What was my learning? Simply, it takes a lot of time, thought and prayer to lead an excellent meeting.  One can’t skim on preparing.  I know. I did for years. This was our best staff retreat in 21 years. Why?

I think Ed Freidman said it well:

 “The overall health and functioning of any organization (or ministry or sub-ministry) depends primarily on one or two people at the top, and this is true whether the relationship system is a personal family, a sports team, an orchestra, a congregation, a religious hierarchy, or an entire nation… It is rather that leadership in families, like leadership in any flock, swarm, or herd is essentially an organic phenomenon. And an organism tends to function best when its “head” is well-differentiated. The key to successful leadership…has more to do with the leader’s capacity for self-definition than with the ability to motivate others…The key to successful coaches is less how they “handle” the players than how they handle themselves.”  (Generation to Generation).

I managed myself with a little greater skill and maturity (note the word “little”)

We began with a day alone with God in silence and solitude. This was followed the next day when I shared my objectives for them as a pastoral staff for 2008-2009, a Henri Nouwen DVD, a sharing time about our excitements and dreams for the year (one by one), prayer, and a brief time on the calendar reviewing the upcoming year.

For years I have tried to delegate the leadership of these meetings, leaned on others to allievate my anxiety, and fallen back on my gifts of vision-casting and teaching rather than take the time to manage my self and really think through my objectives and goals. It felt like too much work.   Let’s face it: leadership of our own lives, in any area, is challenging and difficult!  I think I’m finally getting it!

Why do you think it might be true, or not, that “the key to successful leadership…has more to do with the leader’s capacity for self-definition than with the ability to motivate others?”

When I was in high school and elementary school, I did what most of my friends did —  I skimmed for tests. Learning the material was not important. What was important was to get a good grade, to survive, to get through it.

Most Christian leaders/pastors skim today.

We skim on ourselves, our self-care. We have so much to do, so many demands that we figure we can catch up on our sleep some other time. The space we need for Sabbath-keeping, replenishing our soil, reading, relaxing, etc. can happen later, some some other time. We lie to ourselves that all is okay.

We skim on our relationship with God. There are sermons to prepare, calls to return, people to visit, e mails to read. So our devotional lives are weak and we carry a general cloud of guilt.

We skim on our marriages and children. Our families rarely demand us out of a crisis so we give them the minimum to keep it going. Our investment is not full, thoughtful, planned. We get through it okay.

We skim on our preaching. A good friend shared with me recently how many pastors download transcripts of other people’s sermons on Friday and Saturday of each week. Why? Who has time to get a fresh revelation from Him? For the silence and meditation and study needed to bring a genuine word from God each week.

We skim on our leadership. It takes a lot of time to lead a community, a ministry, a good meeting. But we have too much to do in too little time. So we go in with little thought and preparation into a meeting we are leading, leaning inappropriately on our gifts and position. We get by but we skimmed. We cheated.

We skim on fun/recreation. Christians can be among the most pleasure deficient people I know. Again, who has time? Our work for God crowds out our enjoyment of His gifts to and for us.

Where else might we be skimming?

Now that we are entering fully into new year here at NLF and the flurry of activity that goes with it, I find myself feeling the winds and waves of our culture, demonic forces behind that, and my own tendency to do my will and get caught up in the anxiety around me. 

I am reminded of Tertullain (155 – 222 AD), a church leader and prolific author of early Christianity),  said that it is God’s nature to be patient, and that when the Holy Spirit descends, patience and waiting is always on its side.

Eugene Peterson once remarked that “impatience is the besetting sin of pastors.” The more I ponder that remark, both in my life and in Scripture, I think he may be right. It is a deep, wide root out of which many other smaller sins fall - at least in my life.

I medidated deeply this morning on Psalm 27 and the amazing balance of David in his leadership. What a model!

What will it look like for us to wait upon the Lord patiently in 2008-09? with leading ? with developing people? with the timing of new initiatives? with raising of our families? with speaking less and listening more?

What does it say about our culture today (especially in among pastors/leaders) that the notion of the Holy Spirit’s power and patience/waiting are so seen together?

      One of the texts I spent the summer meditating and memorizing is the account of Peter saying, “Never Lord” when Jesus informs him about suffering and the cross (Matthew 16:21-26). I understand Peter and his commitment to avoid pain. Don’t we all? So I am spending time with God, with our staff, pondering what it means, truly, to lead our people to Jesus. I am concerned at how I (we) too might be creating a Jesus I think I want or need. The following excerpt from Eugene Peterson’s The Jesus Way (Eerdmans, 2008) sums it up well:

 If we have a nation of consumers, obviously the quickest and most effective way to get them into our congregations is to identify what they want and offer it to them, satisfy their fantasies, promise them the moon, recast the gospel in consumer terms: entertainment, satisfaction, excitement, adventure, problem-solving, whatever…We are the world’s champion consumers, so why shouldn’t we have state-of-the-art consumer churches?   There is only one thing wrong: this is not the way in which God brings us into conformity with the life of Jesus and sets us on the way of Jesus’ salvation.  This is not the way in which we become less and Jesus becomes more.  This is not the way in which our sacrificed lives become available to others in justice and service.  The cultivation of consumer spirituality is the antithesis of a sacrificial, “deny yourself” congregation.  A consumer church is an antichrist church.
        We can’t gather a God-fearing, God-worshiping congregation by cultivating a consumer-pleasing, commodity-oriented congregation.  When we do, the wheels start falling off the wagon.  And they are falling off the wagon.  We can’t suppress the Jesus way in order to sell the Jesus truth.  The Jesus way and the Jesus truth must be congruent.  Only when the Jesus way is organically joined with the Jesus truth do we get the Jesus life…
       The operating biblical metaphor regarding worship is sacrifice – we bring ourselves to the altar and let God do with us what He will.

Might it be true that the notion of a consumer church really is an “antichrist” church, and that we as evangelicals are in deeper than we realize?

I am wrestling. Wrestling with I observe and experience in the North American church.

I, along with many of you, am passionate for people to know Christ as well as for the church to be the church - i.e. healthy, growing into adulthood, mature, full of the life of Jesus per Eph. 4:11-16.  I love the church. More importantly Christ does also.

When I visit with other traditions (e.g. Orthodox, Roman Catholic, monastic), part of my tension is their lack of cultural relevance to communicate Jesus Christ into our culture. I see few young people. When I visit evanglical churches, the over-concern for growth in numbers seems to overshadow any time for genuine formation. Shallowness prevails.

Dr. David Wells, a professor at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary recently published a book The Courage to be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World. While I am not in agreement with everything he says or writes (I actually had two courses with him while in seminary), he is a sharp thinker and worth listening to his observations of American Evangelicalism today.  He writes:

There is a yearning in the evangelical world today. We encounter it everywhere. It is a yearning for the real. Sales pitches, marketed faith, the gospel as a commodity, people as customers, God as just a prop to my inner life, the glitz and sizzle, Disneyland on the loose in our churches – all of it skin deep and often downright wrong. It is not making serious disciples. It cannot make serious disciples. It brims with success, but it is empty, shallow, and indeed, unpardonable. It is time to reach back into the Word of God…and find a serious faith. It is now time to close the door on this disastrous experiment in retailing faith, to do so politely but nevertheless firmly. It is time to move on (pp.57-58).

He argues that the marketing, mega-church model that can so easily mix American values with biblical Christianity cannot work because it is so internally flawed, that the very worldview upon which it is predicated is off center. By marketing products and services for our use rathar than a focus on submission of the god of the universe empties the truth out of the gospel.

Do you think David Wells is accurate in his observations?

I returned this week from 5 weeks away and began the difficult transition of  coming down off the mountaintop of being away with God for a sabbatical rest (i.e. vacation) and returning to the ordinary, the mundane, the imperfect, the very real work of life. The work of bills, house, cars, parenting our four girls, congregants with cancer, families in crisis, a sermon to finish and the rest of what makes up pastoring a church. It sure is easier to be a contemplative away from it all! I am sobered by my limits and body resisting too much activity after time away. By God’s grace, I am trying to listen to the Spirit in my body/spirit to live slowly.

Each year I teach a course for 3 consecutive weeks on a book of the Bible. This year it is Galatians and the theme of Sonship and the gospel, one of the greatest contributions of the Reformation. Last night, as we began, was wonderful for me, centering me in the beauty of the love of Jesus. 

George Whtfield was a powerful, open-air preacher in the first Great Awakening during the early 1700’s. The following is an excerpt from one of his sermons:

“But before you can speak peace to your heart, you must be brought to see that all your duties – all your righteousness… put all together are so far from recommending you to God, are so far from being any motive and inducement to God .to have mercy on your poor soul, that he will see them to be filthy rugs… that God hates them and cannot but away with them, if you bring them to him in order to recommend you to his favor….I do not know what you think, but I can say that I cannot pray but I sin–I cannot preach to you or any others but I sin–I can do nothing without sin.., my repentance wants to be repented of, and my tears to be washed in the precious blood of my dear Savior. Our best duties are as so many splendid sins. Before you can speak peace to you hearts, you must not only [repent] of your sin… but also of your righteousness. There must be a deep conviction before you can be brought out of your self-righteousness. It is the last idol taken out of the heart…Did you ever feel the need of the righteousness [not just the forgiveness] of Jesus Christ?…And can you say, “Lord, thou mayst justly damn me for the best duties that I ever did perform?… If you are not thus brought out of self, you may speak peace to yourselves, but yet there is no peace…. You must lay hold by faith of the all-sufficient righteousness of Jesus Christ, and then you shall have peace.”

I sat in the love of Jesus this morning - loving and befriending myself in this rich love, knowing his record/righteousness is enough. This really is the first order of our work isn’t it?

Why do you think we don’t hear such a sermons in our pulpits today?

This was my fifth retreat with the 70+ monks of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Massachusetts. Maybe since it was the end of my 6 weeks away from the responsibility of leading New Life, but I entered into a deep calm, silence and rhythm with their life almost immediately.

One of the highlights of the weekend was a conversation with Father Kizito Kwame, a West Indian who has been with them for 49 years. He joined at the age of 17 when the monastery was at its height (1958-1960) of 200 monks. He recently returned from 10 years of serving among the 25 Trappist monasteries in Africa.

A part of me so longed to remain on the mountaintop with God and not leave return to checkbooks, house, problems, needs, noise and traffic of NYC, that I complained to him for a while, shared with him this inner compulsion I often feel to be a monk, etc.

He shared the following that I found rich and helpful:

1. God calls everyone to a contemplative life, to be a monk. Like Jesus we all need a place apart and distance from the rush of sounds, distractions, etc. That longing is in each of us. I believe he is right on that one.

2. The key issue is that each of us do God’s will. He, along with many others at the monastery, has many gifts. They could be doing many other things besides cleaning toilets and making jelly. He would like to be more active than he is, yet this is God’s will for him and that is all that matters.  He is content.

3. His primary ministry is intercession, to stand before God and to pray for the world. That is tough to argue with. His understanding is that we all have our place in the body of Christ, in the larger church.

I think many of us leading active evangelical churches can learn a lot from the Trappists, even though we differ in our traditions and in some of our theology. What do you think of the recommendation that more pastors spend a few days with them each year for centering and perspective?