32 | Ken Shigematsu on Grace, Shame & Developing Healthy Rhythms

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Brazilian Pastor podcast. My name is Rich Volotis. And as you may already know, this podcast is part of the much larger Brazilian pastor initiative from Barna that includes live and person events and online events aimed at encouraging and equipping pastors and church leaders to love well and lead faithfully and a rapidly changing world. Well, lots of stuff going on with the Brazilian Pastor podcast and stuff happening with Barna. Glenn, can you tell us a little bit about this cohort and other programs that we have? - Yeah, we're really excited about this new format for the Brazilian pastor cohort. People will know maybe they'll remember that last year we did it or, you know, last year, earlier this year or last fall, I guess, and then into the spring. We did a six month version of it. And some of the feedback we got was, hey, it was really great, but could we tighten it up a little bit? So we're actually doing it over the course of 12 weeks. And so three months and the meetings will be more frequent. So instead of meeting once a month, we're gonna meet every two weeks. And so six meetings, five of them are virtual. So starts January 31st, we'll have a Zoom meeting and each meeting is gonna be roughly 90 minutes. There's a 30 minute kind of webinar content with a really wonderful presenter. And then we'll do some dialogue about that. And then there'll be 30 minutes of breakout rooms, which we heard such incredible feedback from pastors saying, I made some really good friends because of these breakouts. So 90 minutes every two weeks. And then in late April, we'll have an in-person gathering, not necessarily with all the people who were presented webinars, but a few of our key kind of folks will be there. I'll be there. And so, listen, the idea is that we're gonna, we're gonna really focus in our theme this year is on, how we deal with the crisis of credibility. How do we deal with the crisis of credibility that's facing pastors today? And the, not just in terms of we can't change, maybe the perception, but how do we manage the toll that that's taken on our own relationships and on our own souls? So more info is coming on thebarna.com, a page. Make sure you check it out at the Museum of Pastor cohort. - Sounds great, sounds great. Well, today we're gonna have a conversation with Ken Shigamatsu, Ken is the senior pastor of 10th church in Vancouver, Canada, one of the largest and most diverse city center churches in Canada. Ken is actually a dear friend. He's preached that new life a number of times. I've done some stuff for his church and just a remarkable guy. He's a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal. Glenn, aren't you so jealous to hear this? - Yes, I'm so jealous. - Yeah, let's talk about envy right now. (laughing) It's awarded to Canadians and recognition for their outstanding contribution to the country. Before entering into pastoral ministry, he worked for the Sony Corporation in Tokyo and he's the author of the award-winning bestseller's god in my everything. Survivor guide for the soul and his recently released book Now I Become Myself. And so before we sit down and get in our conversation with Ken, just wanna touch on some of the things that he touches on in his books and his most recent book about emotions and leading and so Sharon, I think about this a lot, but the impact, what impact do you see with particular emotions like envy, shame, guild, these feelings here, how do they have an impact on the lives of pastors and maybe in your own ministry? - So envy and comparison as an American woman, it's pretty familiar with those feelings and it's something that I've done a lot of my own spiritual work on, but it was really interesting planting a church and learning, there was a new dimension of it for me to work through because planting, you're sort of serving the landscape of church planters and how other churches are doing that have planted on a similar timeline as you and I discovered very quickly that a lot of the spiritual work that I had done for myself, kind of in my personal life, I was now going to need to import into leading our church. And so some of what I had to do early on was be really careful about who I was following on social media. It's so deceptive and it really makes you think, oh, they're doing awesome and meanwhile I know how many volunteers didn't show up to church that Sunday. But the other thing that the way that it really impacted me early on that I had to, part of the reason I had to be disciplined about what I was viewing online is it can envy for me creates almost this mission drift because the way I thought about it was, it's like, I'm on this path, this highway in a sense that God has called me to, this is my lane, but as I'm driving down the highway, it's like, I see these billboards that's like, this attraction is over here. Like you could be doing this over here, just exit right here and go in this direction. And so every time I saw, oh, this church is doing this really cool initiative or this church is doing this for worship or whatever it is, I realized that was becoming a temptation for me to sort of exit off of the lane that God had called me to. And so part of my work early on was just eliminating as many of those billboards as possible so that I could stay focused on the actual vision that God had given our church. - Really well said, Sharon. Glenn, how about you? When you think about envy, shame, things along those lines. - I'm glad you asked Sharon first 'cause I don't really struggle with those things. (laughing) I'm so envious. - Yeah, yeah. Oh, Sharon, I love that billboard metaphor. And just to affirm or add my own experience with that, yeah, I've had to be careful. Maybe I don't mute people for unkind reasons, but sometimes it's like, I don't want to unfollow them, but sometimes I don't want the distraction of what they're saying and doing. Because, yeah, the comparison thing. But you're right, I love that you compare it to mission drift. We do have our own kind of calling. I think for me, let me just comment on the other emotion you listed there, Rich, shame. I think there are moments when I fail, when I find myself like I got reactive in a meeting or actually more for me, reactivity at the home, in the home, you know, family. And I was talking with my wife about that this summer where I felt like, man, why am I the most tightly wound person in this family system, you know? And so then I can feel shame about that and to say, and my wife's so great about saying, yeah, there are moments where that spins out into creating, raising the temperature, so to speak, of a home. And it's small stuff, like, come on, get in the car. We gotta go, you know, but there's also gifts that come along with that, you know? And so she's helpful in helping me see that. And I think maybe the story that comes to my mind was shame was a few years ago now, maybe five, six years ago. I was sitting with my spiritual director. And I was just kind of in this slump. And I was like, I feel like I'm supposed to be, you know, a certain way, and I'm not. And I keep sort of, you know, falling short of what I think, I need to be, and I feel the shame for it. And he gave me this image. He said, Glenn, I see you in a pit and you're stuck in there because of, you know, a failure or falling short. But then I see you standing on the ground above yourself, wagging your finger at yourself. And there's almost like two glens. The Glenn that's idealized shaking the finger at the Glenn who's in reality. And he's like, my goal for you is to integrate that and say, there's really one person and that Jesus loves that person, you know, that you don't have to bring your perfect self to Jesus. You can bring your failed self to Jesus. And it's so powerful to me because it, I've been reminded over and over again of the story of Jesus meeting Peter after his own failure, after his own falling short. And Jesus says to you love me. And then at the very end of that encounter, Peter says, hey, what about this guy? You know, it's like he's still tempted by that billboard, by that comparison. What about John? And Jesus says, what is that to you? You follow me. And over and over again, I feel like I need to know Jesus loves me. I love Jesus. I'm following Jesus. And that can free me not just from comparison and envy, but from shame as well. - One of the most helpful things that a congregant came up to me and said after one of my sermons, I think I did a sermon probably on shame or something like that. And he said, rich in N.A. in narcotics anonymous context. He said, there's an acronym for shame. And he shared it with me. And he said, the acronym is still haven't already mastered everything. And that we feel shame about that. And when he said that, I thought, man, I could have just said that and said, Amen, and the sermon, you captured. But I think what he was describing in that acronym was something that I very easily find myself ensnared by. I haven't mastered this part or this part of the job or this part of the, as opposed to I will never master all these things. As a matter of fact, I remember one day thinking about these things, there was a passage I forget in which gospel, but it says about Jesus that he has done all things well. And I thought to myself, oh, I think Jesus is the only one who does all things well. And so I better find myself appropriately in recognizing my limits can be a great gift as well. And so thinking about shame, envy, these emotions, what I love about Canon, we'll hear of this conversation, is he also writes about the contemplative life and hiddenness, and when we think about the impact of the formation of leaders as it relates to seasons of hiddenness and contemplation, anything that you've learned along those lines around Sharon, you just came from a sabbatical and he just lessons around seasons of hiddenness, contemplation, obscurity, and the role that it plays in forming leaders. A number of years ago, a friend of mine gave me a really helpful distinction. The language is a little bit different, but I think it's still really helpful for this conversation. We were talking about the importance when you are as a leader dealing with something and when is the right time to share publicly? And what is the difference between that and hiding? And she said that there's an important difference between privacy and secrecy. She said secrecy, the purpose of secrecy is to hide so that the sin, the unhealth, whatever it is, can continue. But the purpose of privacy is to heal without the weight of public opinion. And that was, at that season, that was really helpful for me to hear because I am a very transparent person as a leader. I never want to be hiding. But there is a place for that hiddenness where you're not hiding out of shame. You're not hiding to keep the light off of you in a sense, but you are creating a space to heal and to hear from God. And so that has been a really helpful distinction for me personally. - It's good. - That's so good. I like that because if we don't take time to be alone in your link here, can such a wonderful guide in all this because he has got that deep contemplative sort of life but then he's giving vulnerability here about his own story and his latest book. And I know for myself if I'm moving too quickly and I experience shame, I can either spiral or I could try to shake it off with Taylor Swift here. Taylor Swift for referencing her. Shake it off too quickly and say it's nothing. It's no big deal. It's fine. And sometimes this is maybe the uncomfortable thing is there is a healthy place of shame. A couple years ago I read a book by secular sociologist Randall Collins and he talked about interaction ritual chains or basically chains that bond us, bind us. And he says in sociology or just in human relationships, there's a solidarity that forms in a social group. And whenever there's a break in that solidarity, the result is shame because there's been a breach in the solidarity. And so there's a right-sized shame that is proportionate to the kind of role of guilt. And I think when I don't take time to reflect or to pray, to say Jesus, show me what's happening here, then I don't get to actually repent of things where I need to repent. And then when I repent, I need to also receive the grace of God, let it really get deep down inside me. And so I neither need to wallow in it nor do I need to sort of shake it off and pretend to ask and then just dismiss it, you know. Yeah, hidden is for me. I think this is one of the reasons why I've write a lot and preach on contemplation and hiddenness is because it's one of my greatest struggles. And I think we write about often what? We are most, you know, our greatest struggles. And so, you know, the notion of hiddenness, you know, I especially think of it in terms of like social media and the importance of seasons of obscurity and staying away. You know, there's this quote from Aristotle along the lines of when someone doesn't feel love, they seek to be admired. And when hiddenness and contemplation, I think serves, how does it form leaders? I think it helps leaders to get off the drug of social affirmation that I need your affirmation in order to have a sense of self. And so for me, I think obscurity, solitude, sabbatical, Sabbaths, I think in many ways helped to root me and for me. Where is my fundamental identity? Is it in the love of God or is it in someone else? So that's how it's formed me over the years. And I desperately needed it. Well, in terms of maybe we can go through one more question before we go into this interview here. In terms of like solitude, in terms of healthy versions of solitude, you know, that birth contemplatives and contemplation instead of like isolation, loneliness. Like, how do you to distinguish the healthy sense of like solitude and the unhealthy sense? Because some folks might be drawn into more introverted ways. And I just need to just say this here, that introversion does not equal contemplative. There are lots of people who are introverts that are not contemplatives. But how have you delineate or distinguish between like a healthy sense of solitude and then that unhealthy sense of aloneness? I mean, for me, I think the fundamental difference is between running from versus running to. So with shame, you know, I'm running from being seen. I'm running from myself, honestly. But with, you know, contemplation, solitude, I'm running to the presence of God. And I think that was one of the things that I actually loved so much about my sabbatical was even in my busyness, my prayer life has been sort of formed by my pace of life. And so I'm going to God, you know, setting the agenda very often. Like, here's what's going on. Here's what I want to talk about. Here's what I need your help with. And just having the space to let God set the agenda and to follow him was so wonderful. So that's a helpful distinction for me. Yeah, I mean, I think I'll take a slightly different twist on this guy, amense, everything's sharing. I just, you know, really quickly, you know, we have four kids, three of which are still in our home. And it's, you know, solitude, you know, that's what are you talking about, you know. So I have found that if I want this, I need to go to bed at a better time and get up at a certain time. And even if I can get honestly, even if I can get 15 to 20 minutes in the morning, maybe listening to this devotional app that I have, you know, Lectio, 365 or listening to sometimes the Bible out loud or worship music, you know, any one of those three while I'm, you know, say taking a walk or doing some stretches or whatever that is, that is a little escape. And then, yeah, this is going to make the listeners angry, but take a walk on the beach, you know, try to do that, try to do that several times a week and just let the waves minister to me. - Wow, amazing, amazing. Yeah, there's, I don't have anything like that over here, Glenn, at least within walking distance here. So, well, when I think about the difference, I think the question is, is our solitude leading us into worship in our own self-examination or something else? And I think Sharon, that's essentially what you're getting at as well. That's why I distinguish solitude from a healthy sense of aloneness. Is it producing worship? Is it producing a greatest sense of self-examination? So, we'll get into some of that. Well, we're excited to jump into our conversation with Ken. But first, I wanted to highlight one of our partners of the Resilient Pastor Initiative. Today we're thanking right now media. Right now media wants to partner with you to enhance the discipleship experience in your church. Recently, I was able to partner with right now media and create some content around the deeply formed life. They have tons of resources, one of the largest, if not the largest library of resources available regarding Bible studies, books, all that. And so, visit rightnowmedia.org to find out more about how right now media can serve your church. And so, now to our conversation with Ken Shigamatsu. Ken, what a privilege to sit down with you today. Welcome to the Resilient Pastor Podcast. Thanks, it's great to be with you and with your viewers on this mess. Thanks, Ken. We met. I think it was eight years ago. We were at an event together in Paris, which is a wonderful way to meet someone. I think it was a Christian missionary alliance, next gen sort of thing. And I was so struck by your kindness, your humility. And I read, got in my everything around that same time period. It's such a wonderful book, Ken. And we're going to talk today some about your latest book. Now, I've become myself. But before we get into any of that, I just would love, Ken, if you would share a bit of your own pastoral, vocational journey. Did you grow up knowing you wanted to be a pastor? How did the Lord kind of lead you to this place? Yeah, I didn't grow up wanting to be a pastor as such. I was planning to head into the business world. And in high school, I was at a Christian camp. And the youth were supposed to go here. A youth speaker. And things changed. And we ended up having to go here, the adult speaker. And he was Luis Palau, the Argentinian board evangelist. And he was talking about his passion to reach Latin America with a gospel and parts of Europe. And I was very moved by that message. And simply said, Lord, I want to make myself available to serve in your harvest fields. And so I ended up working in Tokyo for a couple of years in the corporate world. But then since the ongoing call to pastoral ministry or some kind of vocational ministry, and during a time of discernment spent five days fasting and praying. And on day three of the fast awards, 10th Avenue Alliance Church came really clearly to my spirit, had no formal connection with the church. And then on day five, the word senior pastor came to my mind and spirit. I was 29, visited the church thought. I'm way too young to pastor this group of people which seem to be composed of mostly white anglos acts and senior citizens, but through an unforeseeable turn of events, the pastor left. And then I was called. That's Ken, the way to say that's amazing. So you heard the Lord say the name of this church. You had not previously visited this church or known about it. Yeah, I knew about it, but had no formal connection. No connection. Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. And so how long have you been the pastor there at 10th Avenue? So I've been here for 27 years now, began in 1996, the summer of 1996. That's incredible, Ken. We talk a lot on this podcast about pastoral, the shakiness in a pastoral calling. And for a lot of younger pastors in particular, can feel like, man, they're three years in, five years in, and just cannot imagine what a multi-decade commitment to a church could look like. I mean, Ken, you've surely weathered a lot of storms. But I'm curious, what have you learned about yourself? This has been maybe too big of a question. So you can choose any dive in and out of a particular thing if you want, but what have you learned about yourself as a pastor or leader over these 27 years? One of the things I've learned is that it's better to work from a place of interest, ideally. Not that I've always experienced that by any means, than a place of anxious scribes. So let me explain. You just mentioned that a lot of younger pastors would find it hard to imagine being in a place for a long time. When I came to Ken, I discovered that the church had titled through 20 ministers in 20 years. So lots of trouble. The church had gone from over 1,000 in a tea day back in the 1950s to 100 in something in the mid 1990s. One day, the secretary walked into my office and said, Ken, if this ship meaning the church sinks now, everyone will blame you because you were the last captain at the helm. She was motivated, and you were trying to motivate me to work harder. I'm not probably a press, but I ended up working really hard, but not in a very Christ-centered or fruitful kind of way. And I learned that just because you put in a lot of hours and you're striving, striving, striving, it doesn't necessarily need lead to a place of inner peace or fruitfulness. And learning to work from a place of, as Henry now might say, my belovedness, my being accepted by God, has been a lesson that I learned and am learning across the years. Ken, I want to pause here and talk about this a bit more because what you've named is such a profound insight. There's lots of these external pressures that can motivate us. But there's internal pressures that can motivate us. And what I hear you saying is actually neither the external nor the internal is as healthy as the sense of working from peace, working from rest, working from belovedness. And I'm just curious, how do those things go together? Because sometimes, and particularly younger pastors just say, OK, well, I'm going to do the Sabbath thing. I'm going to do the rest thing. And so it can feel like the trade-off is diligence. So the trade-off is, OK, there's no going the extra mile. There's nothing sacrificial about it. Because we haven't seen an imagination for sacrificial service that comes from a place of belovedness and peace and rest. How do we reconcile those things? Yeah, the two aren't mutually exclusive. So we may think that the more hours we work, the more fruitful we will be. And to a certain extent, you put in more hours in certain, say, rules, say, you're making widgets. There probably is a one-to-one correlation between hours in and widgets out. But if we're working as a pastor in some kind of vocational ministry or service-oriented work, working more hours to a degree will lead to maybe more output. But then our output levels off. And then it starts to decline. And we will find that if we take time for Sabbath or for silence, that we will be more present to God, to ourselves, our own souls, and to the people around us. And so I find that on a typical day, maybe 20 or 30 minutes of pure silence might be enough. But if I'm facing an unusually busy day, if I've got a crucial conversation, if I've got to turn up the temperature in the room, so to speak, on an issue, I need not just 20 or 30 minutes of silence, but 50 an hour. Because I'll be calmer, I'll be clearer, more creative, more aware of the most present, more courageous, more fierce if that's what's needed. I love that, Ken. I really love that. Because, yeah, you're saying even that phrase that we can be more present to God and more present to ourselves, more present to others when we have that sort of deep abiding and that space for silence and God's presence. And that's not frenetic work. But neither is it, you know, we're not mailing it in, we're not kind of, you know, detached and, you know, laissez-faire about it, but you're describing something entirely different, which we deeply need, we desperately need an imagination for this, because our society, you know, I live here in Southern California. I've sometimes joked with people that leisure is kind of the status symbol, you know, around here, where if you can ride your bicycle and walk around in your board shorts, you're a successful entrepreneur, you know. And, and, you know, not neither are some friends in Silicon Valley who say it's the opposite. You know, if you're always hustling and you're saying that Google's got you, you know, grinding 80 hours a week, then that's the sign that you're successful. And you're, you're saying, no, actually, we've got an imagination for something entirely different. I want to come back to your, you know, the other book God and my everything later. But first, I want to talk about your most recent one. Now I become myself, how deep grace heals our shame and restores our true self. What led you to write this, Ken? Tell me about where this book emerges. It sounds, it's a deeply personal project I know. - Yeah, Glenn, I have observed that it's not just people who have gone through trauma and abuse that experience shame, but people that are very successful in your name, some very successful people who've just been here. Last illusion, feel a sense that they're not quite enough. And when we feel like we're not quite enough, and I know this has been true to my own experience, there is a tendency either to shrink back and to not embrace the totality of our calling or to try and go big and to prove that we are worthy but for the wrong reasons. And I believe that the most powerful way to be free from positive shame is through not just a head knowledge, but a deep experience of God's love. And so, and now I become myself at the end of each chapter, I have perfect sizes that help to awaken us to a sense that we are loved by God. And if we experience that, we can undergo real transformation. And live with a greater kindness of being. - I love the polarity there, either the shrinking back or the sort of trying to supersize yourself to be larger than the moment and how both of those are unhealthy impulses. I also, one of the things I loved about the book is those prayer practices that you're alluding to because ultimately it's not, we have to move beyond sort of a cognitive knowledge of this. And so how, what does it look like for grace to actually find its way to those deep places of our heart? I know there's a role of therapy counseling, but from a pastoral perspective, these practices, how does prayer kind of unlock or help us apply the grace of God to these deep wounds? - Yeah, prayer can slow us down and it can put us in a place where we can actually attend to and even savor the love of God. So my friend Kurt Cobbinson, who is a psychiatrist and committed Christian points out that it only takes two or three seconds for shame to form in our brain, but about 30 or 60 seconds for affirmation to form. So it takes considerably longer, 39 seconds for a good word to form. And so for whatever reason, we tend to fixate more on the negative or on the discouraging, or on the critical, than the uplifting and the inovling. And so in prayer, we can slow down, come into the presence of God in a conscious and receptive way and receive the love of God. - You said the phrase earlier, toxic shame. And I've heard you talk about this in an interview, I think recently where you said, well, there can be a good role of shame. What is there a sort of normal or maybe even would we dare say healthy function of shame versus toxic shame, Ken? - Yeah, in the book I talk about how we can experience state shame, so momentary shame, which actually may have a beneficial social impact. So for example, I'm thinking about someone who works in the tech sector, a very famous executive, I won't mention the person's name, but his management style was to walk in the room according to someone I know who worked for him and just starts swearing at everyone. And if we had the impulse to do that, but then thought if I, custies people out for no good reason, I would feel a sense of shame. That anticipation might cause us to redirect our behavior. And so in that sense, shame or the capacity to feel shame can act like a proximity sensor in the car can warn us about something and causes the beer off. Or if we've done something shameful, it can help us to realign how we interact or live. So as a temporary state, shame can be redemptive, but it becomes part of our identity, part of our, the way we see ourselves at a trade, not just a state, but a trade then it becomes toxic. - Well, get back to our conversation with Ken Shigamatsu in just a second. But first, I wanna take a moment to share about a brand new study that Barna is releasing with World Impact. Barna is launching their latest study this week called Inside the Urban Church, how local congregations engage with and impact their communities. This new report was created in partnership with World Impact and explores how cities view their churches and what faith and life look like inside the urban church. So you'll gain a better understanding on the unique challenges that urban churches face and how these local fellowships established in dense and diverse neighborhoods are fulfilling the great commission within their cities. There's a lot of great insights to unpack, including advice from urban church planters that will inspire and help you lead better in your own context. So to learn more, pick up a copy of this report, visit barna.com/urbanchurch. That's barna.com/urbanchurch. And again, we wanna thank another one of our partners on the Resilient Pastor Initiative right now, media. They understand that the mission of the church matters, that your church matters. And right now, media wants to partner with you to enhance the discipleship experience in your church. They offer more than 25,000 biblical videos and supporting curriculum for use in community with other believers, including some great resources from leaders like myself, Rich and Sharon. So visit rightnowmedia.org. That's rightnowmedia.org to find out how right now media can serve your church. And now back to our conversation with Ken Shigamatsu. You know, I'm reminded a couple years ago, I read the work of a sociologist named Randall Collins and he talked about this very interaction ritual chains and he's talking about how, you know, in human beings where like these interaction chains and there's ritual behaviors and blah, blah, blah. But he talks about whenever there's a breach in that solidarity, a breach in that link, if you will, that shame is the result of that. Shame is the result of a breach of solidarity when you've sort of let someone down or you've let the group expectation down. Ken, you and I both come from Eastern cultures, Asian cultures. I know for me in Malaysia and then even, you know, kind of my ethnic roots being Sri Lankan. There's, I know for me, I experienced it growing up a little bit as a boy in Malaysia, very much an honor, shame, culture. You know, I remember a headmaster at my school, my primary school, disciplining me and referring to my mother, you know, 'cause he was friends with her. So you know, you've let your parents down. And just like the weight of that, I think you tell a story like that in the book, don't you, about your own childhood experiences of shame and culture. - Yeah, so I had some bad habits as a teenager. Glenn, as you now know, and one of them was shoplifting. And I got shoplifting at a K-Mart, I was pulled over by this store detective and this person called my parents and my parents took me back home, had me sit down in my bedroom, had me kneeling asian style. I've never been flexible. So it was literally physically painful for me to sit like that, not just psychologically. And my dad explained how I had not only shamed myself, but brought shame on the family. And it was a very intense, heavy and moving conversation and realization for me as a teen. But that ultimately proved to be a turning point because I thought to myself, I never want to bring that kind of shame to my parents that kind of pain again. And then it was not long thereafter, feeling that I needed a new path in life that I became open to the good news that Jesus Christ has provided that way through his life death and resurrection. - That's amazing, Ken, because we've talked about shame now a little bit on that sociological side, the breach in solidarity. But this, there's a theological explanation or perspective on shame as shame is proportionately related to guilt. But then what you're saying is, okay, so it's the dashboard indicator that there's been some guilt, something's been broken. But what's the cure? And you're saying, look, there's no, this is what makes the gospel such good news, isn't it? This is why your book is about grace, essentially. - Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned before that shame, especially for those of us who come from Eastern cultures is a feeling that we've been lowered in the eyes of someone else, maybe a family member, maybe society at large. And the beautiful thing about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ is that God not only loves us in spite of what we've done, but God has provided the way through his sacrificial death on the cross to remove our sins so that we are seen as perfecting his sight, as beautiful and beloved. And to the degree that we understand that we are not just accepted, but cherished in the eyes of the one who matters most will be free to our shame and will live with greater lightness of being in joy. - You know, I want to come back to one of the things you said about how shame sometimes can push us to retreat. Barn has done a lot of work on kind of some of the loneliness and isolation that pastors and church leaders feel. And the pastors who struggle with loneliness and isolation are actually significantly more likely to say that they're also less confident about ministry than when they first entered. So they're 20% more likely to say that they're actually losing confidence in their own calling. They're more likely to say that they've had a significant doubts about their calling, 64% versus 41%. So in other words, loneliness is like a, it's a compounding factor on some of these other challenges that pastors feel. And I wonder just even from your own story, Ken, like has loneliness ever resulted from this sense of shame or this, they're being an area in your life of not allowing God's grace to really break in. Yeah, loneliness is a feeling of being cut off from people, especially significant people and relationships. And when we experience guilt and shame, there is a sense of our being more distant from other people. Even if we're in physical proximity, we feel a relational disconnect. And so one of the most powerful practices, which I also write about is confession. And I recount in one of the chapters how back in my student years, one summer, I was traveling and was powerfully attracted to someone. But any romantic relationship was out of bounds because she was in a relationship with someone else. I was intending to initiate a dating relationship with someone back home. And we met one night in a public place, so we were on a sidewalk and we spontaneously started kissing. There were some, yeah, restraints in place because we were in a public place and people may think, oh, that's not such a big deal. But I felt like I had violated my conscience and my code. And so I was feeling a lot of guilt and shame. And sometime after I confessed that to a trusted Christian friend and he was disappointed, he teared up. But he looked at me and said, can I love you? I love you. And I just felt this weight lifting for my shoulders, sense of relief, sense of being seen and loved and connected. And when we're able to present who we really are, including our flaws and shortcomings and where we're saved in the person says, I'm not going anywhere or welcoming to the human race, there's something about that experience that enables us to see something of God's face and the sense of loneliness, disconnection. We'll vanish and we will feel connected to God, to that person and to our own souls. - That's amazing, Ken. You know, we've so far we've talked about, you know, silence, we've talked about prayer, but you naming this practice of confession is so beautiful because sometimes for maybe for some of our listeners, this idea of receiving God's grace as you sit in prayer can feel too abstract, can feel too ethereal. You know, it doesn't quite lodge deep in our hearts, but when you tell that story of your friend, you know, confessing to your friend and them speaking essentially the words of Christ over you as an agent of the gospel, how powerful that is that God's grace actually arrives to us through others. - What a beautiful thing that is. Ken, as we begin to kind of wrap up here a little bit, I know there's a connection here in your rule of life, God and my everything and this book, becoming my son, now I become myself. What is the interaction you see between kind of these healthy rhythms, rule of life type stuff with embracing, you know, this health that comes from God's grace permeating every part of who we are, reclaiming a sense of identity, our true self. - Yeah, well, God and my everything came out of pilgrimage to Ireland years ago, my life as a younger pastor was really crazy. I felt like I was constantly shredding water. So my mentor, Lately Ford, Father-in-law to the late Billy Graham invited me on a pilgrimage to Ireland. We learned from the monks about a way of life they described as a rule of life that enabled them to experience God as alive and real in every part of their life, not just when they were in chapel praying, but as they were working out in the field as they were studying the library, preparing a meal in a kitchen. I was hungry to experience God in every part of my life through what the monks call this rhythm of rule of life. And so I have found that my rhythm of life or rule of life acts as a kind of trellis for a grapevine. It exposes me more to the sunlight of God and enables my life to be pruning guided so that I am more exposed to just to the life and light of God in a way that makes me feel more loved than I would otherwise nourished. And Thomas Merton once said that the soul is like a wild animal in the bushes. It's shy, it tends to retreat, especially in the presence of what they perceive to be danger. But when we are in the presence of a God who loves us where we feel safe and cherished, our real self, our soul can emerge as it is. And I have found that as I have learned to tune more to God's love for me through some of these practices that in the process of my rule of life like Sabbath, like silence and solitude and meditation, that I have more capacity to show up as I really, I'm not just rink away as we talk about, or to try and go bigger than I am, but just to be myself. You know, really quickly, you know, Barna has this thing where they recognize that they discover the pastures who practice, some form of self-reflection, meditation, actually twice as likely as those who don't to rate their mental and emotional health as excellent. And more likely for them to actually be more present to others and more likely to say that caring for the poor and the marginalized are among their greatest spiritual concerns. They're more likely to say that it's been simple to find time in ministry to schedule, which is, it's almost like a paradox here. The more you do it, the easier it becomes almost because you start to say, yeah, this is part of my rhythm. This is part of who I am. I wonder if you could offer a little diagnostic here, Ken, because maybe for some people they're like, yeah, yeah, great. I'll get to that. I'll get to this self-reflection inventory, you know, but what would be some of the warning signs that actually coming back to your most recent book? What would be some of the warning signs that actually you're not living from your true self and actually there's a need here to slow down and I'll let the grace of God touch some deeper areas that you've not been attentive to. What might be the first signs of bubbling on the surface of that? - Yeah, I think that some of the signs that we are living on the surface and not connecting deeply to God and to the realities of our soul is a kind of unnecessary anxiety. I mean, we have the capacity to feel anxious and fear. We've got a threat detector called the amygdala, which can sometimes keep us safe or literally save our lives. So I'm not saying no anxiety. We'll have an unnecessary kind of anxiety or restlessness, a consciousness about appearances and how we're perceived. And I think that's a sign that we're not living from our own true self, are made in the image of notself from a place of deep rootedness. - That's really good. That's really, I'm so glad you name that. That's exactly right. And maybe for some of these pastors, some of our church leaders, I mean, all of us can relate to these feelings of oh my goodness, these stresses of the job and the weight of managing these emotions of these relationships rather. And to say, well, yes, some of those things are legitimate, but where is it overfiring? And it might be overfiring because we're not living a deeply and there's a deep place of shame that God wants to bring his grace to. I mean, that's just such good news. And I would love for you Ken to now pray for our listeners that we discover kind of the gift and the good news in all of this that we're not stuck. Well, we don't have to live in this place. We can truly be free to become our true selves, our selves that God made us to be. So I'd love for you to just take a moment here and pray. - Sure, that sounds pretty good. Lord, I pray for those watching, listening to this conversation. And I pray that you would develop them in your love that you would enlighten the eyes of their heart so that they may see you more clearly. And with the Apostle Paul, I pray that out of your glorious riches, you strengthen them with power in their inner being so that Christ your Son might dwell even more fully in their hearts by faith. And I pray that through the power of your spirit, they would have power to grasp along with all of your people, just how wide and how long and how high and how deep is your love for them in Christ. And that they would know this love that surpasses human knowledge. They might be filled to the measure of all the fullness of you and overflowing with love and embracing your peace and radiating your joy to the world. And we pray these things in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. - Amen, amen. - Thank you so much, Ken. - Yeah, thank you. It's been great to be with you. - All right, friends, thank you for joining us for another great episode of the Resilient Pastor Podcast. Like we mentioned at the beginning of this episode, we're excited to kick off another round of the Resilient Pastor cohort. We've got some new presenters presenting webinars throughout the cohort. And so it's a shorter journey this time. It's 12 weeks. We'll have virtual gatherings every two weeks with one in-person gathering at the very end of it. And so please consider signing up, joining us for this journey of the Resilient Pastor cohort. I thanks again to right now media, one of our great partners. They know that the mission of the church matters. They know that your church matters. And right now media wants to partner with you to enhance the discipleship experience in your church. So check them out at rightnowmedia.org to find out how right now media can serve your church. As always, thank you for listening. We're so grateful that you take the time to spend these moments with us. We hope that it was encouraging. If it was, please do share this with others. Like, follow, subscribe, rate, review, all the things. But above all, we are praying that the Holy Spirit would bring life to your soul this week. Pastors, church leaders, we'll catch you next time on the Resilient Pastor Podcast. (gentle music)