Spiritual Formation in the Life of the Leader (Featuring John Ortberg)

[MUSIC] This teaching titled "Spiritual Formation in the Life of the Leader" was given by John Orpurg at the first annual practicing the way pastor conference in Portland, Oregon, September of 2022. This was the same event where our last episode was recorded, a gathering of a thousand pastors from all over the world arriving from wildly different context traditions and denominations. And if you remember the fall of 2022, you'll recall the collective sense of crisis in the air, the lingering exhaustion of the pandemic, mounting national and political tensions, and a general uncertainty about the future. In this teaching, John names the complexity and challenges of leading in our cultural moment, yet makes compelling case that the primary calling of a pastor has not changed. In fact, he argues that the seasons of pressure and upheaval are precisely the moments where God invites leaders into deeper intimacy and maturity with Christ, so that we might become people who lead from an overflow of our flourishing inner life with God. This is a teaching I plan to send to any leader at any stage of life or leadership, anyone who needs to be reminded of first things and first love. As we prepare to hear this teaching, let's begin with prayer. [Music] As we enter this time, I take a moment to slow down in make room, to breathe, to settle, to notice God's presence here with me. Spirit of God, gather my attention in quiet my hurry. May this conversation become a place of encounter, where my heart is awakened, my mind renewed, and my life gently formed in the way of Jesus. Great honor to be with you. It is a noble quest that you are on, and I'm thrilled to get to be here and learn with you. I want to dive in. COVID, George Floyd, racism, inflation, political polarization, Donald Trump, Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court, declining church attendance, seminaries closing their doors, doors, record percentages of pastors thinking about quitting, the rise in fall of Marseille, church, scandals, worship wars, culture wars, old Christians staying home, young Christians deconstructing. If you hold to traditional sexual ethics, you are thought in many circles to be immoral. If you raise questions about inclusivity, you are not allowed to call yourself evangelical, which nobody is sure they want to be called any more anyhow. White Christian nationalism is searching, housing prices impossible, young staff, unfindable, volunteers, unrecruitable, church campuses, unbuildable, property unaffordable. This is a great time to be administered. It really is. It is an opportunity to be grasped and savored. And I'll tell you why, when the bottom falls out of your outer world, you turn to your inner world. Because that's all you have left. And it's there you find God. So these are good days. I was asked to talk about formation in the life of the leader. And I'm very grateful to have gotten to think about that topic with all of us. And I thought I would begin by thinking about just the words in that assignment. And then move to what this formation looked like when it goes right, how do we pursue it? But I want to start with the word leader. My favorite definition of leader comes from Ron Hyphids from Harvard. He said, "A leader is someone who disappoints people at the rate they can stand." And if you think about Jesus, that is not a bad definition. Right up to about Calvary. I don't know about you. For me, it's a very complicated and still confusing word after many, many decades. I was at one church where the leadership word was so exalted that everybody there believed they had the spiritual gift of leadership. Everybody on staff on every survey had the spiritual gift of leadership. All the volunteers thought they had the spiritual gift of leadership. All the attenders thought they did. People thought their pets had the spiritual gift of leadership. It was everything. And then I've seen the nomination. And this tends to happen sometimes, particularly in older ones. That almost looks as though it were designed to fort leadership. So wonderful book by Edwin Freeman, "Failure of Nerve" that talks about what a social ecosystem can look like when courage and bold initiative taking and creativity begin to die. And people think a good decision is one where everybody gets their fingerprints on the football. It's a very complex word. And I was thinking, getting ready for this, I think part of it is because there's overlapping meanings. That's why I've never been able to hear or come up with one single definition of leader that I found particularly helpful. So let me just run through them real quickly. For one thing, I believe leadership refers to something universally true about all of us that you were made in the image of God to exercise dominion. God says in Genesis, "When human beings were made rule, be fruitful and multiply." And it carries all the way through to the book of Revelation when the saints will sit on their thrones. You are a royal priesthood, a nation of kings. And every one of us is that way. Your kingdom is your range of effective will, where what you say goes you are made to have an impact to be significant. We watch that happen in little children and it's amazing. What is every two-year-old's favorite word? No, what's their next favorite word? Mine, those are kingdom words. It's a real good words. But it's very difficult to lead people without violating their kingdom. Sometimes I will say to my wife, Nancy, when we go to bed at night, I command you to turn that light off. And she will leave that light on all night before she will give me the satisfaction of doing what I order her to do. Because we were all made to have dominion. That's true for all of us. Secondly, we talk about leaders as people who have a strong moral compass, who have a healthy will, who don't capitulate easily to peer pressure. Whereas followers along these lines are people who will just do what they're told. Are the animals that we use to describe leaders are eagles and lions? What animals do we use to describe followers? sheep, lemmings, just wherever everybody else goes. A third way we talk about leaders are somebody that has a positional authority, a boss, head coach, CEO, lead pastor. That phrase didn't used to exist. There didn't used to be a thing called a lead pastor. But there is now titles come and go. And it reflects our intrigue with that word. But of course, we all know being a boss doesn't necessarily make you a leader. And then there are influencers. This is kind of an interesting emerging category. People who crush it on social media, thought leaders, opinion shapers, people who know how to build a brand and leverage a great platform. I was just reading today. There are mega influencers with a million or more followers, macro influencers, micro influencers and now nano influencers. If you're a nano influencer, nobody cares. By the way, in our preoccupation with this, it remains the case that in the history of the human race, there has never been a single influencer who has come close to a carpenter from Nazareth. I work in the San Francisco area. Why is there a San Francisco? Because hundreds of years ago, there was a man named Francis who was so captivated by a man named Jesus that centuries later, they would name a city after him. We live now in San Jose. Why is there a San Jose? Because once there was a man named Joseph who was associated with this man named Jesus in such a powerful way that that's a city. The capital of our state, California is Sacramento. Why is there a Sacramento? Because this man Jesus once had a meal for some friends that were so unforgettable, the most famous meal in the history of eating when we think about the table that they named the city after it. Before I live there, I lived in Chicago. Why is there a Chicago? No one knows. I was going to try that with Portland, but that just felt a little too mean. So I decided not to do that. Anyway, influencers. Another category is situational leaders. In certain situations, everybody's lost, whoever knows something about nature will take the lead. Or if there's a medical emergency nurse or a doctor or somebody with medical training in a situation, there'll be situational leaders. And then there is corporate or organizational leadership. And the folks that have these kind of gifts may have an ability to cast a vision, strategic thinking, very often a lot of [BLANK_AUDIO] personal charisma, team builders, people developers, able to recruit, able to make decisions. It's a real complicated word, and we get confused about it quite often, I think. The spiritual gift of leadership should be recognized and honored and leveraged, but so should every other spiritual gift. As a matter of fact, Paul said, the gifts that are the most overlooked humanly ought to be the most honored in the body of Christ. And every human being is made to exercise dominion. Dallas Willard used to say that discipleship, spiritual formation is training for reigning. And we have a hard time sometimes talking about leadership in a way that recognizes every single human being was made to reign. We live in a culture where everybody wants to be a leader and nobody wants to be a follower. We follow a man who called everybody to be a follower and nobody to be a leader. So that leads to this kind of challenge. What do we do when the prestige of the word leader keeps going up, but the prestige of the word pastor keeps going down? And that's part of why I just wanna tell you right now it is a noble thing that you do, 'cause you're not likely to hear it too much and a lot of the props that used to reinforce that for people have evaporated. You all know this better than I do. Church historian, friend of mine, said in 1950, 10% of all five beta capas thought leaders in America were clergy, 10%. Today it's far less than one tenth of one percent. Baster's used to be recognized as educated people in their communities. Newspapers, they were these things that were printed on paper. Used to publish the sermons of pastors on Monday morning after they were delivered on Sunday. Now, you all know what I'm talking about. If I'm flying next to somebody on a plane and I don't wanna have a conversation with them, I will tell them what I do. If I wanna have a conversation, I was talking to a guy a while ago and just told him a little bit about my education, but not what I did. And he talked for an hour. He was involved in tech, Bay Area Guide. He told me about his girlfriend, told me about his kids. He used to be a soccer player. All of his problems. Finally after an hour, he turned and was curious and said, "What do you do?" And I said, "I'm a pastor." These are his direct words he said, "I'll be damned." (audience laughing) And I said, "Well, maybe, but I hope not. "We can talk about that for a while." (audience laughing) Being a pastor is more challenging. It has fewer resources, faces larger culture resistance and has less dignity than ever. We need help. We need help. The state of leaders, however you wanted to find that, people who carry the burden of Jesus' church is enormous. So what is formation? Formation is the process by which the inner self is given character or shape. Formation is the process by which the inner character or inner self is given shape. The best example that I can think of is just simply there is a physical dimension to you. You have a body and it is being shaped all the time. For better or for worse, by accident or on purpose, what we eat, how we exercise or don't rest or don't, our bodies are being shaped all the time. And there is a spiritual dimension to you. There is an unseen dimension, thoughts and feelings, emotions, perceptions and decisions. And it is being shaped all the time, like it or not on purpose or by accident, for better or for worse. It's very important that we and then our churches understand this. Spiritual formation is not an activity restricted for introspective, introverted white males who like to read devotional writers like Thomas Merton and Henry Noan and Barack Obama. (audience laughs) By the way, wonderful thing. I got to spend the night last night in an Airbnb with Brandon and John Mark. And to get to wake up in the morning and do devotions with John Mark Comer. As he reads Bernie Sanders. (audience laughs) Unforgettable. No, that's alive, made that up. Spiritual formation is not a particular set of techniques. John Mark was talking today about Bible study is indispensable and prayer is indispensable. And meditation and lexio divina, which is a way of engaging with scripture, centering prayer. Those are wonderful things, but spiritual formation is not just swapping out one set of methods for another set of methods. Spiritual formation is not extra credit work for overachieving attenders. Spiritual formation is not an alternative to discipleship. I've had folks ask me, are we a discipleship church or are we a spiritual formation church? A disciple is simply somebody who has put Jesus in charge of her or his spiritual formation. And spiritual formation is simply the process that we engage in as we become disciples of Jesus. We are all being spiritually formed all the time. Everybody is receiving a spiritual formation. And by the way, you cannot overcome 23 and a half hours of spiritual malformation with 30 minutes of reformation. And by the way, we're talking about a rule of life. Everybody has a rule of life. And this wisdom goes way back the very first song, blessed is the one who does not stand in the way of wicked, walk in the steps of sinners or stand in the way of the wicked or sit in the seat of the scorners. That's a way of life. And basically it's just doing what everybody does. But her or his delight is in the law of the Lord for the way of the righteous, the way of the wicked. Jesus talked about a narrow way and a broad way. Everybody's got a way of life. So that brings me to the next question, what is life, formation in the life of a leader? Jesus said, "I come that you might have life and have it abundantly," or 1 John 5, 12, whoever has the Son has life, or Ephesians 2, 5, when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, God made us alive. What does that mean? This is from Dallas, Willard. By the way, for those of you who don't know Dallas, Willard, Dallas taught philosophy at the University of Southern California for many decades, very influential thinker and writer in philosophy and particularly around spiritual life. He's the smartest man I have ever known. I would never get in an argument with Dallas 'cause I was afraid he would prove I don't exist. And he was one of those people, you know how sometimes you hear somebody talk or you read what they've written and then you meet them and they're kind of disappointing? I have met that person. I have been that person for many, many people. With Dallas, it was the other way around. His life was better than his mind. And from the first time I ever sat down with him, it was apparent that God was simply as present to him as this podium is to me. This is what he writes about life. Life is always and everywhere in inner power to relate to other things in certain specific ways. The living thing has an inherent power that contacts what is beyond it, drawing from the beyond to enhance and extend its being and influence. G.K. Chesterton has that wonderful quote in orthodoxy. Like what part of what we love about children is they are so full of life. He says, "Because a child is abounding in vitality, it is in spirit, fierce and free, and it wants everything repeated and unchanged." So it says to the grown-up, "Do it again." And the grown-up does that again until they are nearly dead. For a grown-up is not strong enough to exalt in monotony, but perhaps God is strong enough to exalt in monotony. Maybe God says, "Do it again every day to the sun and do it again every day to the moon." Perhaps the reason there are so many daisies is not automatic necessity. Maybe God makes every daisy separately and has never got tired of making them. Perhaps God has the eternal appetite of infancy for we have sinned and grown old and our father is younger than we. We have sinned and grown-up. That's life. [BLANK_AUDIO] Those are not just clever words. Dallas writes a spiritual life consists in that range of activities in which people co-operatively interact with God and the spiritual order deriving from God's personality and God's action. I am to be the way that a seed puts roots out into the earth so it's constantly taking in nurture. I was meant to be drawing power from God all the time. We mostly, Dallas, would say experience grace as God's power in us. One of the great misconceptions in many churches in our day is that only sinners need grace. Dallas used to say saints burn more grace than sinners ever could. They burn grace like a rocket burns rocket fuel. It's live on it. That's life. Redemption. It's not the avoidance of eternal torture. It is the impartation of life. And now that leads to the next question for people who do what you and I do. Is the life I'm inviting other people to live? The life I'm living myself. Is the life I spend time teaching about casting vision for calling other people to enter into? Is that the life when I'm stepping down from the stage that I myself am actually living? Am I sending out my roots like a little seed? You all know about this. The temptation of ministry is to make the outcomes we pursue more important than the person we become. Dallas would often say, "The main thing God gets out of your life is the person you become." And that's the main thing you get out of your life. Not the resume you write, not even the ministry you build. It is the person that we become that we will take with us into eternity. And very often people go into ministry and become exhausted, preoccupied, burnt out, anxious, dissatisfied, overcommitted, overwhelmed, discontented, vaguely guilty. We sacrifice the life of Jesus in pursuit of our success while trying to convince everybody else that they should sacrifice their success for the life of Jesus. The world does not need any more untransformed successful pastors, leading untransforming successful churches. And that's part of why it's so important that we get the gospel right. I love what John Mark had to say about that today. When we get the gospel right, you will always have the natural consequence of creating disciples. Because it is the gospel of the availability of life together with Jesus in his kingdom. And if you want it, then the way that you pursue it is by becoming a disciple. To be with them, to learn from them how to live like it. Dallas used to say an interesting thing about pastors. It kind of haunted me sometimes. He said, "Pastors must know." And I thought about that for a long time. I don't think it's mostly about academic knowledge, although that's very good. One of the groups that I have been studying a lot for a number of years is AA and just their community and their program. If you've ever been to an AA meeting, and I'll go to them because I find them quite helpful. Most always at the end, after they say the serenity prayer or the Lord's Prayer, everybody joins hands and they will chant together, "Keep coming back. It works." And very often they add a little, "Cota, keep coming back. It works if you work it." Honestly, one of the great problems in the churches, for the most part, we have a hard time saying that. See, in AA, it's not that they're all that educated academically about AA. What they know is, if I don't come, I will get drunk and die. I know it works. And I think that's the kind of knowing that Dallas was talking about to know Jesus and that there is a way of life that leads to nurture and grace. And that's what you're signing up to work on. And I just want to tell you, I mean, it's been a dream for a long, long time and to see a group like this, others that are watching online to say, "I will devote my life to try to find a way in our day with our technology and our challenges and our culture through which people might be able to. " There's a weird thing in AA because they often meet in basements of churches. One of their things is when you go into a church, you can go upstairs and hear about miracles or you can go downstairs and see them. I think we've got to go downstairs. You know, a question that has been asked by more Christian authors and speakers than I could count tons of them. They'll talk about the marvel of AA meetings and then ask, "Why can't the church be more like AA?" And I think the short answer is, it can if Christians are willing to be more like alcoholics. And show up in utter neediness and be real about not hiding. So much around that. I was used to think the story of Ananias and Sapphira is really strange and very severe. I don't have time to get into it right now except you look at this story. What happened there, in a lot of ways it was echoing what happened in the Garden of Eden with Ananias and Sapphira for the first time in the early church, somebody hid and pretended to be better than they were. And spiritual power can flow in almost any circumstance, but it cannot flow when people hide and pretend to be what we are not. Leads me to the next observation I was like, spiritual leadership has a unique capacity to malform the life of a leader. Eugene Peterson used to say, "Ministry reinforces inattentiveness to God." Because generally people want to know, was that a good sermon, was that a good program, was that a good service, is a kids minister good? Not many people will ask you, "How is it with your soul?" And we see malformed leadership all through Scripture, Genesis 3.16. After the fall, part of the curse is, "Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you." Now I grew up in the kind of church that thought that was a pretty good idea. We actually felt like that was the way it's supposed to be. That happened after the fall. That's Genesis 3. Not Genesis 1 or Genesis 2. We remain to rule over creation for good in a spirit of servanthood, not to dominate one another. For Jesus, Jesus said to His followers, "The kings of the Gentiles lorded over them and those who exercise authority over them called themselves benefactors." When Jesus said that, He was not being snarky, that's literally what they would do. Peter Leithard has a great book called "Graditude about gift giving in the economy back in that day." And people that had resources would often give it. But they literally would claim the title, "Benefactors," which meant that the people who had been given from them were now obligated to them. That was a literal title in Jesus' day. You're not drawing that from thinner. But you are not to be like that. Instead the greatest among you should be like the youngest and the one who rules like the one who serves. One of the most significant themes of Jesus' teaching is to deconstruct leadership. And I think if there is a rich topic for the process of deconstruction in our day, leadership would be it. Ego inflation, misguided loyalty, isolation, lack of accountability, misunderstanding, who really counts image management, fake vulnerability, comparison. So we're called to have Christ formed in us and our lives. And in the time that's left, I want to talk to you about four indicators of flourishing in ministry. And these actually come from the largest study of clergy well-being that I know. Mostly comes out of Duke, researcher named Matt Bloom, and his team have written about flourishing in ministry. So I want to go through the four categories they come up with. Talk a bit as I do about how do we pursue them. And if you want to get as much out of this talk as you can, you might rate yourself if you're feeling courageous. Scale of one to ten. Where do you stand on these four indicators these days? And where might God be calling you to make some changes? So number one, first indicator of flourishing in ministry is what Bloom calls daily well-being. Daily well-being. basic satisfaction in life, having an energized spirit, being engaged in challenging work, starting the day with a sense of anticipation. It's really a wonderful book not too long ago to talk about this ancient liturgy. The author said, "Every day should be a sersum quarter which I guess is Latin for lift up your hearts." And from about the third century out when the community would gather, that would be part of the call to begin the day. Lift up your hearts and the people would say, "We will lift them up indeed to start a day with a lifted elevated heart." And then to go to bed at night with a grateful spirit. Many years ago I was on a sabbatical and I went to spend one day with Dallas and I asked him, "Dallas, what do I need to do to more effectively lead my church in spiritual formation?" And then there was a long pause with Dallas, there was always a long pause. And then he said, "You must arrange your life so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy and confidence in your everyday life with God." And I said, "No, I wasn't asking about me. I was asking about them." And he said, "I know." But the reality is that you will inevitably reproduce yourself. And the people who are closest to you will watch you. And if there is a gap between what you say and how you live, they will always believe how you live. And I don't know about you. For me, the temptation is always to think, "I will experience deep contentment, joy and confidence when ministry goes really well." When the church is full, when the sermons are great, when everybody's happy, someday, not today, not to, and Dallas said, "You must do this. Your elders will not do this. Your spouse will not do this. The church fairy will not sprinkle and fairy dust on you and do this. You must arrange your life so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy and confidence in your everyday life with God." While what a place to pause for a moment and just let that sink in, you must do this. Arrange your life so that you can experience deep contentment, joy and confidence in your everyday life with God. With me, as always, is Bethany Allen from Bridgetown Church such a gift to be with you and have these conversations. That message, that talk, that teaching from John Orpurg, just my heart is like full. I am more than full. I'm tipping over. I love John Orpurg. There's no one, yeah, no one better. That talk was profound. It hits as a human. It speaks to a part of me, as a dad, as a husband, longing to arrange and order my life and time around the things that matter most. It just stirs that. But as a leader, it also, that phrase, they will always believe how you live. I'm reminded of this phrase that I heard from a Scottish teacher. He says that, "If you're preaching measles but carrying mumps, the people catch mumps." I've always liked that. They're going to catch what you carry far more than what you preach. To arrange your life in such a way where that is the center. I love, as someone who wants to be thought of as smart and intelligent, for Orpurg to speak about Willard and say, "Dallas was the smartest man I've ever met. That just named something that I deeply long for." Yeah. And something that I think is rare. Unfortunately, I feel sad saying that. But even hearing Orpurg say it felt like, "Why is this so novel? Why are we all like, wow, yes, I should be arranging my life in a way that I'm experiencing joy and experiencing freedom and the presence of God? Why is that so novel to me?" Of course, it makes me think about just the education I've gotten, the places I've been, and the pressures I feel a lot about just a certain way of being. This is prophetic to me in a lot of ways for the pastor for myself and who it is that I want to be. Even the other thing I was thinking about was just the measurement of your ministry. When he was talking, I just wondered what people would say about me. What have they caught from me in those respects? I mean, we could reflect on that for a while. I feel like that is a very powerful question. As I was listening to John, I was reflecting on the models and images of what I assumed the role of pastor to be and the primary tasks of pastoring what they are. No matter how hard I fight for the ideal that I think of, I still drift in the complexity of life. I care more about how this sermon goes than I do about the type of father I am in writing the sermon in my frustration. It's crazy to me. I care more about that. Tell me about things that have helped you ground or stay grounded or reflect on that for a moment. I was trying to think about this too because the freneticness of getting caught up in ministry work is just complex. For me, I think the good grounding of experience in my life is, and I'm a pretty playful person. So are you. We're not people who are like, we're not blessed and we're not eaors. I don't think we have that disposition. I'm naturally like, let's play. Let's do something fun. But even in our own ways, we get caught up. I think the best thing in my life, even as John was talking, I was thinking about friends that I have a few poor friends who just call me out on it. I think the deeper layer there is that they call me out of my false self into my true self. I think a lot of times in the role that we fulfill in that pastor realm. A lot of times there's a propensity towards bending in that direction. Your friends are able, good friends who actually know you are able to call you back to, I think who it is that you actually want to be in the world. I think about my own experience. I struggled to find myself as a pastor or a role because I never saw myself in the pastors that I looked around. I never looked around in my life and saw, man, that is a life that I want. That is someone who reflects my unique personality. I'm a little more playful or I'm not the strong leader type. I remember just this sense of, I, and I remember having a dear friend, actually we're going to hear one of his teachings later, Chris said to me, he was like, well, what if that was just the type of leader the church needs is not the global church, but the expression maybe someone needs a model that's different. It just was an invitation to be myself and that I can be playful and I can come back to myself and I love that idea that your community, your friendships, your people who can speak directly and name the things that they see in you and name when they see it not present. So how do I do that? Well, one big part of it will be having the right people in your life who know you and speak deeply into your soul. I think one of the most important needs for people, particularly in ministry, is to have what is sometimes called a fully disclosing friend. In Celtic spirituality, it was called a soul friend. A soul friend was defined as one before whom you have no secrets. And it took a long time for me. I had a friend that I made in grad school at fuller name Rick and we were very close. I'd known him for about 10 years and I finally decided I would like to have someone like that in my life. So I asked Rick if he would listen to my confession. And I spent several weeks reviewing my life and writing stuff down and that eventually we met at a place where we could talk and they took well over an hour and I read through going back as far as I could remember as honestly as I could the things that I was the most ashamed of. I'll never forget that moment. I didn't want to look at him. And I didn't know what he was going to say. What he said, I would never have guessed in a million years. He made me look at him and he looked me in the eye and he said, John. I have never loved you more than I love you right now. And it felt so good I wanted to make up more bad stuff to tell them, just to hear how much he loved me. And I came to realize then something I should have known a lot earlier, it is only possible to be loved to the extent that I am known. And I can only be fully loved if I am fully known. Because as long as there is a part of me that you don't know, you may say you love me, but inside I will inevitably say yes, but if you knew this about me, you can do a little two by two quadrant on this. I think it may come up. Yeah, so one axis is I can know or be not known. And another one is I can be accepted or not accepted. If I am known and accepted then I am loved. If I am not known but I am accepted then I look impressive. If I am neither accepted or known I am a stranger. A lot of us can live in churches as strangers. If I am known and then not accepted as I am known I am rejected and that is so painful. The biblical word for that is cursed. To be cursed. That is so painful. A lot of us will go down to the impressive quadrant to try to avoid the rejection quadrant. So for daily well-being, Rick and I call each other Monday through Friday, call them this morning, every morning at 6.50, how did yesterday go, where did I mess up, where do I need help, what do I face today, pray for each other, every day we do that. And then periodically deeper times together we did that this last Thursday. So that is a big part of daily well-being. Joy is a huge part of daily well-being. In the celebration of discipline by Richard Foster, his final chapter is on maybe the most neglected of the disciplines, the discipline of celebration. Now in the Bible we are commanded to be joyful. God would not command that if it wasn't something that we could do. Well we can't do it by willpower, we have to train for it. You go through the Old Testament between Sabbath, Feast days and so. One scholar says about a third of the days of Israel were actually set aside not for normal work, for Sabbath, for festival keeping and so on. Why would they do that? They were training for joy. You read Deuteronomy 14 sometime. I will not talk about it right now. But as a Baptist growing up, I was shocked by the commandments of what sorts of things they were to imbibe to celebrate in Deuteronomy 14. In the Bible they were training for joy. Maybe what you need once a week as a part of your Sabbath is a day of celebration. I have one day a week where I just eat horrible food that I love all day long. It's actually on Sundays and often when I would get up to preach, I would be so full because I had so much, I would have like a bunch of peanut butter and honey bagels and eggs and bacon for breakfast. I would be doing this all through the sermon. Nobody knew why I was doing it. Maybe once a day eat what you love to eat, where what you love to wear. Listen to music that you love to listen to. Be with people that make you happy because there are other people that don't bring you joy. They suck joy out of you like a hoover. When they're around say, "I can't be with you today. This is my joy day. I'll be with you tomorrow." Bloom talks about having what he calls a restorative niche. I thought this was really interesting. When they were just looking empirically, they looked at over 10,000 pastors, 20 different denominations, who seems to be flourishing by various measures. One of the most important practices was what they called a restorative niche. You might use the word "habi," but that doesn't tend to conjure up the strength of it. It will be an activity that you have a certain level of skill at that you can grow at that can give you a sense of mastery or flow, if you're familiar with all of that research, and that you do it for intrinsic joy. Not to get approval, not to show off, not for money, just for the joy of doing it itself. When they found that not very many pastors have what they would call a restorative niche, golfing, surfing, knitting, music, could be any number of things. Carpentry, I met a couple of years ago, a guy that actually lived with Dallas and James for a few years. He said, "One of the things Dallas used to do, Dallas was actually a union ruffer way back in the day." He said, "Dallas would go up on the roof and work on his roof and sing opera songs." So that may be your thing. I don't know what it is. People who engage in restorative niche once a week were in about the highest category of folks flourishing in ministry. I'll tell you, part of their research, for whatever it's worth, and again, I spend a good deal of my time writing and teaching about the idea of spiritual disciplines or practices, understand the baggage about the word, learning about that, changed my life. However, in their study they say, "People who engaged in at least weekly involvement in a restoration niche were flourishing more often than people engaged in any of the spiritual disciplines that they measure." Now one of the problems is, of course, a discipline is simply an activity that you engage in by direct effort to give you the power to do what you cannot now do by direct effort. So there is an unlimited number of spiritual disciplines, if it's understood rightly. And this idea of an activity that is restorative to you is precisely a spiritual discipline. Unfortunately, we don't understand it, and we cram that language into goofy little piotistic unappealing as though God's given gold stars out for that kind of stuff. We end up measuring people's spiritual maturity by their devotional activity. It was a bad idea. If in Jesus' day you measured people's spiritual maturity by their devotional activity who would come out on top. Faresis. We've got to find a way to measure spiritual maturity where the Pharisees don't win. A couple of years ago it was really interesting. I had a bad day and I had a good day. And I was trying to ask, "What was the difference between the two of them?" And what came were three words, "Unhurried, surrendered, and free." And I find for me, if I can live those three words, "Unhurried," surrendered. You will be done, you will be done, you will be done. Free. The burden is not on me. So that's daily well-being. Second indicator of flourishing in ministry is what Bloom calls resilience. The ability to adapt to change. A friend Gary Hamill who says, "Your organization's irrelevance is the rate at which the change of the world is happening faster than the change in your organization." That's kind of sobering to think about with churches. Change continues to accelerate the ability to respond to life's challenges, the capacity to grow, being able to learn, being able to recover, being able to manage frustration, being able to incorporate pain into ministry. Bloom writes that maybe the great challenge for ministry in our day, especially right now, is burnout. Mental exhaustion, physical exhaustion, a sense of depersonalization at work such that it's harder to be creative, it's harder to be patient. I'm losing effectiveness, it's harder to make decisions. Really interesting. It's a wonderful book by Steve Kuss called Managing Leadership Anxiety. And he talks about how most burnout is more a reflection of unresolved anxiety than it is level of workload. Burnout is more a reflection of unresolved anxiety than of level of workload. And part of what that means is very often in churches, it's not going to work to try to reduce burnout by reducing people's workload because that's not what's really causing. Things that I used to be on California men, they'll back in the 90s before I was there. In one year, this is during the dot com boom, the budget of the church literally tripled so they literally tripled the size of the staff at the church in one year, went from 60 people to 180 people. Do you think that the sense of stress went down 300 percent? No. Very often, that's not what stress in burnout is about. Steve says that anxiety is what we experience when we do not get what we think we need. So King Saul, everybody's singing Saul's saying is thousands, David is tens of thousands, Saul said I think I need that. And then there's deep anxiety. He also says, "If you want to know if a little bit of the The leader is anxious, don't ask the leader, ask the leader's team. And what we need is fully differentiated leaders. We're going to have time to get into this. One of the great themes in Scripture all the way from creation on is there's chaos, there's separation, God separates light and darkness, earth and sky, dry land and water. God joins them together and then there's shalom, wholeness, flourishing. But the separateness has to come before the togetherness and when it comes to people, that means churches need really differentiated leaders who are not reactive, not addicted to the approval of the people that I serve. I cannot serve people, lead people or love people if I'm living in the need of their approval. So I got to find what are some ways to train for freedom from approval addiction. I'll tell you one that Steve did, this is kind of interesting spiritual discipline. Steve actually deliberately preached a bad sermon when we get at his church. Poorly constructed, no logical flow, dull illustrations, people didn't know what the point of it was. He's just deliberately in order to free himself from the need of everybody's approval, literally they got up and preached a bad sermon. And he said, part of what was humbling was people said, "Nice sermon just about as often as they ever did in his great sermons." So I was like, "How do I engage in those practices that will tell me, 'Ahh, I'm free! My worth is in contention on what everybody says about me.' By the way, I think resilience is part of my solitude is uniquely important for leaders. For me, it is primarily when I go away and I'm just away for a while that my body begins to remember. I have a life and it's bigger than my job. The way everybody thinks about me is not who I am. And I was not made to bear the outcomes of my work." Dallas used to talk a lot about, "We're not made to carry outcomes. We are not atlas. Remember atlas the guy that had the world on his shoulders? That's not us." And it would work really hard and learn from feedback, but our well-being is not on the line. And Dallas came and spoke one time at our church and he was a philosopher. He would often talk in a monotone. Sometimes he would talk and everybody would be riveted and then other times people kind of get lost. And a lot of times in churches, for a lot of us, we wrestle with as soon as the service is over. How to go? How to go? How am I doing? How to talk? How to service? And Dallas finished the talk and we're walking out to my car and he's just humming an old hymn under his breath. And it's like there was not a cell in his body that was asking anxiously, "How did it go?" He was like watching a kid with a helium balloon, just let it go. "Oh, that's what it means not to live under the burden of outcomes. I really want that. That would be so good." He said one time when he was a young man preaching, when he was getting up to preach, the Lord said to him, "Dallas, remember, it is what I do with the words after they leave your mouth before they hit people's ear that matters." Third indicator of a flourishing servant of Jesus, and this one's real challenging for me is authenticity. The current is the real integrity, the courage to be real, having clarity about my identity and my values and my beliefs, and the courage to just say it the way that it is and allow the chips to fall where they may. Courageous authenticity. I have a friend who reminds me about that in wonderful and challenging ways because it is my constant growth edge. There's a series of books by an author named Susan Howich, one of them is called Glittering Image. It's about an English clergyman that's set back in England, I think, in the 30s, who wants to be gifted but is drawn to how he looks in front of everybody, wants to serve God, but his idol is this glittering image. He falls apart. Very captivating book. My wife got me a copy of that book. My parents got me a copy of that book. My sister Barbie, this is your story. Barbie got me all six books in the series. I get it. I need the book. Don't get me the freaking book. But man, glittering image. And there's no authenticity there. And it's exhausting. It's exhausting way to live. Bloom talks about a couple of really interesting areas of alignment that are in need of mystery. One is, is there a value alignment? You know, every pastor has what might be called a spiritual theological center of gravity. Here are the authors I resonate. Here's the ideas. Here's the words. Here's the books. Here's where I find myself on the spectrum, theologically and spiritually. And we all have that. And every church has a theological center of gravity. And if the center of gravity for the pastor does not fit the center of gravity for the church, and I've been in situations like that, that's a problem. And then I start wondering, do I fit? Can I be myself? And Bloom says, then, then arise what he calls, "fasad's of conformity." I pretend to be a better leader than I am, or more intellectual than I am, or father to the right than I am, or father to the left that I am, or to really love something that I don't really love, or to like people that I really think are mean to me. So do I really fit here? And then am I highly self-aware? Again, this has been a long journey for me. I don't even remember this, shows you what a problem I have. When it comes to the Myers-Breg, you all have heard of Myers-Breg? So I have a PhD in clinical psychology. My friend Rick tells me when we went through the program, I told him, quite emphatically, I was ESTJ. I now clearly understand myself to be INFP. I was wrong on every category. I'm glad, because it turns out Jesus was an INFP. But my lack of self-awareness, just massive. So authenticity, the ability to actually be who I am, where I am, and especially in churches. And then for the final indicator is what Bloom calls thriving. Experiencing meaning, significance, and purpose in ministry. It doesn't mean having a pain-free life, but it does include involving integrating pain into my ministry so that it can be redeemed. Knowing what I do counts somehow. Even if nobody else can see it, God and I can. Having values and beliefs that inspire. And on this one, when it comes to how do I find that, where do I look for the deepest level of meaning, significance, purpose, the values that are bedrock? What I would recommend, at least after this season for me, is lean into pain. Because I don't know why fully, but somehow it helps you know what you really believe. John Mark mentioned it's been a hard season in my life. Where that was for our family, our oldest struggles a lot with anxiety. And then in one year went through three miscarriages. And then got pregnant and it stuck the fourth time. But her anxiety was so bad, we did not know if she was going to make it through it. And she would have these nightmares of giving birth to something awful. And then the delivery itself was as bad as any of those nightmares were. And thank God everything turned out to be fine. But it was horrible. And then we got to be grandparents. And that was such a joy. Somebody explained it to me like this. When I had kids, I realized I would kill for my kids. And then I had grandkids and realized I would kill my kids for my grandkids. And as a pastor who told me that, that's true story. team is here. in this room right now. (audience laughing) That same time as we were embarking on the journey of Grandfiring, my dad was diagnosed with a cavernoma, kind of like a tumor in his brainstem. And he'd always been a real physical guy. I had a tennis racket in my crib when I was a baby to let me know what was coming, but his body began to betray him. And I watched as one by one, the abilities that my little grandchild was gaining, my father was losing. He'd always wanted to go to the Galapagos Islands. My mom never wanted to go, so I decided to take him. We went on one of those national geographic cruises, and it was a few months before he died. It was the last month physically he couldn't done it. And it was kind of painful to watch. He was just shuffling with a walker by then. When we would sit down for dinner, because his face was partially paralyzed, food would kind of dribble out of his mouth. It was very hard to be able to tell what he was saying. When he would try to get down in the ladder into those zodiac crafts that go off, it took forever, and I felt kind of awkward with other people there. And then three people came up to me privately before the end of the cruise and said to me, "Your dad is my hero." I hope when I face whatever I have to face, I can do it like him. A couple of weeks before he died, when he was in the hospital, one person came, and my dad gave that person a framed poem, and then another person, a book that were very meaningful to both of them, part of the case of my dad's situation. And he said to me, "See, I can thrive even when I'm dying." There has been other pain with our family, and with our job. One of the things that's been real helpful to me in seeking to thrive in this season comes from Victor Frankel, who's a psychiatrist, survivor of the Holocaust. And there's a book called, say, "Yes to Life" of lectures he gave just months after World War II, which is done. And he says, "One of the big choices that you face is, "what question will you ask?" He says, "You can ask the question, "what do I expect of life?" And when we ask that question, we'll go through our days and kind of wonder, did I have a good day, good circumstances, good things happen, or did I have a bad day, bad things happen? And we'll even teach sometimes with people. If you wanna be happy, then just adjust your expectations. What you're expecting to look. Lower your expectations, expectation, reality minus expectations equals happiness. That stuff gets taught a lot. You can ask that question. Frankel says, "The other question is, "what does life expect of me? "What does God expect of me?" I've found that to be a real helpful question. Today, God, what do you expect of me? What can I bring to the day? What can I do so that when I faced my last breath, 'cause I was there when my dad took his last breath, I don't have massive regrets about, oh, why did I do that? Why did I go down that road? To thrive, cultivate hope. One of the books that has meant a lot to me over these last couple years was written by loose means. Wonderful thinker, teacher and preacher. And it was his memoir, it's called, "My God and I." Last book he ever wrote, he died two weeks after finishing it. And he wrote it after he quit teaching at fuller. He said he wanted to know, "Now that he didn't have to believe anything, "what did he really believe?" (audience laughs) And what he discovered was, it all basically comes down to two things. One is gratitude and the other is hope. He said, "When it comes to the future, "the only alternatives are illusion, despair or hope. "I scorn, illusion, I dread despair, "so I put all my eggs in Jesus basket." And I think a lot in this season about the crucifixion that there's a cross in the middle of our story. I pretty much never sleep through the night. And so I'll always have a plan. Very often it will involve reading Henry Nowen, 'cause he's so wonderful about finding God in pain. And that Jesus is greatest contribution somehow, somehow, somehow is not what he did but what was done to him. The cross. And then I think a lot about the resurrection. This is wonderful story by Dale Bruner in his commentary on Matthew about how, for Jesus the resurrection was such a core and certain event he was almost blosset about it. In Matthew in particular, the women are walking and they see Jesus. And the text says that Jesus said greetings and then he walked away. Doesn't that seem terribly understated? He's just defeated death, risen from the grave, experienced resurrection. All he has to say is, "Hey." Bruner tells about this children's sermon where somebody's asking the kids and the children's sermon, does anybody know what Jesus said after his resurrection? And one little girl raised her hand and said, "I do." Ta-da! (audience laughs) And it's not a bad translation. So, this is the ultimate for us to thrive. It is the power of the resurrection that builds communities, that has done this now for two millennia, that transformed women and men, that healed wounds, that broke addictions, that freed people from sin, that inspired unbelievable generosity, that created gifted servants and imparted life. He has done it before. Do it again. God bless you. (audience applauds) - When I hear John finish that conversation, do it again. My heart immediately goes, "How much joy is possible?" I love his way of communicating, but I love the life that he brings it with, because he's so serious, he takes this so serious, but he is full of such hunger and joy. Like what abundance is available? Jesus is our friend, he is our model, joy is available. And I'm just, I'm stirred by that reminder. I needed that as a pastor today. - Yeah. I mean, and I remember needing it in the room, men. - Yeah, yes, yes. Yeah, I think, to your point, when Jesus said about John, it's true, like he lived out while he was teaching, the very thing he was teaching. When he was talking, I remember in real time, and then again, listening to this thinking, yeah, I mean, John is experiencing this. I think we could all look at his ministry and say, he has the thriving ministry thing dialed in, or he has the flourishing ministry thing dialed in. - Yeah. - And the best way, the challenge there is, and not to be the Debbie Downer here, but like, where do I not have it dialed in? Like what are the gaps? I'm always wondering, like, God, where are the gaps in me? Like, where am I not excavating the realities of my own life and heart? And where am I missing? The opportunity to be that kind of person and experience that kind of ministry and fruit in my own life, you know? What I hear you saying is, you know, even the idea of being able to be curious, you cannot do that without curiosity. - Yeah. - And if we're fixed in this judgmental way of seeing, or even experience in our own good bad, I've done it, I've not, I've kept up to the standard. What John exudes so well, and what he's talking about, that Chesterton quote, is the playfulness of a child fully dependent on God and his goodness, and curious, children are curious about life. And I often ask myself, wherever I stop getting curious, is where I've kind of given up. When I'm with couples and you see a couple who just aren't curious about one another anymore, you're like, oh, you feel like you've exhausted the story between you. And the first thing I try to do is like, get curious, and when you're doing it with yourself, it has to be so compassionate. You're not looking for the parts to reject them. You're trying to, like, man, I am not living in integrity in this area. And it's not judgment, it's compassion. What part of you is protecting that? And I'm just, when I see someone like John, or I just am stirred by what the Spirit is speaking even now, I'm just like, how much more compassion do I have to have for myself? Because secretly I'm judging the people I'm leading if I'm withholding grace from myself. Yeah. Were you trying to get us with that one, Brian? That was painful. No. Thank you. I'll take that into my week. But it's so interesting because he starts with well-being and resilience, which are such common words in our parlance and our language today, especially in the last few years. What do you think when you hear the four pieces? I mean, I think especially as pastors, I would say, for sure, well-being and resilience, especially post-2020. That is our word for pastors. It's like, all right, we all kind of have it dialed in. The truth is, I think in the best ways, a lot of us learn that and are learning that in a different way. And even the well-being, I think, especially if you look at the church 30, 40, 50 years ago, I think about my dad and pastoral ministry, has been in pastoral ministry almost 50 years. And I think, yeah, the well-being piece was a learning curve. Whereas for my generation, it's been different. We've just got that kind of front of center. But I think when John was talking, what I was thinking about a lot is the last two, the authenticity and thriving. And thinking about how difficult that is, if I'm honest, in my assessment of my own self, but also of my peers, of how difficult those last two really are. And those seem to be more of the challenge for me than the first two. And he said it in his talk. He used this language around. He said, you know, authenticity is the courage to be real. And to have clarity about your identity and your value and your worth when you walk into a room. And I think for a lot of us as pastors or emerging pastors or pastors who are, you know, entering into even new ideas or ways of leading people, that's a difficult, I think it's a difficult task. And then the thriving piece, like I think we'd love to say we're thriving. That we're experiencing meaning and significance. But again, I think there's a bit of an uphill battle in that because in the thriving piece, and this was another significant piece that I think he highlighted that was really helpful was he was talking a lot about how we integrate pain in our leadership and let it be redeemed. That's what he said. You know, you take pain and integrate it and then let it be redeemed. And I think that is for most pastors, a massive learning curve because all day long, and you know this, we're seeing people do that. We're helping people take their pain to Jesus and let it be redeemed. And it's easy, I think, to live off of the fruitfulness of other people in that space rather than authentically in his language, connecting to the fruit in my own life and allowing my own pain to be integrated and redeemed until at the fruitfulness of that be what makes my ministry flourish. The image that came to mind as you're talking is we spend so much time midwifing other people's pain towards healing that we mistake it for our own children or our own fruit or our own. That's the kind of image I'm feeling. It's like because I'm around the pain so much, I think I've done the work. And so often it's a means of avoidance or escape. And I think the authenticity piece that you named is, you know, he said at the beginning that great quote that a leader is someone who disappoints someone at a rate they can stand. And I've just really, I've been thinking so much and how often I disappoint people in my daily life as a leader, as a parent, as a whatever. And when you're disappointing someone out of a pretend self or out of a role you're playing, rather a role you're being, it it almost like protects it. So it's a harder to stand in the reality of who you are. Yeah, it's like, you know, like I love songwriting. It's like, I remember playing songs for the first time and singing a song for someone that's not a cover. And you're like, this is a poem I'm reading or a song I'm writing. It's vulnerable to see how are you going to respond to this? Because it's from me. It's not someone else's words. It's not the pretend pastor. It's harder. And we buffer that. I just feel that sense of how do we come out of hiding? Yeah, it's a different cost, right? I mean, it's just a different cost. I think, you know, I think what John was laying out in these four points and in this just kind of came to a mind as you were speaking, there's there's they build on each other. Like you can see a bit of a pattern in what he's laying out of like if, you know, if I have a daily, if I have a sense of well-being and anticipation, that builds, there's a life in that, a joy in that that builds resilience and then that resilience. It gives way to the authentic self to your point of like, I'm able to adapt, not conform, but adapt based on what God is doing in me and then live authentically and then moves, you know, if you're living aware, if you're living with courage in who you are, then thriving is possible. Can I actually ask you, would you lead us into a way of engaging those categories, but more than just categories as a real, just honest look at where you are and where we are as we take this message and go somewhere with it from here. Yeah, I'd love to. Maybe I'll revisit each one, give a definition for each and then we'll just take some time to reflect. So, yeah, so there are four again, four indicators of what John says of flourishing in Christian ministry in the first. He says, is daily well-being. So he defines that as just a basic enjoyment of life, being engaged in challenging work, anticipating the day, having expectation for what lies ahead of you. So that's daily well-being and the second was resilience, which he said was your ability to adapt to change or to respond to life's challenges, your ability in essence to grow or to recover or to even remain faithful to what God's asking of you. And then the third was authenticity, which is the courage to be real, having clarity about our identities, our value, our beliefs, and our ability just to say who we are and let the chips fall where they may. And then finally thriving, which he defined as experiencing meaning and significance and purpose in ministry. So yeah, let's just take a moment with those in our mind and just assess, welcome the Holy Spirit and just assess even at John's encouragement, how am I doing? How am I doing in each of these areas? Even how would I rate myself in these spaces? [Music] Or would you give us the compassion to look on us at ourselves, to be curious, to welcome your grace as we honestly come out of hiding, long to be full of abundance and life and joy and arrange our lives to be experiencing your life and joy more? But would you yeah, would you open ourselves to new places that you want to speak kindly and strongly to us? Thank you Lord. So I think there might be one more courageous step we can take as we continue to learn to grow in trust, in honesty and authenticity. I love the language John gave us of having a fully disclosing friend, someone who knows us and my invitation, our invitation is that if we're going to pursue this life of unhurried, surrendered and freedom and bring this, whatever the Spirit has been speaking to you about these areas, bring this to a trusted friend, someone who you can disclose and share and they will see it with compassion and grace but hold you in it so that there's an invitation to be more authentic, more seen and more known. But don't take that step alone, that's the invitation now. [BLANK_AUDIO]