We live in a violent world. We live in a hostile environment. We live in a rapidly changing culture. Civility has eroded. We are all busy. Some of us are hanging by a thread. Others are at the end of their rope. Some are new to the spiritual journey and filled with unbridled passion. Others are tired, worn out and burned out on religion. Few are resilient. Few, it seems would say, “The abundant life is not the exhausted life.”
As a whole, we need help. Many of us turn to our churches to find some kind of solace. Whether our churches use the word “sanctuary” or not, the simple truth is every soul needs some kind of sanctuary in the crazy world we live in today. We need a place where we can gather or wits, collect our thoughts, sing a few songs and hear something that might inspire us. We’re just made to need that. It’s okay to offer a sanctuary in today’s world.My intent here is to awaken you a bit to the life of a pastor—the life of anyone who is in ministry these days. My intent here is to ask you to express some kindness, some gratitude for them this particular Thanksgiving and Advent season. Pastors are people too!
Read moreThe journey of the spiritual life is about waking up. The Spanish poet, Antonio Machida has said, “All the words of Jesus Christ can be reduced to two: wake up!” Jesus never seemed content to let people remain as they were…to coast through life or to remain asleep in their life. His words woke the religious establishment up. His words jarred the faithful. His words comforted the outsider and welcome us home.
He jarred those on the left and made those who thought they were “right” to reconsider their ways. Everything about his life, death and work was about waking people up. His work has not changed though our culture is luring us to a long, long sleep.
It’s time to wake up. There is a grace when we awaken. When we think about it, we all spend long years of our lives in a sleepy condition. Life is happening all around us but many of us are asleep to it.
Read moreWhat you are going to read is the fruit of my work with leaders in ministry. I've spent over forty years in the grass root ways of leadership, mainly in the local church but for the past twenty years, in providing soul care for leaders who serve in the market place and ministry.
As the world has changed so much and with increasing speed and erosion of some core values, we are all the witnesses to implosions in churches as well as organizations and including politics. It is a systemic disease and what I have called in the past a "cult of leadership" that is converging with other concerning factors about the state of the soul; the state of the church and the state of the world. See that article here!I have spent considerable time in my work with leaders on nearly all of the continents.
Read moreSoul Care is caring for the whole person. Every part of our lives matters. Everything about us needs care. Everything that is alive needs and requires care. Plants, animals, our bodies and our souls need care to thrive. You are not the exception. We cannot live our lives on auto-pilot—running our lives on empty feeling tired, depleted and upset and call this experience—the abundant life.
Soul Care is about sustaining life and providing ancient pathways to experience true life! We are not machines. For a life of meaning; a life that is sustainable; a life that is worthy to be lived—care is required. Care is the intentional practice of giving attention, grace, love and foster resiliency.Soul Care is the intentional practice of integrating all aspects of the human experience: physical, relational, emotional, sexual and vocational. These core aspects of our human existence form the real me—the real soul of a person. Each area needs care. Each area needs attention. As the Christian writer, C.S. Lewis says, “You do not have a soul. You are soul.”
Read moreThe spiritual life is a journey of having our illusions about God and our expectations about how life “should” work shattered and transformed. An illusion is a distortion of reality. Distortions do not help us live well or be well. Why is this? It's because distortions and illusions are not the truth. Opening up our distortions an illusions is a necessary part of the spiritual life. It simply cannot be avoided.
Our expectations and illusions of how God should behave began early in our spiritual formation with our parents, teachers and early experiences shaping our tender hearts to believe that God is “this” way and behaves "that" way. Through fairy tells and Sunday school, and adults who shaped our thinking, our malleable hearts were formed to hold onto illusions that many of us find ourselves still clinging to today. Some were helpful and good and obviously, some were not. It is the pieces of our internal belief systems that are not good or healthy for us that God seems to want to work on throughout our lives.
Read moreOut there, just over the horizon, a storm is brewing. This storm is not a political storm. It is not a cultural war. It is a storm brewing deep within the soul of many leaders who serve in the marketplace or ministry arenas. We cannot see the storm now—at least our own storm—but it is brewing.Due to the Internet and social media, we hear of storms taking down leaders and leaving carnage and havoc in their spheres of influence. It is a hidden, present danger that confronts leaders in the marketplace and ministry. It is what I call the perfect storm of leadership.A “Perfect Storm” happens when several weather systems all converge making a super storm; a massively destructive powerhouse of a storm. Perfect Storms in the leader’s life happen when dark, powerful forces converge within the soul of the leader.
An unholy convergence of factors creates this Perfect Storm; the storm that threatens the landscape of leadership and the personal internal world of leaders today.
Read moreDiscernment is not just an activity one engages with when we are seeking clarity on the big decisions of life such as: “Should I marry Bob? Or “Should I move to California to take this specific job? Or, “Should I attend this church or that church.
”Discernment begins with practicing experiencing God each and every day. The foundation of all discernment is the belief that God cares about the day to day “business” of our every day life. Discernment helps us to see and experience God in all things.Dailiness is where the wheel hits the road of our lives and it is in the mundane stuff of our daily lives as well as the significant events that happen to us in our days where we long for our own transformation. We want to see God at work, don’t we? Don’t we want to witness the movements of God in our every day lives? It is also where we have the opportunity to grow in our own awareness that God is moving and at work—whether we are aware of God’s movement or not. Our goal in discernment is to grow in our awareness—to wake up, so that we do not miss what God is up to in our lives and in our world. Just as Jeremiah told us that God’s mercies are “new every morning,” (Lamentations 3:23), our invitation is to be aware of these new mercies.
Read moreMy Copernican revolution began in 1996 when I had the privilege of spending a month with Dallas Willard in a Catholic monastery in California. How I got there is a story I have told. But what happened to me in that monastery is what changed my life forever. Let me explain.
Nicolaus Copernicus was an astronomer who discovered in the 16th century, that the sun was at the center of the universe, not the Earth. This changed everything and the ripple effect of his discovery continues to this day. It was revolutionary because his discovery changed and impacted the way people saw the world; experienced a shifting in their understanding and radically altered the way people thought about life. My Copernican Revolution began when I heard that I was a soul and that I had an interior life that needed my attention.
Read moreIn January 2017, I decided to invest an entire year of my life on the journey in discernment (doing the Ignatian Exercises). I found myself at a critical crossroad. My work, my marriage, my heart needed attention and care. The future felt looming and did not excite me.I decided to do an ancient, year long, proven way of deepening my own heart and experience with God that helped me; renewed my heart and is rekindling love in my marriage. I think I've morphed into a new place; a new space and a new way of living my life and expressing my faith.I did this because:
as I aged—my answers and boxes were not working or fitting me or others anymore. Old paradigms were crumbling. I was de-constructing.
as I worked and poured my life into others—I needed to be poured into;
as my marriage also aged, we both saw thin spots-- with sounds of the ice cracking around us. We needed deep renewal and rekindling or we would not end well. We were not coupling well. We admitted that something was wrong.
as I contemplated my future being relatively healthy, yet acknowledging my inner weariness—I needed to find some answers about my next stage.
I needed to find some answers to questions that seemed to have plagued me nearly all of my life. I felt unsettled in thinking about repositioning my life but unsure how to do what I wanted to do.
Motivated by these questions and certain disillusioning events that had happened in a key staff relationship at my work, I felt like I was at my end. I well recall telling our Board, “I’m done. I cannot go on. I’ve hit a wall and I will not recover from this impact.”
Read more“At that moment, open eyed and wide-eyed, they recognized him.”—Luke 24:31 Message
Waking up is one of the necessary movements of the spiritual life. We can live our lives asleep—going through the motions of work, family, sex, friendship and church without ever being awake—ever really noticing what is really happening around us and in us. We can go through the motions of our lives without ever really waking up.Mike, a successful business owner came to me and said, “I feel like I’ve missed out on my life.” He continued. “I’ve shown up for my work. Married my wife. Raised my kids but deep in here (he pointed to his chest)—something is missing. I feel like I have been sleep walking and calling it my life.”
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