dontbesheep

For Amanda

jasonevans — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:41:14 +0000

Today, I had a conversation with a young woman that we’ll call “Amanda.” A conversation might be stretching it. Amanda made little sense in what she said and didn’t seem to hear–or at least respond–to much of what I said. She was mostly naked and stumbling down the sidewalk in downtown San Diego. She had scratches along her arms intermixed with sporadic, blurred tattoos. Her hair looked as if it had been cut with hedge trimmers. Her shirt looked as though she, or someone else, had torn it almost completely off. She wore a pair of shorts that were an inch away from being classified as underwear. She cried. She moaned. She spoke of having been killed, of being allergic to dirt and water, of Mother Mary, of being abused by horses, of being deaf and blind, of FBI conspiracies.

I told Amanda I was sorry for how sad she was. Myself and another person tried to get her covered up and settled down. She was calmed somewhat by our kindness but remained terribly disturbed. She told me she wasn’t a human, just an animal. I told her it wasn’t true. That she was a person, created in God’s image and loved by that same God. She cried out that it wasn’t true, she wasn’t human anymore. My heart broke.

Amanda’s situation is drastic, although, working in downtown San Diego, I see a lot of this kind of thing. But there remains a broader lesson to learn from her. We live in a broken world and it is as if this broken world works at its best to dehumanize us. We are reduced to numbers and demographics, voting blocks and consumers. The wonderful work of Christian leaders, and followers of Jesus in general, is that this is just isn’t true and we get to announce that. We are more than those things. The good news of the kingdom of God encompasses within it the recognition of human dignity where it was not recognize before. That the Creator of the cosmos fashioned us in his own image, would choose to work with us in the accomplishment of his mission and save us from our error is profoundly good news. The world today, and historically, tells that we cannot escape from our error, that we are insignificant, that we serve no grand purpose. Yet the gospel stands in contrast, declaring that being human is so much more than this through the work of Jesus.

Your work is to display God’s creative will and design where others do not yet see it. Most poignantly this is done in the lives of others. Give them dignity, declare that there is another way to be human… and pray for Amanda.–JE

Painting the Future

julietkilpin — Thu, 10 May 2012 19:29:47 +0000

This is a painting by the artist Magritte which I was first introduced to by Stuart Murray Williams and which I now steal regularly! It is a picture that all leaders would find worth pondering. Here are some questions to help you reflect on your own role as a prophetic, entrepreneurial or creative leader:

What is the artist doing?
What does the egg represent for you – a person, a community, an initiative, a congregation, a vision, a network or something else?
What is your role as the artist?
What if you are the egg? Who is the artist – a parent, a mentor, a friend, someone who believes in you… God?
Who has seen and drawn out your potential?
Is there more to be realised?

Ponder…reflect…give thanks…imagine…pray…do something…

Leaders get to say NO

donotbeasheep — Sat, 05 May 2012 14:40:20 +0000

Leaders get to say “No”. I don’t like to use this tool very often but this week I find myself with no other alternative.

Ninety-nine percent of the time I let the disciple, the leader in training learn from their mistakes. The leadership lessons we learn from our mistakes stay with us for the rest of our lives. I justify this stance by realizing that I know a lot but I don’t know everything. So when a disciple presents an idea or a direction which makes me pause but they are passionate and believe in the concept I’m willing to let them run with the idea. I like to encourage as it builds confidence in the disciple. Mind you I’m constantly monitoring the progress and outcomes.

Even as I write this post I recognize my hesitancy to deal with the “No”. When a colleague, friend or disciple is engaging in poor judgment or manipulative behaviour to accomplish a task it is my job to say “No”. If others are being discouraged or the organization is put in harm’s way by the disciple’s misplaced exuberance it is my job to say “Stop”.

I do my utmost to a.) Check my frustration at the door because I do want to salvage the relationship with the disciple if at all possible and b.) Measure my words so that I’m not scolding the disciple but instead giving them new insight into their actions.

Too often I procrastinate hoping and praying that the disciple will figure it out on their own…BUT in the end I still have to say “No”. It’s what leaders get to do.

People are Watching, Wash Feet

donotbeasheep — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 21:51:12 +0000

This post was inspired by JE’s post “Leaders of the Towel and Basin”

I grew up in a faith community that practised what Jesus did with his disciples in John 13. Twice a year, Good Friday and Thanksgiving, we washed each others’ feet. Since leaving home as a young adult this Anabaptist ‘sacrament’ lost much of its meaning for me. As a pastor and a Christian of the Mennonite tradition I avoided the washing feet thing at every turn.

Then I visited Burma.

In the back waters of that nation I spent a week teaching and preaching an Anabaptist understanding of the Gospel to a Bible College student body and faculty. At the end of the week I spoke at their convocation service. Over 500 people gathered on a warm February Sunday afternoon to celebrate the 14 students who were graduating with their Bachelor of Theology degrees.

With input from the President of the school I decided I would dust off the Anabaptist ‘sacrament’ which I had grown to loathe. Nancy, my wife and fellow teacher, and I proceeded to wash the feet of these students. I was unprepared for the rush of family and friends who came forward to take pictures.

One of the faculty summed up the people’s curiosity around foot washing. “We have taught the importance of John 13 to our students but no one ever dared to think that a wealthy, educated, leader from the west would ever wash the feet of one of my people. We look up to you. We are your servants. That you would wash our feet is amazing to me.”

Read JE’s post. Then, as a leader, go out and serve those who least expect it. You too may be as surprised as I was.

People are watching; wash feet! - BB

Removing barrie…

jimlt — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:14:37 +0000

Removing barriers…

For the past four years our church has organized an Easter Egg Hunt for the kids in the community where we are located. Fifteen hundred eggs are hidden behind the school where we meet Easter morning, and in 20 minutes about a hundred kids find them all. Then, we invite the kids and their parents into the school gym for baking and coffee. The first year we did this, to my surprise, almost all of the parents stayed for coffee. Its one of my favorite moments in ministry: people from many nationalities enjoying coffee and baking together. The last two years we’ve hauled over our church’s espresso maker, which creates another level of joy among the devoted! Anyway, when it’s all done, we invite people who wish, to stay for the Easter worship celebration. Over the years, few have stayed. This year, however, we opened the large divider separating the two gyms, so the worship area and coffee area were one. Now if you wanted to stay for the service you didn’t need to enter another room. More people from the community stayed simply because we left the gym open. It’s a “no brainer” I guess, but it touches on a theme I’ve been brewing on the past while. The barriers as leaders we put up that keep people from experiencing the love of God. Easter morning I believe folks from our community received it in three doses-four if you like espresso! JLT

Leaders of the Towel and Basin

jasonevans — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:56:56 +0000

Today is Maundy Thursday on the Christian calendar. Christians all over will gather together and wash each others feet, mimicking Jesus’ actions the night of his betrayal. Yet, there is something within this action documented in John’s Gospel that we ought to consider beyond annual ceremony. When Jesus undresses himself, kneels down and washes the feet of his disciples, he communicates a profound statement of what the Christian leader ought to be. While the other Gospels don’t relate the foot washing story, the intent of its message is still conveyed in their own telling of Jesus’ story.

On his magnificent book on Christian leadership, Spiritual Leadership, Oswald Sanders wrote, “True greatness, true leadership, is found in giving yourself in service to others, not in coaxing or inducing others to serve you.” Here, Sanders captures the heart of Jesus’ message to those that would lead the effort of taking the gospel of the kingdom around the known world. Jesus was serious about it, it wasn’t a nice platitude. Serving is how we lead.

This doesn’t mean that we are to become human doormats. Consider what it means to “serve God.” If we serve God, we go about attending to what he asks of us. We derive this in great part from Scripture. But we also have to live with “eyes wide open.” That is to say, we have to pay attention to the voice of God as he speaks to us in natural and supernatural ways; through community, the natural world, etc. In doing so, we uncover what it is that God is asking of us.

It is no different in becoming the servant to others. There are often the obvious requests or needs to be attended to. But we serve our neighbor in the ways not always obvious at first glance as well. Consider John McKnight’s work on asset-based community development. His method intends to, draw out the dignity, the capacity of the other. More than a symbolic gesture, an asset-based approach seeks to discover the worth of those around us and put it to work. Not for our agenda, but for the sake of the other.

As we wash each other’s feet today, consider how you might use this a model to shape how you lead. Do you know the need around you? Do you know how to go about serving the need in a manner that elevates others rather than yourself? Ponder these things as someone washes your feet and you wash theirs.

– JE

Imitate Me?

julietkilpin — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:34:07 +0000

People follow leaders. One of the greatest accolades a leader can have is when someone says ‘I did what I thought you would do’. To hear this is indeed very humbling yet it also adds weight to the burden of responsibility leaders have to be good role models.

The pioneering church planter and former disciple-hater and murderer Paul was not afraid to urge people to imitate him (1 Corinthians 4 v 16), yet he must have been abundantly aware that there was much in his former life he didn’t want people to imitate and he must have been aware that in his old life he himself had caused much pain and suffering in peoples’ lives. The only way Paul and the disciples could have journeyed on from this is is in the arms of forgiveness which Paul first experienced on the road to Damascus.

Forgiveness is a precious gift and characteristic we leaders can model as we choose to acknowledge our own failings and the pain we may have caused others and ask for forgiveness. It is also something we can model as we daily make choices to forgive those who have let us down and as we forgive ourselves for not always being the people we seek in our hearts to be.

Who knows, maybe one day someone will say that they forgave a person because they knew that’s what we would do…? JK

The Importance of Emptiness

donotbeasheep — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:38:50 +0000

The Baby-boomer anthem by that laid-back California troubadour Jackson Browne has always said it best:

“Running on-running on empty
Running on-running blind
Running on-running into the sun
But I’m running behind”

(Running on Empty, 1977)

Leadership often seems to have that sense of no matter how hard one works, one is always behind. Leadership in the church is frequently about managing process without closure. There is always one more call to make, one more meeting to take, one more thing to do. We run and run and run…and run out of gas…and we become exhausted from all the running. We find ourselves as leaders empty.

But is that such a bad thing? Recently two writers, Gordon Cosby and Sister Joan Chittister, have given me new insight into the importance of emptiness. Cosby, in a 2001 interview said, “Our culture promotes a constant filling up, but our disciplines will draw us toward a greater emptiness, so that we can be better prepared for obedience and, ultimately, for finding our place in God’s plan finding true relevance.” Sister Joan, in her book, “Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope,” (Eerdman’s, 2005), encourages Jesus followers to cultivate the spiritual discipline of detachment – of letting go – of emptying in order to gain that which is greater.

If we “run on empty” because we are obsessively trying to control our world, we will fail. But if we run on empty as a means to unburden our souls from all that crowds us , to unclench from our tendency to hoard, then as leaders we discover true freedom, and the ability to be the non-anxious presence required of good leadership in our post-everything world. – JPW

Jesus liked A.P.E.s

donotbeasheep — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:29:34 +0000

Recently I noticed first hand a leadership reality which Alan Hirsch, an Australian Missiologist, teaches. “At the beginning of a religious organizations life the Apostles, Prophets and Evangelists are large and in charge and by the time the organization matures and plateaus the Pastors and Teachers have taken over the management positions. The ‘APE’s’ have either moved on or have been ostracized.”

I had the privilege of meeting with the National Executive of a 15 year old Christian non-denominational organization in Burma two weeks ago. It was a room full of passionate, fervent, God fearing, fearless, tireless, and generous to a fault men and women. The majority were self-proclaimed Evangelists with a couple of Pastors thrown in for some balance.

It didn’t take me long to realize that this room of large yet healthy egos would not be tolerated in the North American church circles where I typically move as a leader. At best these Evangelists would be gently ignored and at worst be treated with disdain and derision.

They taught me a valuable lesson. If I as a leader want to see new things begin or old ways truly renewed then I have to be able to identify the “APE’s” in the crowd, disciple them and then let them loose on the world.

This is what Jesus managed to do. Peter, ‘the Rock’; James and John, ‘Sons of Thunder’; Judas; were not gentle shrinking violets. I realize anew that Jesus chose leaders with large personalities who after three years of being discipled were going to be instrumental in starting a new thing; a large sustainable, life giving God thing.

It is an example worth following today. – BB

Women, Love and God

donotbeasheep — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:21:59 +0000

Today, 8 March, 2012, is International Women’s Day and so it is fitting for us to make a special note of the strides made and not made to bring about gender equality in our communities. Though most of us can list extraordinary women who have had and continue to have a global impact, I want to focus on one particularly special women – my mother.

My father passed away when I was twelve and so I credit my mom for teaching me how to be the best man I could be. Though I wasn’t always the best son (especially during those teenage years), my Mom’s enduring love for me never ceased. She never gave me a reason to question her love for me. Her ability to always find the good in my life and her never dying belief that I always had the imagination to pull through any situation gave me the assurance to step out and take risks. All this while society kept telling her she was of the lessor gender and weaker without a husband to take care of her. Even today Mom’s gentle encouragement to me, even while she is struggling daily with her own health woes, never ceases to amaze me.

As I reflect on Mom and her life and the life lessons she passed my way, her most important lesson to me is the reminder that God’s call to each of us to live a life of Love. 1 Corinthians 13 is a reminder of this love. Thank you Mom for reflecting God’s love to me in ways only a mother can to her son. And may I as a man find the strength and courage to pass on this love to my daughter, son & wife. - JM