I had lunch today with a woman who has played guitar at various live music venues here in Austin for many years. She also plays in the praise band of a local church. We were talking about her mixed feelings about playing in church when she surprised me by pointing out how she prefers working with club owners and managers and band members and how she really gets frustrated working with ministers and church leaders.

She called it "professionalism" but as we talked, it became evident that what she was talking about was integrity. She described feeling cynical about church leaders' willingness to do what they say they will do and frustrated with their lack of follow-through. Most recently, she was disappointed by two different ministers failing to keep very basic promises and was so demoralized that she was considering quitting her role in helping to lead worship. I know both stories personally and I think she's absolutely right to feel betrayed. I also know for a fact that neither of these ministers knows the emotional carnage that he left behind.

The next part of our conversation also surprised me: she pointed out the vast differences in accountability in the secular world and in the church. In fact, she wondered aloud if maybe one reason church leaders lack accountability is the church culture of "niceness" that keeps us from confronting our leaders with their lack of integrity. I told her a little bit about the Ridder Leadership Initiative and your commitment to doing what you say you will do when you say you will do it and, I kid you not, she seemed wistful. This is radical stuff that you're doing--keeping your word and cleaning up your messes. It shouldn't be, but it is.

It's easy to identify problems.

It's hard to be part of the answer.

It's easy to say, "Well, I don't know what I want but it isn't THAT."

It's hard to work toward imperfect solutions and then stand by them.

It's easy to tell people how they should do better.

It's hard to figure out how I can do better . . . and then do it.

It's easy to be resigned and cynical.

It's hard to nurture hope.

It's easy to look for quick fixes.

It's hard to persevere through deep change.

It's easy to say, "Well, somebody ought to do something about that."

It's hard to be "somebody."

I don't want to disappoint Chip...

And so I post again... :)

We have begun the process of research for our current picture of reality. We have gotten some demographic work done, the ridder team has wrestled with a few items and the consistory has assignments for the summer. John and I have our conference call this evening and I am looking forward to that... So, we take babysteps on this journey together - John and I decided to bring Gill along on the trip as well...

On another note, this Sunday my fam and I leave for 2 1/2 weeks of being unplugged from the world. We will be spending a week in the Yellowstone area and then hit some of the major sights along on our way back home... Here is a picture of where we hope to spend some of our time.

Blessings to you,

Brian

A Clear & Compelling Picture of Our Current Reality... hmmm

So, we are trying to tackle this assignment - here at Haven. We are dividing it up and sharing the research load with the whole consistory for two reasons. First, dude, it is a huge assignment! Not only are there a ton of significant areas to dig into, but we have to multiply it all by 5 in order to mimic my kids when they were little (you need to read Leading Congregation Change to get that...).

More important, however, we want them all to be part of the process of coming to grips with the reality we are living today. I was struck by that reality as we tried to practice much of what we have been learning at a "come to Jesus" meeting last week.

Anyway, we are on the journey...

Blessings,

brian

It just happened again. A professional that I depend on failed to keep his word, much less honor it--for the third time this week. From his point of view, it's a failure of organization--he just got too busy, he lost track of his schedule, he couldn't be on this side of town, he forgot to let me know.

For me, it's a failure of integrity. He said he would do something and then he didn't. Then, in an effort to look good or at least not look bad, he lied about it. He tried to make it right by saying that he would do it on Friday of this week. Then he called Friday morning to say that he wouldn't be able to get to it, again with a long list of reasons.

He doesn't understand why I am upset. In his mind, his reasons are good reasons (and I agree, they probably are.) He doesn't understand what happens to a relationship, even a professional one, when you give your word to something and then don't do what you said you would do--and then rely on fudging the truth to look good.

I mentioned our commitment on integrity to a man in my church over dinner this week. He manages a beautiful ranch down here in the Texas hill country. He talked about how much of his work depends on people keeping their word with him. We agreed that the gospel is often compromised by our failure of integrity. I said that sometimes ministers had trouble with this and he nodded vigorously.

I am watching myself more closely right now--am I keeping my word? When I can't keep my word, am I honoring my word? Am I more interested in looking good or at least not looking bad than I am in my basic integrity? How about you?

From Jim:

Yesterday and today Michael Frost, co-author of ReJesus: The Wild Messiah for the Missional Church, spoke in three settings in Houston. At the lunch meeting he challenged and inspired me. I want to recapture what I heard him say for my own learning. This are my notes.
Throughout modernity the Church has focused on four purposes - worship, discipleship, community, and mission. During this period, we have done discipleship and community around worship - on Sunday mornings, with the preacher as the center piece of the experience. And for a long time that worked.
He suggested that in this era a more effective way to think about the work of the Church is to do worship, community, and discipleship around mission. He proposes that the Church is a collection of the sent ones. While on mission, worship, community and discipleship take on a much more powerful focus.
What would happen if the vision for local missional congregations was to equip missional leaders who, as they were on mission were worshipping, building community, and making disciples? Does this seem really different to you? It does to me.

It was truly wonderful to see you all again, in Holland this time. You challenge and inspire us and we love to work with you. Thank you for the privilege one more time!

We'd love to hear what you're hearing from your leadership teams. What seems to be the main take-away from the weekend? What kind of emotional connection did they forge with the concepts that were presented?

You can comment on this blog or post to it OR if that's too techno-challenging, email me and I'll post your comments.

Next, Jim and I will comment on your next steps and offer some coaching for the near future.

One common way we try to avoid or mitigate pain in the future is to make a vow. We respond to a painful or threatening experience by saying, "I will never . . . " or "I will always . . . " Some common vows: "I won't try." "I won't feel." "I won't get close." "I will win." "I will avoid." "I will be perfect." "I will make up for it." "I won't trust." You get the idea, right?

So how do we discover the vows or decisions we made as children? One way is to think through our painful or scary memories. Whether we remember making the vow or not, we may be able to discern a way of thinking that formed in response to that difficult experience and became a patterned way of dealing with the world. Another way is to look at a place in our lives today that isn't working. Sometimes we can trace a pattern back to its source. You may remember that I shared a story about the murder of my uncle. My vow was, "I will love You and serve You but I will not trust You." I only discovered that vow as I was working with a spiritual director to understand my seeming inability to form a consistent prayer life.

Vows matter because they form a default response in our lives--a way of being that shapes who we become and how we behave. Because it is a default response, we lose the ability to choose differently, to do something else. Do you remember the vows you identified at the retreat? Do you remember Jim saying, "If you made the vow, you can unmake it"? Have you begun the hard work of recognizing and undoing the vows of the past?

Something happens. It actually, factually happens. Then we make meaning of what happened. We tell ourselves stories about what happened. Eventually, we no longer know what happened. We only know what we told ourselves about what happened.

A boy asks a girl for a date. The girl says no, thank you. The boy tells himself that he was rejected.

When bad things happen when we're very young (and sometimes when we're older), we only know two meanings: "There's something wrong with you" or "There's something wrong with me." Which one we tend to choose will determine everything else.

Why does this matter? It matters because these stories about our lives are the patterns we bring into ministry. This is what other people see, what they relate to, and this is what will do us in eventually. Our questions, our addictions, our insecurities, our struggles are all rooted in the meaning we make of what has happened to us.

Freedom comes when we are able to tell the truth. To tell the truth about what actually happened. To tell the truth about the meaning we have made and the stories we have told. To tell the truth about the struggle.

We can only tell the truth about our selves when we take time for solitude, to remember and to listen. Jesus said, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."

So what is self-differentiation (also known as emotional maturity) and how do we know that we are developing it? Put as simply as possible, it is the capacity to stay connected to others without having our feelings and behaviors determined by them. We know we have it when we are able to know and do the right thing even in the face of pressure to do otherwise. This pressure is only sometimes overt external pressure from others. More often, it is internal pressure we call anxiety that surfaces when we are taking our emotional cues from others in the system or from old messages.

When we are operating out of emotional maturity, we do what we do because we have decided that it is the best course of action, not because we are too anxious to do otherwise. We can calm ourselves enough to make well-thought-out decisions. We act according to our deepest values and not out of a need to fend off anxiety.

Our emotionally mature actions may look very similar to our anxious actions but they come from a very different place. For example, as I become more emotionally mature, I may seek out opportunities to connect with the opposition in my congregation more out of genuine caring for them and less out of a need to please or manipulate.
I will control my temper because I value controlling my temper and not so that I will look good to others.

Take just a minute and sit quietly and imagine, "What if I was consistently able to stay connected to others without having my feelings or actions determined by them?" What would that look like? What would that feel like? Wouldn't that kind of transformation be worth the effort?

What makes you VIBRATE? Remember that word? What makes you anxious? What gets you stirred up inside? Even more importantly, what do you typically do when you're vibrating?

Do you pull away from people, literally or emotionally? Do you shut down or put walls up? That's distancing and that's one of several predictable ways that people react to anxiety. Maybe you engage people more intensely, to persuade them to think or act differently and, failing that, to move to argument or conflict. Maybe you overfunction by taking more responsibility than is yours in a relationship or a situation. (That's a personal favorite of most ministers!) Or maybe you underfunction by not taking enough responsibility for yourself and your relationships. If you're depressed, that's certainly a possibility. Or maybe you create triangles with other people in your congregation or your family, pulling them in to bolster your position or getting in between two other people who are experiencing anxiety in their relationship.

Effective leaders are able to monitor their own anxiety in a given situation and manage it. They know when they are vibrating before they are so anxious they can't turn back. They are also keenly aware of their own predictable reactions and can intercept them before they become inevitable (remember: anxiety makes us stupid!)

Effective leaders also pay attention the anxiety of others. Without absorbing or taking responsibility for the reactions of other people, these leaders are able to see anxiety as it develops in relationships and predict what is likely to happen. They are then able to introduce--through their own behavior--a measure of calmness and rationality. More about that tomorrow.

2 Corinthians 5:17-20

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.

All of us operate out of our mental models--our way of seeing and understanding the world. Because our mental models are acquired so early and are so deeply held, we often are unaware that we have them. We think, "That's just the way the world is" without realizing that there are multiple ways to see the world.

When it comes to church, most of us grew up with a mental model that was attractional; that is, "Church is a place that people come to. If we want people to experience the kingdom of God, we need to invite them to church." However, many of us are now understanding the church to be missional; that is, "Church is the people of God who go out into the world and bring the Kingdom with them." To the extent that we believe this, we have exchanged one mental model for another.

As leaders, we now take on the daunting task of helping others in our congregations see, evaluate and exchange their own mental models about what church is and who it is for. We understand that when our congregations push back against our sermons and our teachings about missional living, it is not because they don't love God or that they don't love the world or even that they don't love us.

Instead, we see that they are firmly invested in a mental model they don't even know exists . . . and it's our job to help them excavate that and to look at their thinking. We ask questions like, "How long have you seen it that way? Do you know why you believe as you do? Who else in your life believes that way?" and we create safe places for them to explore. We also have the courage to share our own thinking: "I see this differently and I'd like to tell you why." "I've had a different experience and this is what I'm thinking now." "I'd like to consider the possibility that something else might also be so."

Telling people what they should think never changes their mental model about anything. Neither does shaming them for not changing. Neither does giving them more and more information about the position we want them to adopt. Jesus understood and modeled this so beautifully. He said, "You have heard it said . . . but I say to you . . ." and then he backed it up with story, with street theater, with humor, with inspiring words that created new possibilities in people's minds.

Everything he did was for the purpose of exposing their inadequate beliefs about God and his kingdom or showing them what God's kingdom actually looks like. And lets keep in mind a couple of things: first of all, in three years, he made virtually no progress and two, it eventually got him killed.

And still, that's what we've signed on for. As leaders, that's our job: to help the people we serve see that God is a missional God and that we, his people, must join him on his mission to reconcile the world to himself. In essence we're asking them to exchange one mental model--one way of seeing things--for another. I think Jesus called that repentance.

During the retreat, we challenged ourselves and each other to listen in a radically different way. We committed to set aside our natural inclination to ask ourselves, "Is this right or wrong? Do I agree or disagree with this? Will this help me look good?" Instead, we tried to remain open to what we were hearing, asking, "What if this is so? What would that mean?"

There was some concern about the implications of this way of listening. What if we became so openminded that our brains fell out? But as we gained trust in each other, we practiced more and more listening from a stance of openness--"what if this is so?"

Normal listening, to be honest, isn't really listening at all. Instead, it disguises itself as listening but is, in fact, reactive and defensive. While another person is talking, we line up our own arguments in our heads, just waiting politely for our own chance to talk. Or, we only hear the parts of what another person is saying that already confirm what we already believe, disregarding the rest without even realizing what we are doing.

Throughout the retreat, we continually reminded ourselves to listen differently--to listen for possibilities with the goal of understanding, to listen with openness and trust, to truly listen. I'm curious . . . since you got home, have you continued to listen?

Most of our current ministry began the day a group of Houston ministry leaders asked the question, "What is the difference between making good church members and making genuine disciples of Jesus Christ?" Part of that conversation eventually showed up in a diagram we use to describe the interplay of obedience, community and reflection in the life of a follower of Jesus. We believe that maturity comes in the willingness to drill deeply into each area.

Reflective lifestyle that leads to intimacy with God
We look to John 15 for the reminder that apart from an intimate vine-to-branch relationship with Jesus, we can truly do nothing that will bear lasting fruit. We're also painfully aware that everything in our culture--including church culture--works against this. We remember that the spiritual disciplines help us to slow down and be still, to listen to God and to turn our hearts toward Him, to receive from him everything we need for our life and work. This is the only antidote to ministry in our own strength.

Community of grace and truth
Surely Jesus knew what he was doing when he assembled a group of men and women who would follow him together, live life together, endure the days after the cross together, receive the Holy Spirit together. Surely community is not an optional part of our discipleship. So many ministers are lonely. Our church members are lonely. Our culture is lonely. Nothing brings the presence and power of Jesus into our midst like genuine, loving community--where we can tell and hear the truth, where we can be truly known. This is what the world is hungry for and what we must be committed to.

Radical obedience that leads to missional living
Jesus meant it when he said, "If you love me, you will do what I say." He is not some egomaniac on an authoritarian power trip designed to build up his self-esteem. He is the creator of the universe and the creator of me and he knows what is best. Trust looks like obedience. When I obey Jesus, I will necessarily join him in his mission. Jesus did not come to the earth as a tourist. He was on mission from the very beginning until the very end and beyond. Radical obedience will keep me from "playing church." It will keep me from ignoring the ones Jesus loved the most. It will give me new experiences with God that will coax me into new levels of walking by faith. It will lead me into joining the mission of God in the world and into leading others to do the same.

We're counting down to the next retreat by reviewing our time together in Texas. Remember the blue, blue skies and the warm sunshine? We also want to remember together some of the concepts we learned--just to keep us on track and help us take our next steps toward real change.

We started by examining what it really means to learn. Learning is a more complex process than gathering information or absorbing more facts into our already-crowded brains. Too often, we have attended conferences or taken classes and gained information but we've seen no transformation or even real change in our lives.

The model of learning we advanced had three key components:

Information: These are the facts we need to know and skills we need to acquire.

Practice: This underscores the importance of humility--we become willing to be terrible at something as we learn by doing.

Reflect: We look back on our practice and ask, "How did I do? How can I do better?" We listen to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and ask for feedback from others.

Why does this matter? Partly because we want to see genuine learning in ourselves but also because we want to see transformational learning in our leadership teams. We don't want to just know new facts--we want to be able to do new things. If your strategy doesn't intentionally create opportunities for all three parts of the process to do their work, the learning will be incomplete. Does yours?

Ridder Leadership- Hi!

Good morning all,

As I sit here looking at the COLD Michigan winter outside my window, anticipating the 6-8 inches of snow expected tomorrow. I am wishing we were back in the warm weather of Texas. We were so blessed to have such an amazing week of weather, learning, and enrichment. What a great gift we have been given by the Ridder Initiative.

I wanted to reintroduce myself and share what my role throughout the Ridder Leadership Initiative will be. I work in the WTS- Journey Department as an Administrative Associate. I coordinate the logistical arrangements for all of the Ridder Events (Texas, Holland, and Augusta Oct/Jan). I am handling the hotel accommodations, meals, and travel arrangements, as well as, the Conference Center accommodations and administrative arrangements. So you will be receiving reminders and update from me periodically.

My first update and reminder is that you should have or be very close to confirming your Leadership Teams. I am currently working on database input of these teams. When I have received all final team lists, I will at that time add any additional members from the waiting list to your teams. This will be done on a rotating system. We will expand as many teams as possible, based on our original model and maximum numger we can include in the upcoming events. I will be contacting you with final lists soon.

Blessings to you all,

Lee Ann

Howdy from Texas!

Hi, everyone! I'm hoping that you all had safe travels back home. Since you left, the weather has been cloudy and damp--God must have really wanted you to have some perfect sunshine while you were here. I hope you haven't been reviled or persecuted for your sunburns and suntans!

I'm sending an email explaining to everyone how you can participate on this blog so that it will be interactive--all of us are readers and all of us are contributors. I hope it becomes a place we can share ideas and stories and our best learning as we journey together toward transformation.
---Trisha