Cognitively Charismatic

A few months ago, I attended the Brooklyn Tabernacle’s conference and prayer meeting. While I was there, I was confronted by lack of receptivity to God and what He would want to do in and through me. I was open to ministry strategy and the study of theology, but what about God answering big prayers or awakening spiritual gifts that I don’t really understand?

During the season of Epiphany at Apostles Church, we are going through the 7 signs of Jesus recorded in the gospel of John. This has led to some amazing conversations about spiritual gifts, especially those typically associated with the charismatic wing of the church.

As someone who associates more with Reformed Theology, loves John Piper, and named his 2^nd son after the dead theologian John Calvin, I’ve always settled with the typically charismatic gifts as still existing but certainly not completely comfortable with them. These are things like healing, prophecy, tongues, and discerning spirits.

Charismatic With a Seatbelt or Cognitively Charismatic?

Mark Driscoll has used the term charismatic with a seatbelt to describe a willingness toward the gifts, but trying to avoid some notoriously crazy associations with the charismatic gifts.

That always sounded good, but the last few months I’ve realized that I have been merely cognitively charismatic. Open to the charismatic gifts in knowledge only, believing them to exist, but not really open to practicing any of them.

Demystifying the gifts

This sermon series at church has been incredibly helpful because the scriptures speak of Jesus healing people. He heals people physically, spiritually, and performs all kinds of amazing miracles. Jesus told His disciples that they would do greater works than these before speaking about the Holy Spirit, God who dwells in and empowers Christians with spiritual gifts.

Christians are comfortable with the gifts for preachers and teachers, but the charismatic gifts are mentioned right in line with those. In the past as I have thought about gifts of healing or prophecy, I’ve imagined them as magical powers and mystical gifts.

But seeing them as I would see the gifts of teaching and preaching has been incredibly helpful.

Earnestly Desiring the Gifts

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul challenges the church to earnestly desire these gifts. This has led me to approach God in prayer with an openness, not simply because I want to see people healed or truth be proclaimed through prophecy (though I do!), but really because I want people to see Jesus as glorious. That same chapter says these gifts are given for the common good. Are we forfeiting the common good of others by being merely cognitively charismatic?

I think we are.

Why not now?

1 Corinthians 13 serves as a reminder that greater than these gifts is a focus on love and in reality these gifts lack any power without love and compassion. My challenge is why wouldn’t we want to see these spiritual gifts happen in our church? Why wouldn’t we want to see people healed?

My hope and prayer for this sermon series on Signs is that it begins to cultivate openness to spiritual gifts within our church, that a community could really embody Jesus to one another and to our city.

If you really believe God can do really powerful things, why not be open to God using you. And why wait? Why not now?

Monday Morning Family Fun

We were looking at some pictures and videos the other night and thought I would share some of them with you.

This is Calvin at the Central Park Carousel the day he arrived in NYC. It’s crazy to see how much he has grown up since then!

Here are the boys having fun in our first apartment dressed up as Spiderman and Batman. They are super cute!

This past year we started the kid’s ministry at our Union Square Congregation so this was the first Apostles Church Advent Choir. Though small, they rocked it!

Mya took her first steps about a month ago, so we handed the iPhone to Eli to take the video. His excitement is awesome! She has refused to take any steps since…

Hope you enjoyed them!

Links I Loved This Week

I read a lot of articles and blogs on the interwebs. Here are my favorites this week.

Leadership

I’m a bit obsessed with Harvard Business Review, my favorites for this week were:

What’s Your Influencing Style? A great article about leading through influence rather than simply relying on a title.

No is the New Yes: Four Practices for Reprioritizing Your Life Incredibly helpful concepts and practicals to help be proactive in prioritizing life. Helpful for me in light of my Reactionary Life posts.

Seth Godin wrote about learning leadership lessons from congress. Mainly by explaining how horrible they are at it. It was enjoyable and sad that “representatives” are really corporate advocates.

Thom Rainer wrote 10 Lessons in Organizational Leadership from Steve Jobs. Incredibly helpful.

Christianity, Masculinity, & Parenting

Spurgeon & Manly Men is an older post but worth considering since the tendency is to try and nuance Christianity to where you have to just-add-Jesus to your current American Dream lifestyle and you’ll be fine.

Mark Driscoll wrote for the Washington Post “Why Men Need Marriage” which has some great thoughts. At the same time, we need to hold up God-glorifying singleness as high as we do marriage to encourage the healthiest marriages. Otherwise marriage becomes a point of idolatry.

(My Personal Favorite) Connecting Church & Home Conference audio. I’ve listened to the first 3 sessions and they are incredibly encouraging for parents. I highly recommend them.

Barnabas Piper wrote a blog titled Vehicles, Obstacles, & Parenting that cuts to the heart of how parents have a tendency to treat kids as a means to their own end. Really great thoughts.

The 4-minute video below titled Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus caused a big stir in the Christian blogging world, but I enjoyed it. His thoughts are worth watching and considering.

Rhetoric vs. Reality

It is much easier to describe what you would like to do rather than actually do it. This is true of real life and true of just about every organization. This can also be true for the local church. There is an ideal of God to be pursued and the first step is often in using our rhetoric to call people to God’s ideal. When the reality doesn’t quickly follow the rhetoric, it can be a source of frustration and criticism.

So when the rhetoric of a church outpaces or looks different from the reality, what should you do about it?

Check Your Rhetoric with Your Reality

There is only one way to judge the effectiveness of your rhetoric and that is by your reality. The vision you have for your church, ministry, or small group can be great, but if your rhetoric presents a lofty picture it must be paired with the realistic path to get there. Otherwise, you have great sound bites and nothing to show for it.

At times, you must check and change your rhetoric to address your reality. Don’t shy away from weakness or even the word failure when it comes to accomplishing the vision or goals. Identifying and working on weakness and failure is the only way to achieve the reality you are seeking.

Other times, the rhetoric may need to altogether change. This can be true of how people can use the “movement” rhetoric in the church today. Many are talking about a church planting movement, disciple making movement, or missional movement. The vision is to see many churches, many disciples, and many missionaries. It is not a bad vision or idea, but it often focuses on the end ignoring the means. It sounds exciting and sensational so it gets tossed around as if calling people to a great idea is the only thing needed to accomplish it. Any great movement that happens is usually identified after the fact and is the result of consistent faithfulness through the mundane that becomes the monumental.

The movement rhetoric in the church seems like a rush to recreate Pentecost without sitting in the upper room praying first. There can be a problem with this type of rhetoric because it presents an incomplete picture of how it gets accomplished. It’s unhelpful and even destructive rhetoric that needs to change.

Pursue the Reality of the Rhetoric

But we can’t stay merely frustrated with a reality that doesn’t match the rhetoric. We must become a people that pursue the ideal. God’s ideals are not the problem; our brokenness is what impedes our ability to see them come to fruition. The good news is that God is so passionate about seeing His ideals accomplished in and through us that He meets us in our brokenness through Jesus’ death and resurrection, to save us from our sins and set us on His mission. Living out this gospel truth is the only way to pursue the reality of the rhetoric.

If you are in the church being called to a great vision, but not seeing it accomplished in reality, embrace the pursuit of the vision. I’ve seen too many people (and been one) to lob verbal grenades from afar at how the church isn’t facing the reality of the situation.

Have you ever considered that maybe that’s why you are there?

Maybe God has revealed the vision to others so that you and the church can work together towards its fruition. God’s ideals are worth pursuing and His gospel enables all of us to be a part of the pursuit. Each person in the church must participate in pursuing the reality or it will never move past rhetoric.

But how do we move from the status quo to a new reality?

Be Gracious Towards Reality

The status quo is likely imperfect whether it’s in your personal life, church, or small group. The rebel against the status quo is not to abandon all aspects of it and swing the pendulum hard the other way. It must be doing the hard and messy work of repairing and fixing the brokenness of the status quo.

It can be a long journey or a small fix, but both need a gracious approach that has been modeled by Jesus to us. He entered our broken world, took our brokenness and sets us back on His ways by faith toward His ideal.

So when you see flawed leadership, feel your small group leader has messed up, or grow weary of the rhetoric not matching the reality, approach the situation with grace. Approach the situation seeking understanding and being available to work on the solution.

Celebrate the “Minor” Realities

Lastly, celebrate the minor glimpses you see of the rhetoric coming to fruition. Success is not only found and to be celebrated when we believe a movement is happening, it’s too be celebrated every step along the way.

All great rhetoric has an ultimate reality that includes minor victories. Celebrate the minor victories to encourage and inspire the move towards reality. Hopefully the church can be a place that presents God’s ideals with appropriate rhetoric, but does not ignore or simply maintain the broken reality.

The Reactionary Life: In Church

Last week I wrote about my realization that I have been living a reactionary life at home, at work, and at church in a way that has prevented me from enjoying life, enjoying relationships, and pursuing excellence in all areas of my life. I received some good feedback and some questions, so I thought I would elaborate on each of those areas as I seek to be proactive in the coming year.

In my job as a pastor I see the reactionary Christian life everywhere. Where there is a professed desire to have a quality devotional life or prayer life, but lacking a plan it never happens. This carries over into how we treat accountability relationships along with how we approach loving people who are part of the church and those who are not a part of the church.

This is a reflection to how we interact with God and what we believe about how we imitate God.

Is God Reactive or Proactive?

Does God wait for us to act and then come clean up our mess? Or let it all unfold until it gets really bad and then come help? Or do we have a God with a plan and the power to accomplish that plan?

Nearly every Christian would say yes to that last question, but if faith is proclaiming a trust in God and His plans so you will follow Him and His plans, then we have to check our verbal answer with the answer of the lives we live. The scriptures are clear that God had a plan from the foundation of the world and works with and through our human history to accomplish His perfect plans that scripture says can never be thwarted.

Now that could open up a number of questions or frustrations, but what it reveals is that we have a very proactive God. He even states His goals as restoring all things to their perfect design, wiping every tear from every eye, and implementing a reign of joy and peace with Christ as King one day.

Since we have a proactive God, the response of the Christian is both in reacting to God’s plans for His people and proactively pursuing His goals and His mission. This occurs in the way a Christian lives and the mission the Christian is on.

In the Christian’s Life

God being proactive in working for and toward specific things challenges us to know and participate in those specific things. For us to know and participate in these initiatives of God we must know God through His scriptures and by prayer. We must be a part of His community of people who worship Him and participate in His mission.

Scripture and Prayer

Many Christians know they should read their bible and they should pray, but many do not. This is both a want-to and how-to problem. The lack of want-to is part having not read the bible (because when you do, it draws you into more) and partly a heart bent on selfish desires that will be confronted by the scriptures. So we can’t just jump to the how-to without appropriately analyzing the lack of want-to. But there are times when you need to push pass the lack of want-to in order to know the benefits of scripture (same could be said of exercise or any other disciplined habit).

For scripture and prayer it often helps to know God’s purposes in giving us these is not a road map for life (though it has good advice) or to offer a wish list to the benevolent gift-giver (though we will never have without asking). The primary purposes of these are to know God and specifically to get to know Jesus Christ, who lived perfectly and died because of imperfections and sins, but then rose from the grave. Once you know the purpose is to know and be like Jesus, the need for these becomes hugely apparent (since I am not like Jesus often enough) and the need for how-to develop this habit increases.

Reading calendars such as the daily lectionary and the slew of other reading plans are immensely helpful guides to reading and reflecting on scripture daily. My challenge is always approaching these with a legalistic mindset of completion rather than in simply trying to commune with God and know Christ. I miss days (don’t tell!) and feel the need to catch up instead of picking it back up to meet with God.

Prayer can be the same way if you do not cultivate an understanding of it or a habit of it. Books like A Praying Life and Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire (a MUST read) have been immensely helpful in encouraging and informing my prayer life.

Community & Accountability

The church is intended to be a healthy family that loves one another like Jesus loves them. This doesn’t just happen, it must be pursued. If you are lacking community, become the type of community you want to be a part of by beginning to pursue and care for individuals within the community. Invite people to meals, to coffee, into your normal routines and habits and utilize those times to have personal conversations. I plan on elaborating on this in the coming weeks, so I’ll move on.

When it comes to accountability, we must ask the question of why. Are we pursuing this as a confessional booth or is this the way I become challenged to be more like Christ? The confessional booth accountability leaves people in their sins and flaws, even creates a seemingly inescapable cycle since it is focused on actions instead of on increasing faith in Christ.

Proactive accountability sees the aim of knowing and loving Christ as the true way to put to death sin (Colossians 2:20-3:4) as opposed to harping on getting better morally. Morality is first fruit, not first step in overcoming sin while knowing Christ is what ultimately makes sin seem worthless and trite. So gather in your gender small groups and begin to ask, “How is Christ becoming more valuable in your life?” and when sin comes up ask, “Where did you stop believing that Christ was enough?” Obviously these are a few of the many questions that could be asked, but the aim is always the same, it’s conforming to Christ’s way of life as opposed to your selfish desires.

On the Christian’s mission

God is proactively working to bring His good and gracious reign into reality in and through individuals that make up a community. If this is God’s aim, we must proactively make this our aim. This requires sacrifice and changing your lifestyle. If you are unable to have time to love and serve your neighbor like Christ, it’s likely that your schedule will have to shift to make margin for this. But more than your schedule will be required of you.

Entering into relationships to truly be like Jesus in healing the brokenness in people’s lives will require emotional strain, financial strain, and personal space strain. You have to be prepared for this, because there is so much joy in doing it.

All that goes into the Christian life and the Christian’s mission can seem like a big juggling acts of activities, but only really require one thing. That one thing is to love Jesus Christ and His gospel more than anything else. The result of knowing and loving the gospel is seeking God, loving other people who share your beliefs and loving those who do not. This is the pattern of believers in the scripture. Christ becomes supremely valuable so they devote themselves to knowing more about Jesus and embodying Him to each other and their neighbors.

The reactionary life prevents you from truly knowing God and participating in His mission. For the Christian, there is no other way than to become a proactive seeker of God. Believing in a proactive God leads us to become proactive followers.

The Reactionary Life: At Work

Last week I wrote about my realization that I have been living a reactionary life at home, at work, and at church in a way that has prevented me from enjoying life, enjoying relationships, and pursuing excellence in all areas of my life. I received some good feedback and some questions, so I thought I would elaborate on each of those areas as I seek to be proactive in the coming year.

When it comes to reactionary work, I’ve been in situations and seen plenty of people in situations where the inbox never gets empty, the initiatives and projects they wish would be completed get relegated to the background for the immediate need, and their schedule is guided by the immediate need instead of by the goals of job.

So the question I continue to ask myself is how do I move from reactive to proactive and encourage others to do the same?

Love Your Work

The NY Times recently had a series of articles remembering people who had died and celebrating their life. One of them was Richard Geller, a teacher at Stuyvesant High here in NYC. He taught math for 43 years and died of lung cancer. His students had him speak at their graduation before he died. He challenged them about their future career:

Assignment No. 2: Find a career that you enjoy as much as I enjoy teaching math. You will be much happier with your life if you enjoy your job. And if your parents don’t like what you choose, that is their problem, not yours. When they see you happy in your life and career, they will be happy for you, too.

If you hate your job, just endure it, or wish you were doing something else, you’ll never be proactive at work. You will do just enough to get by, be bored due to the lack of challenge, and won’t think about how you can use your career or time at work for the benefit of others. If you hate your job, go find a new one and discover the work that makes you feel alive.

Every job has a loveable facet that must be cultivated in order for you to proactive and seek to use your work for the good of your co-workers and others.

Right now, I’m lucky. I love my job. I didn’t love my first job where I worked for the state government, was bored, told to pace myself to not finish quickly and not given enough work. It was miserable. I initially thought it was engineering, but it was really the company. I later committed to enjoying the parts of engineering that matched my skills, pursuing them wholeheartedly through sharing my goals with my boss and seeking out more knowledge over it.

The difference between hating and loving your job determines whether you will experience joy in work like you were made to experience. When you begin to even try to love your work it sparks a desire to make your office, your employer, and your clients be as successful as possible. This becomes the motivation for moving from reactive to proactive.

Cultivate Fruitful Work Rhythms
We all desire to be fruitful at work, to produce and accomplish great things, but much of that production is contingent on how we approach work. Are you exhausted and don’t want to be in the office or are you looking forward to the task ahead?

I’ve discovered there are certain things I do that greatly motivate me, refresh me, and enable me to work well. As a Christian, my fruitful work is the product of cultivating a rhythm of rest and work. In the creation account, God makes man on the 6^th day, Sabbath rest is on the 7^th and work starts the 8^th. Rest leads to work. This is counter to the American work-for-the-weekend mindset, it states that we were created to do great work and rest provides the refreshing time to enable us to re-engage our work to be fruitful.

I’ve seen this to be true in my life not just in taking time off on my weekends, but also in my everyday. As a Pastor, my schedule is Sun-Thurs, but I have a household to care for which usually takes another day of work. Our family has designated one day a week where we don’t work, we don’t do homework, we don’t prepare for ministry, and we participate in activities that will be refreshing. This conviction has led to more work the other days of the week, but working more to enable a truly restful day is worth it. But rest doesn’t mean we do nothing, we feel refreshed by enjoying our city as a family, spending time reading, and occasionally watching movies.

In the everyday, my day starts off with scripture and a long walk to work, but long walks have always been refreshing for me providing time to think, pray, and then I get to work to read scripture, journal or type out my thoughts. This is what refreshes me to be ready to work well. For others it could look totally different.

I mean, my mornings involve Dr. Pepper, but yours could involve coffee.

Projects, Content, Meeting, and Email Time

Another change I have made is scheduling out my week. I’ve blocked off designated times for meetings, for working on projects, for reading books and online content and for email.

If I don’t do this, I end up booking so many meetings that I’m drained or trying to empty my Google Reader or email perpetually and put the projects aside for another time. This is part of me learning how I work best. I’ve learned that I have enjoyed reading blogs and books to get my mind thinking and brainstorming about new ideas.

At times this has turned into collaboration with others. Collaboration is different than meetings for me in that I want to discuss and dream about ideas rather than the details. I usually leave times of collaboration ready to work on my projects with more diligence and focus.

Email is usually the most challenging, since you can only put off some emails for so long before it is incredibly rude. But setting aside time daily and larger times weekly to crank out emails has given me a lot more freedom to stop stressing about the number in the parenthesis.

These are the things I’ve discovered change me from being reactive to proactive as I have approached work over the years. Obviously there is so much more that can and is done, so if you have an approach that is helpful to you, please leave it in the comments. My hope is that this sparks ideas for you as I know the frustrations of work when approaching reactively.

The Reactionary Life: At Home

Last week I wrote about my realization that I have been living a reactionary life at home, at work, and at church in a way that has prevented me from enjoying life, enjoying relationships, and pursuing excellence in all areas of my life. I received some good feedback and some questions, so I thought I would elaborate on each of those areas as I seek to be proactive in the coming year.

Life Schedule

One of the most common things I’ve seen in my life and others is getting to the end of the week and feeling like every night of the past week and the coming week is full, feeling overwhelmed and overcommitted. It’s the result of saying yes to invitations without setting any aim for how you would want to spend your weeks. Maybe you want to be busy every night, but not by doing the things you have committed too, maybe you want to see a date night become a weekly reality, maybe you want to see a night of rest and relaxation happen.

The reality is you won’t see any of it happen unless you set out to plan your week and your month. What’s funny about this is scheduling is natural for work, but somehow doesn’t transfer to the home.

We love having people in our home as often as possible since we desire to be hospitable, to build community where people are cared for and invited to be a part of our family life. We also have 3 kids who we desire to have a great relationship with through fun evenings and now we have a kindergartener with homework.

Juggling all of these without a schedule isn’t something we do well, but luckily I have an amazing wife who likes to organize/create a color-coded calendar (I use Google Calendar, but she prefers less technology), but we’ve added to this recently a general daily schedule that reminds us of our family goals in displaying Christ to our kids, to our friends, and to our neighbors through a healthy home life. We by no means stick to it by the minute and feel the freedom to shift things around depending on the day, but it provides a guide for us that, so far is enabling our family to thrive more than the reactionary life.

Marriage

Somewhere along the line, pre-marital classes became the beginning and end of working on your marriage, as if it were a college class that certified you to have a good marriage. The benefit of pre-marital classes and counseling is being forced to discuss and work through potential troubles, but all too often they become one-and-done conversations instead of the foundation of a pattern of communication in your marriage. Then you get married and try to merge two lives into one way of living and become surprised when it isn’t natural and easy because you have that pre-marital class certificate that said you were ready.

I continue to learn that cultivating a healthy marriage is a continual process, that a healthy marriage is what enables me to thrive in every area of my life. But if I only give it attention when something is wrong or a disagreement occurs, I’m only trying to maintain a relationship that was made to evolve and grow over time. Amber and I have a great relationship, but I want it to continue to grow, to thrive, and to be even stronger than ever.

Moving to be proactive has led me to create more date nights, which for us means seeking out more generous babysitting (read: we pay with food) earlier to plan for the month. I’ve set a reminder on my phone to daily set aside time to consider how I’m caring for my wife and cultivating my marriage. We are cultivating as close to nightly a routine as possible of sitting together to connect.

Luckily there are a slew of new books on marriage to continue the discussion together with Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage, Tim Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage, and Tim Chester’s Gospel-Centered Marriage (cheesy cover included for free).

Just like any new habit, it takes time and can be challenging, but the rewards of joy are worth it.

Parenting

There have been times in my reactionary life where I’ve felt like I’ve spent the whole day correcting or disciplining or trying to overcome a meltdown of one of my kids. I felt like I never got ahead of them and they won that day exhausting me and bringing out my oh so many flaws.

In addition, every child is uniquely designed to thrive in certain ways, to learn in certain ways, and it is a never-ending task of parenting to know your child and pursue their holistic well-being.

In early December it hit me that no one is waiting around to teach me to be a great dad or even a great husband. Plenty of people would love to cultivate a great leader or invest in a pastor’s ministry, but becoming a great father and husband has been left for me to figure out. I had been waiting to react to someone else initiating those conversations with me, but sensed God convicting me to pursue it as hard as I pursue ministry.

So I started googling children’s ministry curriculum for the home, asking friends what they do to teach and empower their children to know Jesus, and how they seek to enable their kids to thrive in what they were designed to excel in.

I found sojournkids.com, which pointed me to a number of great resources, our friends in youth ministry pointed us to Southern Seminary’s Connecting Church & Home Conference audio (I’ve listened to the first session twice) and it’s been amazing. It is really just the beginning as I’ve read What Fathers Should Teach Their Sons by Glenn Brooke and pre-ordered What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him.

Capturing a vision and a hope for having a healthy, proactive home life has been incredibly empowering for me and it excites me for the coming year. My hope, and I would certainly welcome your prayers, is to see my family blessed and each member of my family thriving in their love for the Lord and for others at the end of this year as a result of being proactive instead or reactive at home.

The Failure of the Reactionary Life

It was the end of the week and I looked back at all that happened only to realize that I didn’t make a dent in my to-do list that I made at the beginning of the week. I thought I wasn’t going to do this again. This happened last week and it seemed not to just be my to-do list, but in everything I was running around to put out the next fire without ever addressing the cause of the fire. I felt so behind in every area of my life.

This is how I felt mid-November, like my life was one big reaction. The inbox never emptied, but I kept reading when a new one came, the projects that I was supposed to be working on were put on the backburner for the immediate need (again), and I felt like I was trying to just catch up at home, to help get the dishes done or the kids ready for bed, but wait I hadn’t been able to spend time with them!

Given some time to reflect and discuss this with my wife and friends I realized I was living a reactionary life, that I had even gotten to the point that I wouldn’t give something my time unless it was a red flag and needed my immediate attention. Just waiting for the next shoe to drop, hoping it wouldn’t be too bad and then rushing to fix it.

As I thought about this, I realized that this is how a lot of people I know live their lives. They feel busy and overwhelmed, with a packed schedule because they kept saying yes without planning their calendar first. They feel like their job controls their every move and every hour because they’ve never set boundaries or the immediate need prevents the completion of the project so every Friday is leaving with things undone.

So if the failure of the reactionary life has been preventing me from pursuing excellence in all areas of my life, how does this change? I’ve come to realize that when I’m not proactive, I’m by default reactive and find myself in the same cycle of incompletion.

Reactionary Work

So how does this change at work? The last few weeks, I’ve schedule out large blocks of time for the week. I have specific times to meet with people, specific time to work on projects, and specific time to answer email. It has provided a ton of freedom at work to accomplish what actually needs to be done in order to get ahead of the fires.

When I worked as Engineer, I worked for 2 different private consulting firms. The first consulting firm felt like they owned me. There were Friday afternoons where I was told to be in another city that Sunday night to work 16-18 hour days for 2 weeks straight. I stayed at this job and worked long hours for fear of being fired, but finally I chose to pursue a new company. During my interview and after they hired me, I proactively stated and kept to boundaries for my family and my commitments to ministry. In order for me to do this I had to prove my ability to produce quality work in the time I was there, but also show by words and actions that I was keeping to my commitments.

It finally provided that elusive work/life balance and I was better at work and at home because of it.

Reactionary Home Life

But this isn’t just a work reality. This can happen in your home whether it is with your relationship with your roommate, your spouse, or your family. In your marriage, the reactionary life becomes only working on your marriage if there’s a problem or only interacting with your roommate for conflict resolution. In parenting, it becomes reacting to every emotional shift in your child rather than developing a vision for each child that you are pursuing every day.

At home you can maintain just fine by getting all the chores done, but maintaining is avoiding joy in relationships. Nothing happens unless it is planned, so we have a monthly calendar, we’ve developed a fluid schedule that has an ideal that can shift if necessary to make sure there is time with the family, but also reserved time and energy for our marriage.

I’ve also realized that no one is standing by to help you figure out how to lead your wife and family, so unless I am proactive in thinking out ways to care for my family or learn how to teach my children, no one else is going to do it. The reactive life is selling my family short and my hope is that this becomes a year of proactively caring for their needs.

Reactionary Church Life

In my job as pastor I see the reactionary Christian life everywhere. Where there is a professed desire to have a quality devotional life or prayer life, but lacking a plan it never happens.

The biggest area I see it is with reactionary accountability. Accountability is supposed to be a group of people working together to prevent sin from occurring, but unfortunately it has become something of a confessional only sought when people feel guilty from sin.

If Christians began to see accountability as an opportunity to challenge people to see Christ as more valuable and more to be treasured than the pleasures of this world, it takes on a proactive role in the lives of Christians instead of reactive. The failure of reactionary accountability is the assumption that everything is fine in someone’s life until a massive failure and eventually the failures must escalate to get our attention. Reactionary accountability fails the Christian in their pursuit of living and loving like Jesus did.

So as people assess New Year’s resolutions, I’ve only become resolved on one. To be proactive in the way I approach the different areas of my life. I’m a procrastinator by nature, so this will be a welcome (and likely difficult) shift. I’ll try and keep you updated as it goes.

15 Lessons in 15 Months in NYC: 5-1

The end of the year is always a time to reflect over what went on and what you’ve learned from the past year. For me, this is an opportunity to reflect over the last 15 months of being in New York. These are lessons we have learned personally and from watching and interacting with others in the city. I posted lessons 15-11 on Monday and lessons 10-6 on Wednesday, and here are lessons 5-1.

5. To be “For the City” you must be “For Your Neighborhood”
The good news is that most churches have recaptured an understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ that leads to a huge concern for and move to act on behalf of the poor and marginalized. As a result there are many churches that are seeking the physical, emotional, and spiritual welfare of their city. They are being “For the City” by advocating for the human flourishing of every person in the city.

This is the vision of a church truly being Jesus to their city, but practically this must be worked out in neighborhoods. In Manhattan, it seems that every 10 blocks is telling its own story, presenting a message of its worldview that is different from the surrounding area. It’s no different in the suburbs as subdivisions present a fairly consistent message about what is important.

Each neighborhood has beauty to it and each neighborhood has brokenness. To seek the human flourishing of a city, you must start next door or down the block. Begin by answering the questions “What do I love about my neighborhood?” and “What is the one thing I would like to see improved that would heal the brokenness of my neighborhood?”

Our city is 8.5 million people with the matching problems. Until “the city” becomes smaller and more tangible through our neighborhood, the task of seeking human flourishing is too daunting, but a community of people working together on the issues of their neighbors can see beautiful change.

4. To be “For Your Neighborhood” you must enjoy your neighborhood
The unfortunate side of recapturing a gospel vision to care for the poor is the ability of the human heart to make a good cause a duty to perform. A duty attitude prevents you from investing in your neighborhood the same way you would if you enjoyed it.

We only live for and give ourselves fully to things that we enjoy. So what do you enjoy about your neighborhood? What do you enjoy about your neighbors? If you spend all of your time commuting to another part of town, why don’t you move there?

I’ve seen this attitude change our way of life and the way of life of others in our community. In New York, you can live your whole life within a 10 block radius, it is built to be a walkable and enjoyable community, but if you only see the brokenness and never look for the beauty to enjoy, you will despise your neighborhood and never care for it in a way that could improve it.

3. Community is part of the mission
I am a huge advocate for missional communities, the idea of a community of Christ followers extending the message and mercy of Christ together. Unfortunately, the pendulum seems to have shifted to only beating the drum of mission at the neglect of community. It has become more about “being missional” than being a community…on mission.

Building a healthy community is just as much a part of the mission as reaching and caring for new people. Sacrificing community for the sake of mission will lead to burnout, bitterness, hurt and sin that goes unaddressed and never gets healed.

The communities I’ve seen that flourish on mission usually flourish as a family caring for one another. The habit of loving others becomes so ingrained in the community it naturally overflows to those outside of the community.

You don’t JUST aim for community or JUST aim for mission, you aim for the gospel of Jesus Christ, which invites people into a loving family and sends that family on mission to care for others and invites others into that family.

2. Community takes 6-9 months to establish, another 3-6 is a lot of fun & then it gets messy

We left a lot of great friends and family when we moved. Initially, we were wondering who might replace them, but you don’t replace old friends, you make new ones. It’s “not the same” as it was and it shouldn’t be. There’s no need to replace, there’s need to establish new relationships.

It takes a while, usually 6-9 months, then you have fun for a while, but then it gets messy. It seems like we have been taught that messiness should never happen in friendships, but you handle the messiness (the somewhat annoying habits, the differences of opinions, the correction conversations) and work through the messiness, the relationships are better on the other end.

Community takes time, sometimes it’s awkward, messy, and not always fun, but eventually becomes a joy to those who pursue it and commit to it.

1. Despite all the challenges it’s worth it

The last 15 months have been amazing, but they have also been incredibly challenging, and at times painful. We left behind friends, family, and what seemed like the American dream with a house on a cul-de-sac, but it’s been worth it. It can be challenging to be a family in the city, there are plenty of shocking looks and comments about having such a huge family, but it’s worth it.

We are incredibly thankful that we have been able to grow as a family while being a part of a church that cares for one another like a family, but also seeks to care for the neighborhoods of this city as is they are our family as well.

Jesus died on a cross and promised His followers a joyful life, but also that it would involve sacrifices and those would at times be painful. Saying goodbye and missing friends and family has been painful, but there has been a greater understanding of the Christian faith and a greater opportunity to share our faith because of the sacrifices we have felt God has called us to.

There are many more lessons that I have learned and surely many more that I will learn. I hope you have enjoyed my processing of the last year plus and would encourage you to do the same.

15 Lessons in 15 Months in NYC: 10-6

The end of the year is always a time to reflect over what went on and what you’ve learned from the past year. For me, this is an opportunity to reflect over the last 15 months of being inNew York. These are lessons we have learned personally and from watching and interacting with others in the city. I’ve broken them up into 3 posts because I have a tendency to write too much, on Monday I posted 15-11, today is 10-6, and Friday 5-1. I’d love to hear the lessons you have learned over the past year.

10. Once a pastor, always a pastor
Pastoral ministry is a calling that never stops. Once you take the title of pastor, everywhere you go, you are a pastor. It isn’t reserved for Sundays or office hours, it is a title that comes with expectations. At times this has been difficult for me because I like to “turn off” and have down time, which I had as a Civil Engineer. No one asked me to design a road that would solve their personal traffic problems outside of the office.

This has been good for me, refining me so that I don’t stop pastoring when I come home, and it has challenged me to always be looking to share Christ with my life. It is something I have to remember though, that when we have people in our home from our church or even outside the church, I’m representing the church and Jesus for better or worse.

Honestly, I think most Christians treat their faith as if it has an on and off switch instead of it being constant. The expectations can be, at times, overwhelming and I’m learning to delegate to our deacons and leaders as much as possible and take a refreshing day off, but I’m thankful for this calling. It’s made me a better friend, husband, and father.

9. It takes a city & a smaller community to raise a kid
Kids are a joy to a city with more dogs than children. Even if the stats don’t verify that, it certainly feels that way. It has been amazing to see the demeanor of entire subway change because of our kids. In fact, people go out of their way to help our family get around the city. There is so much to offer our children here, from museums, to zoos, from sports teams to the arts, they are exposed to so much culture and we love it. It’s also been remarkable to see our kids adjust to the space given to them.

It feels as though the city is helping raise our kids, but we also know they need a smaller community that cares for them. Our church has been that community, they are helping raise our kids whether they know it or not. When I try to teach Eli something, I’m not surprised when he tells me he learned that from a teacher in our kid’s ministry or one of his babysitters.

For us, babysitters are part of the family, not people that serve a function. We know our children are better behaved and have more joy when they have a number of people (single, married, male, female) in their lives who love Jesus and love them.

8. Everyone needs community

This is true of everyone, anyone who says differently, either with their words or their lifestyle, is lying and likely lonely. The city has a way of pressing that into you even more. In a city of 8.5 million, it can be a lonely place without people who you can care for and who care for you.

But the reality is that it’s not a city thing, the loss of community results in greater consumerism, discontentment, depression, and loneliness. We have all been made to desire to be known and know others. We thrive in that environment. But it’s never easy and requires sacrifice to have any decent community. From sacrificing with your parenting methods, your schedule, your workload, or your finances, community is worth the cost.

So whether that is paying more to live closer to those you love, letting your kids skip their naptime and risking meltdowns, or choosing to have a little less “me-time”, you won’t miss those things when they result in community.

7. It’s better to be in the city during natural disasters than outside the city
We’ve been in the city during a blizzard and outside the city during an earthquake and a hurricane. For some reason, the city seems to thrive on natural disasters, everyone seems to join forces and be concerned for one another.

But if you are trying to get back into the city, forget about it. We were on vacation for Hurricane Irene while our kids were being babysat in the city. We moved our flights up in hopes to avoid the hurricane, but every airport in theNew York Cityarea went on full shutdown. We had to fly into Washington-Dulles (as the hurricane was hitting), wait out the night with some family members and drive up the next day.

I think this is something I love about the city. It bans together through trial, seeking to persevere together and I believe that is inspiring.

6. This city will make or break your faith

In the bible belt, Christianity at least appears normal. There are plenty of full churches on Sunday and claiming to be a Christian can be an advantage at work or in gathering friendships. There are many who claim to be Christian for its benefits package, but never truly live like they know Jesus.

In the city, there’s no point in faking it. It is a disadvantage in a city that sees churches as harmful to renting space in schools, let alone claims an absolute truth of Jesus being God. I’ve seen many people move to the city and for the first time in their lives are faced with questions of what they really believe. Their family is stretched thin, their job sucks the joy of life out of them, and they wonder if Jesus really is who He said He was, The Lord and Savior who died to pay for the sins of the world, offering forgiveness and life through His resurrection.

There’s no better place to wrestle with those questions than in a community that loves Jesus and takes Him seriously. I’ve seen it firm up people’s faith and unfortunately, I’ve seen people abandon their faith for the pleasures of this world.

The city refines you through its challenges. No matter how great you thought you were, the city will humble you, break you down, but then allow you to be built back up. It’s a strange and beautiful thing to live here. We’re so thankful for the opportunity to be a family in the city.

5-1 hopefully coming Friday…