2012

I am going to join the pack of bloggers who post something about the new year… yes, it will be the same ole  new years resolution stuff, trying to motivate so-and-so reader (one of the five that read this) to live intentionally in 2012, or maybe this blog is for me, to just put my plans for 2012 out there to be held accountable and responsible to these goals and hopes.  I posted a pretty lack-luster blog called, 2011 Faves, my hope is that by the end of 2012, I’ll have much more to report.   Anyway, I am interested to see what this blog looks like in December 2012 looking back, compared to what it reads like now, being January 2011 looking forward.  So, if you were looking for something deep, go on to another blog, but, now that you are here, here’s what I plan on doing:

• Intentionality: Often times, when it comes to our devotional life, we can usually categorize it in the columns of: haphazard, last minute, or absent…sometimes, we can even land on the side of doing so much, that we are getting nothing out of it, rather we revert to just “getting it done” which is exactly what I did last year.  Last year, I took a team of guys through a one-year study; I had myown devotional stuff; went through something with my kids; and then my wife and I read through the Bible Chronologically last year.  Needless to say, I got a lot of information, but very little depth.  This year, I am planing one braid of devotionals with my family, that includes three different strands.  This is what I am doing with my family, and I’m not going to add anything different for someone else, in fact, I’ll be creating a DNA group of guys again this year, but we will either be gathering around what we are all doing separately and talking about how it informs our lives or they’ll be joining what I am already doing, which will be:
  • Operation World: Many people know Sarah and I have a heart for the nations.  In fact, the seedbed of our relationship was started in Morocco Africa on a mission trip.  When a relationships begins in that sort of environment, it is hard to ever feel completely settled in the US.  Many people also know, Sarah and I have talked about adopting for the past 5 years. So, we are going to use Operation World for the purpose of praying for the world and cultures that we love so dearly and pray that maybe as we read and pray through this, that God will open our eyes up to either a country God wants us to adopt from or even a country he wants us to be more involved in.
  • The History of Redemption: Last year, in order to read through the whole Bible in a year, we tackled several chapters a day, this time, we are going to read, concentrate, meditate, write about , and yes, maybe even memorize one passage a week, in congruence with The History of Redemption.
  • I Want to Live These Days with You: About a year ago, I felt God moving me to begin to study the writings of Bonhoeffer.  I ignored this prompting, but God didn’t let me get away from it, in fact, it seemed like any book this past year that even meant anything to me was from an author who was a student of Bonhoeffer… So I folded, I gave in, I started reading him in the fourth quarter of 2011 with Life Together, then Ethics, then I finished the year reading Metaxas’ biography on his life, Bonhoeffer.  I Want To Live These Days With You is about a half page reading each day from one of his works.  I think the three of these will go good together, and in our devotional life we will begin to move into depth, at least that’s my prayer.

• Altars: Basics, beginnings – I think we all get this idea of altars.  I’ve dabbled in different sports, one of them being jiu jitsu.  One of the element that makes for a good jiu jitsu artist is not just knowing the basics, but returning to them time and time again, it is the foundation that everything else is built on – I think it is like this in life as well.  Going back to an altar is like going back to the basics.  The idea of alters is often times forgotten in our day and age, unless used for some abiblical idea of an “altar call”.  But in the Old Testament, the idea of altar is used often and in a very sacred way.  Before the ‘altar’ became a place of sacrifice, it often was a place where God met man in an obvious way, and an altar was built as a sort of icon for remembering.  A thing, place, item that reminded you of what God did in, through, and/or for you or spoke to you about something.  I’m not talking about those everyday things, but those times when something has been stained on your soul, an imprint in your mind, that can’t be forgotten.  That said, there seems to be one thing more rare than alters in our world today, and that is going back to them.  When God meets us, or to use Old Testament language, when an altar is established for us by God, we usually only move forward or beyond that, without ever going back to remember, to think, to hear his voice again there, in the same place he first spoke, but now as a different person.  I am in no way suggesting we go back and live in the past, no way, rather, I’m suggesting we intentionally remember rightly, we take time and go back to those altars and remember, and reflect, and seek.  I’m not even sure what this means for me, but I like many have a few altars, in my life – but I feel like in 2012, I need to go back and visit some altars in my life…

• Centralizing: One of the last things I felt God telling me at the end of 2010, was to recenter, reorient my life, to “centralize” it, if you will.  If there is anything, that I completely disobeyed God on, it was this, it was obviously this.  I kept myself so spread out, that while I seemed to “do” a lot, my life feels more disconnected than it has ever been.  It’s time for the Hansens to begin to connect the dots again, to bring it all back together.  We aren’t sure, but we are praying about the following:
  • Moving: We are praying about, and thinking that one of the smartest moves we could make is to move from South Austin to East Downtown Austin. This would make it feasible for us to live where we do life, that alone will be a huge move in living deeper.  This will put us closer to UT and the kid’s school, and will help us move one more step into community development.
  • Community Living: This goes along with moving, and will start with really doing life right where we live, rather than driving all over the place to do all kinds of things and being “focused” on several different elements, which has kept us pretty detached from anything.  It’s time for us to begin to truly live back in community.  Our prayer is that this will lead into true community development.
  • Unmentioned: We have a couple of unmentioned requests, and as they are unmentioned, there isn’t much to say about them, but you can be sure as we know more, so will you.

There are some other things I plan on doing, that I would recommend.  I don’t recommend these exact things for you, but plan on “firsts“.  Do some things you’ve never done before, or as a friend of mine said, “clear your bucket list“.  Don’t play it safe, it would be much better to have some failure notches on your belt for 2012 than none at all, they at least shows you tried.   I don’t know what that looks like for your – visit a place or places in the world you’ve never been but want to go; going back to school; going to work at an orphanage overseas; running your first race; starting a new business or stepping out in faith and starting a new career; I’m not sure what it is, but do it.

I would challenge you to live in such a way, with such faith, that faith is the only thing that makes sense of your life in 2012 – in other words, if God stepped out of your life in 2012, would your life still work?  It shouldn’t.  Remember, the hard thing is, or should I say, the reality is, there are many things we haven’t done, simply due to fear, but for many of us, it is because we keep our lives too crowded, which means, to move into the realm I am speaking of means letting go of some of the current things that are presently in your life and walking into the fog, the unknown… no, no, charging into the fog…

So, we’ll see, here’s to 2012…

oh’ and here are a couple things I plan on doing in 2012:

• Family Pilgrimage – I want to take my entire family for a 2-3 week trip this summer to experience a different people, a different culture, brokenness, and poverty like they’ve never seen – not just me, my entire family.
• Community Development – I’ve been dreaming, writing, hoping, and talking about this for about four years, this year I plan to start this
• Marathon – I would like to make 2012 the year for my first marathon.  This is not just a physical goal for me, though it is that, but those who know me, know running is a very spiritual thing to me.
• Write – I want to write something that counts this year, I’ve wanted to since I was 17, it’s time I stop avoiding this.

Faves of 2011

This is just a simple short post of my favorite things for 2011:

Top Five + 1Books (blog HERE):

1. The Pastor
2. Barefoot Church
3. The Lost History of Christianity
4. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
5. The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor
6. Bonhoeffer, this is my +1, this would have been part of the top five, but I read it after I did the blog

Top Five Happenings of 2011:

1. Tough Mudder (did a blog on it HERE)
2. Haiti (did a series of blogs: pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3, pt. 4, pt. 5, pt. 6, pt. 7, pt. 8)
3. Las Vegas (this is one of the best vacations I had in a long time, my brother, his wife; a best friend for the past 23 years and his wife [my cousin], and a current best friend and his wife)
4. New York City who can beat a trip with your wife, the Marlows, and LOVE146 in the Big Apple around Christmastime – magical!
5. San Antonio – before school started back in August, just me, Sarah, and the kids got away for a three day weekend for a Hansens only weekend.  I even learned something on that little excursion, click HERE to read on it

Top Five non-profits of 2011: The point of this, is not so much to say who my favorite nonprofits are, rather, that if you still want to make an end of the year donation to an organization that counts, I recommend the following five organizations:

1. HELP End Local Poverty
2. Eden Reforestation Projects
3. LOVE146
4. Cross Cultural Connections
5. Heartline Ministries

My top five blogs for 2011:

1. SlaveFree through a commitment to Zero Tolerance
2. What I learned from Tough Mudder
3. Parable of God’s Love
4. Get in the Ring
5. Caged Rhino

Top 5 Albums:

1. Barton Hollow, by The Civil Wars
2. Sigh No More, by Mumford and Sons
3. StrangeTown, by David Ramirez
4. Repair the Breach, by Austin New Church
5. **********

’tis the season…

’tis the season for…hustle, bustle, debt, stress, anxiety, and greed.  ’tis the season that we celebrate the birth of our God… Mammon. ’tis the season, that the divine nature of our God becomes oh so present… consumerism, materialism, and individualism.  Argue with me all you want, minus the one or two days we sprinkle in 8-pound 6-ounce baby Jesus, this is what Christmas has become for the majority in the church…in fact, for many of us, outside of what we may verbally declare, our actions show that we have become functional atheists during the holidays.  Our actions show, that we believe God to actually care that you get that set of golf clubs you’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford, or that you get that Coach purse you ‘need’, or that mine and your little brat gets those toys they ‘deserve.’ This year we will spend about 450 billion dollars, just in our country alone, on junk that we will be ready to replace in a few more years, and we think congress has a spending issue.  Doesn’t it seem ironic that we are the very ones who fight, who get indignant, who lose our witness over the idea of taking “Christ” out of Christmas… we get angry that the secularists don’t want to use Christ to represent everything during the season I just described.  Are they not simply making official what we have already put into practice?  I have to say, when I look at it that way, I have to agree with them, in fact, it may be the most polite thing we do for Jesus this season, and that is completely disassociate Christ with our greed OR relearn how to celebrate Christmas in such a way, that his life is obvious to those around us.

I’m not trying to be a scrooge  at all, in fact this is my favorite time of the year – hands down.  I will, like many of you, sit around a tree with my family and open gifts.  I will, like many of you, over eat in the name of holiday festivity.  I will, like many of you, enjoy family in a way that seems foreign to the rest of year (which it shouldn’t).  That said, about three years ago my wife and I, for the first time ended the Christmas season with disgust – we HATED it!   One night as we were attempting to sort out our feelings about things like holidays, traditions and the like, we realized that the real reason we hated the Christmas season is that we weren’t actually celebrating Christmas, we were celebrating that holiday I described above, in fact, it sparked an amazing conversation in us that resulted in a blog about traditions (click HERE), and several changes in our practices.  Maybe that is you or your family.  Maybe you celebrate the birth of Mammon, rather than the birth of the Christ.  Maybe you have lost the true meaning of the coming of Jesus into this world, and thus exchanged it with the coming of a new credit card bill in January.  Maybe you are ready to reclaim Christmas for you and your family.  Here are some ideas on how to do that:

• Create new traditions, here’s a blog that talks a little bit about that – For Tradition Sake 
• Give outside of your family – commit to giving one gift per-family member to someone (or an entire family) who may not get to enjoy this season the same way your family does (if you don’t know where to begin, here are some RESTORE Christmas initiatives you can give to, click HERE).
• Center the whole season around the coming of the Christ, not just a church service.  Below are some great resources to help you do that:
• The Village Guide to Advent
• God is in the Manger
• Discovering Advent
• Black Friday: Just DON’T DO IT!!!  Stay home and play with your family!
• Slow down: Live life light through the holidays, make living incarnational your goal, be very present with those you love and those who have no one to love them
• Prepare for Next Year: I find that if we can be intentional about approaching times, we have a better chance of not letting the time control us.  We all know, unless we die this holiday season (grant it, not a great thought), that the new year is coming for all of us, so use this down time during the Holiday season to plan to be others and Christ centric through 2012, here are a few good resources.
• Operation World – maybe you recognize you don’t have or you would like to have more of God’s heart for the Nations.  Maybe you feel called to international adoption, but you don’t know from where. Maybe God is moving on your heart to move out into the international mission field, but you are not sure where. This is a great resource to use to not only pray for the nations but open the eyes of your family to the needs in each nation.
• The Circle of Seasons – this is a great resource to connect the historical church rhythm with your year, connecting the past to the present
• Live Outside Yourself – plan, plan now, to give more of yourself through all of 2012 – maybe you become a foster parent; maybe you plan a pilgrimage or mission trip to another country; maybe you start the adoption journey; maybe you begin to sponsor children in other countries; maybe you and your family commit to build a home in Haiti;  maybe you decide to uproot from your nice little suburban haven and move to a place that is in need of an incarnational people among them…dream it, pray about it, do it and if you have any questions about how to do any of these, email me.

Do it!  Be intentional, put Christ back in “Christmas” not by arguing with the media or getting angry at a secular perspective, but by actually living the Christ life in the Christmas season!

Until next year, have a great holiday season!

12 years of memories…

what do I remember most from the past 12 years…

…I remember the first time I saw your legs on June 9th, 1995…I was hooked, I also remember telling Julian in 1996, “one day, I’m gonna marry that girl…” – grant it, that was more than 12 years ago, but that’s where it started for me, and while a lot has changed for that boy and girl in Morocco, it’s one of the best memories I have…

…I remember taking a road trip with some of the best friends a person could have, and I made sure one of our stops was your front door.  When we pulled in front of your house, i took one look at you sitting on the porch, leaned over to Bill and said, “that’s the one”…

…I remember, still after all that time you weren’t convinced I was it, and I didn’t know what to do, so your mom (a.k.a best mother-in-law a guy could asked for) called me all the way down in Austin to let me know, “she loved me, was praying, and asked me just to give you space, and you’d come around“…and you did

…I remember planning a surprise engagement, but Mr. Fed Ex showed up not only on the wrong day, but while you were at home.  So, I jumped out of bed, still in my boxers and ran down stairs, no shoes on, ran out the front door into the snow, just so Mr. Fed Ex wouldn’t ring the doorbell.  The whole time your dad was in the kitchen, and never told me I was weird… (hand’s down – best father-in-law ever)

…I remember our amazing wedding, our great honeymoon in Spain, and learning how you would react when you found out I left ALL my credit cards in the U.S….

…I remember the night you laid in bed crying asking me not to take that youth pastor job, I did anyway, and that forever taught me the importance of listening to the wisdom of my wife…although, the silver lining is that we made some of the best friends we could have wished for in Jeff and Holly…I mean who else would have snuck through the snow with us so no one would report to the pastor, who banned us from the church and our friends, that we were still hanging out…

…I remember making the decision (this time with you) to move to Austin in order to go back to school, only to find out you were pregnant, I was jobless, and we had a mortgage, two car payments, and a mom who reminded us we didn’t have insurance to cover the pregnancy (which to be fair, she is the best mom I could ask for, and has been an amazing nana for the past 10 years)…

…I remember watching you watch Serena the first night you had her, I was thinking, “I didn’t think I could love her more than I already did, and seeing her now as a mom, I do“

…I remember rushing home from work because of your phone call letting me know you were in serious pain.  I remember walking in our bedroom to find you as white as a ghost…I remember taking you to have that emergency surgery, and I remember feeling fear for the first time that we might loose the baby…and today Ashton is here and you are fine…

…I remember laying floors in my mom’s house, only to have you come in late one night and say, “I think my water broke, but I’m not sure, because I’ve never had that happen.”  I remember being very excited driving to the hospital that night to have our third, Eden…

I remember the fear we wrestled with every time we went to get the blood count

for Elie; I remember every time we had to consider a full body blood transfusion for her; I remember that week in the hospital with Elie, not knowing what was going to happen to her, but more than anything in that week, I remember walking in to our hospital room after going out to get something to eat, finding

first UT Game

you not worried for Elie, but praying and praising God in the midst of this, that was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen…

….I remember standing near the Bosphorus, when the thought hit, “the dream of going back to school that Sarah give up so long ago…it is time for her to go back to school…”

…I remember all the support you gave me, and all the times you believed in me,

First Day of School

when I didn’t believe in myself through all the ups-and-downs of our first years in the ministry…

…I remember the day you received your acceptance letter from UT…

I have so many other memories, that this page could not contain, but I look forward to a million more and another amazing 12 years…

I am so blessed to be married to such an amazing “Tough Mudder”

SlaveFree through a commitment to Zero Tolerance

what if, you were to send your child or grandchild out today, to play, to ride their bike, to go for an innocent walk…what if two hours had passed, and in the midst of your hectic schedule you finally realized, “I wonder where they are, they should have been home about an hour ago.”  So, you go look, you search, and your scavenger hunt comes up empty.  Your child, the love of your life, the innocent one who sleeps ‘safely’ every night under your roof, is gone…no more kiss good nights, no more “I love you’s” no more walks through the neighborhood… your child is gone, someone took away the one thing you love…

what if you found out, that this beloved child of yours was taken to a far away cocoa farm… what if you found out, that same child was given a large machete that he did not know how to use and told for 13 hours a day, he was going to have to pull large pods off of trees in the heat of the African sun, while being beaten… what if you found out your child may get to ‘eat’ once a day in order to have fuel to make it through the day… what if you found out that at the end of the day, your child or grandchild who could barely walk from sheer exhaustion, was used as sexual sport by the plantation managers…what if you found out, your child was going through all this, because in another part of the world, other kids, much more ‘important’ and valuable kids, had a lust for chocolate at really low prices, and it was your kids lot in life to provide this for the other kids… Then, you got the worse news of all, in order to rescue your kid, you didn’t need to hire some sort of a guerrilla swat team, you didn’t need your country to declare war, but all you needed to do, was convince people to stop buying the chocolates these little kids make – that’s it.  Easy?  Well, it would be easy if we lived in a world loved humanity over the lowest price.

This is a true story, that happens every day, except the story is reversed.  It’s our kids, it’s our need for the lowest price, it’s our inability to say, ‘no’ that enslaves these other kids, these kids that are ‘less important’ than our kids – it’s our kids, it’s us, that are eating the blood stained chocolate, and year after year after year, we turn a blind eye to this reality.

When I talk about this (and other things like toys and clothes), I hear every excuse under the sun, the problem with that is, we live in an age, in which ignorance is chosen (for the most part).  However, out of all the excuses I hear that make me want to go tough mudder on someone, the one that bugs me the most is this: “my individual purchases of chocolates, these toys, these clothes are not going to really make a difference?”  Now, history proves otherwise, and we know that true power lies with the consumer.  But let’s just pretend you are right, I still want to say, “what does this excuse say about you, your heart, your view of other kids, other people?  Because you’re single decision to not buy, say a Hershey made chocolate, won’t shut down or change Hershey’s, it does promote it, it does feed it, and it does say, that since you can’t change the unethical practices of a company, you might as well participate in them.”  I’ve gotten to the point I’m ready to boycott family and friends functions, holidays, outings and parties that use slave made foods in the name of convenience, price, or forgetfulness.

Anyway, thank you for putting up with my rant, but another excuse I hear often is, “I didn’t know“, unfortunately we live in a world that does not allow this excuse to live long.  In fact, there is so much information out there, all you need to do is do a casual google search, and you will find what you are looking for.

So here’s the deal from now until February 14th, there will be more chocolate, clothes, toys, and jewelry purchased than the rest of the year combined.  The truth is, there is not such thing as neutrality on this subject – you either participate in it, or fight it! If we can get enough people to purchase ethically over the holiday seasons, we can start a tidal wave that can’t be stopped, the Arab Spring should prove this to us, but even if we don’t at least you get to go to bed at night knowing that you were active in moving the freedom of humanity one step closer to a reality.

So, I’m always asked, “what can I do to fight human trafficking?”  I always give the most unpopular, but most valuable answer, “start with you, start making ethical decisions no matter the cost: no matter what you have to give up; even if you have to tell your kids ‘no’; even if that means you have to teach your kids to read instead of rely on mr. leap frog; even if you have to eat 50% less chocolate than you normally would; even if you can’t make that same cake you do every other Thanksgiving or Christmas some mom, some dad, some kid on the other side of the word deserves that from you, because if the story was reversed you would want that from them.“

So, here are some tools you can use NOW to live more ethically this holiday season, starting with halloween:

• For a list of fair trade Cocoa product click HERE
• Not For Sale app for your iphone or android that allows you to scan bar codes, click HERE
• Read Slave Free Chocolate, HERE
• Buy your chocolate online, HERE (I’ve had this stuff, and it is GOOD)
• Download Slavery Footprint, by clicking HERE. 
• Read this other very helpful blog by clicking HERE.

So, those are a few good tools to get you started, but join with me this holiday season as we work towards being a SlaveFree Family, SlaveFree City, with the vision of a SlaveFree World as we commit to showing zero tolerance in our consuming!

what I learned from the Tough Mudder…

I love COMMUNITY, I long for COMMUNITY, I dream of real COMMUNITY, and I have very deep convictions about COMMUNITY (click HERE to read one post).  I also love pushing myself. I love challenges.  I love fitness.  But what I love, is when challenges and community come together.  I did a post a while back called, RUNNING in which I explain some of this.

Anyway, myself and nine other people, teamed up to do the 2011 Central Texas Tough Mudder.  I honestly believe events like this, attract people the way they do, because of an internal longing to push yourself, but even more than that, our longing to be part of something that is beyond self, something that forges a community together through the trials of the course.  I believe, that while it rarely happens, these events show what community should be, and what it should be is much more than an in vogue word we use.  So, I wanted to do a post on what I learned from the tough mudder:

Everyone Pays the Price: In many “communities” a few pay the price and many ride the coat tails.  And as much as we preach against this, and boast about how unhealthy we think this is, I kind of think, at some level, we need this unhealthy co-dependency.  It makes us feel good about ourselves; if we are the one’s who pay the price, it kind of allows us to play the
superiority card when needed; It allows us to have a pseudo self-righteousness; It makes us feel we have this weird sense of authority; it gives us a wrong sense of importance (the list could go on).  Then as leaders, we say ‘kind words’ like, “well it wouldn’t be right to ask them to pay the price” “it wouldn’t be nice, right, good, of us to expect that out of them”  the list could go on, but I think these are all clever ways of simply saying, “I need them to depend on me like this because it gives me popularity, it gives me a false sense of accomplishment, it gives me a false sense of leadership, it keeps me in charge, it keeps my job, etc…”  But this is not leadership, and this is certainly NOT community…. From a Biblical perspective, even Paul thought this was a really bad idea.  In 2 Thes 3:10, Paul makes the equivalent statement of, if you don’t contribute, if you don’t participate (this is not the Greek word for attend), then you’re not in. We do a real disservice to people when we make them think they are part of community, but NEVER expect their best.   We had a motto, in this race – start together, run together, finish together – period.  That sounds all inclusive, but there was one exception – we had to know you trained for this race.  In other words, if you didn’t train for this race, we weren’t helping you, you were going to get left behind, because you, in the name of community, expected the community to make up for your lack of contribution, and that is not community, that is ball-and-chain…It didn’t matter your fitness level, it didn’t matter what your condition was or wasn’t, it didn’t matter if you were as strong as everyone else…what mattered, is that you cared enough about the mission and the community that you trained the best you could, and if you did, we were going to make sure you finished with the rest of us – that’s community!

Identity was Lost in the Team:  Please hear me, I’m not saying our uniqueness doesn’t matter, it absolutely does!  I’m not saying the qualities that make us the individuals we are aren’t important, they are.  What I am saying, is that we live in a culture, in which certain qualities, statuses, fame, education levels, etc, feed our individualism and make us ‘better than‘ the people next to us.  But that’s not the way it works in community – in fact we were a team of 10 individuals with different education levels, different financial accomplishments, different morals, different  status levels, different successes, different failures, different fitness levels, different strengths, and different weaknesses.  And the truth is, none of this stuff even mattered in community, unless it helped the entire team get to the goal.  No one cared that I may be a decent speaker; no one cared that Lamar can inspire a crowd with music; no one cared that my brother was a doctor (actually all of us cared if we ended up injured, but you get the point); because if it didn’t add to the team, it didn’t matter…what mattered was what our strengths and abilities did for the whole… I think this is what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 15.  This is the danger of popularity and celebrity, they often isolate us on a platform that makes us think we are better than we are.  There was no “I” on our team, the team as one was the “I”.

Vulnerability is a Must: My old boss used to tell me, “Those who do, do.  Those who can’t teach.” and while we know that is a very vague statement and not completely true, there is a lot of truth to it. As a teacher, I know that when I get up to teach, if I nail it, I know people will think certain things about me, I know they will assume some things about me that are better than what or who I am in reality.  They will assume I am better than who I am…and as a good teacher, I’m going to just let them assume that about me.  There’s another saying, “talk is cheap.”  We all know this, and am convinced this is the reason many people don’t truly engage in deep community, because people might figure out who I really am, or more importantly, who I’m not.  I often say, the real leaders, the ones really forging the new work out there, are the people we will never hear from; they are the ones doing right now, what we will write about in 20 years as a ‘new discovery’; they are the ones that will never get a platform; they will never be a featured speaker; they will never have 300-500 people in front of them eager to take notes on what they are saying; they are the one’s who don’t have time for that because they are too busy making it happen now.  We knew, once we started the race, every weakness we had was going to be revealed.  Every inability we had, would be exposed to the whole.  The frailty that we seek to cover would be shown for what it was, and we would need, at different times, to deeply depend on others, that normally we would want to seem ‘better than’, because they, in truth, were better than us.

There is no such thing as THE Leader: Insecure leaders hire ‘leaders’ to do work they don’t have time to do; real leaders, hire leaders to do work they are not capable of doing because they are not as good at it, and they are secure in that.  We live in a one-leader-knows-best-all-the-time culture.  But when we are exposed for who we are and what we are, this is an impossibility, well, it is possible in pseudo community, and in controlled environments that the one-leader sets up.  However, in real mission, in real game time, in real life, this is not a reality, it can’t be. I can think of several times in this race, where I was NOT the leader, not even close, I had met my limitations, and to depend on me because I can lead in some areas would have been foolish.  We allow leaders to walk a very dangerous plank when we hoist them to the point of beginning to believe, they are the best there is in every situation they encounter.  In this challenge, many of us had to step up at different times and lead.

Yes, I learned more than this, but according to blog rules, I’ve already gone too long.  But I’ll say this, when I can experience and live in community like I experienced in the Mudder, I’ll take that above anything else, even if we do get a little dirty and a little banged up!  Until next year Rhinos-n-Tutus – DEUCES!

…learning to let go…

It seems that God, in his divine way, has backed me into a good kind of corner, the kind that is teaching to let go. My friend and co-pastor, John Church, preached a great message out of Ecclesiastes 5 yesterday, and let me tell you, it was a rock in between the giant’s eye for me – in a good way, in a great way. This book is making me ask a lot of hard questions about my life, my reason for doing things, and what’s really important, and why they are important to me. If you haven’t kept up with the series, I suggest you do so, by clicking HERE. The very ugly reality about myself is I think there are a few things I do for very wrong reasons, some even for vanity sake. Isn’t that horrible, use God for my name… Sure, you want God to weed that junk out of you, but when he does, he has to spotlight it, and that just sucks, because you never really want to believe that stuff is in you.

When God does this, you have to come to grips with several things, like, “while God has invited you and me to play and to be involved in his redemptive plan on this earth he doesn’t need us for it to be accomplished – it is GOING to be accomplished whether you and I flake out or not.” Which, to be honest, if that is not a peace-giving reality, then it is only because we think his redemptive plan is so small that we could make it happen, and therefore do not understand the full depth of it. Because if we did, we would literally vaporize under the pressure of just thinking the success of it rested on us.

This past weekend, I almost produced an ulcer stressing over a ministry move – I’m not talking ministry move, like packing up my family to go plant a church in a foreign land, I’m talking about, simply being present during one project or another. Due to my schedule it was an either/or, not a both/and, but due to my over-inflated view of myself, I couldn’t let go of one for the other…until being in service yesterday… I’ll explain below.

For a non-traveling pastor/speaker, with four kids, a wife who is in school and someone who focuses on several things (which convinces me, I really focus on none, but that’s for another post), I have a pretty heavy travel schedule for the fall and winter:

• October I’ll be in San Francisco for the NFS Global Forum
• November I’ll be in Haiti with Eden RP and HELP to look at some land and talk vision
• November I’ll be in Omaha Nebraska with Porterbrook to create intensives for the TRCPorterbrook
• December I’ll be in NYC with LOVE146 and HELP to talk about partnerships in Haiti and beyond
• December I’ll be in Peoria for Christmas, and will take the time to focus, read and listen
• January – nothing yet
• February, I’ll be in Portland at the Justice Conference.

The trip I was stressing out over was the November Haiti trip and the November Porterbrook trip. Now here is the deal, the Haiti trip already has the lead of both HELP and Eden going, and they don’t “need” me to make any decisions, they are amazing men and have great organizations, and they know what their organizations need more than I do. But I realize this could be a great partnership, and I wanted to be there, probably more for me, than the cause itself. The TRCPorterbrook initiative on the other hand, is new and on a need basis, I need to be at that more than the Haiti trip. See, here’s the deal, this post is kind of a sub-post to my last one, Slow Down. My big take away from John’s message yesterday was the idea of being too busy for worship. I don’t mean, being too busy to show up to a Sunday worship service. This is often how pastors allow themselves to be deceived that they are not ‘too busy for worship‘ because see, we’re pastors, we have to show for Sunday worship, therefore we are not too busy for worship. I’m talking about the heart posture of worship, in which EVERYTHING we do is an act of worship to bring glory to God. See, I think it works like this: We begin to do good things, maybe a lot of good things, and then you add so much to your plate, you really begin to edge out that time of prayer and reliance on God; you then begin to feel the weight of everything, because your reliance is yourself, not God; then the stuff you ‘do’ can no longer be worship to God, simply because you are relying on self; and I’m convinced, that which you rely on, you have to worship because when you accomplish something, you point the glory and praise to that which you were relying on to accomplish it.

But God loves us too much. He cares more about us, than the stuff we are doing, even if it is for him. And he will bring us to places in our life, in which the pressure (usually self-inflicted) is so heavy that you begin to realize that the thought of you being able to rely on self to accomplish the good tasks God has given you, is sillier than your 2 year old child thinking it can handle the financial responsibility for the whole family, much less herself. You begin to learn to let go, to cast all your burdens on him, and to realize, maybe what God is asking me to do, is not ‘DO’ he’s got this one, but begin to enter into a life of worship, and let go of the rest… Guess, what will happen, you will let go, and the world, doesn’t fall apart, and we are reminded, “thank God this world and all that needs to happen is dependent on God, not me…I just need to be obedient and full of worship, and he gets the glory, which really is what I want.“

Slow Down

We had a very good and productive, yet busy summer.  We were able to squeeze in the “Matthew and Sarah only vacation”, but as the summer was coming to a close, we realized, that we had not yet, in the midst of all the travel and many different happenings, we had not taken our kids on a “Dad, Mom, Kids, only outing.”  While the kids were having a great summer with their cousins, they really got the short end of the deal when it came to “time with Dad”.  So, about a month ago, we packed up, drove to San Antonio, for a three day weekend of just me, Sarah, and the kids, one hotel room, one water park.

At one point, I was walking with Elie up one of the sidewalks, and she kept stopping, looking, touching at this or that, just taking it all in.  Some of the things she was interested in were confusing, some interesting, some simply (in her opinion) just deserved to be looked at in wonder.  But, being the more mature adult, for the first two days, I would tighten up my grip on her hand, give a tug, and pull her away from whatever she was taking the time to think on or enjoy.  In other words, she was loving the journey, and I was ignoring it for the sake of the destination.  Then at the end of the second day, as I was pulling her away from her post, I felt a small voice just say to me, “maybe you could stand to learn a lesson from her, slow down, and enjoy everything that is on the journey, because one day, it will no longer be there to enjoy the way you could enjoy it here and now.” – ouch!

But this isn’t the first time God had been telling me this, he uses a mentor of mine, Curt, to remind me of this all the time.  Then with my grandfather dying, and Sarah having a grandfather who’s life is coming to an end, I’ve really been faced with the question of “what really matters?” a lot. Currently we are preaching through Ecclesiastes, tell me that won’t get you.  I went to a leadership summit, and I’m thinking principally the key note speaker could have been speaking directly at me in his message. Then the water park experience.  So, for me, I’m not sure what it means to slow down, or maybe I’m not even sure how to, but I am working on it.  If this is you, there are a few things we need to remember:

• Create a rhythm that is founded on God and revolves around family, community, and service (put non-negotiables first, and everything else takes a back seat or supports the non-negotiables). Then make everything else come secondary, if we try to do it all, the rhythm is off, and and our life is no longer a beautiful song, but just a loud noise, use everything else as notes that simply highlight the rhythm, to know more click HERE.
• Figure out how to sabbath well – remember, the sabbath was created for man, and it was created for us for a reason…click HERE for a good starting resource
• Live deeply right where you are.  the american way is to get to the next phase in life in order to get to the next phase – seems very pointless, when we look at it this way.  I honestly believe, most of our ineffectiveness is not a result of our lack of planning for tomorrow, but it is when we ignore today for the ‘better’ tomorrow, that never shows up.  Our families, our wives, our kids, our friends, our churches, don’t need the tomorrow version of us, they need the now-version.
• Realize the reality of mission is not something you engage outside of your everyday life.  Mission is not something that you do better outside of family, community, or the average work day, rather these are the things/elements that God has given you for your mission and as your mission, so be fully present in them.
• Contemplate – the majority of us, have not carved out time to simply think, mediate, dwell, contemplate… we are go, go, go from sun-up to sun-down.  Take time at a minimum, once a week, to get away from the noise of life, and journal, pray, listen, think about what God may be saying to you about your life…
• Slow down, the world won’t fall apart because you don’t show up all the time  - Haiti will always be there, so will the church, as will your favorite hobbies, or the things you find very important – but this time in your kids lives, you will never get back; you and your spouse will never get to live this time over; one day your kids won’t need you to rock them to sleep, or lay by them when they are lonely or just want to watch a movie…so slow down!

Here’s what I have realized about me, I have some discontentment in my life, some of it, as Alan Hirsch would call, Holy Discontentment, is good, very good.  But the other elements I am discontented about, if I were to dig deep enough, are things of vanity, selfish ambition, and those are the things I need to rid myself of, by slowing down, so I can starve it out.  The truth is, much of what we chase, we chase because we are afraid, if we don’t achieve, arrive, accomplish, we won’t ‘be’ all we want to be, in other words we chase much of what we chase out of fear.  Sure, we like to dress it up and think, “if I don’t then it/he/she/they won’t…” but the truth is, for many of us, the motivation is, “if I don’t, then I won’t be, become, be noticed, find value, etc…”

Please hear me, this is NOT a call for laziness, this is a call for just the opposite, to slow down, and live deeply right where you are!

parable of God’s love

Community is a very popular term today, it is a fad, it is a word we use for any sort of gathering, and like most terms, ideas, or dreams that become fads, and can be used to tag about anything, it has lost its gravity, its weight, its meaning.

The truth is, we all long for community.  We do.  We all long to be deeply known, loved and accepted for who we truly are, while at the same time contributing our lives to something beyond us.  But this is not how we function in the west.  We are ‘doers’.  We want to get it done, get it off the “to-do” list. Then if something, like community, costs us in the way of pride, transparency, or perceived status, we quickly strip it of its value and depth, cheaply quantify it and begin to manufacture pseudo-communities in order for us to ‘feel’ like we are in community without the cost of community.  And as a culture we will go to great financial cost to make us ‘feel’ like we are in community, in order to avoid the personal, emotional, or security cost.  This is not the place to expound on that, but just for a moment think of some of the sales pitches, we buy into, “…if you buy [you feel in the blank] then you will be part of this group, family, community…”  Heck, if you buy a Chevrolet, you will receive a letter about three weeks after your purchase, informing you that you are now part of the “Chevrolet Family.”  That’s not family, I can’t depend on these people when times are bad, in fact, if hard times come my way, and I loose my job, and I can’t pay my bills, then all of the sudden, that family, is going to take away my car… that’s not family.  Think of facebook, most subdivisions, Starbucks…what are these things?  They are the illusions of community without the personal cost of real community.  In fact, we have exchanged the cost of real gospel community to surround ourselves with people who are just like us, thus validating the self-seeking, self-promotion pursuits I have in my life.

But according to scripture, this is not true community.  The truth is, when we live in true community, we become a parable of God’s love to the world around us.  In fact, throughout scripture, God seems to be very intentional about the purpose of community, and that purpose is much larger than the nice warm feeling of being accepted.  From the very beginning of time, community has been the tool for the movement of God.  From God himself (three-in-one), Adam and Eve, tribes of Israel, Jesus and the twelve, and then the church.  So, I suggest, if you desire to do anything with any significance in life, you may need to, ditch the idea of the one-man-army, and surround yourself with some people, who will love you enough to get in your junk, and still love and unconditionally accept you for who you are and who you are not.  Until then, you will be blinded by the deception of self. Often times, this is really hard to understand, especially in our culture, when idolizing or exalting a ‘single person’ as ‘the man’ is second nature, we do this in the secular world and in the church.  However, if God the creator of all things, the one in which nothing is impossible for, chooses to move his will forward through community, then it would only make sense that us finite, mortal beings would have to work through the bonds of community.

So, why does God work through community, instead of lone-rangers?  There are several reasons, but I think those reasons can be collapsed down into the following four:

• God chooses to work through community to rescue and comfort the oppressed, marginalized, and abandoned.
• God chooses to work through community in healing our brokenness and pain.
• God chooses to work through community in transforming us into the image of His son, Jesus.
• God chooses to work through community to reveal his love to the world.

In light of this, here’s what we have realized:

• In order to be the type of community that is a parable of God’s love to the world around us, we have to fight for it, because everything in us, wants our friends, to be a parable of our glory.
• We have to be intentional, because it is natural for us to form our lives in a way that is completely inward focused.
• We have to be submissive to the work of the Holy Spirit in and among “US” as opposed to His ‘work’ through me telling others what to do.
• We have to reorient our lives for the good of the community, which goes against the flesh (my desire to be oriented around the good of me).

 

 

 

 

 

Learning Myself, pt 2

About six months ago, I wrote a blog called, “Learning Myself“.  There’s been a lot happen in those past six months, new friends, new ventures, travel, new environments, etc.  I believe, as this blog will show, along with other blogs on learning myself will, I believe it is very important at times to do a bit of introspection, to turn the spotlight in on one’s own heart and mind and ask yourself, “what have these recent events revealed about myself?”  Sometimes you will be pleasantly surprised.  Other times you will be embarrassed.  Some things will come out of left field, and others are more obvious.  So, all that being said, I think some of the things I have learned about myself in the last six months are as follows:

• I need learn to slow down – period.  And the truth is, if I were to be really honest, much of the things I do that cause me to miss some of the most beautiful things in my families life, are (a) not worth it and (b) out of some selfish-ambition that in the end doesn’t matter.

• One of the major flaws in my leadership is that I seem to create dependents more than I do disciples…I’m not sure what that flaw is, but it’s there, and I’m asking God to reveal what ever the root of that flaw is, be it insecurity, small-mindedness, or being over-bearing…I hate this about my leadership – hate it!

• I actually love being a pastor…pause: not CEO; make the church grow; quantify the life out of everything; get my name out there; keep myself in the spotlight leader; but pastor – and there is a huge difference, but this isn’t the place for that blog.  This was made very real to me on three separate occasions (1) the first was being in Haiti with my team, my part was to play the pastor role [admittedly I didn't not do so well at this, but the main reason was, I didn't prepare for what I didn't expect, and the unexpected happened a lot - both emotionally and physically, next time I'll know what to plan for], Haiti was great, but nothing gave me greater joy than being a pastor on that trip. (2) I look at my study life – sure I love to read books on sociology, justice, human trafficking and history… I love to read them and often times they are like a good ale for my soul; BUT, when I begin to dig into Biblical theology, study on the atonement, scripture, the work and person of Jesus and teach and guide with the scriptures, it is like the finest red-wine I’ve ever had for my soul. (3) Someone tried to nail me down the other day.  They said, “hey, you’re the anti-slavery guy aren’t you…” I assumed my reaction would have been much like one of those cartoons where the proud person sticks his chest up and yells, “that’s right, that’s who I am…”, but I didn’t… I said, “um no…I mean, yes, I fight human trafficking, I long to restore the orphan, and end cycles of poverty, but I’m just a pastor who wants to help lead others into a deep relationship with Jesus through community, scripture, and prayer, to the point they become a people who do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before God…” All that to say, maybe it is time to redefine or better yet, uncover the real meaning of pastor that has been lost in western church world (again, that’s for another blog).

• According to Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, one of the commonalities of the best leaders in many different fields is their willingness and ability to focus on one or two things only, and put 100% of their energy to this… if this is true, and the more I do, the more I believe it is, then I am not on a fast track from good to great…

• I think God is wanting me to focus on things like prayer, quietness, sober mindedness, finding the sacred in the ordinary, and kindness as opposed to accomplishment, popularity, and whatever else we driven people focus on – not the most exciting request God has given me, but what the heck… In fact, about a month ago, I had a guy that I’ve known for over 25 years say to me, “ya’ know, you just seem a lot nicer than you used to be…it’s kind of nice...”  I have never been accused of being nice, but I know what he meant, and he’s right… I can’t take credit for that, I chalk it up to age and 3 daughters.

Getting ready to enter a new phase of life with Sarah going back to school. I know this is going to throw the schedule into whack, and cause us to be even more intentional in our scheduling, time with each other, the kids, and community.  We are at a point where we are really going to have to trim the fat (metaphorically speaking) out of our lives and only focus on what really matters.  I’ll see what I’ve learned about myself by the beginning of the year.