Spiritual Formation and Emotional Health with John Mark Comer

good morning you're here in the snow I was expecting you know 30 or 40 people in a church basement with lousy coffee and here you all are so it's a it's a little bit of oh man I hope I I'm not terrible but hi I had a Jason said hey would you chat about spiritual formation and emotional health and a lot of my work is in that arena and so I had a talk in the can that's kind of like you know I don't know a pastoral leadership talk but as I was starting to think about our time together and Jason said hey there's more than a few people coming I began to just kind of you know as you do listen to the the spirit my heart and so I have I put together some thoughts yesterday and I got up early this morning and in lieu of a run it was a little snowy outside so instead I have some new thoughts so this isn't all that put together but I do want to chat to you around spiritual formation and emotional health and anything I can do just to aid you in your journey now in 30-something years whoever you are well well done how do we be here in this room that far in you know I've been at our church for this year we'll be 17 years in since we planted and that field 17 years I think in church planting that's like it's like dog years I think that's like a hundred and fifty you know so I think well especially for millennial well-tanned 17 years at anything well done but how do how do we stay in it you know not just 17 but 30 40 50 and more than just stay in it but how do we how do we really grow and mature and and thrive and and what does that even look like and so let's chat about some of that if you have a Bible please turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 11 if you don't have a Bible well you're a pastor so no I'm kidding 1 grenades 11 I just have a few I don't have I'm not going to exegete a passage or whatever but it's a few thoughts based on Paul's insights into pastoral leadership and spiritual formation and he would not use this language but emotional health or whatever you want to call it so I just want to take a look at if things that Paul has to say about pastoral leadership and life with Jesus and maybe draw a few insights for our experience here and now Jesus again we're just so grateful for you for your example not just of how to die but of how to live grateful for your easy yoke we're grateful for your pace of life we're grateful for your invitation to slow down an unhurried and live a life of abiding of just resting in you as you come to rest on us so Holy Spirit even now in this beautiful winter day these wonderful people would you just come and visit us with your sweet presence your wisdom your discernment have mercy on me and give us your peace amen I love what Paul writes at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 11 in fact if you want to back up a line or two or there's a paragraph bacon chapter 10 verse 31 so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do do it all for the glory of God do not cause anyone to stumble it's a great word for pastors whether Jews Greeks or the Church of God even as I try to please everyone in every way for I'm not seeking my own good more about that later but the good of many so that they may be saved follow my example as I follow the example of Christ it's an interesting line follow my example as I follow the example of Christ for years you know I read that line and all honestly I thought it was a little bit pretentious you know and in my pretty lousy you know adolescent theology it was well he can say that because he's Paul as if somehow you know writing the New Testament makes you superhuman or something like that but I really have come full circle to think you know if I can't to say that then I have no business being in leadership at a church and notice Paul does not say live you know perfect as I live perfect he says follow Jesus kind of the way that I follow Jesus you will do well over the last number of years we have rebuilt our church down in Portland around kind of all things spiritual formation and I'm happy to take questions around that down the road we have still have more questions and answers but one of the most difficult and I think hard-earned lessons that we have come to is very simple and it's that leadership is about example an invitation not coercion in control and and that for me becoming due to my personality that was a very hard lesson for me to learn this whole thing it's about example and invitation follow me as I follow Christ you see that in Jesus you see in Paul you see in church history it is not about conversion coercion and control and to lead in this kind of a way we have to see ourselves and this is so basic but first as a follower and then as a leader first as a practitioner and then as a teacher we have to view our body and our life in our body as a living laboratory for the way of Jesus in our city and in our generation and in our time because if you think about it the whole thing that we're trying to do is really form Christ in people turn over to Galatians chapter 4 most of you know Paul's line in Galatians chapter 4 let's pick it up in verse let's just pick it up in verse 19 he writes My dear children and there's that parental tone to leadership right that mother or father tone but actually it's the mother our emphasis here for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you how I wish I could be with you and changed my tone because I am perplexed about you which is what every parent would say to their child if they were Paul I am perplexed about you and every pastor would say that at times too and I love Paul's vision of the end goal here is not to plant churches or deliver lectures it's not to organize community it's not to put on events those are all means to an end the end is to mother people and nurture people and and form Christ in people at spiritual formation it's in Paul in Scott McKnight's most recent book on pastoring he calls it Christ deformity which is just his language for Christ's likeness it's to pasture people to mother people or parent people or nurture people into Christ Oh forma T and this is of course where we get our language of spiritual formation it's literally from this Greek word right here till Christ is formed in you and that is our job whatever you do if your children's pastor or lead pastor or sermon or worship or ops or whatever you do the end goal of all of this is spiritual formation and so everything we do is a means to that end and I would define of course spirit spirituality in the Jesus tradition as our capacity to receive and give love and relationship to God on others which means that spiritual formation is the process by which we are formed into people with a greater and greater capacity to receive and to give love and the tricky thing about spiritual formation and this has been a steep learning curve for me is unlike a lot of other stuff including Bible theology and leadership you really have to live it in order to teach it so it's kind of like it's more like karate than it is like philosophy you know domain like you don't know a lot of karate instructors who just read all the books and don't actually know how to do karate you know I mean you go because it's a practice it's something that you do with your body it's not just an idea or a concept and the same is true with Jesus you can't teach people how to follow Jesus you know the old adage you can't take people somewhere you have not already gone yourself or at least are in route to you can't teach people how to follow Jesus if you have not actually you know have that in your muscle memory which is a little bit different from again Bible and theology and this is not a slant on that at all but you can exegete you know Philippians chapter 4 very well stay true to the tack to draw out Paul's authorial intent start with a good kind of catch to your sermon and with a few very practical application points and not actually be a non anxious presence and you can XG Philippians 4 give yourself a day or two to study hard you got it non anxious presence yeah there goes three decades you know but you but you can't teach somebody who's racked by anxiety and fear and is reactive and is addicted to technology and news and social media outrage how to become an awning ship reson s-- if you don't at some level have that in you turn over to 1 timothy chapter 4 which of course is one of the pastoral letters as you know and I come back to Paul's letters to Timothy a few times a year they're just so rich and I feel like the more I read them the more I fall in love with his wisdom I think this is why Paul says this in 1 Timothy chapter 4 verse 15 if you don't at the end of the chapter be diligent in these matters give yourself wholly to them so that everyone may see your progress it's for the interesting language so that everyone may see you're proud I started really young and so one of the things I I regularly hear from people as I've really seen you mature you know which is kind of accomplice salt you know but I'll take it and that's the downside to just you know growing up in front of people and when you're a leader you're a person in process leading other people in process and man if there's not humility in that I don't know where there is humility you know but that's the idea that people may see your progress that people may journey with you and sit under your leadership or living community with you over 5 years 10 15 20 and see your progress and of course in Paul's rubric that's the progress of spiritual formation you becoming more and more like Jesus and then he has this to say watch your life this is Paul's word to his young Protege in pastoral leadership watch your life and doctrine closely persevere in them because if you do you will save both yourself and all your hearers or all those that listen to you if I'm reading Paul right he's saying that in order for this end goal of progress and to you know Christ's deformity in our own life much less than the people that we lead the most number one the most important thing is that we continue to progress and grow and mature in our own spiritual formation as we cultivate an emotionally healthy if you want to use that language a grounded non anxious deep prayerful contemplative life of abiding that is active but not reactive the next most important thing is our doctrine that we think well of God because we will become like our vision of God for better or for worse and the people that we lead will become like our vision of God for better or for worse and it's so imperative I the more I get into both biblical theology and spiritual formation and the psychological aspect of that the more I come to the conviction that man what we think about God is is the most important thing about this Tozer said that years ago in Canada and he said it's because we tend by quote a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God why is it that pastors who most emphasize the wrath of God are often known for not being nice and pastors who emphasize the freedom of God are often known for being the least holy right there's just something to all of this like we become like the vision this is true we could argue this from theology we could argue this from church history we could argue this from neurobiology like all of the evidences in we become through mirror neurons in our brain I read all this whole book if you want to nerd out called how God changes the brain it's a whole new emerging field of science called neuro theology where neuroscientists are doing deep research around religion spirituality Christian spirituality and and they tie it all to the mirror neuron in your brain you know think about when you look at somebody and they smile at you what do you do unless if it's winter and really bad and you're really grumpy most of the time even if you're a laid-back Canadian or West Coast person you smile that that's but like the instinctive mirror neuron in your brain this is true at every level it's why when somebody walks into the room and is and is anxious we feel a little bit of we feel a little anxious you know we're sad we feel a little sad or as happy it's like oh there's a type 7 we're like okay everything's okay you know and we feel this is like the same is true more than ever with God we become like our vision of God so watch your life your soul and your doctrine how you think about God very closely and then that in might unless I'm doing the math wrong that means the last or the least most of the least important thing we do is develop leadership skills which i think is where most people start and when to that in particular with an event like this the kind of technique now I could just be saying that because honestly I am a b- leader I'm not a great leader I get away with way too much to do our team and the mercy of God and the occasional sermon but I have really is I'm not I'm not here to give you like this is how you lead really well I'm not the guy that you should ask about that but I have really come to believe that the greatest gift that we offer the people we lead and this this sounds pretentious and I don't mean it that way is our self Ruth Haley Barton has that great line and by the way you've not read her strengthening the soul of your leadership anybody read that it's on a short list of books I read every year it's just fantastic but she has this line the best gift you can give the people you lead is you're transforming self how what a great lot and it's really weird grammar you're transforming self but that's weird grammar but very solid theology again where people in process leading others in process not our transformed self not like once I get my life all transformed then let me Pastor people are transforming self and this is really the best gift that we give to our people us at some level emotionally healthy present to God and our own body and the person in front of us and doing what we were made by God to do and the opposite is true Jason when I were talking about this yesterday the greatest threat to the people that you lead is yourself and that's just the hard truth the greatest danger to the people you lead I don't think is Satan I don't think it's seculars and I don't think it's the iPhone I don't think it's transients I don't think it's the breakdown of the family or critical gender theory though all of those are dangerous things I think the greatest danger is me and you we have more capacity to do harm and damage and wreak havoc and the people we lead I think than anybody else so there is a reciprocal relationship between our emotional health our maturity our formation the depth of our prayer life with Jesus and that of the people that we lead Pete's cos arrow says it so well in his little Maxim as the leaders go so it goes the church I read his first book emotionally a healthy church which is actually my favorite of all of this if you've not read the ogee but I read it when I was 23 it was the year we planted and it was on Rob bells reading list back when he was like the coolest thing ever and was like exegete in leviticus and orthodox and stuff and and something like oh this sounds like a weird book emotionally healthy Church okay and so I read it and I remember thinking oh this is great but it literally went in one ear and out the other and over the next 10 years I did pretty much every single thing he said not to do and then I came back to it at 33 on my sabbatical in a kind of early midlife crisis burnout you know feeling like a failure as a pastor and leader and I read it again and this time I was ready to receive what he had to say and I just remember reading that opening line as the leaders go so goes to church and think oh well yeah that's the problem like I'm I'm not well why would I expect the people that I lead to be well and he's right I mean his little insight is that a church will rarely rise not never but rarely rise above the level of health maturity and formation of its core leaders and leadership team so all I really want Iraq rap with you today about is how do we kind of watch our life and doctrine closely and persevere in them it's an interesting line from Paul persevere and we're in this for the long haul how do we how do we stay in the room decades in and and how do we not just stay in it but again grow and mature in our capacity to receive and to give love I am 39 I turned 40 soon you know I'm just at that age where a number of the leaders that I came up with her gone over the last 10 years you know a number of kind of celebrity pastors have gone the way of whatever and then a number of non celebrity pastors we all know people that aren't on the front page of the New York Times but it's the same exact kind of story just not famous and you know for I think most of them are lost to one of the three great threats to our generation or maybe this is every generation but in particular to ours one two lousy theology which for most people in our generation and I mean that the broad sends his progressive theology or a more biblical way to say that is compromised with the world or to moral failure some kind of a mistake that you don't come back from or you don't come back from fast often sexual but not always and 3im is burnout just people just get tired or the marriage is tired or people just worn out and and and those three things by the way all go together but the inter thing that's interesting thing about that last one about burnout is that one comes for everybody even if you have impeccable theology even if you are a moral exemplar at some level burnout man it will still haunt you that one comes across theological lines across denominational lines across generational lines across urban suburban lines it comes for everybody and you know just the question we have to ask is man how do we persevere in Paul's language how do we stay in this and not get you know sidetracked by one of the big three by you know lousy progressive theology or by moral failure or by far more dangerous for most of us just good old-fashioned burnout and leadership there's like no I'm not here to give you a pep talk leadership is hard in my it's pastoral leadership is harder still and pastoral leadership in the day and age of canceled culture and PC and polarization and secularism a post-christian hostility like gosh that's not an easy task so how do we stay in this for the long term well just three kind of things I want to chat to you about this morning I think about it through layers kind of three layers let me just wrap a little bit about each one lifestyle personality and inner work first off I think is just crafting a sustainable lifestyle we have the saying that we throw around back home if you want to experience the life of Jesus you have to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus this is based on Jesus famous line in Matthew 11 come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden take my yoke upon you and I will give you my rest and you know that's it I grew up in the church and I'm not a first-century Jewish farmer so it's easy for me to forget what odd imagery that is of you know an easy yoke we would say something like a relaxing tractor or something like that and if you translate it that way you're like wait what that doesn't make any sense Fredrik Dale Bruner who is one of the top scholars in the world right now on the Gospel of Matthew and his commentary writes this a yoke is a work instrument thus when Jesus offers a yoke he offers what we might think tired workers need the least leading the mattress or a vacation not a yoke you know I mean like I want a condo in Kauai not a tractor like that's not how I want to deal with the burnout in my soul but Jesus realizes this is a really great insight that the most restful gift he can give the tired many of you in the room retired is a new way to carry life a fresh way to bear responsibilities realism sees that life is a succession of burdens we cannot get away from them thus instead of offering escape Jesus offers equipment Jesus means that obedience to his Sermon on the Mount his yoke in context in Matthew will develop us in a balance and a of caring life that will give more rest than the way we have been living a lot of people view emotional health as a kind of escape from the burden and the responsibility and the pressure and the hard work of life and leadership it's not an escape and there's no silver bullet but there is a way to carry life that is sustainable over a long haul that is based on the lifestyle of Jesus and you know Willard in his work on this called it called Matthew 11 the secret of the easy yoke that was his insight and his basic insight was that what a lot of us try to do is we read Matthew 5 6 & 7 we read the Sermon on the Mount or just insert you know whatever teaching of Jesus or Paul or whatever you have in your mind and then we just go out and we try to live it we just go out and try to love our enemies or try to not worry anymore or try to not lust or whatever and but we live the rest of our life the way that everybody else in Vancouver does or our generation does we spend our money we spend our time we interact with our phone and the internet Netflix we do relationships we just kind of most of our life other than like the moral stuff is the same as everybody else and then he just writes quote if that is a strategy bound to fail if we attempt as pastors to go out and do all the stuff that Jesus did teach and preach and heal the sick and cast out demons and start communities and stand up against religious corruption and do justice all the things that we do but then we don't adopt Jesus overall lifestyle we don't follow his example we just kind of live the way that most people our age do in our city do that is quote a strategy bound to fail and one of the first things if you want to just kind of summarize Jesus rhythm what made it sustainable for him is I think one of the first things that you realize about Jesus is this this rhythm of retreat and return whatever you want to call that retreat and return where Jesus would just oscillate back and forth between kind of retreat time alone to regather himself to God in the quiet and prayer time with close friends rest sleeping Sabbath and then return like re-engage T to preach heal the sick cast out demons review get into fights like offer a prophetic word do all the things and then he would disappear again and this rhythm of retreat and return is in all four Gospels it's painfully obvious on the page I love Luke's little summary quote from chapter 5 Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed man cannot be said of you Sarah John will Jason often withdrew to lonely places and prayed in fact I would argue that the more in demand if I'm reading Luke in particular right the more in demand that Jesus was the more responsibility that was on him the more influenced the more he snuck away to pray rest sleep process with friends grieve feel his emotions process discern and get direction from God often we go the exact opposite direction I just read elton truebloods autobiography last week over the Christmas break if you know him 20th century Quaker and he had this great line about how the more public a leader is the more you have to learn how to hide and he base that on Jesus example and there's really something there and this is a lesson again I have had to learn this the hard way and I'm still in process on learning this one I have a couple I'm not into sports but I have a number of we all have friends who are all about sports and want to talk about it all the time but apparently this is massive debate been learning a lot about kind of some of this I think there's a lot of parallels between that lettis ISM and some of what we do and apparently is this massive debate in the NBA right now overload management and where this is whole thing where the key players like actually the better they get and the more important they are to the team actually the more they have to rest but this is a massive problem because if you pay to go see you know the Blazers or whatever your team of choice is and you show up and the star player is like on the sideline just resting his soul so that he can be a good husband and not hurt his knee and be really present for the next game you're like what I just paid aren't tickets expensive but they like really spending I don't know they are I just paid whatever I paid 60 bucks or whatever to see so-and-so and he's not there you know and my therapist actually used the analogy of baseball and I don't know anything about baseball but at all this is dangerous I'm not even sure I understood him at the right way but the metaphor the metaphor was true whether or not it was true but he used the analogy of a pitcher in baseball apparently a pitcher is different than a basketball player and that you know the the more important pitcher is the the less they can actually pitch and they're a great threat to throw out their arm so once they get to the World Series it's this big psychological game where you know that pitcher can't actually play all of those games so it's this like give-and-take like with the person that helped get the team there can't actually play all of the games and so this is big you know thing psychology around or whatever you basically said you've been thinking that the more responsibility is put on you the more influence you have the more God's blessing is on you the more you need to do actually it's the exact opposite you need to do less now than you have ever done and you just spend more time in prayer rest quiet it's reading a fascinating book last week on Olympians and it said that the difference once you get to that highest tier of athletics the difference between the elites and just the really good athletes is not how hard they work it's how much they rest they all trained it said pretty much at the same level of intensity and many of them have the same level of talent what separates the Olympian from the great is how seriously they take rest recovery care soul care spirituality things like that so I cannot many of you are young in the room and you will have at least for a little while it goes away but this sense of like upward mobility trust me it doesn't last but you have this sense of a more responsibility Oh more influence Oh more whatever I cannot encourage you more I work less hours now that I've ever worked and I spend more time resting and in prayer than I ever have and I still feel like it's not enough I recently read ordering your private world like Gordon McDonald anybody read that yeah I'd not even heard of it and apparently like sold a million copies he knows from Denver Sanford seminary was the pastor for many many years in New York and beautiful beautiful book that's a bit dated now but still very good but my the best line in the entire book on have a slide for you but let me just read this to you he said he write this writes this jesus knew his limits well that's a good insight do you know your limits well you're like yeah I know them really well and blow past them every day Jesus knew his limits well strange as it may seem he knew what we conveniently forget here's the best one in the book time must be properly budgeted for the gathering of inner strength and resolve in order to compensate for one's weaknesses when spiritual warfare begins let me read that to you again since we don't have a slide time must be properly budgeted for the gathering of inner strength and resolve in order to compensate for one's weaknesses when spiritual warfare begins he calls this time budgeting which is a pretty simple concept is what Willard means by lifestyle but the ancients called a rule of life so level one I just think I'm going to like long-term health and how do we not burn out and get off track I think level one is just crafting a rule of life or whatever you want to call lifestyle or whatever that is sustainable we hear you know a lot that ministry is a marathon it's not a sprint and there's truth in that but I actually think an even better analogy would be to say that ministry is like a track relay race you know it's like intense output followed by deep breathing unrest that's my experience you know you don't run a marathon for 50 years you know you but you that's I think it's more like a relay race let me take the baton intense output let me get everything that I have and the Spirit of God to this event the sermon this leadership team this moment the spiritual direction encounter and then rest breathing come back to myself it's living in that kind of a healthy rhythm now I'm you know you have to craft a rule that's based on there's no right way to do this because you have to craft a rule that's based on your personality on your stage of life on the level of freedom that you have in your job it has to be countercultural to the city you live in the generation you live in for example a rule of life nowadays has to include a digital component so like I have a digital rule of life that's like an addendum to my rule of life and we just have taken our church through this and have asked our entire church you write it yourself here's a few ideas but write up a digital rule of life for your own life and cheese that's not something that like even 10 years ago people needed to have that now I honest not in the Bible it's on a moral a biblical thing but I think we need to have a digital rule of life and it has to be based on your call and all of that so they're just there is no one-size-fits-all approach just if you're curious a few key practices in my rule of life are morning prayer I just spend a long time every morning but when I say morning prayer I don't mean like I'm like up at 4:00 I am interceding for revival and speaking in tongues naked on the roof and winter and the rain like you know what I mean my prayer is it looks a lot it looks suspiciously like drinking coffee in a quiet room and just letting God love me you know and it feels more like resting than working and that's not a sermon intercessory prayer there is very but I do most of that actually with other people I do most of that with my team not by myself most of my prayer life I see is is just spent kind of resting in God listening doing my best to focus my mind which is all over the map doing my best just to hear from God a sense of direction or or conviction or discernment or whatever is on hand morning prayer is massive for me Sabbath is huge for me I am I do my best to spend the day every month in prayer even if it's like I can't go away overnight which is my ideal there's a monastery about a 50-minute drive tempt to go there whenever I can but even if I can just like get early and you know in the summer i'll drive out to this little spot and I'll just park my car and I will come back at dinnertime and just spend the day with Jesus in prayer and journaling and thinking and planning long vacations I'm a big believer that with our job there's something about that Sunday after Sunday after Sunday rhythm in particularly those of you that are on an aspect of the church that is is kind of Sunday heavy that is just there's an emotional drain to that you know and I mean if we remember that that Andy Stanley a video a couple years ago Sunday is coming you know it's like how many of you are driving home we have Sunday night gatherings I literally be driving home and like my first thought after I made it is next Sunday it's almost worse when it yet a good Sunday or a good sermon and you're like no I got to bring the heat again you know oh and then if it's bad you like I have to redeem myself worth now you know whatever that's not mature by the way just to clarify that's not how you handle that reading is a huge one for me relationships you know with my kind of trifecta community that I do life with therapist and mentor to help me with that stuff and then deep friendships that's been really life-giving for me some of you know I'm a part of a little group of guys that we spend a week together every spring it's about 13 of us and we've just committed to kind of doing life together as friends we're all lead pastors of churches and it's been the most life-giving thing I think I've ever one of the most life-giving things I've ever done in leadership and it's a really easy model we'll just spend if we fly in have dinner together and we spend one day with an older wiser kind of just person that we want to be like when we grow up this year we have Ronald Reuel Heiser coming in which is not to drop names but he's like a hero of my I'm an a fanboy out hard I'm picking him up from the airport I'm going to be like you know he's gonna have to pull the angel and revelation don't bow down to me I too am a messenger of God so it should be pretty spectacular I really really appreciate his work and then we'll do a day just kind of a best practices or helping each other or sometimes you know we'll do like a Quaker listening committee helping each other at make decisions and then a day just together and the beauty of that model it's like anybody can do a 22 year old youth pastor with seventy-five dollars can do this you don't you're not gonna have run a rule Heiser but you know what I mean you can you can like take your aunt's cabin or rent an air B&B and get some older wiser pastor in the city to come sit with you for a day and pick five or ten other youth pastors that you want to at least commit to for five or ten years if not a lifetime and and just help each other grow and mature and be like Christ and be good wives or husbands and be good leaders and following help each other make decisions and discern should you stay or go or plant or not or you know what I mean that that for me which is a very that annual trip is is a core part of my rule of life and I think it's such an easy and replicatable model so there's a few things in my rule of life that are very life-giving I'm happy to take questions on that later though it's it's pretty basic stuff second layers but that's just layer one all right so you're like this we're gonna be here forever I'll go faster that's just layer one and but there's still another layer that I would just say is discovering kind of our identity and Colleen you know if it's if it's true that the best gift you give the people you lead is your transforming self as Barton says then it stands to reason that you need to know who you are and who it is that you are becoming or not becoming I love that story in John one of John the Baptist when the Pharisees come to him you know are you the Messiah no are you Elijah no are you the Prophet no who are you quote from Isaiah I'm the voice of one crying in the wilderness that I mean that's like the dream to have that level of clarity around who we are and who were not and out of that identity a sense of calling what were called to do and what we're not called to do and to just and that that then gave him the humility to a few paragraphs later and the freedom and the capacity to a few paragraphs later say he must increase and I must decrease you know literally my ministry can dissipate and disappear and I can end up in prison and that's ok because I know who I am and I know what I'm called to do that's inside what God has set me for him and that and that's a high level of self-awareness but that's the dream is that we grow and mature to that point you know in the fifteenth century the Spanish mystics st. Teresa of Avila who I've just been reading a lot of her stuff lately and a lot of wisdom and that woman she put it this way quote almost all problems in the spiritual life stem from a lack of self-knowledge that's one of those statements that feels like an overstatement almost all problems in the spiritual life stem from a lack of self-knowledge until you actually like sit with it for a while and let it work on your mind and you're like oh yeah yes yes yes yes I think you could say the same about leadership almost all problems in spiritual leadership stem from a lack of self-knowledge we really need and this is not just Teresa or my opinon like you hear this as a refrain all through the great luminaries of church history men and women from across the spectrum that you know a really good high level of self-awareness a deep sense of who you are and who you're not what your strengths are what your weaknesses are the good the bad the ugly honesty about it without hiding from yourself or self-deception and human beings are masters of self-deception and I think are in crisis that the love of Christ for us as we are is the greatest gift because we can actually explore the full range of our personhood before God with no excuses no hiding no shame and experience his love and yet come to actually realize who we are the good the bad and the ugly and you know so many of the great leaders have said you you have to have this sense otherwise you know on the negative for two reasons on the negative side if you don't have a high sense of self-awareness you will just cause great damage to the people you leave it's the famous you know Rumi poet line you know if you're here with us unfaithful you're doing great harm and you know if you look at most you know that the pastoral celebrity stur scandals of the last decade have been really interesting because so many of them have not been the classic like so-and-so had an affair or stole money from the church so many of them have just been eager ambition domineering leadership manipulative practices not treating people of kindness hurry busyness exhaustion burnout overload most of the time it was somebody leading out of a low sense of self-awareness and leading a lot of times from a father one I mean I can't I'd like many of you I keep meeting people and I know more and more pastors I cannot tell you how many of the most well-known leaders of churches are living from deep father wounds I mean deep deep the percentage and this is Trevor this is way higher for CEOs that if you look at CEOs almost all of them have horrible relationships with their dads and you think men who would sacrifice their life who would work 90 hours a week and like pretty much have a guarantee you're not gonna stay in any marriage long term and your kids don't want anything to do with you and you're just gonna sacrifice you're so often its people that are living out of this deep wound this deep sense of I they don't feel like they were that they're enough that they're loved as they are and so I have to accomplish I have to accumulate I have to do act or they're just so scared of losing control so they control other people and they're so racked by that anxiety because they've been hurt in the past that or they can't attach because they were never loved and nurtured and so they're just cold and hot and cold and people can't connect with them and my point is not that if you have a father wound you can't be in leadership any more than if you have sin you can't be in leadership all of us are people in process leading people in process it's that if you don't have self awareness you are disaster waiting to happen and so it's so important that before the loving gaze of God and through community which is really the - you know will really discover who we are through listening prayer with God as we get to know God we get to know our self as we hold ourself up and we mirror to him in the ways that we're like him and not like him and through community we're just all of your stuff will come out in any kind of in close interpersonal relationships Mary family community around a table best friends or people I can know you as you are not the projection of you but who you actually are who you are will actually come out and then on the positive side so the negative side we have to do this work so that we don't like drag our shadow side and project it on to other people and hurt people but on the positive side we have to do this because you know so many of us are just trying to fit into a stereotype that we're not you know this is so like you hear this all the time but we need to hear it more I specifically remember years ago I was wrestling with my job and the size of our church and I was all angsty about Sunday centric Church and all this stuff and I I just read the pastor by Eugene Peterson and was obsessed with him and at one point my therapist who's this very you know 70-something PhD Quaker guy is great at won't because he's not very like rebuked kind of guy you know and I'm his therapist but at one point he just stopped me and he said John Mark you are not Eugene Peterson nor should you be and it was just this like loving rebuke and I was like oh yeah I met Eugene he was like the mellowest person I've ever met in my entire life I am and he's wonderful and I adore him but oh yeah that's a different call than my and he translated the Bible I'm not doing that anytime soon you know and it was I mean II just had this great insight he said you know mentors are only helpful in so much they mirror back to us God's call on our own life otherwise they can actually be really dangerous because we start to pattern our life not just after a lifestyle which is great I'm always asking pastors what's your morning routine what's your rule of life how you handing handling email what's your staff meeting asking all those lifestyle questions but then we start to pattern our life after their identity and calling when we might have a very different identity and a very different calling and then we just expand all of this energy trying to be somebody we're not Parker Palmer and his beautiful little book let your life speak if you've read that about the seasons of life he tells his story of burnout and he just is this great little line about how sometimes burnout isn't a function of giving too much it's a function of giving something that's not ours to give in the first place meaning we think burnout is just I work too many hours and I need a vacation but I know lots of people that work 40 hours a week and still burnout I know other people that work 70 hours a week I don't but and seem full of life and energy and passion and vitality and some of that's personal capacity and we're all different on that I don't have that kind of a capacity but a lot of it is what people are doing and we all know that you'll do that and none of us have the great job I was with John or Brooke recently we were chatting about this and my angst because I really feel like I should just be a teacher and do spiritual direction not lead a church and you know and you know and he's somewhat similar and he kind of got sucked into church leadership when he wanted to be a teaching pastor and you know but he was so relaxed about it he wasn't all angsty like me and he said you know I don't really like leadership but I'm really interested in growth and he said nothing will show me how much I need to grow like leading other people and I was like that's very true and very mature is like I want to grow to be more like Christ and just every time I lead I see all the ways that I'm not and it just throws it in my face and then he said you know there's this there's no so there's no role out there where you get it and you're just like everything is perfect you have the perfect job you know he said if you can get within 80 percent you're killing it and he said just try at some point to get within 80 percent there's always going to be a chunk of your job your life your role that's outside of your gift set and you know if if 80% of your job is outside of your identity and calling that's a problem but if 20% is outside that's just life you know and I think how do we move how do we move that dial toward that end now obviously this is a lot harder for those of you that are young and don't have that same freedom and privilege to kind of pick what I want to do is nothing worse like when the 22 year olds like I don't really want to do that job I'd rather do this one I'm sorry you know so that's like I'm sorry I just it's a bummer but you have to kind of do the job you have to get the job you want you know and I spent I was a 1st through 3rd grade pastor for a number of Amith can you imagine that and then I was a youth pastor what kind of heinous cruel satanic joke was that on those poor children you know and that was not my identity and calling but that was that was my job and there was there was something good about that for me you know Cal Newport if you're a recalling for its work deep work is the the one I recommend everybody but his but before that is called so good they can't ignore you which is great it's based on the Steve Martin line when he was asked like how do you make it in your career and he said be so good they can't ignore you and it's a book about excellence and how excellence is more important than passion that being really good at your job is far more important and rewarding than having a job that you're passionate about and he does all the data on that really and basically it's like an anti Steve Jobs commencement speech a book it's really good but in it and he has this idea of vocational equity that the better you get at your job and the longer you keep at it the more you accrue what he calls vocational equity the more you accrue the ability to kind of actually eventually do the job that you really want and that you really feel and we would use language of called for and made to do and this is not something that happens in like a year or two if anybody's read Bobby Clinton's work on the making of a leader has anybody read that that that is like that's one of the few that's a leadership book I would say everybody should read he has this idea the last kind of stage as a six you know six stage development pattern for spiritual leadership and I think the second to last one is what he calls convergence which is just where your job and your experience and your identity and calling all like converge and come together and you're just like in some kind of a role a ministry leadership possession where like it just maximizes your doing what God made you to do some people get there in their 20s most people get there in their 50s the point is just to move toward that you know wherever you are at in spectrum so get within 80% so layer 1 lifestyle layer 2 kind of discovering your identity and personality and then finally as we end is just what I would call layer 3 is just doing the inner work doing the inner work you know one of the hard lessons I've had to learn and again I don't think I'm a natural leader is is painfully obvious and it's just that life is really good but life is really hard Emma's got pack in his beautiful book the road less travelled which is one of my favorites his opening line is life is difficult and that sounds really dour and it's actually not but I mean he says this great insight when you expect life to be easy it's really hard but when you expect life to be difficult then actually it's very doable and beautiful before God and I say that because I think there's a myth that at least I buy into in my idealism and a lot of leaders are idealists and it's what makes us good at our job and it's our Achilles heel because people are not ideal life is not ideal church is not ideal it's messy and it's human and people don't do what they should do and we don't do what we want to do and the whole thing's a mess and beautiful but the idealism can be can be really dangerous it can be it can be violent at times but I read an interesting interview with him where he because what got him started as a clinical psychologist was the question of the problem of evil in the 20th century how could the most advanced civilization in human history in Germany in particular and then later in Russia in other places create the greatest genocide in human history and do so much evil and he in the 80s he bought up apparently all of the Soviet art like Soviet propaganda from communist regimes and he put it all over a room in his house and apparently just creeps people out when they like walk into this room there's just Stalin everywhere and read graphic design of like the hand and the fist you know and he said he said he put it there to remind himself though that he would never forget this is what happens when human beings attempt to create utopia and there's an idealism that I'm prone to actually have the same personality type as all three of the famous communist leaders so there's that that's great like you google like Google famous whatever your myers-briggs type is and it's like Karl Marx Joseph Stalin and Lenin awesome great somebody else is like whisper spoon or whatever the genocide people you know great but they were all idealists they were there they were they could visualize this unrealized future and they didn't test it they didn't practice it they didn't live it they tested it on live subjects and it was a disaster just wreaked havoc in people's life so I say that idealism is dangerous and I think the idealism is hey if we can just nail our lifestyle and then just get a high self-awareness and a role where we're really doing we're made to do ah no burnout no temptation and we're gonna do great we're just gonna be happy all the time we're gonna be full of life and energy we're never gonna get tired and burned out we're just gonna kill it for 60 years I think that's idealism life is hard what you realize is you kind of get your lifestyle in order massive help then you kind of grown self awareness and you mitigated your shadow side through community and help and soul healing and you and you kind of work your way over many years into a job that's really in line with your gift set and how God wired you and your temper man massive help and then you realize oh but life is still hard doesn't solve all my problems there's no silver bullet there's no three-step formula there's no light download this rule of life off of this website and never burn out like there's all this inner stuff and that's where again or burg I don't really like leadership but I like growth and leadership is a great way to grow there's this constant invitation to kind of do this inner work and three things let me just end here if you want to turn over 2 Thessalonians I'll just read this really fast to you just a few pages to the left Paul has this great line up and thinking about a lot in Thessalonians you know verse 2 right at the bit right at the very beginning when Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 2 we always thank God for all of you won't end here continually mint and we continually mention you in our prayers we remember before our God and Father and here's his beautiful try part observation your work produced by faith your labor prompted by love and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ man I've been thinking a lot about this lately work produced by faith labor prompted by love and endurance inspired by hope and I've been thinking about how often my work is not produced by faith my labor is not prompted by love and my endurance or lack thereof is not inspired by hope often my work is not prompted by are produced by faith but by anxiety and a need to control you know faith so many scholars now argue that a much better English translation is the word trust whatever you want to call pissed is faith and Trust or fidelity is another translation it is a kind of trust and confidence and fidelity to God's presence goodness and involvement in our leadership in life when our when our work is produced by faith we work from this place of inner calm and tranquility and confidence that God is with us and for us and ahead of us and we I love Eugene Peterson's insight into Genesis chapter 1 if you read that where he writes about you know in biblical theology the day starts with sleep it was you know this evening and it was morning on the first day and the week starts with Sabbath just think just think any and then he Garg you is that that's God teaching justification by grace through faith from page 1 in the Bible your day starts with sleep your week starts with rest and then he just says when I wake up and go to work I wake up to a story of what God already has been doing not just while I was asleep but for thousands or millions of years I've been a fascinating or I was listening to a fascinating podcast but the neuroscientist was a sleep expert and he said we can't figure out sleep because it makes no evolutionary sense so when they try to interpret sleep through evolutionary biology it doesn't make sense because if you think about an animal that sleeping it's the most they're vulnerable to attack wild animal disease press it's very dangerous they can't make sense of it why did human beings evolve in the universe to sleep I'm like yeah cuz God was teaching justification by grace through faith come on don't you know that mister nurse and neuroscientists you know man we the day starts with sleep the week starts with rest we wake up to what God is all I think of what Jesus said my father is always working I always do it pleases the father you rest you sleep you're not God you're you I'm me we play our small part we join the Father and what he's already doing the opposite of this kind of working from trust and confidence and limitations and rest and peace is working from anxiety and when we lead from a place of anxiety what if God's not with me what if it doesn't go well what if they hate me what if it's a failure what if it doesn't come together what if my identity isn't validated by success whatever it is even if it's at a subconscious for most of us level not conscious when we lead from this place of anxiety and it's twin which is anger and those two go together we lead in a manner of domination we seek to manipulate and control other people whether it's through alpha male kind of domination leadership or passive aggressive thing which is far more common and just as corrosive though it's most more socially acceptable our staff has this little thing we've we've come up with over a number of years now I'm trying to do spiritual formation with the whole church they just say coercion is not a fruit of the Spirit I like that it's true coercion Paul's like love joy peace patience making people do what you know they need to do to grow that's not on his less coercion you know and the the more and this is where leadership this is a whole other sermon I'm not going to rant on but I really think that faith and I think the better word is trust is the core of the spiritual life even before we get to love because I don't think we actually can become loving people until we've come to trust in Jesus and let go of our need for control until we can let go of the need for our life and our leadership to go a certain way for us to be safe happy and at peace we will inevitably lead in such a way that we attempt to manipulate and coerce the people and events of our life to make them what we think they need to be for us to feel safe and happy and we will do great damage and we will burn out because it's exhausting because you can't control people if there's anything you're gonna learn really fast as a pastor it's you're not in control you're just not any kind of leadership parenting doesn't matter you're not in control example invitation that's all you have so work prompted produced by faith and then labor prompted by love often my my labor is not prompted by love not definitely not by agape which I would just define us to will the good of another ahead of your own is prompted by ego or ambition and any sub facet of that greed desire desire for notoriety fear insecurity about I mean that often if we if we're actually honest and most of us don't even want to be honest with ourself bunch of other people what drives us and we really is a driven this is not a cop a it's egoic ambition it's some desire for something else and when we're run by these kinds of egoic motivations we are a danger to others as we're more likely to operate out of anxiety and domination and control and manipulation and those kind of tactics of leadership but we're also a danger to ourselves and to burnout because it's just it's not a sustainable thing you know there's just to live by the social darwinism of how do I make it there will always be somebody more successful than us more intelligent than us cooler than I was better than as more christ-like than asked that comparison will just corrode and oxidize all of our joy and confidence and contentment so as long as we're in bondage to our ego and driven by self-interest we will cause great harm to other people and we will just below and burn out our own soul we have to come to this place a first inner freedom and Trust where we just detached release the illusion of control and have faith in God and then God has to move us and one way of framing the whole spiritual journey has from this kind of moving off of the egoic operating system to a life of agave that's one way of looking at the hundred years of your life every child comes out of the womb 100 percent run by egoic operating system I want what I want now it's all about what I want what I feel what I need when I'm hungry for what I'm thirsty for I don't get what I want I cry and I scream all of us are that way some people never mature beyond that they just grow more sophisticated but they're still in that same level of egoic operating system at 82 other people become over many years of discipleship to Jesus and spiritual formation free to a greater and greater degree of that to become people who are more and more run by agape run by self giving just the flow of the Trinitarian community of God's love through you to other people even if it comes at great cost to yourself and then lastly that's endurance inspired by hope often my endurance are just sticking at it or staying in my job and role is not inspired by hope it's just run by cynicism and striving those will not get you very far very long that just kind of I'm gonna stay at it probably not gonna go great but I'm Canadian we're all cynical so what the heck you know I could say that because it's no different down south but man that's that's not a sustainable way and so to end just read what he says next with me for you know brothers and sisters verse 4 loved by God a beautiful language he's chosen you because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction you know how we lived among you as the example and invitation for your sake there's a life motivated not by ego but by agape and you became imitators of us same exact idea again this is his paradigm and of the Lord follow me as I follow Christ for you welcome to the message people chose to say yes not all people choose to say yes what made this church unique was they chose to say yes in the midst of severe suffering this is not an easy life everything is hard with the joy given by the holy spirit ah but it's rich and good and beautiful and I'm so grateful and then here's my one of my favorite lines in the New Testament and so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Aki the Lord's message rang out from you not only in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland your faith in God that's a heretical translation but Eugene Peterson did it your faith in God has become known everywhere this church in Thessalonica was a model literally to the church in the known world for its work produced by faith it's labor prompted by love it's endurance inspired by hope which was in turn built on the model of Paul's life in leadership there was just a man who planted churches said follow me as I follow Christ a person who was in process leading others in process he said yes others said yes and the result was a model church that's really the dream for your church for mine for that church in the Pacific Northwest I don't think God sees the border the way that we see the border for all of us stuck up here in the rain God sorry just to end with some cynicism God is God is with us may we live in the power of the Holy Spirit

Channel: Canadian Church Leaders Network

Views: 10,505

Rating: 4.8202248 out of 5

Keywords: Jon Mark Comer, Jon Mark Komer, John Mark Komer

Id: c9Clqp737uA

Length: 62min 34sec (3754 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 30 2020