Last December, a colleague asked what was the most fun thing I had done lately. He’s always asking questions like this instead of the “How are you doing?” and so the question wasn’t really intended to offer an intense reflection on my part….but it did anyway.

I was still working my way out of a fog of grief after a difficult year that included losing my grandfather. I felt like a lot of days I was just trying to keep it together out in public; not wind up a weepy pool in the grocery store. Manage grief and stress to give it space but still be a functioning adult. But when I tried to think of the last really fun thing I did, I couldn’t think of anything……I’d been so busy with my work, with my life, that I hadn’t really taken time to have any kind of sustained fun. I wasn’t doing anything creative on a regular basis. I was stretching myself and exploring.

So, in January, I decided to take tap dance lessons. It was something I’d always wanted to do as a kid but never did. However, as a child, if I had a pair of hard soled shoes on, I was going to be “tapping.” I remember once as a third grader dancing up a storm in our upstairs tiled bathroom and finally my mother telling me to stop because it was disturbing the whole house.

It was an exhilarating moment that first rehearsal when I tied up my shoes and did my first steps.  “Look at me, I’m actually tap dancing” I felt my insides screaming. Sometimes I got the steps right, was in the zone and smiling and other times I would kick myself in the shin or twist an ankle but here is what I learned from the experience….

1. We all have those things we’ve always wanted to try, always wanted to do…What are you waiting for? It will only happen if you make the time for it, carve out the budget for it. You may have to be quiet for a little while to be able to listen to that inner child, that inner teenager or younger adult, in order to let them guide you.
2. We all need to keep trying new things even as adults. It keeps our minds fresh as we work to try new things. It makes us use new parts of our bodies, new ways of thinking. It also gives us space for new triumphs and new discoveries about ourselves while offering new opportunities to be humbled.
3. It doesn’t have to perfect, just do it and just own it. I tend towards perfectionism. If I won’t succeed in it, why give it a try. If I can’t be perfect, why bother. And in much of my life others have high expectations of me as well because I have a good reputation that I’ve worked hard for. Having space to begin something new in my life was exhilarating, space to just show up and give it my best, space where I did not have to be perfect or have it figured out. So many of us are hiding in places of comfort – jobs, relationships, marriages, church – because it is hard to step into places we are not known, to begin again, which is exactly why you need to do it!
4. What is the most fun thing you are doing these days? What have you always wanted to learn more about? What have you always wanted to try? What are you waiting for? Make it happen now…..

 Me after my recital this weekend, which is serendipitously fell on the tenth anniversary of my ordination in ministry.

When I moved to Richmond four years ago, I was in the market for a new gym. My new gym had all kinds of fancy equipment and classes.  When you join, they set you up with a meeting with a trainer under the guise of getting to know the gym better and helping you to design a plan for your personal fitness.  Of course, this is not the truth.  It is a pitch with a trainer designed to get you to sign up with them for private training.

After taking me through a round of exercises, my wanna-be trainer asked me a round of questions.  What were my fitness goals? How quickly did I want to achieve them? Of course, I said that I wanted to become stronger. I wanted to lose weight and I wanted to become all around healthier.  It was not just about a number on a scale but of getting back to a place of eating healthier and exercising regularly.  Because the weight thing was something he could hone in on with a fixed number, he asked how much I wanted to lose.  I gave him the figure that nags in the back of my mind but rarely has ever been a number I’ve seen when I stepped on a scale.

Then he asked me a question that has stuck with me, “On a scale of one to ten, how important is it for you to achieve your fitness goals?”  Whoa…It is one thing to say “it is important to me” but another thing to rate its importance in my life.  I suddenly felt a lot of pressure because if I had to be honest, I’d probably have to say that it gets a lot of lip service but meanwhile my actions do not reflect that it is a “ten” on the importance scale in my life.

Of course, he had an end game, he was trying to pressure me to sign up for personal training.  He said that he would suggest me working out with him twice a week, an hour at a time, at one hundred dollars a time.  Ok..seriously, who just has an extra eight hundred bucks a month laying around?  I couldn’t help but think, “I bet that’s what you’d recommend.”  I know he needs to make a living too and so I’m not going to begrudge him or his efforts when he acted like it was crazy for me not to sign up with him right in that moment.

But that question keeps sticking in my mind.  “On a scale of one to ten, how important is this for you?”  I think about it when I want to skip going to the gym, when I want to eat something unhealthy, when I want to procrastinate doing work for school, when I want to spend money frivolously and so on. There are always things we cannot change, cannot control in our lives but most of what keeps us from living the lives we really want is within our power to change.

What is the most important to you? What do you really value? Who do you really value? What work matters the most? What gives you energy?

Does your budget reflect that? Does your calendar reflect these things? On a scale of 1 to 10 how important are these things?

As spring moves into summer, this is a great season to reevaluate. Spend some time with these questions in the coming weeks. Grab a coffee, get up a little early, stay up a little later, take a few hours off work or get a baby sitter but spend some time focusing on what you really want out of life. What can you do in the next twenty-fours to put a priority on the things that really matter? What can you do in the next week to put a priority on the things that really matter? How about in the next six months? Where do you want to be in another one year/five years?

Stop allowing others, a busy schedule, mindless work and mindless time spent on things that do not matter rob you from living the life that you really want.

No more excuses.  What is a ten for you?  How do you adjust your life to reflect it?

It was the summer after my freshman year in college and I was headed to a small town in the middle of nowhere North Carolina to serve as the summer youth worker at a church. Before we were sent out to parts known and unknown, about seventy-five college students had gathered for a week of training. It would be a life changing summer for me but during the training, I was just nervous. In fact, I cried, no weeped, while my best friend hugged me and told me it would be Ok as we were leaving for our respective churches.

Our theme for that week of training was “Going Not Knowing” and focused on the call of Abram. God didn’t give Abram a lot of details, just said to go. God made promises to Abram and told him that his ancestors would be a blessing to the world, and so Abram and Sarai packed up and left. They were going not knowing exactly where they were going, what they would experience along the way, how they would get there, if they would have what they needed along the way.  God said go and so they just went.

The scripture for this portion of Abraham’s story was preached in churches around the world this weekend as it is the Old Testament lectionary text. In a meeting with a pastor last week she mentioned she was preparing her sermon for this text. She talked about how she was planning to explore how GPS systems and our phones have changed us. How we hardly ever go anywhere without some tool to tell us where to go.

I was taken back to that first summer of service. The summer of 1995…man, I’m old. And I couldn’t help but think how the world is different now. When we heard that scripture, we still carried maps in our car. I remember when the pastor of the church gave me directions to find the church and at some point referred to “our stoplight.” “Our stoplight” because there was only one at the time.

Today I would have been able to use google maps to find the church. I would have looked up church members and the youth on social media. I would have looked up Bible studies and games online to be prepared for the summer. I would have researched events in the area to be able to make plans for fun trips. But I just went…..

Yesterday I made plans for a work trip in a couple of weeks. I highly researched my hotels, mapped out distances along the way to maximize my travel and minimize the time in the car. I even have a dinner reservation for a place I want to try on Monday night.

I do personality assessments and so I know not everyone plans ahead quite like that but I believe we have all lost of the spirit of getting lost, of wandering, in our culture. We can watch our favorite TV shows when we want. We can order our groceries, our coffee, from an app and have them ready to be picked up when we arrive. My sister recently talked about how on a family vacation, the kids decided they wanted ice cream and so they looked up where to go and were there eating ice cream in some random town, in some random state, in a matter of minutes.

And I just can’t stop thinking about how that affects us spiritually.

Much like with Abram, God still does not work like a GPS. My path in life rarely feels like it is the most efficient. Seasons of waiting have me looking for everything that may be a sign, maybe an answer that the waiting, that the wandering, are over. Just get me to the next point, the next job, the next relationship; send me an alert for what I’m supposed to learning here.

The Bible is full of wandering though. Abram wandered. Moses and the Israelites wandered. Even the many stories of Jesus’ life are about those he encountered while he was traveling.

As much as I love efficiency and planning, I think we need wandering now more than ever. It reminds us to stop and take a look around. I pay more attention to where I am and where I am going when I am not exactly sure where I am. I learn a city quicker when I take time getting lost. I need to wander to pay attention to the people I’m meeting along the way, pay attention to how God is speaking and working. I need to be reminded that no matter how much of my time and travel I can control with my phone, I cannot control the wild and meandering ways of God. There is purpose in the wild and meandering ways.

If you find yourself in the dessert, on a road, and nothing looks familiar, there seems to be no end in sight, put away the phone, the maps, the technology. Focus on the next step in front of you. Pay attention to what is happening around you. Let your wild and meandering God show you the value of feeling lost.

I can’t fight this feeling that I’m not making enough difference in the world these days. I get out of what feels like very productive meetings, or a good conversation or a good days work and just when I’m feeling in my zone…

I watch a video of workers pulling a crying child out of rubble in Syria. You can watch that here…but it will break your heart.

I see a friend who is desperately trying to get her nieces and nephews out of the war zone and to safety with their mother in another country and everything that can go wrong seems to be going wrong as she navigates the bureaucracy of other countries.

I read articles about the wrong being done to those most vulnerable in our country.

I see children being wheeled out of schools in cribs because of bomb threats.

I get a news update on my phone about another sketchy or shady thing that is happening in politics these days.

And I wonder if what I spend my hours and days doing matters in this world. I feel paralyzed and overwhelmed with the needs that are out there.

How did we let it get this bad?

Will we ever move many churches beyond the conversations about what happens with the church kitchen or complaints about Sunday School rooms?

Will people ever really care about anything more than power?

The hurt and the pain and the fear and the grabbing for power seem to be in the air we breathe.

This is a season of awakening and reawakening.

Many days it feels like a shedding of an old snake skin. The old one just doesn’t fit right any more and we need to get it off in order to be able move on.

I feel my heart is breaking for the world. But it is also breaking apart the things that have been holding it hostage so that it can grow back with a new freshness…so that it maybe be a little healthier than it was before.

I feel my eyes seeing the world, seeing our culture, my culture, in ways I never have before.

I’m writing this not so that you will worry about me…Mom, don’t worry about me because I know you will read this….but I write it because I can’t think I’m the only one.

I can’t be the only who feels a little lost. The only one who is being stirred. The only one who is asking some really big questions about life and purpose. I can’t be the only one. The only one angry. The only one broken. The only one questioning how I spend my days and energy.

My prayer for me..and you, if you find yourself wanting to scream, “does this really matter” or “you’ve got to be kidding me” or even “am I making this world a better place at all”…is that we keep doing the next thing in front of us. We work to be kind to the next person we meet. We try to give people a little extra grace. Give a little more of our resources to make a difference.

It can’t stop there though. My prayer is also that we lean into the pain. We don’t try to wriggle out of what makes us uncomfortable, what makes us angry, what breaks our heart because God is working right there. God is calling us. God is stirring us. God is in the big questions to push us to people, situations and realities we never could have dreamed.

We have to be faithful where we are, all while paying attention with our new eyes, listening to the beating of our new heart and listening to the voice of God. I know I’m not the only one who can’t fight this feeling and I don’t think we should fight it. It is a gift from God. It is a calling. May we answer the call to something bigger than little lives we can easily control.

A few years ago, after my uncle passed away, I was sitting around with my extended family going through old family photos when we found the one below. It looked just like me! when I posted it to social media, one of my closest friends even commented, “O that freaks me out. I seriously thought you had your photo taken at one of those old western style places.” It seems there was consensus that this family member is sitting on the front porch of my great grandmother’s farm house and was probably my great aunt. There was argument about which great aunt is pictured but it was agreed she appears to be holding a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

 I’m not freaked out by the picture, in fact I find great comfort. Knowing my roots helps me to understand myself better. It helps me to feel part of something larger. I put a lot of pressure on myself to make the most of my gifts, the most of my life. Sometimes, that pressure to “not settle for less” keeps from enjoying the moment or making the most and the best of situations right here and now. I like thinking that some distant relative will be looking at a picture of me in the future, and even if they don’t know my name, know they are somehow linked to me.

In ministry we often feel like we have to be the newest, the biggest, the best. Churches are looking for the next big fix. We are looking for the inspirational leader with the suave speak and all of the answers. I used to work for an organization whose vision was to “become the strongest force in the history of this Convention for reaching people with the message of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.” There is nothing wrong with wanting to make a difference in our world, and we do need to do things differently but we cannot lose site of where we have come from. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

When we begin thinking that the future of the gospel rests fully on our shoulders, that we are going to save the church, that we are going to save Christianity, we put ourselves in the God’s position. I literally just had to say to myself in the kitchen last night, you cannot think that you can fix the decline of the church when it has taken over a thousand years to get us where we are today.

No matter our calling, we walk the same path with the same purpose as our ancestors did. We have to figure out faithfully how to live humbly, love mercy and walk justly with our God today. We have to in one hand realize how small we are in the grand scheme of the vast gospel of Jesus but on the other hand realize that we are so valuable that God knows how many hairs on our head, that we have been created for just such a time as this.

Live humbly, love mercy and walk justly with our God.

Recently facebook shared a memory with me. It was five years ago and apparently on that day I was “excited and all aflutter about the possibilities that lie ahead in life.” At the time, I was in the final stages of interviewing with a church to serve as their pastor. I haven’t shared much publicly about my experience as a pastor but now feel these words may be an encouragement to someone or help others understand the challenges of leading the church today.

My first day was April 1, Palm Sunday that year. Really the Easter season was a wonderful time to start work at a church. It is weeks of celebration if you follow the church calendar. We were all hopeful; I was hopeful, the church was hopeful. It was a new beginning.

Unfortunately, the new beginning did not last long. Within two months I started to feel that everyone was really concerned about the finances but no one would come right out and say it. No one really had any idea just how much money the church had in all of their reserve accounts or how much they had been spending. I learned there had been some concerns about whether they would be able to pay a full time pastor, a concern that was shared with previous candidates but not with me in the interview process.

I hate numbers with a passion. I was always getting the wrong answer in math class but could totally justify my result. This was important and I needed to be sure I had the right numbers so I spent hours during the month of June and July surrounded by pages of spreadsheets. I looked at how much the church had been taking in for years compared to what they’d been spending. I looked at how much we were taking in now and how much was left in the reserves and came to the realization that if something drastic didn’t change, we’d be without any resources within the year.

I presented this information to the finance committee and then to the church, because no one else would. I learned that in the fifty one year history of the church there had never been any real discussion about the finances, at least not like the one we needed to have. Each year’s budget was simply based on the budget from the previous year’s budget on paper. Powerful people within the church had been rolling over money from reserves for years without telling anyone. It wasn’t necessarily done with ill intent, they had lived through worse economic times than we were facing now and they assumed things would get better.  They believed there was no need to alarm anyone. They wanted to avoid conflict at all cost. When looking at the finances, I realized that some of the things that had been promised to me in the call process were never actually going to happen. I would lose thousands of dollars that had been promised to me. The person who had promised them to me had no authority to promise them but I didn’t know that. I also learned that the congregation had never voted on my final salary. So, not only was I telling them they were running out of money but they were looking at figures new to them that suddenly seemed like I was getting paid too much. (Let me assure you I wasn’t. It was still more than 10,000 less than I’d been making in a previous job)

Money wasn’t our only problem. Like many churches, we had a number of older individuals and about four young families. One of which was out the door before I got there and another was swinging in the balance the whole time I was there. As is often the case, many of the older adults were ready to give up their jobs and quickly began making their exodus out of positions once I started and the new nominating committee was established. They all wanted to the two young committed families to take on all of their responsibilities. I tried to engage everyone in conversation about taking the opportunity to examine some of our leadership positions, were they really necessary? How could we do things differently? But add the worn out feelings of doing a job for too long with the fear that was rising about money and no one wanted any kind of change, which left us in a terrible bind.

I joke that many times in the middle of meetings I would think, “It is a shame we aren’t recording this right now because it would be the perfect illustration of systems theory in a seminary class.” These members loved their church, understandably so, and wanted to do whatever it would take to keep the doors of the church open. They did not want their new pastor telling them they were at a critical point and so in ways I don’t even think they realized, they worked hard to make me change my dialogue.

Honestly, it was exhausting. It is always difficult to lead people in a way they do not want to be led, but sometimes you just have to go with your leadership integrity even if it means you get beat up some in the process. Here are some things I learned in the experience…

– Sometimes you can ask all of the right questions in the interview process and still not know what you are stepping into. People can only be honest with the truth as they understand it. You are hearing their best version of the truth as they understand it when they describe their church.

– In stressful situations, people are not the best version of themselves. They go into survival mode and it is not necessarily personal when they attack you to survive. However, when a church’s priority becomes keeping the doors open above everything else, the battle has already been lost.

– There are many bigger issues facing our churches that they cannot even begin to name themselves. Learn the history of the church. This church had been formed from a group of people who always had seen themselves as outsiders and had always felt like they needed to prove themselves to those that lived “in town.” To acknowledge they could no longer afford a full-time pastor made them feel like a failure in a deeper more systematic way than they could express.  Another church I’ve worked with recently is having a problem finding a new pastor but the town is dying from around the church. So admitting you don’t need a full time pastor, cannot afford one, is to admit that the town your ancestors built generations ago is dying. The family’s wealth is tied up in land that no one wants anymore. If a minister does not want to move to your area to work with you, who else will.

– For older generations, those jobs they’ve held in the church for decades are the way they have expressed their faithfulness to God. We had a Sunday School secretary who had been doing the jobs for probably fifty years. His generation was encouraged to serve in these positions because we needed them for the church to be successful. This was how they expressed their faith, their relationship with God. I asked him about the numbers he was still collecting, what did we do with them? He did not know. As I probed further with others I learned that the church had not been doing anything with the numbers for decades. He was collecting numbers just to collect them but no one had told him and here he was wanting me to find someone else to take his job because he was tired. He was tired of serving God this way, he’d been doing it for decades after all.

It is hard for this generation to hear that the way they’ve been serving God is no longer needed. If this is no longer needed, what does that mean about the life of faith I’ve lived? At a point where senior adults often feel like they are losing their usefulness in the world, feeling they are using their usefulness at church only compounds what they are experiencing. We have to make tough choices in most churches today but we need to give space to honor the way older generations have expressed their commitment to God. We need to give them space to grieve the changes and honor their service. However, we cannot use all of this as an excuse not to have the hard conversations in the church. In smaller congregations there are just not enough people to fill these positions and many of them now hold no real meaning in a life of someone seeking to be the presence of Christ in the world.

– You cannot save every church. Most of the younger ministers I talk to really do believe in the power of the church. We believe there is hope in dreaming a new dream for what it means to be the church today. We are in ministry because we have hope. The reality is that not every church will survive this season in our history. I’m not saying that is what will happen to the church I served but I came to the place that I realized I was not going to be the person who could move them forward. For me, shining a light on the issues the church had to face and continuing to force the church to face the reality excluded me from being able to move them forward.

Ministers who are facing this, keep a journal because when you leave it is quite possible that you will feel like a failure. You will wonder else you could have done. You will forget some of the awful things that happened, many of which only you and select people knew about, that forced you to make the decision to leave. You’ll need to be reminded that you did try everything at your disposal. You’ll need to be reminded that some of the insecurity you now have deeply embedded came from words and actions of people who were desperate. You will need to remember what you learned during this season, knowing that God can redeem all.

Church, are you paying attention?

Our world is crying out and I wonder if we are paying enough attention. Do the things happening in the voting polls last year or the events of this past weekend hold any meaning for you? Are you listening? Because the people are crying out. Church, they are crying out to you. They are crying out for help, for meaning, for someone to show they care.

We wonder today why many of our churches are dying. We wonder how we can get more people in the pew, get them tithing, get them volunteering to take over our responsibilities but those are the wrong questions.

I did a training session last year at a church that was hiring a new pastor and wanted to be aware of what were some of the trends of church involvement, issues new ministers were facing, issues facing young families in their area, etc. One older gentleman tried to quickly cut me off. He spoke up, interrupting me with a gruff, “I don’t hear you talk about Jesus. We just need to get back to Jesus. If people would get back to Jesus they would be in church on Sunday.”

Here’s what I told him….Jesus is in all of it. If we say that Jesus is who he he says he is, if Jesus is relevant to this world, then what happens in the world matters. If this faith is big enough, it should be bigger than what can be contained inside an hour of worship on Sunday morning and Wednesday night prayer meeting. It should affect every area of our lives, it should affect the way we do our work, it should affect the way we engage our community, it should affect the way we treat our neighbors. It should draw us into our communities, draw us away from our often over-filled church calendars.

The world is crying out. Crying out to be loved, to have work, to have food, to have health care, to be able to pay their bills, to be respected. It doesn’t matter where your community lies politically, there are needs you can meet. People from all sides are crying out.

Many say that we shouldn’t let culture dictate the church. That was the cry of this older gentleman. Go back and read the words of Jesus because his ministry was all about meeting the needs of other people, and not just the people that were on the church membership list.

He healed the sick, heard their cries. He fed the hungry. He treated women with respect. He did this outside the walls of the church.

We’ve ignored the signs people are holding outside the church for far too long. The future of the church will look different, like nothing we’ve known in the past.

“We are unsure if the church will survive to the next generation. The answer is not to try harder but to start a new adventure: If talking, trying or tricks work, they would have worked already. They are only going to be solved through new insight into the context, the values and the systemic issues at play in the congregation and within the leaders themselves. In other words, before we can solve any problem, we need to learn to see new possibilities.” (Canoeing the Mountains by Tod Bolsinger, page 33)

It may mean that we as a church need to stop doing something inside the walls of the church so that we can be the presence of Christ outside the walls. The future of the church may look more like words on those signs we have seen over the last year than the materials on Christian bookstore shelves. But make no mistake, if Jesus is really all that he said he was, he is present in both.

Want new possibilities for the church? Take a look at the signs. They are calling us into uncharted adventures that are frightening and challenging but are also exciting.

Last November, my neighbors and I were horrified to come home to butchered shrubbery. Shrubs of all sizes had been decapitated, the top half of them taken off. As part of our homeowner’s fees, we pay landscapers to keep up our yards. I had a large shrub that had grown to be up close to my shoulders. It often grew out into the driveway and walkway. I’d asked many times for something to be done about it but was always told it was fine by the landscaping company standards. I’d eventually taken to buying an electric hedge trimmer to keep it out of the driveway and walkway and to keep me from growing over my head.

One day I walked out and my overgrown shrub was now at knee height. The top just taken off, in November….with months before anything would grow back. The now scraggly branches all exposed. The shrub now living and green on its bottom half and completely dead and broken on top. The ivy that was growing underneath it that was now completely exposed to the sun. That ivy will grow because ivy always grows.

Learning their lesson, the HOA company made sure to let us know when their would be arborists coming into the neighborhood to trim back the trees. They were fascinating to watch! The arborists would climb up into the trees with some kind of pulley system and would carefully cut away branches. They cut branches that were too low, some of the oldest branches. They cut branches from areas where the tree was unhealthy. They cut new branches from areas of the tree where new growth was overwhelming the tree.

I once had a conversation with an arborist years ago who worked for the power company. He spent his time removing trees from power lines but he said that what he loved about his work was keeping the integrity of the tree in tact. He considered it a success if he could cut back the tree in such a way that it was free from the power line and the power line was free from the tree without it being obvious the tree had been cut back. From my observation, to a true arborist the work is an art form.

It is no surprise that church leaders find themselves in the need of making tough decisions. Even our larger, thriving churches should be aware that as they add new ministries, others have to be cut back. Smaller churches already know that they no longer have the budget, the staff, the people to do what they once did. Leaders can approach these decisions two different ways.

If they go the route the landscaping company did, they wouldn’t do the needed maintenance along the way.  They could keep claiming everything is fine and wait until things are out of control to make the cuts. That’s what we often do, we blame hard decisions on the budget or lack of volunteers, making reactive decisions rather than planning ahead, making the tough decisions along the way. It can be easier to be reactive with our decisions but just like my shrub outside, it’s an eyesore. And remember the ivy? Unhealthy removal of one thing can lead to an unhealthy take over by something/someone else.

Leading like an arborist is an art form. It isn’t about waiting until things are out of control to make decisions. It includes cutting the oldest branches even when they seem healthy because it takes the resources away from the growth of others. It is cutting back in areas that are too crowded, even if they seem to be growing now because you know it cannot be sustained and growth cannot occur elsewhere. It is recognizing what is unhealthy and removing it. It is about climbing the tree and doing the hard work in the middle of it. It is done with a care that keeps the integrity of the shape of the tree. This method takes much more time but is done so the overall health and growth of the tree continues in the right directions.

Will you have the courage to be an arborist?

In searching for the meaning of the word abundant online, I found a chart that maps the use of the word abundant in literature. While I cannot confirm its accuracy, it says that when abundant was at an all time high, around 1863 from my best reading of this chart, it was used in literature to describe agriculture, when speaking of faith, and in one article I found, to talk about butterflies. I find it fascinating and incredibly sad that we are at all time low for the use of the word abundant. The chart showed it is a world-wide epidemic; abundance is not a part of our commonly used vocabulary.

This week I read an article about Marrisa Mayer, the yahoo! ceo, who said in her early days at Google, she and her colleagues regularly worked 130 hours a week and slept at their desks. She said they would even schedule bathroom breaks for most efficiency and went on to say that she can now predict the success of start up companies by whether they are working these kinds of schedules.

We were supposed to have more than previous generations.  Our technology and world wide ways of doing things were supposed to lead to more abundance: abundance of money, time, energies, agriculture. When did we get to a world where we need to schedule bathroom breaks and sleep at desks in order to work enough to be successful? It seems to me that we need to redefine success and redefine abundance.

I think we define abundance as having everything we could think of. Unlimited finances, unlimited resources, unlimited time.

Do you remember Garfield and his dream in the opening of the Christmas special? John gave him this chair that when you sat in it and put the head piece on, it would give you anything you could dream of. We believe we should have that chair; that it should be given to us by God, by our country. And in our most honest parts, I think many times we believe that we are owed that chair. Anything that has limits is not abundant and when we focus on the limits, on what we do not have, on what is missing, our mindset becomes scarcity.

Parker Palmer said, “True abundance comes not to those intent on securing wealth, but to those who are willing to share a life of apparent scarcity. Those who seek well-being, who grasp for more than their share, will find life pinched and fearful. They will reap only the anxiety of needing more, and the fear that someday it will all be taken away.”

Too many of us are living lives that are pinched and fearful. We are so busy running from one thing to another, trying to do it all, feeling compelled to always do more with less, we wind up depleted. I had a coaching client, an incredibly talented, intelligent person, who would come to each call with a new time management tool.  She was just sure that this new tool was going to allow her to do everything she wanted to do, everything she felt she needed to do. Having everything was just out of reach and if she could just get herself organized enough, she could get reach it.

Too many churches are living lives that are pinched and fearful. I  have spoken with countless ministers whose biggest problem is helping their church to move from a mindset of scarcity.  They cannot see their assets, they can only see their deficits and their deficits cause them to focus inward. Thom Rainer says that the most common factor in declining churches is an inward focus. They believe there is not enough to give and so they focus on themselves, surviving, and how to make sure they are taken care of and how they can get more. We focus on the lack of volunteers to keep everything running, the lack of finances to have a big staff, the lack of being able to fund our buildings by ourselves. In each of these is the possibility to dream a new dream.

Abundance does not equal unlimited. Things may not be unlimited but they can still be abundant. We may not be abundant in the things we use to be abundant in. Perhaps we need to redefine abundance. What are the worlds greatest needs and where does that intersect with what we have to offer?  That is living in the spirit of true abundance.

Limits actually serve as great filters. In order to really say yes to some things, we have to say no to others. We have to make smart choices about what we agree to, what we say yes to, where our resources are used. We decide what is most important and we invest there. This is true for family, work, church and the gift of your talents to the world. We become clear about what is most important and we realize how many wonderful things we do have in this life. We focus on where we want to say yes and there we find abundance. We find an openness to this life that comes from feeling that we have more than enough.

For organizations, if you don’t have someone willing to lead something, let it go. It may be time for something entirely new to be birthed, or the same ministry may spring back to life in a new way. So many churches find themselves with the albatross of big buildings. Instead of looking at them as “our buildings”/”our churches”, what if we opened them up to others. Let go of some of the control and watched new ministries and non-profits being birthed in our spaces. Suddenly there could be more ministry happening than we could have ever done ourselves.

I think sometimes we don’t want to live in abundance. It is easier to feel that we have no time or money. We are victim to the world we live in. It takes work to make intentional choices. We are not able to please everyone. It is easier for an organization to focus on trivial matters, like the operations of the church kitchen, than to focus on letting it be used to do good in the world. Living in abundance is often messy and we are the ones responsible for discernment. It takes courage to move beyond being a victim of circumstance, focusing on what is not.

Jesus said in John 10:10 says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

Are you living life all the way to full?  In a world that is driven by fear and negativity, let’s live as people with open hearts, open hands and bring the word abundant back into vogue.

Today in Chapel Hill, NC, there will be a celebration of the life of Bob Phillips.  Bob served as the campus minister at UNC for thirty-four years . He passed away from cancer at the age of 76 on August 28. I have been grieving since learning of his death but am so glad that a few years ago I had the opportunity  to share with him just how much he meant to me personally and how much he influenced who I am today.

I had the incredible privilege of working with Bob for two years while I served as the campus ministry intern at UNC for the Baptist Student Union. I later had the privilege to be his colleague as I served as the Baptist Campus Minister at NC State and for the Raleigh area before his retirement.  Many times in ministry, I have reflected on how much I learned from my years with Bob. This morning I’d like to share a few of those nuggets with you and hope they encourage and challenge you as much as they have me.

1. You have to have life outside of ministry. Bob had experienced some personal tragedy earlier in his ministry career because of the hours he poured into his early years of ministry. Until my position at UNC, ministry was always something I did in my free time. It did not have to have boundaries because it had natural boundaries. When ministry is what you do in your full time, there are no natural boundaries.  People will always want more, the organization will always expect more than is possible, and as another mentor once said, there will always be a great list of the unfinished in ministry hanging over your head. After long weeks of mission trips or weekends retreats ,he would always ask how was I going to take time off in the following weeks. He would encourage me to take time away from the building where I lived to really escape and recover. I didn’t always do well with boundaries while living at the Battle House (sadly, now the former BSU house at UNC) but in my first years of ministry, the permission he gave for recovery, and even insistence for it, were invaluable! I think many of us need permission to have boundaries in life. I tell coaching clients all the time, boundary work is the hardest work you do in life but it is the most important work. 
2. You always need some kind of ministry outside of your full-time ministry.  You need it and the people you are working with need it. This is something I didn’t really get until later. He said that the students in our ministry needs pieces of the ministry they felt were their own, that neither of us were directly involved in. He needed expressions of his ministry that didn’t involve the students. Otherwise, those you are ministering to rely too heavily on you and you begin to see this ministry as your own and your identity becomes enmeshed in this one world. This piece of wisdom I have followed in every ministry position I’ve ever served in. Outside of my full-time positions I have served as a life and leadership coach, a church consultant, a three year old choir teacher, an undergraduate adjunct professor, participant and leader for Baptist Women in Ministry of NC, freelance writer, preschool Sunday school teacher, and the list could continue. With each one, I’ve learned about myself and gained a clearer view of the ministry I was working with full-time. It’s not always possible, but these other roles do not have to be over and above the hours you work committed to your full-time ministry role. You can give more completely and with better perspective when you are able to step outside your current role. None of us can be completely fulfilled and keep a healthy perspective when we focus on just one role in our lives. 
3. Don’t take anything too personally. Most likely, people’s response to you says more about their personality than anything about you. Bob had a great understanding of Myers-Briggs and used that lens when looking at people. I’m now certified in another personality assessment, Workplace Big Five and I know that while I’d always loved personality assessments, he had great influence on helping me use personality to understand others and differentiate myself from other’s needs and reactions. Bob and I were incredibly different in personality but I always felt safe, not judged, and appreciated. Some leaders tend to be threatened by differences but Bob seemed to thrive on them, finding ways to work together. I don’t always take constructive criticism well but Bob had a gentle way of guiding me. I didn’t understand until later how much that spoke to his own strength and confidence and how guidance like that takes a great gift.
4. So much of leadership happens outside of traditional office hours. So many times in ministry leadership, we fall prey to a culture that expects you to work traditional job hours behind a desk or in an office. If you are not available when they need you, you are doing something wrong. He once said to me later when I was serving as a campus minister myself, “They are not just paying you for the hours in the building. They are paying for the time you spend waking up in the middle of the night worrying about the ministry and students. They are paying you for the time you spend in the shower thinking through what needs to be done for the next event. They are paying you to relate to other organizations, run errands, etc.”  Any good leader realizes those are all part of the role as well. Boundaries can only be formed when you realize how boundaries are not always possible. As a campus minister, I had students who always expected me to be in the building whenever they stopped by. It didn’t matter how late I was going to be there at night, I needed to be there when they were done with their 8:00 class. It didn’t matter than my responsibilities included working with churches, being present on campus, etc. Later as a pastor I had church members that would call the church office promptly at 9:00 and wonder where I was. These were the same church members who would also check in with the home bound and “home bound on Sunday” to see how regularly I was visiting them. Good leadership does what needs to be done. Good leaders do their jobs with integrity while recognizing their own needs and the value of other relationships in their lives. Sometimes work happens in the shower when your thoughts are running wild and no one outside ministry will understand the burden you feel in those moments. It’s like a quote I once saw, “You cannot make everyone happy. You are not nutella.” 
5. The state of our world affects people more than we realize. I had just started at UNC when 9-11 happened. I had been in divinity school classes all day and while I knew the basics, the first time I saw the images on TV was with a crowd of students that had gathered at the Battle House to watch and be comforted. There was a great sense of desperation on campus in the months that followed. Suicide and suicide attempts hit record numbers. Students did not know how to process how this made them feel. Bob compared the desperation he saw to the culture when the Vietnam War started. As he helped me to name the panic our country was experiencing, he helped me to love students by knowing how to name that for them. Recently while teaching leaders for young adults I talked about this season, comparing it to the current season in the country and in the world. Our students, and adults in our congregations, are experiencing this level of panic, anger, fear and desperation in our world and one of our roles as their leaders is to help them name it. We help them to differentiate from the panic in the world where possible and then give them hope and peace by holding their hands through the rest. 

Bob, thank you for the gift of your leadership. Thank you for the ways your legacy lives on in me. Rest in peace.