Last week I watched the presidential debates. I needed a week to reflect on them before I could comment. For me, what stuck out more than anything else was the way the candidates interacted with each other and with the moderator. I am not interested in getting into a political free-for-all. I want to speak to the plight of declining humanity.  Call me old-fashioned, but whatever happened to common courtesy? I could not get past the fact that the candidates kept calling each other “Donald” and “Hillary.” What ever happened to “Mrs. Clinton” and “Mr. Trump”? Should not those vying for what some would call the most important and powerful office in the world show some trace of respect?   It does not matter what your political ethic is, or what you think of the candidates. Can we not treat one another with some level of kindness? Possibly a little honor? (Colossians 3:12, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”) From the array of the social media posts I have seen this week, it looks like many of us followers of Christ have set the Bible aside, at least when it comes to our thoughts on presidential candidates (again see Colossians 3:12). It is possible to disagree and still shake hands. We can disagree fiercely and still live lovingly. We can let our opinions be known, no matter how strong they are, without being a jerk about it.

Has the presidential election been reduced to which candidate looks worse than the other? That seems to be the strategy. Supporters of each candidate have seemingly taken up the tactics of the one they support and have hated on everything about the opposing candidate. Again, just check out social media; it’s embarrassing. We can support our candidate and still live Christ-like values.

My kids watched part of the debate with me. And what did it teach them? It taught them that it’s ok to cut off someone when they are speaking… That it’s ok not to listen…that when someone says “times up”, they don’t have to be compliant with such “rules”… That common courtesy is an endangered species in our culture. I don’t feel angry or mad, just sad. Maybe it is time to go back to some time-honored values; “Mr.” and “Mrs.” would be a great place to start.

I have met a lot of great people. I have met great parents, great husbands, and wives. I have met great leaders and read the biography or autobiography of other great people. Of all the successful people I have met or read about, they all have one intangible quality about them: they have grit. Grit is resolve, the ability to push through. People with grit do not give up. Life can be tough, we all know that. When things are challenging or when things do not go like we planned, how would we respond? Will with throw our hands up in the air and give up or will we push through?

Grit is especially required in marriage and vocation.

All relationships take work. Most relationships will go through rough times. We are all people, and as people, we will do and say things that complicate relationships and hurt others. In year eleven of my marriage, the relationship with my wife hit a wall. In every marriage, it is rarely one person’s fault. I will speak to my failure.  I was a workaholic, gone all the time, and seemingly more interested in other people than my family. I was burnt out and becoming detached. One day our marriage imploded and it was rough, for both of us. The reality of divorce seemed all too close. During the hardest of times, the one thing that got us through was grit, the raw courage to not give up, to work on it, to fix it.

Our work and vocation can  be particularly exhausting. Each vocation comes with its own unique challenges, mine included. I love what I do. I love being a Pastor. The church I serve is vibrant, generous and life-giving. I so appreciate that I get to do life with the staff I serve and the people I lead.  In the scriptures, the role of Pastor is described as “Shepherd.” Shepherds lead sheep. Sometimes sheep bite, and it hurts. Over the past 20 years I have been unfairly criticized, personally attacked, yelled at, manipulated…you get the point. Every job has its vocational hazards. As a result, many of my colleagues have quit; well over 50% of those I was in school with gave up on church work before they truly got started. In some cases, I don’t blame them. I almost quit myself. What kept me going? Grit. I decided not to give up. The first few years of my ministry my income was very low. To supplement it, I drove a delivery truck and worked as a substitute teacher, once I worked all three jobs on the same day! Those years were hard. What kept me going? Grit. Pure determination to not give up. To keep fighting and pushing when it would have been easier to throw in the towel.  I remember distinctly the day I stood at the end of my driveway looking out at Pikes Peak (I lived in Colorado) talking on the phone with my dad. I was done. I asked my dad if he could get me a job at his company. He said he could, but I would not be happy. It was not what I was called to do. It was some of the best advice I was ever given, and I pushed on.

Travis Bradbury, an expert in emotional intelligence, once said, “Humans are creatures of habit. If you quit when things get tough, it gets that much easier to give up the next time. On the other hand, if you force yourself to push through it, the grit begins to grow in you.”

Grit is something you can grow. It grows by the practice of not giving up. Whether it’s marriage, parenting, your job or school, you will need grit to push through. Let’s all commit to being a little grittier. You never know what good things await if you only push a little harder.

I was scrolling through Facebook a couple of days ago and stumbled upon an article that essentially pointed out everything that’s wrong with the church. I suppose the author was well-intentioned, but all the article seemed to do was promote disunity in among followers of Christ. My heart was heavy as I read the comment feed. People were naming churches that “hurt” them and complaining about everything wrong with every church they had ever attended. Sometimes people miss the most common denominator. Do we realize that we are attacking the very thing Jesus loves…and died for? (Ephesians 5:25: “Just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”).

As a pastor myself, I realize the church is far from perfect; I know this because I am a part of it. Don’t those outside of the church attack it enough? Do we really need to attack it from the inside as well? Yes, healthy criticism is good when done in the right spirit, by the right people, for the right reason. But most pontificating does not bring about real change. We puff our chest out and share our opinion as if it is doctrine and walk away not understanding the carnage we leave in our wake.

I have learned this in my 42 years of life: people notice…. everything. People notice how we treat each other, what we say about each other and how we interact with each other. Many people make decisions about Jesus and the church based on how they observe us acting towards one another. What is the message we send?

I get it—people get hurt in churches. People in the church have hurt me and I have hurt people myself, I own that. Why does this keep happening?  It happens because all churches are made up of people. Imperfect, broken people. Sometimes we use the word “hurt” as spiritual talk for “I did not get my way”. Other times “hurt” means someone had an opinion or made a decision I did not agree with; other times we genuinely hurt each other. Sometimes my wife hurts me, but I don’t go on social media and rant about it. Sometimes I hurt my wife and instead of telling a bunch of people we barely know, we talk about it—face to face. Yes, there are churches and leaders out there that need to be called to give account for their actions, but there is a better way than jumping up on our metaphorical soap box and lumping all churches of all time together in a speech of disappointment.

People are messy. I am messy.  Yet, despite all the mess, Jesus loved the church and died for her. The church is called “his bride”. You better be careful what you say about someone’s bride. If you say something bad about my wife, you and I are going to have problems. My marriage is not perfect, but that is not your issue; it is my issue, my wife’s issue, and the issue of a group of people whom we trust that we have let into our lives.

Let’s watch our words. Jesus loves his bride, the church, and each individual member of the church.

Let’s watch our words. Jesus loves his bride, the church, and each individual member of the church.

The glorious cause of the church is “faith expressing itself in love” (Galatians 5:6). I went into detail on this in Love Revolution part 1. The ultimate display of “faith expressing itself in love” is what Jesus did on the cross. The cross is the banner of this revolution. Faith expressing itself in love could find no greater fulfillment than a person giving up his or her life for someone else. So what do we, as followers of Jesus, do with the cross? How should we view it?

Much debate has been had in modern circles concerning the placement of and display of the cross. Some churches have crosses up everywhere, others have no cross up at all; some seem embarrassed of the cross, others seem to worship it. I wonder what the response would be if one of Jesus’ disciples, who had actually witnessed the crucifixion, walked into our churches and saw the cross on display. Would he be horrified? Would he look at us and say, “Do you even know what happened on that?”

It is very easy to forget the brutal reality of the cross. The very first churches had no cross at all. For the first Christians, the most common symbol was the fish. The cross became a symbol of Christianity 400 years after the resurrection of Jesus. It became so popular, in fact, that some pagans accused the Christians of idolatry because it seemed as if they were worshiping the cross.

The cross is a symbol to be embraced; it’s not an icon to be worshiped. As with many things, it is easy to vacillate between extremes. For instance, in our church, we have a cross on our stage. It serves as a reminder of what Jesus has done for us. About a year ago someone in our church congregation was offended that we placed the cross to the side instead of in the center of the stage. In fact, they were so offended that they left the church. Really?! The placement of the cross was about ten feet off-center. That reaction made no logical or spiritual sense—leaving a church because of ten feet? Had that person lost that much insight into the message of the cross?

On the other hand, some places of worship display no cross at all because it may offend someone. While I have no desire to offend anyone, our faith is filled with a hard truth: the apex of what Jesus came to do was centered on the cross. “For God so love the word that he gave”…He sent he sacrificed…”His only son…” (John 3:16)

The cross is the banner, the symbol of the love revolution. What Jesus did is the motivation for this Love Revolution. Faith expressing itself in love.  We embrace the message of the cross, it is why we do what we do.

The world is filled with tension. That tension is skyrocketing anxiety levels: ISIS, racism, a volatile election season, the economy… I could go on and on. Some would describe the situation as hopeless. I would describe the situation as an opportunity, an opportunity for the church to do what we were created to do. As followers of Christ, we hold two things in tension, the reality of our world and the hope that we have in Christ.

Jesus said that we are “salt” and “light”.  Bill Hybels, the Pastor of Willow Creek Church, once said,  “The church is the hope of the world”. The church is the hope of a world that has lost its way, a world that lives in pain, fear and anxiety. 40 million Americans struggle with anxiety and the behaviors that result from it (www.adaa.org/about-adaa/press-room/facts-statistics). What is the response of the church to this? A revolution…

Just over a year ago I read a history book about the American Revolutionary war, titled 1776 by David McCullough. As I read it, there was a phrase in the book that griped me. The phrase was “the glorious cause”. The colonists referred to the American Revolutionary war as “the glorious cause”. I thought to myself, what is the glorious cause of the church? With bible in hand, I searched the scriptures and came upon Galatians 5:6, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor un-circumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”  That’s it! That is the glorious cause of the church: faith expressing itself through love! The hope for a hurting, anxious fear filled world is “faith, expressing itself in love!”

I love the local church. As a pastor, I am one of its biggest fans. I love what I do. However, I am also unsettled. I wonder if the church has morphed into something Jesus never intended it to be. Has “the glorious cause” been replaced with what I want? With what I prefer? With my “rightness”? I hear much debate about who is right and who is wrong. When did our faith move from relating to God, to being right about God?

It seems that “religion” is really good at helping us live within the “toxic environment”of the world. In some ways, religion has simply become a coping mechanism. Shouldn’t faith consist of much more than that? Pope Paul VI said, “There can never be a personal conviction without also working for social transformation”. Faith and religion lead to transformation, not mere coping techniques. Transformation of self and transformation of the world around me. The convictions that we hold naturally lead us to good work, the good work of sharing the message of Jesus and transforming society. James the brother of Jesus said, “Faith without good deeds is dead”. In the coming post’s I will continue to explore the Love Revolution and the dramatic impact it can have on our world.

I have been on vacation for the last ten days. My hope and goal was to completely detach and relax. No email, no phone calls, and no writing—not even for this blog. I told my wife, “My life and job require me to make constant decisions. You are making the decisions on this trip”. It took me three days to really settle down. It was hard. It was hard not to constantly check emails or call the office to “check in” or sneak away to work on some project “for a little while”. I learned a hard truth about myself.   Sometimes I am a control freak. I like things my way because my way is always the right way…right? Wrong. I have been guilty of manipulating situations or fudging on facts so that I get what I want. I call myself a Christian, a follower of Christ. Christ wasn’t described as a control freak. Jesus is described as “the lamb of God”. Could there be anything more vulnerable and submissive than a lamb?

Yet so many of us are addicted to control. We use all kinds of tools to control our environment. Some people use subtle manipulation so that things turn out their way. Others use anger or violence to control the people around them. Still, others use fear and some even use sex to get what they want.

The life of faith is more about letting go than holding on. To be fair, I believe that one of the vocations of every human being is to live life well, to work hard and to be productive. At the same time, we must admit that some things are simply out of our control. This becomes an issue of trust. Do I trust the God that I say I believe in? Trust is learning to be “ok” with not knowing “why?” Early in our marriage, my wife and I lost two children to miscarriage. We asked a lot of “why” questions and God answered with nothing but silence. We needed to go through a period of mourning and grief.  The author Richard Rhor writes in his book Simplicity- “Historic cultures saw grief as time of incubation, transformation, and necessary hibernation. Yet this sacred space is the very space we avoid. When we avoid darkness, we avoid tension, spiritual creativity, and finally transformation. We avoid God, who works in darkness – where we are not in control”. As the years went on, we have become OK not knowing why. It was hard to let go, but in the end we chose to embrace the mystery of faith. Even when things don’t go my way, even when the outcome is less than ideal, I hand control to one who created time and space/ I walk with the one who is present in the past, present and future.

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and have a conversation with my younger self.  The last few weeks I have written the advice I would give to my younger self if I had the chance.  I want to end this series of posts by speaking to my 40 something self. Here are the things that I am telling myself today.

My kids need lots of attention….right now

My kids are 8 and 13.  It seems like just yesterday they were born.  I know it sounds cliché, but it’s true.  I don’t want to live with any regrets regarding my children.  I am not the perfect father, but I am a present father.  I spend lots of time with my kids.  A Washington Post article argued that the average father spends 7.2 hrs in quality time with their child per week.  That is up considerably from the sixties; however, that is not enough time to build a quality relationship. I have decided to make my kids a priority.  I go to all their games, meets and concerts, even if I have to skip a church meeting. I play basketball with them, sled with them, wrestle with them and read with them.  I will not sacrifice my children on the altar of success.  I would rather be less effective in my “career” and more effective raising my kids than the other way around.  I know way too many people who are bitter at dad because he was not present and put his job over them.  I am not willing to do that.

My daughter is a teenager, and she needs me now more than ever.  I want to model for her the way a man should properly treat women.  My son is eight and needs his dad to show him what it means to be a man.  My dad is my hero; I hope to be the same for my son.

My wife will always be more important than my ministry 

Several of my Pastor friends have gotten a divorce.  They are not bad people; they simply lost sight of what is important. This week another high-profile pastor was removed from ministry, one of the reasons, he admits,  he put success before his family . No judgment here, I came dangerously close to the same thing (see part 1 ).  I am not going there again.  My wife needs and deserves my time. I had to make some significant adjustments to my life. I say “no” more than I say “yes”. I usually eat dinner with my family six nights a week and am home by 5:30 most days.  I have made an intentional decision: I am walking out the door of my office at five on most days, and whatever I am working on will be there in the morning. I have chosen to serve my wife and love her “as Christ loves the church”.  It’s not always easy, and sometimes I don’t feel like it, but I put my wife (and my kids) as my first ministry.

 Not everyone will like me, and that’s ok 

I am a people pleaser; I want people to like me. I have worked very hard to make people like me, even doing things that were not always in my best interest to make others happy.  I have come to this stunning conclusion: not everyone will like me, not everyone will like what I do or how I live life, and that’s ok.  When I turned 40, I gave myself a gift. I decided I was going to stop trying to please everyone. I strive to be kind and loving. I work hard at living out one of my life verses from the Bible, Micah 6:8, “Act justly, love kindness and walk humbly with God”. Even so, some people will not like me, or believe what I believe, or hold the values that I hold…and that’s ok.  I am committed to becoming the best version of me. I will give life my very best shot, and when I lay my head on my pillow at night, I will sleep peacefully.

 Have fun 

During my college years, I got pretty serious. I did not know how to have fun. I was studying and preparing to be a pastor.  I thought that meant I had to be stoic and stern. I was seriously wrong. We are meant to enjoy this life. I have decided to have fun in all that I do. I have fun at my job with my staff, I have fun at home with my family, and I do things just for the sake of a good laugh. I have discovered my “goofy” side and I love it!

Growing older is a good thing 

When I was younger, I feared growing old. I went through a pre-mid-life crisis when I turned thirty. I was depressed for a week; I thought it was the death of my youth. Recently some grey hair has begun to poke through on my head. I turned forty a year and a half ago, and I am ok with it. I have learned a lot. I have matured in a healthy way, and I possess wisdom I did not have when I was twenty. I have enough life experience to gain respect from those I lead but am still young enough to have vigor. I am mature enough to realize I don’t know it all and I have a lot to learn.  I have decided to wear my grey with pride; I have no intention of coloring my hair. I’ve earned every one of those greys!

Honestly, there are days I wish I could go back in time and give my younger self some advice. Last week I wrote about the advice I would give to my teenage and twenty-something self.  This week I want to focus on my thirty-something self.

To my 30-something self I would say:  

 Develop a better life rhythm. 

I lived life at a very unhealthy pace.  I had no margin.  A wise man once said to me, “You know what the problem with you young guys is?  You have no margin.  You have no space in life to deal with problems when they arise, and you have no space to embrace opportunity when it presents itself.”  If I could go back and have a chat with my younger self, I would tell myself to create a better work, rest, and play rhythm. I would spend more time enjoying the simple pleasures of life like watching it rain, sitting on the beach and reading more books, just for fun.

Focus more on your marriage than your ministry.

I was very driven in ministry.  As a Youth Pastor I was successful and saw some pretty startling results.  The youth group I led grew 350% in 4 years. That is enough to make anyone’s head get big.  I  thought I was pretty amazing. When the founding pastor of the church that I served left, I was asked to fill the role of Senior Pastor. I was 28.  I took the job with the attitude: “I can probably do better than he did”.  I didn’t.

I was not as successful as Senior Pastor as I was as Youth Pastor at that church.  I was not happy with the results I was seeing, so I did what I had seen modeled for me my whole life—I worked harder and longer.  Not much changed in my ministry but a lot changed in my marriage.  I was neglecting my wife and my young daughter as I chased success.  It all came to a head when I chose an obligation over a family vacation.  All hell broke lose, quite literally.  My wife and I did not speak for three days.  We even used the “d” word.  That was a wake-up call.

I am happy to say that I spent the next seven years making some radical life changes, one of which was moving on from that church.  I realized that I could not develop a healthy marriage and family in that environment. Moving to Northbrook Church has been a game changer for my marriage (and for my health).  I am very thankful that I serve in a place that encourages staff members to prioritize healthy family life.

Pursue significance over success.

For a while, I thought I was going to become the next….”whoever.”  I would obsess over success, especially numbers.  I am ashamed to admit that success for me meant having a big church. To be fair, every conference I attended was at a large church, and all the speakers were pastors of large churches. I assumed that success in the ministry meant having a mega-church.  If I had a do-over, I would focus more on making a significant difference in the world and in the lives of people and less on how big the church was or how “cool” the facilities were.  I would spend much more time crafting sermons that were life-giving and creating environments that allowed for life transformation.

 Don’t worry so much about what people think. 

I am a people pleaser.  Sometimes that is good, other times it is really, really bad.  I hate to say “no” and I don’t like to disappoint people.  I want everyone to like me.  What I have discovered is that it is an impossible feat.  I have finally realized that I will never make everyone happy. I would challenge my younger self to give it your very best shot, love people, have compassion and go to sleep each night knowing that you did enough, regardless of what other people think.  One of my life verses is Micah 6:8 “Act justly, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” I am now more concerned about living that way that making everyone happy.

Have more fun and lighten up.

I have a very serious side.  Somewhere along the way, I thought “Christianity” was synonymous with “you have to be serious all the time”.  Sure, there are times to be serious, but not all the time. I would laugh at myself more, in fact, I would laugh more in general. My kids have done a great job at lightening me up, and I am very thankful.  One of the values I have in life now is “have fun”.  People seem so uptight and get so upset at the smallest, dumbest things. I have been given this one life to live, and I want to live it fully. I don’t want to grow old and walk in anger and bitterness.

Next week I will conclude this series with “What I am telling my forty-something self.”

Do you ever wish you could go back in time? For many of us, the answer is probably “yes”. There are days that I wish I could go back and sit down with my younger self. Sometimes I think I would smack him and say, “What were you thinking?” Other times I would sit down with him and say, “Its ok, it all works out”, or, “You’re going to regret that decision later.” We all make mistakes; it is part of growing up. However, if I could go back in time and speak to myself this is what I would say:

To my teenage self, I would say…

Spend more time with your family.
As a teenager I was always on the move—going out, hanging around with my friends and occasionally getting into trouble (I know, hard to believe!). I don’t stay in contact with anyone from Jr. High or High school anymore, not one person. My family, however, is still there, supporting me, encouraging me and loving me. Now that I am in my 40’s, I do everything all can to get back to the place I ran from as a teenager. I wish I could have helped the younger me understand that the only people in my life that loved me unconditionally in my teens was my family.

Focus more on deep, life-giving friendships and less on girls and dating.
Yes, I admit it; I spent a lot of time chasing girls. I was always so worried about having a girlfriend…maybe it was the hormones. None of the dating relationships I had during my teenage years ended well, and most of the time it was a negative experience. If I had a do-over, I would spend much more time cultivating deep, rich friendships and would spend much less time worrying about dating. I would find people that were genuine, not worrying about how “popular” (what does that even mean?) they were, but how loyal, kind, and encouraging they were.

Do your homework well.
Schoolwork is not everything, but it is really important. I hated school. I never applied myself, and thus I struggled to get into college and was rejected from the college my parents wanted me to attend. I had a difficult first semester in college because I was not used to studying. During my teens, it did not seem all that important. The teenage years are a time of critical brain development, and I wish I had spent more time doing my homework and developing my intellect.

Don’t quit so easily.
I quit a lot of things when they got hard. I quit the scouts because it was hard, I quit baseball because the older I got the more it demanded. I joined the wrestling team and quit my Sr. Year. I wish I could tell myself to stick it out when things got hard. Life demands tenacity, stick in there.

To my “twenties” self I would say…

Make your faith a priority
I was not a follower of Christ for most of my teenage years. When I started following Jesus, it was rough. Like all the 20-year-olds I knew, I was focusing on my newfound freedom from my parents and I was “testing the waters.” Even as a Christian, I did some pretty dumb things and made some poor choices, many of which would have been avoided had I focused more on my faith and less on trying to be liked. I would tell my twenty-something self to develop a strong set of spiritual disciplines and seek God first. I would challenge my younger self to read deeply and ask lots of questions, not being satisfied with a status quo answer.

Find a mentor
Besides my dad, I did not have anyone who invested deeply in me. Older men and women spoke into my life, which I will always cherish, but I did not have anyone who made a significant investment in me. I had to figure a lot of it out on my own. I would advise my younger self to search out a man who would be willing to walk with me and mentor me in this critical time of my development. I would tell my younger self to find a seasoned pastor who could help me in the first years of ministry. Most Pastors drop out of ministry after the first five years; I did not; but I came close to dropping out after ten years. I needed someone to “speak life” to me.

Take better care of your wife.
In my twenties, my marriage was all about “me” and what I could get out of it. Honestly, I was selfish. My actions told my wife that she was  not that important. I was so focused on my success that she took a back seat to my ministry. The biggest mistake I ever made was when we lost our fist child to miscarriage. We had a doctor appointment to check our baby’s heartbeat. I also had scheduled a youth event that night at our church. We went to the appointment to discover our baby had no heartbeat; we had lost our child. We were devastated. We went home; I dropped my wife off, and I went to the youth event. I wish I could go back and smack that guy and say, “What were you thinking?!”  You need to be with your wife right now! I wish that were the only event like that, but there were others. I had to learn the hard way. I would tell my 20-year-old self, “Take better care of your wife, God called you to love her like “Christ loves the church.” Thankfully, I did learn from my mistakes

Since I now have more life experience I’ll continue on my next post with what I would tell my 30 something self and what I am telling my 40 something self.