Take a Break

Scientists and efficiency experts encourage it. Your body and your family may be saying you need one. Even McDonalds says you deserve one. 

What? 

A break, a vacation, a sabbath. Humans are not machines that can run 24/7 without maintenance or nourishment. So when the Ascending Leaders board of directors insisted I unplug from this ministry for six weeks, you can imagine I hesitated. Not that I wouldn’t know what to do with myself, though Gina and I did struggle with exactly where to go and how to successfully disengage from the demands of a ministry that is reaching its stride. 

A 16-day trip to the northeast US and eastern Canada turned out to be just what we needed to reconnect with one another and disconnect from the daily demands of ministry.

Scientists say taking a break, even a short ten-minute break periodically throughout the day, has three benefits:

·         It keeps us from getting bored and losing focus;

·         It helps us retain information and make connections (Have you experienced as I have the difference between those days when your mind just seems to make beautiful connections and those when not much seems to fit right?);

·         It helps us re-evaluate our goals. 

I found all those to be true. The last three weeks of my mini-sabbatical included reading, studying, writing and doing some manual labor with both of my adult children and their spouses in their homes. This mini-sabbatical was refreshing and reinvigorating. It was just what I (and the ministry) needed. I am enthused and more hopeful than ever for the future of helping churches, disciples and leaders flourish!   

Now I am back in the office and on the road with my batteries for discipleship recharged. I look forward to sharing some of the new findings related to helping churches grow effective disciples in coming communications and through the DiscipleForward workshops and other workshops I will be presenting this fall. 

In the meantime, staff members have found some great, practical articles about discipleship on the Internet.

I’m not familiar with Preston Sprinkle or his work, but I’ll be interested in reading his book on the state of discipleship in the American church when it comes out. Until then, I think you’ll find his story of an ex-con turned pastor and the resulting ministry highly inspiring and challenging as I did.

For those who are in a discipling relationship, find Derek Brown’scautions against becoming a discipleship bully is instructive, if not a little painful. Sometimes our best intentions conflict with our human nature. I pray your relationships are nurturing.

 

Finding Communion in Solitude

The communication calendar tells me it's time for a blog post. Usually, Mike and I confer on a topic, I write it, and he approves (or disapproves as the case may be). But since Mike is still on sabbatical it falls to the ghostwriter to come out of the shadows and write this month’s blog. 

Surfing the Internet yesterday for something to prompt my creative juices, I found a familiar discipleship theme: the importance of community. Ed Stetzer is only one of many reminding believers that “discipleship is a group sport—best done in community.” I couldn’t agree more. But my own experience of late has been more solitude and loneliness than community. Yet, even that can be a growing experience, if we allow it.

My husband and I recently moved from Florida back to Iowa. Though the Midwest is “home,” our new lodgings are not in a familiar city. We’re still learning our way around, have yet to locate a church home, or become well acquainted with the neighbors. Working from home, my community is almost exclusively online. Most of my day is spent in solitude.

During my morning quiet time, I started reading Dallas Willard’s Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God. In my loneliness, I would like someone to carry on a conversation with. Why not God? I’m not sure what I was expecting. When you’re desperate for the sound of another voice, I guess you’ll try anything. I didn’t really expect to physically hear God, though I believe he does occasionally speak audibly to some people. In contemporary life, we’re probably more familiar with (and apt to experience) God speaking in a still small voice. 

In a lectio divina exercise from I Corinthians 2, I think I arrived at a clearer understanding and discovery of how that works. The passage contained these familiar lines, 

“‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him’—these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (emphasis mine).

The Spirit, Willard reminds us, dwells within those who believe in Jesus. That Spirit searches my heart and surprise, surprise—is also searching the depths of God himself and sharing that with me. Rather than be afraid of what God might find in me, could I, should I be more attuned to “discovering” the depth and intricacies of God? In knowing more of him, will I understand myself better? I believe so. I need to be more willing to explore, ponder, question, what God is saying and doing within me. For that is the conversation he wants to have with me.

Community is essential to healthy discipleship. Communion with the God who created us for community is equally important. Whether you find yourself in a season of a small or seemingly nonexistent faith community or surrounded by believers who sharpen you as iron sharpens iron, I encourage you to take time to commune with God, listening for the still small voice and searching the depths of God. 

As my experience shows, there are seasons in our spiritual journey when we need or are called to a different level or type of community. In the DiscipleForward workshops Dr. Mike Johnson provides valuable information for pastors and church leaders regarding the size and nature of groups that people need at various stages in their pilgrimage. That’s only one aspect of adult discipleship Mike covers in these half-day sessions. Look for one in your area and register today.

Judy Hagey

Communications Assistant

Taking a Break - A Sabbath Rest

I should feel like a kid on the first day of summer vacation. Released from the drudgery and routine of school, months of long summer days with no demands seems like a dream come true to a child—and even for most adults. For me, it’s that and also a little scary.

I love this ministry work. Most often, working in my sweet spot coaching churches and teaching
church leaders and growing an organization that wants to do that better energizes me. But Ascending Leaders’ board of directors, in their wisdom, is granting—no insisting—that I unplug from ministry for seven weeks. They understand (as I do) that taking a break from our normal activities—even pleasurable activities—is not only good, but necessary for our personal wellbeing as well as the health of the organization. 

I compare the situation to a caretaker. Imagine the spouse or child who tends to a sick mate or parent. Without respite care occasionally stepping in and giving this loving provider a break, the caretaker will wear out and be of no use to the care receiver. Ministry leaders are especially susceptible to such burnout. For that reason, I am grateful for the board’s decision to insist on this mini-sabbatical.

Sabbath, and by extension sabbatical, is a concept woven into creation. After six days of speaking the universe into being, work which God clearly enjoyed and proclaimed “good,” he rested. Perhaps there was a sense of sitting back and enjoying and appreciating the fruit of his labors. Surely, the God who never slumbers or sleeps, did not need the physical rest. 

In instituting Sabbath God established a pattern of work. A weekly Sabbath invites us to reflect on who we are, our unique contributions to the world and our Maker, to reconnect relationships and worship God together. Caught up in our workaday world, few of us take the time necessary to really reflect and ponder. 

After months of feverish activity preparing for Ascending Leaders’10th anniversary celebration and our daughter’s wedding, alongside the normal daily demands of ministry and life, I acknowledge that I need a break. But I also know it won’t be easy for me to completely unplug especially with the technology that enables us to be connected 24/7. It’s both bane and blessing, isn’t it?

Nevertheless, this week my wife and I are off on a three-week trip to the northeast, exploring historic areas of our country, even embarking on a “planes, trains, and automobiles,” segment through southeast Canada before returning to Houston at the end of July. 

In the remaining weeks of my sabbatical I’ll be reading and studying in preparation for resuming a busy fall schedule of teaching and coaching. Even in the study portion of my sabbatical, however, I must take care not to focus my efforts only on discipleship theory and examples, but even here to step back and read and ponder outside of my routine, even outside of my comfort zone. 

I covet your prayers for a pause in my ministry life that restores and renews me for even more effective service. 

Going Back to Go Forward

We're two weeks into the new year. Does it still feel shiny and new? Or is the luster gone and life back to its usual routine?

Surfing the web recently, we came across some posts that we hope you'll find encouraging as your spiritual journey unfolds in 2015.

Jeff Strong addresses the disappointment and discouragement that we're prone to fall into after the high of the holidays. In "When Jesus Says, 'Don't Follow Me'" he observes that both the shepherds and the magi had to go back to their routine. Granted the magi's may have been more glamorous than than the shepherd's. Nevertheless, both returned to their previous lives. And though their work may not have changed, their perspective had. They returned glorifying and praising God for what they had seen. We think that's a good way to approach a new year, which may well hold some of the same old challenges and problems that last year did.

For those who feel like they have little or nothing to contribute to God's purposes, the folks at corediscipleship.com remind us to look not to our own resources, but what God is able to do through those who are willing and available. God is not looking for a degree or pedigree, only our availability.

Paul Louis Metzger reminds us that spiritual growth is characterized by mourning in "'Blessed Are Those Who Mourn'--Not Those Who Are Spiritually Comfortable." This is not exactly the feel good message you might expect to hear at the start of a new year, but perhaps with a realistic assessment of who we are, acknowledging with humility our fitful progress in our spiritual journey, we may be more attuned to God's voice as we move into the weeks and months ahead.

Our prayer for you as you move forward into 2015 is that you remain steadfast in the journey and experience God's grace-filled presence to strengthen and encourage you along the way.