Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of a significant moment in my story. One year ago yesterday was my first day on my then new job at Starbucks. The morning after my first day, I was overwhelmed, afraid and clueless as to what was happening in my life. That morning I wrote a blog post called “Learning How To Die.” I know, dramatic, huh?
But it was real, and I was learning how to die… to who I had become.
A couple weeks ago at Cross Point, during his message about the dangers of Leaving God Out of marital relationships, Pete Wilson made the following statement:
If you constantly feel the need to tell your family you’re the spiritual leader of your house, you’re probably not.
BAM. Go ahead. Pick yourself up off the floor and read that again. I’ll wait.
I can relate to that statement in a very personal way that it wouldn’t be wise for me to go into right now. Just suffice it to say, I know that statement to be all too true.
But it’s not just about being a spiritual leader in your home, it applies to a lot of things.
If you constantly feel the need to tell people you’re…
an influencer…
an innovator…
a leader...
etc…
… you’re probably not.
The people I know who are truly influencing, innovating, leading, etc, are typically too busy actually influencing, innovating and leading to stop and identify themselves as such. Truth is, there is much more to being a leader, an influencer, et al than simply calling yourself one. The “be called a leader” line is long, while the “actually BE a leader” line is much shorter. A lot of people want the title, while far fewer are willing to commit to the work. The grind is the grand differentiator.
Along similar lines, lately I’ve been thinking about how there seems to be an unending litany of resources aiming to tell us what things ARE. Books, blogs and bold headlines shout from newsstands and our computer screens at every turn, touting the secrets of “what leadership is”, “the truth of innovation” or “flexing your influence”.
Far more rare are the cautionary, but equally vital, voices that whisper things like, “don’t do that”. In my experience, along with every lesson I have and am constantly learning about what something like leadership IS, comes with it other, often more subtle, less-obtrusive and easily glossed-over lessons about what it ISN’T.
Many love to bask in the glory of the win, but I want to hear more chronicles of lessons from the loss. Most opportunities to learn and grow don’t come from the win, anyway. They come from disappointment, confession and humility; from watching game tapes and going back to the drawing board. There is often more perspective, truth and wisdom to be gleaned from a loss than a win. As such, sometimes winning looks like losing.
Wins may exalt you, but losses shape you.
I need more of those voices in my life… balanced and seasoned voices from the sidelines, coaching me to embrace the reality of what something isn’t just as much as what it is…. voices from just outside the winner’s circle whose limping stride is a character receipt… voices that might still tremble when recounting their stories of recklessness, recovery and redemption… voices that exhort and refuse to let me settle for simply being called a leader without fully engaging my heart in what it means to actually lead.
.
In the fall of 2009, after reading Richard Stearns’ “The Hole In Our Gospel”, my friends Wes Howard and Ben Turner felt compelled to gather a group of 20/30-somethings together around the idea of being intentionally missional and living out the Gospel by actively serving the needs of others. That group started with 3 people last fall and currently stands at just over 140 who are regular/semi-regular attenders. I’ve skipped a lot of details for the sake of brevity, but suffice it to say something very unique has been happening in what we have affectionately called our “not so small” community group at Cross Point Church here in Nashville. Essentially, people keep coming and keep getting connected.
The mission statement the group adopted earlier this year is:
“We are imperfect people, living inside our design, building enduring relationships with each other,actively serving the needs of others, and committing to grow deeper in love and faith with Christ.”
Within those 140+ people, there are 8 small groups that are made up of folks in their early-20′s to mid-30′s looking for an opportunity to connect and serve and to experience community in a whole new way. It is nothing short of amazing. This particular model is quite the anomaly as far as “small groups” go and was NOT by design, but very much just “happened” somewhere along the last several months.
For the past 7-8 months, our group has been officially called the “young professionals”, a somewhat nebulous name that wasn’t very clear as to exactly who we are as a group. Several weeks ago, Wes, Ben and I began talking about the idea of giving the group an actual name that would help to define its actual identity and point to who we were. We landed on the name “Stretch”. Here’s why…
A few of the definitions of the word ‘stretch’ are:
make great demands on the capacity or resources of
cause to make maximum use of talents or abilities
straighten or extend one’s body or a part of one’s body to it’s full length
The cool thing is, those things are happening within our group in a variety of ways, and it’s incredible to see.
Here’s what Stretch means to us as a group:
It speaks to our age group being very much in the “stretch” between life phases.
It points to the opportunity for your life be stretched and changed through service and community like never before.
It speaks to the growth that happens in the space between moving FROM one thing, TO another.
It says our group is not just the cool Sunday night hang, but something that will deepen your life and put new demands on your capacity for community, faith and service.
It speaks to creating capacity for your life in the “space between”
So last night marked a milestone and the beginning of a new chapter for our “not so small” community group as we officially renamed the group “Stretch”, cast the vision for what it meant, unveiled our new logo and showed this video we put together to communicate the concept even more.
It is such an honor to do life and serve next to Wes and Ben in co-leading this incredible group of people. God has done amazing things through us and every single bit of it has been in spite of us and not because of any of us, but because He has a greater purpose and agenda than any of us could accomplish on our own. The folks in the group are incredible and are so hungry to build deep community and be the hands and feet of Christ.
In his message yesterday, Pete Wilson talked about how the Gospel challenges us to be not just recipients of grace, but agents of grace, and that the Gospel does not call for reflection, but rather action. I was so excited to hear him say those things yesterday because they are so essential to the core of our DNA as “Stretch”, and should also be to the core DNA of the heart of everyone who calls themselves a follower of Christ.
I will be talking more about Stretch in the coming weeks and months, but I wanted to take a moment to share this with you all here on my blog. I hope the “Stretch” concept resonates with you and challenges you to consider ways in your own life that you could stretch and create capacity for God to work in new and greater ways in your life. You’ll never be the same.
Sunday I made a decision I had been wrestling with for awhile.
Back story: I was baptized at the age of 11, during a revival at the church I grew up in. All the kids around my age were getting baptized and “saved” (which brings up theological issues that I don’t have the desire or patience to unpack here) around this time. While I don’t necessarily question my 11-year old sincerity at the time, I have often questioned my understanding of what exactly it was that I was doing. I had been in church all of my short 11 years and while I knew “church” very well and had been inundated with all degrees of religiosity, legalism and opinions and personal preferences sold as “doctrine”, I know for a fact that I did not know or “get” the Gospel.
In the denomination I grew up in, salvation wasn’t presented as by grace, through faith (Ephesians 2:8) in Christ ALONE, but rather it was sold as a proverbial “get out of hell, free” card. The salvation I grew up understanding and embracing wasn’t based on the cross, but rather on my ability to follow the formula, be good enough and adhere to enough rules that I would be acceptable to God which, from my experience, resulted in a whole lot of arrogance, self-righteousness and spiritual pride. THAT’S certainly not going to be a popular statement, but it is my story, nonetheless.
Looking back over my journey in the 23 years or so since then, I’ve gotten a lot of perspective and had a lot of time to think about what all that meant. Do I believe that I was “saved” to the greatest extent of my ignorance at that time? Yes. Do I still hold that experience as being sufficient and definitive of what it means to be a Christ follower in my life today? No.
A few months ago, someone asked me a question that is not all that uncommon in Christian circles, especially when you’re first getting to know someone.
“How long have you been a believer?”
My reply: “that’s a loaded question.” At that time, I was right in the middle of this whole season where Jesus was showing me my heart and subsequently wrecking it. Through a series of events which I have discussed quite candidly here, as well as some I haven’t talked about yet, my life had been wrecked and I understood, quite possibly for the first time in my life, exactly why I needed a savior. When I was asked that question, I realized that on one hand I had been a believer since 11 years old, but on another hand, and more importantly, perhaps only a few months. Over the course of the previous few months, the Gospel had dawned on me and I understood it in a way I never had before. Sure, I had “believed”, but NEVER like this. I realized that Christ’s goal wasn’t for me to stop going to the movies, wearing shorts or listening to rock music (don’t get me started), but rather to intentionally, passionately, relentlessly apprehend my heart.
Last week, Pete Wilson sent a tweet that said:
The pain of self-awareness can be the beginning of spiritual transformation. Stop dodging yourself.
If ever there was a statement to encapsulate the past several years of my life, it was that one. All the painful and heart-wrenching months that had led up to right now were also transforming me in ways I could see and some I can’t yet. And yes, I had been religiously and methodically dodging coming face to face with myself for so long. When it finally happened, it undid and changed me.
All of that leads up to the present. For the past couple months I’ve been contemplating and wrestling with the idea of getting baptized again. I wanted to do it to mark this particular moment of my life in a public way and to say to God, “I am doing THIS, with understanding and gratitude of what You did and are doing.” So why was I wrestling with it? It’s simple. Pride. I was so afraid of what people might think, possibly not knowing my story, wondering why I’m JUST getting baptized, etc. I mean, SURELY, by 35 years old… I’ve already done THAT! God forbid anyone think I’m not who they perceived me to be!!! #pridesucks #faithfail
I wrestled with it for weeks, discussed it with some close friends but eventually talked myself out of it, though in my heart I knew I really wanted to do it. I knew that Baptism Sunday was coming up at Cross Point, but I just couldn’t bring myself to commit and follow through. I woke up this past Sunday morning a little upset with myself that I couldn’t seem to move forward past this stupid pride and fear and just do it.
As I was sitting in the 10am service, Blake Bergstrom brought a powerful message about the love of the Father, His passionate pursuit of our heart and jealousy for our affection… a theme I’ve recently been stuck on and blogged about. As the message ended, the worship team started to lead “How He Loves”. As soon as I heard them sing “He is jealous for me…”, I broke and knew today was the day. While I stood there and worshipped God, watching others be baptized, I decided that I would kick the pride and just do it. TODAY.
After the 10am service I shared with Blake what I wanted to do and why. I stayed for the 11:30 service and when it was time, I took the step, moved past my fear and stepped into the water with an understanding of what this meant and was baptized. I am proud to say that no stretchy pants were used in my baptism.
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. (Romans 6:4)
I did it for me. I did it for my heart. I did it to publicly identify myself with the death and resurrection of Christ and what that means in my life every single day.
**At Cross Point, we just started a new series called “Be Rich” and Pete Wilson’s message yesterday, “Who’s Rich”, really struck a chord with me, convicted me on several levels and brought to mind this blog I wrote over 3 months ago when I first started blogging again. So, for all you Cross Pointer’s, this may be especially timely. For everyone else, I’m sure there’s something here for you too.
“I’ve got faith in the bank and money in my heart” (Derek Webb, lyrics from “I Want A Broken Heart”)
This particular season of my life I’m walking through has been full of all kinds of challenges and opportunities to choose to walk by faith, not by what I see. One such opportunity is in the area of finances.
The details aren’t important, but suffice it to say that this has been a real stretching period for me. Recently, I received a couple checks that I was not expecting at that time. It was a huge blessing, to say the least. The money came just in time and I was able to take care of some things that I needed to. I was able to briefly exhale a little bit, and it felt good.
Later that same day, it dawned on me that not only was I feeling pretty good about receiving this money, but I was actually feeling a bit too good about it. In fact, it occurred to me that getting this money had actually affected my heart response to this season I’m walking through. Yes, I was thankful to God for providing what I needed, but I quickly realized that the response in my emotions was not because I knew Christ was the unequivocal anchoring hope for my heart, but it was because of this little bit of money.
In a flash, I had allowed my heart to find strength in a few dollars. I felt so convicted. This ‘idol heart’ thing is no joke.
Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire beside you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Psalm 73:25-26
I have been working on being very intentional about focusing on Psalm 73:25-26 and reminding myself that God is the strength of my heart, not any amount of money. It is dangerous to lean into anything other than Christ for any degree of hope, security or identity.
I’ve been meditating on God being more than just Jehovah-Jireh my provider, but Jesus the Christ, my provision. He is more than my rent-payer, my grocery-buyer or the solution to any problem that can be solved with a Paypal transaction. He is the ultimate, eternal provision for a debt that no American Express Black card could pay… a life separated from Him by sin. More than I need my electric bill paid, I need a savior, a redeemer for my soul. If He alone does not anchor my heart, I’m in trouble.
My soul finds rest in God alone: my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock…I will never be shaken. Psalm 62:1
Anything else that my heart finds hope or strength in is an impostor, a counterfeit god that needs to be evicted. God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Truth is, I can get, earn, save, and invest all I want, but I’ll never squeeze an ounce of peace out of it. (totally swiped that from Pete’s blog)
In his message yesterday, Pete Wilson asked us to consider this question:
“Which of these statements creates the most anxiety for you: There is no God or there is no money in the bank?
Wow. Selah.
