20/20 Vision

I am reading some books on leadership right now, in an effort to grow in 2011 as a leader of my team and my church. So far, the reading has challenged me in a number of areas. One of the greatest areas that I have lacked [in my opinion] is that of vision-casting.

I do have vision for our church and our team. However, too often, it has remained in my head, or in conversation with a few close friends. I have heard the challenge [most clearly in Bill Hybels' book Courageous Leadership] to translate those visions out of my head, and to communicate them to my team and my colleagues [if not the entire church, even].

According to Hybels [and I agree], a compelling vision:

1. Allows the leader's passion to become contagious
2. Challenges me [and my team] to embody the vision
3. Allows people to understand the main thing.
4. Increases energy and moves people into action
5. Increases ownership
6. Provides focus
7. Smooths leadership succession

This has been very challenging for me, and has caused my juices to start flowing. I am excited about spending some time in the coming weeks thinking through vision for the arts in my church, and our small groups [and overall discipleship] process. I want to be a leader that energizes and empowers people to live out their creativity and giftedness, in order to further God's kingdom on earth.

Not A Huge Fan So Far

Blogging twice a week was one of my 2011 goals, and so far, it's gone pretty well. Looking things over, it appears that I have fallen short of my writing goal, usually averaging 5-6 posts per month. So I'm not quite there. However, I will not be legalistic about my writing frequency [or infrequency], but will simply do the best I can.

The process [although that seems too concrete a word for how these blog entries come about] has been interesting. I have heard it said that some people enjoy creating, and others enjoy having created. That is, the process is not enjoyable to them. For me, when I write music, I enjoy the creative process. However, writing these blog entries has not been very enjoyable for me. It's like working out; I am trusting that it is benefiting me [somehow], and so I am doing it even though I usually don't feel like it.

What the benefit might be? Who knows. Certainly there is no harm in wanting to improve your writing or cohesiveness of thought. There is nothing wrong with trying to discover your own voice. However, I'm just trusting that these benefits are taking place on a deeper level, because I am not perceiving them in any way.

Truthfully, I haven't put very much effort into these blog entries. In fact, the first few weeks I put in the most effort, and since then, have usually just been trying to get these posts finished. Just trying to accomplish the goal that I set for myself. I apologize to you, the reader, if there has been little of value here.

But for now, I'm not overly enjoying this discipline. I am trusting the results will be good for me, but currently....eh....

Working Towards Goals

I have spoken on this blog some about some goals I am working toward in 2011. I have created several goals for 2011, so that I can maximize my time, and not allow life to get away from me, always putting off things until the next day or the next moment.

It's going quite well. With the exception of one goal, I have made significant progress toward each of these ends.

All in all, I am finding deep fulfillment in a number of areas as I work towards these goals. I go to bed each night, content that at least some of my day each day has been moving me towards these goals. My hope is that they are helping grow me into being the person God wants me to be.

I highly recommend goal-setting. It has been said, "If you don't know where you want to go, any road will take you there."

Murder Isn't Sin

I am a sucker for John Grisham novels. I recently finished his latest, the Confession, which centers on a man who was wrongly convicted for murder and awaits lethal injection on death row.

SPOILER ALERT!! The good guy gets the needle. He is executed by the state of Texas.

This book has me thinking again about capital punishment. I am strongly opposed to it, to be frank. Reading the book made me upset. Not that, in the story, the wrong man gets the punishment, but that this system of "justice" exists at all. It is violent, hypocritical, and unjust.

Philosophically, it makes no sense. We kill people because they killed people. When an individual does it, it's murder. We prosecute. When the state does it, it's "justice." I just can't get on board with this idea. Either killing is wrong, or it isn't. If it's wrong for an individual citizen, it's wrong for "the state," too. [I use quotation marks when I say "the state," because this is merely a word to make us feel better about execution. It makes us feel like a faceless entity is doing the executing. In truth, it is judges, juries, doctors, wardens--men and women, real people--doing the executing.]

Every advanced society in the world, with the exception of the United States, has discontinued the use of capital punishment.

Consider this verse:

The earth is the Lord's and everything in it,
The world and all who dwell in it. [Psalm 24:1]

If the earth and all who dwell in it belong to God, then who are we to end someone's life prematurely? What gives "the state" the authority to decide that which should be left to God alone? Christians are certainly outspoken in their belief that abortion and suicide are sin. Why? Because it's the taking of a life that belongs to God. Can anyone honestly say that capital punishment is any different?

Perfect Storm

I'm happy to say that lately, I've been feeling great. Honestly, I feel like I can be kind of a moody guy. If not publicly, at least in my thought life, I vacillate between being optimistic and being incredibly cynical. Being encouraging and being sarcastic. Very moody. Eh, it makes me feel more like an artist.

I think I'm feeling so great for a combination of factors:

1. Working out a lot. I'm on about Day 50 of P90X, the hardest workout program I've ever been on. The workouts are increasing my energy level and general mental and emotional outlook. At home and at work, I feel focused and energized. It's exactly the boost that working out is supposed to give you. Check out P90X here.

2. Scheduling my week. I recently read a blog post by Michael Hyatt, the former CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing. He is an oustanding blogger, and recently posted a breakdown of how he actually schedules his week. I have been trying this lately, and am finding myself being more productive and focused at work. I love it. Turns out, I prefer more structure in my life than I originally thought. I think as long as I can create the structure for myself, I enjoy having a scheduled and organized week. It has really helped me a lot. You can check out Hyatt's blog post here.

3. The weather is improving. I think the weather is partly dictating my mood. I know that as a songwriter, I almost always match the type of song I'm writing with the weather [rainy=mellow, instrospective; sunny=upbeat, celebrative]. And I think it affects my mood as well. While it has been rainy lately, the warmer weather has been really helpful in my overall happiness and thankfulness.

4. Focusing on specific goals and attitudes. At the beginning of the year, I set some goals and attitudes I wanted to approach 2011 with. So far, I've been faithful to these goals and attitudes. It's going very well so far. The result is that I'm living in the sweet spot, focusing my energies on things that excite me, and am "using my time wisely" [as Mrs. Waggoner would say].

All in all, it's been a formula for an abundant, focused, joy-filled few weeks. Give it a try.

Sad

‎Last night, as I was about to call it a night, I saw the ESPN ticker breaking the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed by US forces. So, I stayed up and watched the President's address. And I jumped online and clicked around for reaction from the social media.

There is great emotion involved in a moment like this. Personally, I feel a mixture of emotions. I feel a little better [in that I presume, probably naively, that the world is safer without bin Laden].

Mostly, I have just been feeling a deep sadness. Sadness for our propensity for violence. Sad thinking back to 9/11. Sadness for how we glorify violence. Sad at our human desire for revenge. Sad that more life was lost. Sad that this will not be the end to the violence.

"Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble do not let your heart rejoice." Proverbs 24:17-18 (NIV)

Today is a day to measure how we're doing with the whole "Love your enemies" thing. And I don't think it's going well.

Naked Spirituality

Brian McLaren's latest release, Naked Spirituality: A Life With God In Twelve Simple Words outlines what spiritual life looks like against the backdrop of the postmodern, post-Christian, post-everything matrix. For those looking for more classic McLaren controversy, there will be little to offer in this book [with the exception of the acceptance of evolution, occasional political rhetoric, and lack of gender pronoun usage with reference to God]. Instead, McLaren offers up his view on the seasons of the spiritual life, encapsulating each in twelve simple words. The book breaks down like this:

Simplicity: The Season of Spiritual Awakening [Here, Thanks, O]
Complexity: The Season of Spiritual Strengthening [Sorry, Help, Please]
Perplexity: The Season of Spiritual Surviving [When, No, Why]
Harmony: The Season of Spiritual Deepening [Behold, Yes, ...]

Naked Spirituality therefore reads like a progression of spiritual seasons, with springtime [Simplicity] moving to summer [Complexity], descending into autumn [Perplexity] and coming full circle at winter's end [Harmony]. In my own life, I have had a growing awareness of the seasons of the spiritual life, and McLaren's writing gives beautiful voice to these journeys. For anyone who has wrestled with faith and experienced both the fullness and depravity that mark spiritual life [or life in general], McLaren's words will ring true.

McLaren writes most powerfully and effectively about the season of Perplexity, what St. John of the Cross famously called "the dark night of the soul." With sensitivity and depth, he articulates the emotion and turmoil of the season of darkness. McLaren gives the reader permission to feel the fullness of negative emotions with God or their situation. He does not trivialize or dismiss such feelings as a lack of faith, but practically enters the reader's mind and better articulates the pain and searching. A reader gets the sense that McLaren himself has endured and survived more than one such season.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. McLaren moves effortlessly between prose and poetry, narrative and song, weaving together a beautiful portrayal of the abundant spiritual life offered to all. He deals honestly with struggles and questions at each stage of the spiritual life, and refuses to offer trite, pat answers.

The book did lose me in a few places, where it belabored ethereal points that are quite elusive. At times, McLaren's descriptions and outworkings of thought seemed vaporous and tough to understand. However, he can be forgiven of this shortcoming, as such is the nature of the spiritual life. Words fail us.

McLaren does not leave the reader thinking that they are not doing enough, as Richard Foster [unitinentionally] might have done with his classic Celebration of Discipline. I loved Celebration of Discipline, but at the end of the book, felt like I needed simply to do everything better! McLaren is not trying to add this discipline or that to one's life [although certainly there is a time for that]. Instead, he attempts to awaken us to the God who is already there, already the All in all. It's an attempt to get the reader to simply open their eyes and see the God in all things.

I will be taking my team through this book in the coming weeks. This book includes a helpful reader's guide, and some appendices covering group practice and prayer practices.

While Naked Spirituality will not be considered McLaren's signature work, it might be one of his best. Time will tell if it has the staying power [or will even be readily accepted enough] to become a spiritual classic of this generation.

Good Friday

My favorite Good Friday meditation, courtesy of Brian McLaren:

Good Friday.
Here in Maryland, it's a beautiful spring day ... bursting with life. But only a few months ago, the area was buried under nearly three feet of snow.

Wherever there is death ... wherever hope is buried ... wherever evil triumphs over law, and wherever law triumphs over grace ... wherever injustice, unkindness, and arrogance are winning ... just wait. It's not over yet.

Windows to the Sky

I have been reading a book called "Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross," a compilations of contemporary essays on atonement. It is discussing, in new and relevant ways, the significance and scandal of the cross, and how we are reconciled to God through it. So far, it has been really interesting.

I have always struggled with the widely-held theory of penal substitution atonement. This theory says that God, in His justice, demanded that humanity's sin be paid for. Therefore, Jesus took our place, and took upon himself the wrath and punishment of God so that we could be reconciled to Him. To me, there are several problems and tensions with this theory].

The problem is that all atonement theories are incomplete and imperfect. We are trying to ascertain mysteries far beyond our understanding, so our attempts will always be seeing "through a mirror dimly." While all offer aspects of the truth of God, none will completely capture and encompass these truths and mysteries.

I exchanged emails with a friend on the subject recently, and he lamented our need to have one all-supreme atonement theory that must be agreed upon. He suggested [and I like] more of a both/and approach, where we savor and celebrate what's true and helpful about all the varying atonement theories in Scripture [victory over death, paying of the debt, perfect sacrifice, moral influence, etc.]

In another book I've recently read, the author describes atonement theories as windows, looking out to the sky. While we can see pieces of the sky through the windows, and each window offers its own unique view of the sky, the vastness and glory and expanse of the entire sky can never be contained through one window only. In fact, even the sum of the views of all the windows will offer but an incomplete view of the sky as it truly is.

The significance of the cross is so vast and expansive, so all-sufficient and all-mysterious, that we can never fully explain or understand it.

So, more than ever, it is imperative that we hold to our views humbly, always willing to learn and grow as the Spirit opens us to new realities, and celebrate the goodness [known and unknown] in the mystery of the cross.

On the Attack

A quote from the new Rob Bell book, Love Wins:

"For some, the highest form of allegiance to their God is to attack, defame, and slander others who don't articulate matters of faith as they do."

I have two thoughts on this quote.

First, I think it a shame. Attacking, defamation, and slander is not the language of love, the language of Jesus. It's about as un-Christian as it gets. Therefore, no matter how absurd an idea may seem, it is critical that we remain loving towards each other. We don't have to agree on everything, but we do have to treat each other with love and respect in everything.

Let's not lose our religion defending our beliefs.

This is why non-Christians dislike Christians. It's not because non-Christians are hard-hearted, or sinful and blind. It's because Christians, too often, are not agents of love. We are agents of attack and slander. Even though we're on the same "team," we treat each other like crap. Why would anyone want to join us, seeing how we act toward each other? [Not to mention, how we act toward "outsiders?"]

Secondly, it is critical for me to remember that those attacking and defaming sincerely believe they are demonstrating their highest allegiance to God. They feel like they are acting out their faith by defending their beliefs. So I must act with a great deal of patience and understanding, as I realize that, for that individual, this is allegiance. This is what it means to be a Christian.

I just wish they were nicer about it.

Ignore Your Weaknesses

I am reading a book right now about putting your strenghts to work, and focusing your energies there. It claims that I will be most effective when I am working on maximizing my strengths, rather than striving harder and harder to improve my weaknesses. This is not trying to minimize the deficiencies in my personality, only trying to improve upon my professional performance.

One activity that I am doing this week is tracking my emotional reaction to the activities I do. When I feel a strong emotion associated with a task I am doing, I am supposed to record it.

It has been interesting to do this so far. Already I have learned about some areas that I dislike [that I never realized I dislike]. Not surprisingly, I am finding my strongest positive reaction to be in the areas of creativity and artistic endeavor.

I will learn more as I continue through the book, but it is an interesting thought: the proposal that I will be more effective by focusing my work away from my weaknesses [rather than working hard to improve my weaknesses] and simply building on just a few strengths.

The Future Role of the Arts in the Church, Part Two

In my last post, I wrote about my belief that the church, in the future, would more likely organize itself into smaller, organic pods of believers, and live out faith in these smaller clusters. I posed the question that given this new form of the church, how would the arts be manifested in these smaller communities and how might devotional arts impact culture from this context. Here are my opinions:

1. Worship will be less programmed. I believe that it is far more likely that, while small worship gatherings will still have times of worship and discussion of God, it will not be the programmed, polished, consumer-oriented product that we currently see. My prediction is that worship will arise more naturally and organically. I also foresee less congregational singing, and more congregational discussion.

2. More art will originate from within small community. These days, one could attend about any contemporary church and hear familiar songs. Not because great hymns of the ages are being used frequently, but because the same 50 songs are coming from the top music artists and publishers in Nashville, and local churches are simply copycatting these songs. While there are many great songs to be used from these resources, I think in the future, these smaller communities will form their own artistic expression in music, art, poetry, video, etc. The "canned" material will be less important to the faith community, and natural expressions of congregants own experiences will be more highly valued.

3. Art will be formational. We will attempt to understand [literally, stand under] art in our communities. We will stop seeing it for merely its emotional impact in supporting a theological point, and will begin to see the theology of individual artworks. We will treat them as we would a sermon or a curriculum, and attempt to derive our own spiritual anchor points from these works of arts.

4. Art will seem more secular in nature. Rather than limiting expressions of God to come through approved "Christian" channels [using approved "Christian" words and phrases], we will begin to see God's movement in art outside the church, and incorporate it into our own expression. We will allow the goodness of what is being done in the world to impact our Christian experience. We will appreciate and celebrate good art wherever it is found, even incorporating it into our communities. [We already see this at work in some circles, particularly in music and video, as many contemporary churches use secular music or box office hits to illustrate points or deepen meaning in worship services.]

5. The church [even in these small faith communities] will begin to understand itself as a steward of art, which it will use to impact the world for good. The church will more and more realize that "every good and perfect gift" comes from God, and will use the goodness and beauty inherent in its art to impact culture. I think it will not be uncommon for the church to be a regular host for art shows, concerts, ballets, movies, etc. as it begins to understand itself as an administrator and executor of goodness and beauty.

The Future Role of the Arts in the Church, Part One

I don't claim to know the future, but over the next 50 years [or 10 years or 500 years], I believe that the Christian church will move away from building-centered, program-driven megachurches, and newly manifest itself in smaller, incarnational groups or networks of groups. This will allow each church to have greater flexibility and adaptation for relevance and influence in each specific context in a rapidly-changing culture. It is even possible that American megachurches will one day stand as empty tourist attractions, like the vast cathedrals of Europe. Depending on what you read, this trend is already taking place now.

The question that further interests me is this: In this new manifestation, what will the role of the arts be? How will worship and devotional arts have impact in smaller settings? How will Christian art impact culture as it breaks through the confines of the building-centered worship service? In what new ways might art impact the world around us?

Black Swan

I got to see Black Swan a few days ago. It was stunning and incredible. It was also dark and disturbing. In all, it was really good art. In that way, it was inspirational for me.

I was moved by the dancing and music onstage. I was moved by the beauty of the costumes and makeup, the lights and the production of the ballet. I was also stirred and wrenched by the composition of the movie itself. It certainly deserved all of the attention and accolades it received.

I also received it as a call to pursue excellence in my artistic endeavors. I want to create art that is moving, compelling. I want to "lose myself", as Natalie Portman's character was instructed to do by the ballet's director. I want to give my everything in pursuit of beauty and transcendence. I believe that in so doing, I will honor God.

Of course, I really don't want to go bonkers.