Friday, August 22, 2008

Following God in the throes of leadership by Margaret Feinberg

I love Margaret Feinberg's words here about the Sacred Echo of God's voice...I have often heard that echo and been stopped dead in my tracks as I realized God was getting after me about one thing in a major way...

As a leader, more and more, I’m finding that I need the sacred echo – the persistent voice of God – almost as if my life depended on it.


As leaders, we desperately need to be able to recognize God’s voice and leading not only in our daily lives, but as we serve in our churches and community. Though God’s Word is our only source of indisputable truth, many passages of the Bible illustrate the colorful ways God speaks to his people. In the Bible God speaks through kings and queens, princes and prophets, poets and pilgrims. He speaks through weather patterns, barnyard animals, and even the stars in the sky. God is not only creative, but he is persistent in getting our attention and communicating with us. That’s encouraging news for us as leaders!

So how do you know if God might be leading you in a new direction or a fresh initiative? Listen for what I call the “sacred echo.” What is a sacred echo? It’s the persistent voice of God in our lives.

You may find a particular passage on caring for the poor, the widows, the children, or the elderly following you throughout daily life. Several members of your congregation may keep raising this particular need to your attention. Then, during a chance luncheon the topic comes up again. Just maybe God is trying to get your attention! When this happens, take time to prayerfully consider this leading. Ask God to give you discernment if it truly is him. If it is, ask him to begin bringing people around you who share a similar passion and are ready to serve. And watch what happens.

As a leader, more and more, I’m finding that I need the sacred echo – the persistent voice of God – almost as if my life depended on it. The sacred echo reminds me he has not departed, he is steadfast, and he has not given up on me. If truth be told, as I grow older, I’m finding I need more certainty – not less – in responding to God’s prompting in my life.

So go ahead, begin responding prayerfully to the sacred echo. God is speaking to you.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The First Real Mission by Beth Guckenberger from RELEVANT MAGAZINE

When I read this book excerpt story, I was reminded of one of the moments when my life direction was similarly altered...when I handed a live chicken to an orphan girl named Maggie and her only living relative, her great grandmother, and they received it with incredible joy sitting in front of their one room hut that leaks during the rainy season and houses a few pounds of corn that is their only food source for the forseeable future...and I knew that Maggie, millions of kids like Maggie in Africa and elsewhere, needed me to advocate for them, to give to them, to love them beyond my own needs...and I've been back to Zambia 3 times with my 4th trip already planned...and a picture of Maggie is my reminder of the moment that redirected the trajectory of my life...may we all be moved to mission by a divine moment in our lives...


For the past few years Todd and I have sponsored our church’s youth mission trips to Queretaro, Mexico. In general, we know what to expect. A little paint here, a little polish there, some late-night tacos, an evangelistic drama—all in the name of the Lord.

The truth is, no one really cares. As I unpack the paints, I think, “Haven’t we painted this wall before?” We are frustrated, the students are uninspired and, worst of all, the nationals we have come to serve are unaffected.

One of the men from our group comes up to us and says, “About two more hours, and we can clean up here and head for dinner.”

“Two hours, huh?” I sigh.

I close my eyes and try to think how to fill that time, until Todd interrupts my thoughts: “Remember the orphanage we visited in Albania?” he asks, his back to me, bent over, cleaning some paintbrushes.

“Sure. Why?”

“You think there are any in this town?”

Even before he can stand up and turn around, I’m gone. I dash over to where our teens are talking to some of their Mexican counterparts.

“Orphanage-o? Orphanatorio? Orphanagorio?” I try every combination with my best Mexican accent to get a reaction. “Aquí?” (“Here?”)

“Sí. Sí.” They look at me, laughing, either because the answer is obvious or because of my funny words. I don’t know which.

I wish I could say that Todd and I sat down right then and made a plan, but we didn’t. The truth is, within 10 minutes of his question, we leave the students with the other adult sponsors, and we’re in a taxi trying to find an orphanage.

Looking back now, it seems foolish. We didn’t speak much Spanish, didn’t have much money if we got into trouble, and were in a city where we could have easily gotten lost. An hour later, we’re standing in front of a children’s home on a dusty road, knocking at the door as we wave goodbye to our taxi driver.

We hear a series of locks, bolts and chains being unlatched, and the door swings open. Have you ever heard the expression “his face is an open book”? Well, the title of the book on the face of the man who answers the door is Who the Heck Are You? Even though he’s sitting in a wheelchair, he seems eight feet tall. Seeing him makes us wonder if all those locks are to keep people out or keep children in. While he waits for us to explain ourselves, I catch a glimpse of a child over his shoulder.

We struggle with our bad Spanish for more than an hour but don’t get far. Finally, frustrated, Todd gives up and starts playing basketball with some of the boys, leaving me to continue the conversation. For a while we watch Todd in silence, our host with a blank expression on his face and me hoping we really are on a holy errand.

The thought crosses my mind, Has this man already asked us to leave in Spanish and we just didn’t understand? Or is this something that You planned, Lord?

Finally, the man turns to me and says, “I can understand you. I’m an American.”

I can’t believe it. Why did he pretend? I know I should be mad—but my first thought is gratitude that we can now communicate.

He continues, “I’m a Vietnam War vet. I came to work with abandoned children because I know what it means to be tossed aside. Like them, I’m trying to forget the people who failed me. I don’t always trust outsiders.”

I say nothing.

Todd, who has overheard everything, walks over from the court, with the ball under his arm, and says, “We have $200, 25 eager students and a whole day left in our trip. Is there anything we can do for you if we come back tomorrow?”

The man shifts his eyes and says softly, “The children haven’t had meat in a year, and that window up there is broken.”

Sometimes just talking can cost you. His admission costs him something, and our request costs us as well. We all overcome our fears and say things that are uncomfortable. But we do it. As we sit there on that bench, sipping our lemonade, I know what’s happened: Our first real mission has begun.

The next day, with a much clearer sense of purpose, we set out for the children’s home. On the way, we stop at a market to buy food and toys. When we get to the front door, the children are waiting, laughing and asking if “Michael Jordan” has come back.

We have 200 hamburgers, a new window, and our crew of teenagers.

The orphanage is built like a bullfighting arena, with a large open area in the middle. Steep stairs go up to the dorms on the top layer, which encircle the courtyard below. We set up the grill in the courtyard and begin serving the meal.

After all 40 of the kids receive their hamburgers and second helpings, we find ourselves still flipping burgers. From behind the grill, Todd whispers, “What’s going on? These kids can’t still be hungry; go see if you can figure out where all the food’s wandering off to.”

So I mingle with the kids, who are holding napkins full of hamburgers. Some are carrying them up to their rooms; I follow one little preschool girl up the stairs to the dormitory, and with each step, it’s almost as if I can feel her leading me, wanting me to see something. When we reach the top, she hesitates only slightly as she enters and leaves me standing in the doorway.

She’s hiding the hamburger patties under her mattress.

When I walk into the room, some of the other girls are startled and one of them starts to cry. Why? Do they think I’ll be mad? Yell at them? Hit them? Take the hamburgers back? I don’t know, but none of those things even occur to me. I simply help the little girl I followed lift her heavy mattress.

After we carefully hide the girl’s hamburger, I take her hand, and we head back out the door. Then I stop and send her down to get Todd. After he bounds up the stairs, we stand together in that doorway, and something happens to us, right there, that we don’t even realize at the time. But when I chart the events of my life that followed, they trace back to that moment in the doorway.

We walk slowly down the stairs, trying to think of how we might be able to buy more hamburgers. At the bottom, the director is watching us skeptically, waiting for our reaction, and he explains that the kids often save food for later. Even though we know the hamburgers won’t keep long, none of us has the heart to stop them.

That day Todd and I had a defining moment—an experience that impacted our thinking, touched our hearts and compelled us into a new course of action. It changed our lives. I used to be afraid of that word, change, as if it implied, somehow, that I need to be corrected. But now I have a different view of change. It is a shift in perspective, and not the Extreme Home Makeover kind of change we see on television. It is a shift in what we think we are capable of. In where we want to see our life heading. In how we are willing to spend our time, talents and resources.

When people tell me about how God “moved” them, it is that kind of shift, I believe, they are talking about. It’s a step in a new direction that we couldn’t have taken on our own. Sometimes defining moments result in immediate and complete life transformations, like it did for the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus; but more often, such moments are more subtle, things we can only see in hindsight.

For me, the hamburger incident was not a defining moment that lit up in neon lights. Not at all. I flew home the next day, went back to work, headed to the grocery store, called my friends—but there was a difference. I have since described it as being like a burr under my saddle. I knew I would never feel quite comfortable again. Something inside me had shifted, and after the supernatural pleasure of that “defining moment,” like an addict, I knew I wanted another hit.

Before that trip to Mexico, I was not a bad person. I wasn’t doing anything wrong that required major discipline in my life. But that trip was more like a big wooden marker in the shape of an arrow pointing to someplace I couldn’t see—a place I was nervous about, but excited to explore. Just a week before the trip, the path I was on in my life had seemed fine, but now, in light of that experience, I didn’t want fine anymore. For a year afterward, I moved around on that saddle trying to get comfortable again, but there was that silly burr, always reminding me that I had changed that afternoon in Mexico. That is what reckless faith does—it propels me faster and harder toward God’s true plan for my life.

Todd and I talked hundreds of hours in the following year about those hamburgers and about all the people we knew who could buy food for orphans if they only knew there was a need and how important they could be in meeting that need. It became clear that the arrow was pointing us back to Mexico, and so, without much guidance other than a vague sense of the rightness of the decision, we moved to Monterrey.

Today, when people look at our organization and ask about strategy, vision casting, projection and planning, we just smile. It would be tempting to spin it all so it seems more polished.

But the truth is, it started with a little girl hiding a hamburger under her mattress.

Taken from Reckless Faith © 2008 by Beth Guckenberger. Used by permission of Zondervan.

Friday, August 8, 2008

40 Reflections after 40 Years of Life

Tonight I am going to have a little soccer reunion match followed by a Chipotle birthday party dinner with friends and family...and the other night I randomly scribbled down some of my reflections as I hit this milestone of old or middle age as I turn 40 on Tuesday...here they are unfiltered...most of all I am grateful at this time for Jesus, family, and friends...and all three of them have truly been beyond my wildest dreams and continue to be so in my life...


1. There’s no book you can keep studying and growing to love more deeply except for the Scriptures
2. Going to a major league baseball game with my dad, with my brother, with my friends, with my son is something I could do every day for the rest of my life
3. Summer days at the pool with my kids are the perfect way to spend Chicago summers
4. When you receive an impossible vision and then have the faith to chase it with all your heart, that is when God shows up big time
5. There’s no place better to grow up as a sports nerd than Detroit
6. Sharing an idea with someone else is a joy, a privilege, and often the very best thing I can do for someone else
7. Students are capable of doing life and world changing leadership tasks when adults empower and release them instead of limiting and making them wait to be fully ready to serve God
8. Having a remarkably fun and deeply spiritual and personally caring group of college friends lays a foundation from which one can chase one’s dreams knowing that there are people who will deeply believe in you in all you do
9. Soccer connects the people of the world and draws us together from literally every corner of the planet
10. Being in the mountain peaks of Colorado allows one to see and meet with God in a spot and to have a two-way conversation truly unique to that very spot on the planet
11. Reading the words of others can fill and inspire your own soul to incredible levels of passion for the things that make your heart jump and skip
12. Doing more work compared to spending time with my wife simply isn’t a fair fight…Ingrid wins hands down every time because there is no one who I’d rather be with and who makes me more like God created me to be
13. Spending time talking about life and faith and anything else with another brings joy and pleasure to my soul
14. Being on a lake in MN with family in July is truly a place of joy and peace and contentment
15. The golf course is a remarkable place where you can enjoy great conversation with friends and do an athletic thing in the beauty of creation
16. There is no greater joy for a teacher and mentor than when your former students do things you could never dream up or accomplish yourself
17. The marriage of two Christ followers who love each other deeply is something you never get tired of being a part of
18. God has given me the deepest of friendships with those a generation ahead of me, my peers, and those more than a decade or two behind me in years, as age is blown away by the realities of Christ’s presence in both of our lives
19. SportsCenter has been one of the most important inventions of my lifetime
20. Life where one only has relationships with people just like oneself is stale and growth-inhibiting
21. Being discipled at an early age is a blessing of immeasurable value
22. There’s always more to learn every single day
23. Having siblings you love being with makes life much richer and holidays highlights of the calendar year
24. Life on this side of eternity will not be everything we want it to be
25. Investing your resources in the development and salvation of a life, a family, a community, a nation is the best investment you can ever make
26. We are blessed to be a blessing to those who need to be blessed
27. To those whom much is given an awful lot is required and expected
28. Africa is a continent that is filled with amazing people, remarkable potential, unreal beauty, unbearable suffering, needs that can and must be met, and a spirit that you won’t find anywhere else in the world
29. I think I’ve traveled enough miles in a 15-passenger van to circle the globe 3 different times
30. Studying the life and ministry and words of Jesus inspires me to live in such a way that I try to emulate each and every thing that He did
31. The generation of students I have gotten to know will not leave the earth the same as they found it…they will make it better and more like God intends it to be like
32. Listening to podcasts while running is a truly sacred time in my life
33. The least in our world have made my life so much richer than it was when I wasn’t in relationship with the poor and oppressed in the globe
34. Brokenness humbles you and causes you to be shaped into the person and carry the character God longs for us to become
35. Being a dad of a girl is the greatest privilege and most remarkable life calling I have ever experienced
36. The support and example of Christ following parents who celebrate the use of my gifts and passions in my life has been and continues to be the thing that has enabled me to pursue God’s best for my life
37. Being a Christian means that I am called to bring the hope and life of Jesus into the culture and lives of those all around me and that being a minister of the Gospel means that I must announce and physically bring the reality of the Kingdom of God to this earth in this day and age
38. Writing is therapeutic and joy giving to my spirit and soul
39. The power of friendships and the blessing of real community are what have made my life truly something even better than what I could have dreamt of or believed possible
40. After the first 40 years, I can’t wait to see what the next 40 will bring

Saturday, August 2, 2008

A Believer's To-Be List by Philip Yancey

In 10 days, I turn 40...and I am thinking about that "second half" of life...and I loved Yancey's thoughts about how he was going to live and what he was going to be as he turned 50 himself...I like these ideas as guideposts for the next 40 years...a great list of nine life philosophies...


When I turned 50, I had a complete physical checkup. Doctors poked, prodded, x-rayed, and even cut open parts of my body to assess and repair the damage I had done. At the same time, I scheduled a spiritual checkup, too. I went on a silent retreat led by a wise spiritual director.

In those days of solitude, I pondered what I needed to change to keep my soul in shape. The more I listened, the longer grew the list. Here is a mere sampling, a portion of a spiritual action plan for my next 50 years.


Question your doubts as much as your faith. By personality, or perhaps as a reaction to a fundamentalist past, I brood on doubts and experience faith in occasional flashes. Isn't it about time for me to reverse the pattern?

Do not attempt this journey alone. Like many Protestants, I easily assume the posture of one person alone with God, a stance that more and more I see as unbiblical. The Old Testament tells the story of the people of God; Jesus' parables unveil the kingdom; the epistles went primarily to communities of faith. We have little guidance on how to live as a follower alone because God never intended it.

Allow the good—natural beauty, your health, encouraging words—to penetrate as deeply as the bad. Why does it take about 17 encouraging letters from readers to overcome the effect of one that is caustic and critical? If I awoke every morning, and fell asleep each night, bathed in a sense of gratitude and not self-doubt, the in-between hours would doubtless take on a different cast.

For your own sake, simplify. Eliminate whatever distracts you from God. Toss catalogs, junk mail, and book club notices in the trash. If I ever get the nerve, my television set should probably land there as well.

Find what Eric Liddell found: something that allows you to feel God's pleasure. When the sprinter's sister worried that his participation in the Olympics might derail his missionary career, Eric responded, "God made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure." What makes me feel God's pleasure? I must identify it, and then run.

Always "err," as God does, on the side of freedom, mercy, and compassion. I continue to marvel at the humility of a sovereign God who descends to live inside us, his flawed creatures. "Quench not the Spirit," Paul says in one place, and in another "grieve not the holy Spirit of God." In so many words, the God of all power asks us not to hurt him. Do I show that same humble, noncoercive attitude toward people of whom I disapprove?

Don't be ashamed. "I am not ashamed of the gospel," Paul told the Romans. Why do I speak in generalities when strangers ask me what I do for a living and then try to pin down what kind of books I write? Why do I mention the secular schools I attended before the Christian ones?

Remember, those Christians who peeve you so much—God chose them too. For some reason, I find it much easier to show grace and acceptance toward immoral unbelievers than toward uptight, judgmental Christians. Which, of course, turns me into a different kind of uptight, judgmental Christian.

Forgive, daily, those who caused the wounds that keep you from wholeness. Increasingly, I find God uses our wounds in his service. By harboring blame for those who caused them, I slow the act of redemption that can bring healing.

My spiritual checkup offers one clear advantage over my physical checkup. No matter what I do my body will continue to deteriorate, but, spiritually I can look forward to growth and renewed vigor as long as I listen and then act on what I hear God saying.