I haven’t preached at church for nearly 4 weeks now and I haven’t blogged on here for over 3 weeks.

Its lucky I haven’t had to preach because the cupboard feels pretty bare. I am lacking inspiration and spark – maybe if I was more spiritual I would say the Spirit’s voice is quiet, but the more honest reality is that I have been ‘blue arsed fly’ busy – and my thoughts have been consumed with my business and its demands.

As a seasonal worker whose ‘season’ started late after a long cold winter, I have now been deluged with phone calls and service requests. People have turned their sprinklers back on and discovered they don’t work… and the rush is on to get them fixed before the real heat begins.

After 10 years in business I have enough regular clients to never run short of work so my phone rings constantly and no matter what I am doing, I am almost always interrupted. Texts come in from 6.00am to midnight and sometimes in the middle of the night…

Its not a pace of life I enjoy, but I surrender to it for the three months each year that it requires. It means the rest of life suffers during that time as I work 10 hour days from Tuesday to Thursday and try to get thru as much work as possible.

Its difficult to be a good dad and husband when you are preoccupied and weary. Its hard to get motivated to see people, or go out. I eat dinner, watch some braindead TV and then chug off to bed around 9pm and generally I’m asleep in minutes. I was going to go to swimming training with the kids on Friday mornings but I just can’t bring myself to physical exertion on a day when I don’t have to go hard.

That’s one way in which busyness takes its toll, but the other way I see it impacting is on my creativity.  In this time creativity shrivels up and lives in a dark corner of my world and the tasks which it fuels (preaching, blogging, future dreaming) get dropped or done sub-standard because there is little fuel in the tank.

I sometimes open this blog, click on ‘new post’ with a vague idea percolating and discover that there just isn’t the clarity of thought or turn of phrase that comes so easily when my head is in a different, slower space.

My observation is that (at least for me) busyness is absolutely incompatible with creativity – that for the mind to be in a generative mode there needs to be peace and space and quiet. Even in the still moments I do set aside at the start and end of each day I am conscious of the need to ‘get going’ or of other important business pressing in on me. Prayer becomes a task – often a futile one – and I sometimes just give it up and go and ‘do something useful’.

Some of my most creative moments are actually on holidays – when there is nothing to do and nothing to think about. But even then it can take a while to get into that zone.

So for now this blog will show signs of neglect. I will do my best to pull together ideas for teaching at church, but chances are I won’t be ‘in the zone’ for a little while to come.

That said, I know there will come a day – I’m guessing in January once people have overspent on credit cards – when I will get a breath and I will be able to sit at peace with little pressing and listen to the ‘other voice’.

I know that will happen… but what about those for whom ‘January’ never comes – those for whom all of life is lived in the frantic zone? I’d suggest one of the reasons imagination and creativity is seen as the domain of children is because they have wide open mental spaces in which to play and they are not caught up in a life of activity – yet…

I would suggest we all have a creative side to us, but unless it is tended it gets squeezed out of us by a world that insists we get busy. I know there are times we need to be run hard, but I sense the world would be a richer place if the creative spark were fanned into flame more often albeit at the expense of productivity.

If you multiply those two numbers together then that is how many times in my life I’ve been to a church service.

Its a lot

In reality its probably more than that, because for the first 38 years I went twice on Sunday… (remember those days anyone) so I think the mathematicians would work that out as (38 x 104) + (14 x 52) which is 4680 church services give or take a few for holidays and for the years when we had 3 or 4 services a day running.

Let’s call it 5000…

After 5000 church services what is there still to learn, to do, to experience to be part of?… Surely 5000 times is enough?!…

And most of it has been the same kind of thing happening over and over… Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…Sing, pray, listen… sing, pray, listen…

Or in my case once I got a gig it was sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…sing, pray, preach…

Ok point made, church is repetitive – to the point of tedium even.

Not unlike my days, or yours for that matter.

Wake, eat, work, sleep or some variation of that. Every day is pretty much the same and even if I change the content of those activities I am still going to do pretty much the same thing for the rest of my life…

Wake, eat, work, sleep and repeat…

The point?

Repetition is not bad – in fact it is part of life – and health even.  Certainly we all need a holiday and a shift in focus from time to time, but 99% of life is repetitive and routine.

99%

Really.

And we need routine and repetition to give form to our days.

It would seem odd to delete ‘eating’ from our routine, or ‘sleep’. Many would like to delete ‘work’, but if you’ve done that then you would know the emptiness that accompanies a lack of purposeful living.

I’m no fan of church for church’s sake, but increasingly I see the value of the simple discipline of turning up – saying ‘this is what I do’.

I meet with my ‘family’ every week and I check in. And like most family gatherings some weeks its a hoot, other weeks it feels like white noise and others still we fall asleep or zone out completely.

But families get together.

Most evenings 4 of us gather around the table for food and to ‘be there’. Some nights I don’t feel much like talking. Some nights we laugh and joke loudly. Most nights Sam is the last one finished his meal because he talks more than the rest of us.

Our family’s evening meals are rarely inspiring, and captivating, but there is a simple beauty in being there – in turning up – and recognising that its not the same if someone is away – or if we eat at different times.

So I will continue to meet with the family in its various forms just because it matters – even if at times I find it hard to see.

Recently I was at a dinner party and speaking with a person who expressed an interest in all things philosophy and religion. I found myself in conversation with this bloke for a while, so I began to ask him about his religious / philosophical views.

I asked if he had done any study and he confidently told me he had. I was thinking a philosophy degree or similar, but when I asked he explained that he had been on a weekend retreat back in 2011 with a group called Landmark Forum and it had revolutionised his life and been the basis for his thinking.

‘So… 3 days? Was that it?…’ I asked.

‘Yes, but I could do part 2 – another weekend – if I wanted to’ he added.

I admit I was skeptical of someone who would call a 3 day weekend a substantial amount of study…

As we chatted I heard that the group who held the weekend gathering in question  base their work on the EST movement, a school of thought popular back in the 70’s and 80’s but now rebranded as ‘Landmark Forums’.

I had heard of EST, but didn’t know much – they just fitted in my ‘alternative spiritualities’ category. I came home and did some googling and they get both rave reviews and scam warnings, depending on who is writing and what their experience was.

After reading up on them in various places, the common thread I observed was that the weekend was an intense focused time where people were broken down and then ‘re-built’.  It seems the goal of the conferences are to break people emotionally – to help them see and encounter their own brokenness and screwed-upness and to have them experience their own darkness and failure. In that deeply emotional state people are encouraged to scan their past for broken relationships and damage done that needs fixing.

From there they are encouraged to get on the phone, or set up a meeting to reconcile with those they have wronged.  And then once the ‘past has been dealt with’ they can move forwards. Many accounts describe this as a time of powerful healing and breakthru.

The philosophy has connections to the human potential movement, believing that in yourself you have all the capacity to achieve fulness and completeness – to be fully human.

I found it interesting to follow the train of thought and to see the similarity with my own faith – the belief in our brokenness and the need for healing – the importance of reconciliation, but then to see the divergence when it comes to how wholeness is achieved. In Landmark Forums you are seen as capable of moving yourself into a new headspace and of being your own saviour. All around us today in contemporary spirituality are variations on that theme – you are enough – you are your own authority and source of hope.

Its the dominant narrative of our time and in some places it leeches into our Christian story, eroding and ultimately eliminating the need for Jesus. The guy I was speaking with told me that he felt he had evolved past such a primitive mode of thought as Christianity, a theme I hear in the more recent teachings of Rob Bell, as he talks less about Jesus and more about an evolving consciousness. (And yes – I still listen to Bell – because I like him, find him intriguing and I think he has some amazing stuff to say alongside that which I would despatch)

My need for a saviour actually sounds quite ‘weak’ alongside those who would argue they don’t need anyone, which is probably what Paul was getting at when he spoke of the foolishness of the cross and our only boast being in the Lord. (1 Cor 8)

I guess the ultimate question is whose reality is true, but then that’s not the kinda question you ask in these times either…

So much of what is written or spoken about in Christian leadership seems to be about the organisational task of moving a church towards its ‘vision’ or intended direction. Not wrong and I agree that there is that element to leadership, but anyone who lasts a while in ministry knows that the real work of leadership and ministry is actually done in the micro-setting – one to one in personal relationships.

It’s as we help people grow and develop that our ‘organisation’ actually becomes what we want it to be. More specifically its as we help people become more like Christ that the church takes on the shape it is intended to have. ‘Equipping the saints’ may have a ‘skills’ aspect to it, but I am increasingly convinced it is more to do with shaping character and helping people tap into what God is up to in their lives.

You just can’t do that anywhere near as effectively by running a program or preaching a sermon. Even a small group has a limited impact. But as you sit with someone and spend time fully engaged with them, you have the potential to make a significant difference.

These days I tell people I have 3 simple roles leading, teaching and meeting with blokes – just 3 things. I’ll also meet with women where its appropriate, but by and large the most important stuff I do is in those purposeful connections with men. Its where the bulk of the ‘leading’ gets done.

I remember as a young pastor knowing I needed to catch people one to one and doing it, but not really knowing quite what I was doing, why we were meeting or what I was hoping for. I often felt awkward and like I was spinning my wheels, and even wasting people’s time because unless it was a Bible study, I lacked a sense of purpose and I also didn’t feel genuine permission to ask significant questions of the people I was meeting with. I’m guessing they felt it too – nice to see you, but so what?…

I can’t say I feel that now, nor do I have many meetings where there is no sense of purpose. Sometimes the purpose is simply to catch up and shoot the breeze. Many of those in our church community are my good friends and its nice to have lunch and talk cars, caravans and surfing. But most often if we are meeting one to one it will involve deliberate inquiry as to a person’s life trajectory, particularly their spiritual formation, and then helping them reflect on their experience of God and prompting them to consider what God may be saying in their life. Its not about how often you’ve read your Bible, prayed and gone to church. Its focused on helping them pay attention to the work God is doing in their own experience and as they encounter scripture. Its intentional and unapologetically, direct at times.

Of course people can do this themselves but sometimes its easier when someone else is guiding and prompting than just listening to your own thoughts.

I’d say that any Christian leader who isn’t spending intentional one to one time with a small but significant number of people is actually neglecting the core work that is required to shape a community and lead it purposefully. Preaching only makes sense if we know the people we are preaching to, leading only takes form when we know the people we are called to lead.

Its the real work of leadership that we have been called to – helping people form into the likeness of Christ and then seeing what takes shape out of that.

You probably wouldn’t have even known the under 19 World Cricket championships were happening earlier this year except for one incident. A West Indian bowler ‘mankaded’ the last Zimbabwean batsman as the game drew to a close, denying the Zimbabwean team the opportunity to go thru to the quarter finals.

Chances are unless you know cricket you also have no idea what ‘mankading’ is, but if your name is Vinoo Mankad you probably regret the day you decided to play by the letter of the law rather than the spirit, because now a piece of universally regarded unsportsmanlike conduct has been named after you.

Mankading can happen when the bowler is running in to bowl and the batsman at the non-strikers end is walking down the pitch in preparation for a potential run. The batsman is out of his crease and the bowler can dislodge the bales and make an appeal. Technically the batsman is fair game and needs to be given out.. The etiquette of cricket is that you need to give at least one warning before taking a wicket in this way. Even then its considered a pretty dodgy practice.

Vinoo Mankad will be remembered for all of history now, but for all the wrong reasons.

A bit like Aussie cricketer Trevor Chappell…

Oh yeah… we did that whole underarm thing against the Kiwis didn’t we?… That happened 35 years ago now but its still one of the ugliest moments in Trans-tasman sport. Acting on instructions from his brother Greg who was captain at the time, Chappell bowled the final ball of the day… underarm. Yeah – he rolled it along the ground… What an insanely dumb thing to do… The Kiwis needed a 6 to win the game and by bowling the way he did he denied them any opportunity of making a shot that would give them the result.

I think we might now call that ‘un-Australian’… But the fact is we did it. It was legal – it was permissible in the rules of the sport, but it just goes to show there can be a canyon of difference between legal and ethical or ‘permissible’ and ‘good’.

But its always been that way.

You can be perfectly correct and yet obnoxiously wrong. Mark Twain once spoke of those who were ‘good people in the worst sense of the word.’

I think of the story in the gospel of John where Jesus is confronted with the woman caught in adultery and he chooses not to play by the rules of his own religion. Those who were ‘good in the worst sense of the word’ have arrived and declared her guilty and punishable by stoning – which was true.

Jesus knows this is the case and says ‘sure go ahead – kill her – but let’s start with the person who has never sinned throwing the first stone.’

It gets a bit quiet in the street and John writes that one by one they dropped their stones and left.

So the woman is then left alone with the one man who could genuinely pronounce a condemnation – the one without sin – and yet he chooses not to enforce the law as it is written. Maybe its his law – he can do what he likes with it… but its not that… Its not an abrogation of the law but an awareness of what the law was there for in the first place.

He says to her ‘so… no one left here to condemn you then hey?’

‘Nope’.

‘Well – I don’t condemn you either.’

I think its really important we see that first statement Jesus makes because his second statement gets a lot more attention. His first action is to not condemn – to withhold whatever punishment was due – because that is what God’s like.

Then he says ‘alright – go and don’t sin any more’.

Because God’s also like that. He calls us to a better life, but that call comes out of love and grace rather than fear of condemnation.

In John 1 Jesus is spoken of as the ‘one full of grace and truth’, which I find a beautiful tension. We so often err on the side of grace – allowing sin to go unchecked, or on the side of ‘truth’, pointing out the rules divorced from their context.

What’s the point?

Simply that we can ‘get it all right’ and yet get it so terribly wrong. We can create a culture of law abiding and even ‘enforcement’ in Christian communities (whether its overt or subtle) and yet miss the heart of God that loves, accepts and forgives all of us for our screw ups.

If Jesus came to set us free then it won’t be because we live in trepidation that one day someone is going to Mankad us – or nail us on a technicality – because God just isn’t like that.

So if I were to ask you now how ‘full’ your life is and you were to express it as a percentage what would you say?

60%?… 70%?… 80%?…90?… more?…

When is ‘too full’? And what implication does that have?

If that seems like a strange question then maybe its because you haven’t come to appreciate the importance of ‘margins’.

By ‘margins’ what I mean is living in such a way that you have plenty of space in life. You are not perpetually rushing – not hurrying from one activity to the next – not feeling like there is never enough time in the day, and even in the quiet moments feeling edgy because there must be something to be getting on with.

I remember as a 20 something living such a packed life that I simply ran fast from one activity to the next and it set the pattern for my existence for the next 10 years. It was largely ok as a single guy with boundless energy, as even emergencies managed to get catered for by just having a later night. In that phase of life the goal was to get as much done as was physically possible in one week.  There simply were no margins and if there had been I would have filled them to overflowing!

But I don’t believe its a healthy way to live – running hard and squeezing as much in as is physically possible. In fact I would suggest it is a way of depleting the soul, draining joy and slowly but surely bringing us undone in every way.

The absence of margins inevitably means an absence of time in reflection – because reflection will be seen as unproductive time. And the absence of reflection leads to a life lived without examination. What was it ole mate Socrates said about the ‘unexamined life’? I don’t think I have ever heard of a more ‘contemplative’ leader having a moral failure (which isn’t to say it hasn’t happened), but far more often it is the driven, type A workaholic who finds themself here, and my guess is that it is in part related to the absence of reflective space and the ability to see their own vulnerability.

The absence of margins will see a productive body but a withering soul.  However… because busyness and accomplishment is valued so highly in our society you can often get away with a depleted soul for longer than you can the lack of achievement. In reality busyness and hurry are like cancer to the soul and while their effect may not be immediately visible, the damage is being done. That’s not to undervalue achievement because I still love to get stuff done and I want to be successful, but its to say that it cannot be at the expense of the soul.

The absence of margins will inevitably have a detrimental effect on relationships. You simply can’t stop and be present with people if your brain is constantly focused on the next thing. You will piss people off because you clearly ‘need to be elsewhere’. You have better things to do than sit back and fritter a few hours away with friends. If you’re overly busy then it will show in your speech. You will talk fast and people will not rest easy in your presence… and if people don’t feel at ease around you then relationships will always struggle to take shape.

The absence of margins will also show up in your availability to people who call outside of your schedule. Margins are the space in life where the unexpected stuff can be attended to – and with care and focus rather than just as a duty to be dispensed with as quickly as possible.

I find it hard to measure ‘margins’, but I know when they are there and I know when they aren’t. Its been a long time since I lived with narrow margins and I doubt I ever will again.

To live with generous margins could be perceived as lazy, as wasteful even and at times I have struggled with being seen that way. But to live with margins also means to live in such a way that both people and God are paid attention to and given the time they deserve rather than being quantified as a task and allocated a slot in the diary.

In speaking of this I used to say that since living with margins ‘I get less done, but I’m a nicer person for it’, but more recently I’ve been questioning whether I actually ‘get less done’, or if in fact I just accomplish different things.

I guess it all depends on what we believe really matters in the end…

Each evening when my head hits the pillow, the last thing I do is an ‘examen exercise’, a focused reflection on the day that has passed, giving thanks, looking for high points, low points, energy spikes, darkness, relational connections and the presence of God in all of it.

It’s a very simple but effective way of daily noticing what is happening in life and of seeing Gods hand. In the movement of the day it’s a bit harder to be conscious of the spirit’s work, but in the silence and dark of the night as I replay the day’s events in my mind I am able to join some dots, glean insights and get curious about what God may be doing.

Yesterday was a fairly typical Friday – a ‘church’ day for me – with meetings, people connections, admin and a bit of down time. It was so typical that it would have been easy to miss the moments of joy and fun. But an examen allows you to tune into the often unseen moments of gladness and pain that may otherwise go unobserved.

And it was a surprising few minutes of reflection.

As I turned the light off and gave thanks the first images foremost in my mind were some Facebook pics I had just seen of my 13 year old son Sam, doing his first talk to the kids groups he is involved with leading. It was inspiring and joy giving – to see him doing it – but also to hear him articulating the nature of his own faith as we drove home.

As I looked for stuff to be alert to I was reminded of a conversation from earlier the day – a person who wasn’t doing so well and needed prayer and probably a follow up conversation. I prayed for the person.

When I looked for moments of joy where my energy levels rose, I found two that I didn’t expect. One was when I fixed the sound system in my car. A dodgy earth wire was causing an amplifier to cut in and out randomly. I don’t know much about sound systems but I managed to track and fix the problem.

Satisfying. I like fixing things especially things I have little grasp of.  In ‘noticing’ that I was reminded that I find enjoyment in the accomplishment of stuff and I like problem solving. Perhaps I should do more of it…

The second was a funny moment when we picked the kids up from youth group and I noticed the high school boys having a chin up competition. I joined in and my 14 chin ups raised a few eyebrows – hardly olympic standard, but always nice to keep people guessing about what a 52 year old body is capable of… I chuckled as I drove off with the kids. The joy was in the surprise.

There was much in that day to be grateful for, to ‘pray about’ if you like, but I find the examen is most helpful for tuning in to the activity of God and to the more specific and unique moments that bring energy to my soul.

You can’t manufacture those moments, but noticing them, seeing a pattern and then living in line with them is just another way of being more fully the person God has created you to be.