Using Advent To Kick-off a Better Year

This week marks the fourth week before Christmas, the beginning of the Advent season. "Advent" comes from the Latin word for "coming" as translated from the Greek word "parousia." For many, it traditionally marks the beginning of the church calendar. So it's a new year... just over a month before everyone else celebrates "New Years."

This got me thinking about how many people are going to start thinking about things they'd like to change in 2012, things they aspire to, and the inevitable "New Year's Resolutions."

Frankly, I'll admit I'm not a big fan of resolutions, and I'll bet many of you aren't either. People always ask about them, especially family. But the fact is, most people don't follow-through with them for more than a few weeks anyway, so why make them at all? Gyms... they're full in January, I know because it's the month I've most often been there. But attendance really starts to thin-out in February, and by March or April there's plenty of room.

But one resolution I've followed-through with so far has been to read the Bible cover-to-cover in 2011. I used the M'Cheyne plan offered by YouVersion.com. I credit my success this year to two major factors beyond my genuine desire to succeed: the right tool, and social pressure.

The right tool. For better or worse, I live a life that's pretty mobile and busy. That's true of a lot of people these days, but it certainly is for me. But the convenience of an online Bible with free companion mobile apps was perfect for me. It pretty much ruled out the excuse that carrying a study Bible around on a public transit commute is is unwieldy. Whether I have a laptop, iPad, or just my iPhone, my Bible is always there, my bookmarks are right where I left them, and it even pulls-up the passages I need to read each day. It's not for everyone perhaps, but I know I wouldn't have succeeded without it.

Social pressure. I am a person that loves having shared goals with other people. I gain a lot of energy from the team spirit. I like having people to share experiences, ideas, and questions with. What's more, sometimes I really need others to spur me on. So when I decided to take this on in 2011, I started a Facebook group and invited my friends to participate. We commitment to each to read our passages each day, then share our thoughts and questions with the group online. Knowing this group of people was out there made me feel committed not only to the task, but to them. This kept me going for many weeks, long enough for me to find a rhythm that integrated the practice into my life and become habitual. This didn't work as well for others, and the group dwindled as the year progressed. But my habit was established before it faltered, so I still give credit to the presence of this group for my success. I'll probably give this idea another try in 2011, so let me know if you'd like to join us.

Regardless of what you choose to take-on, this is a great time of year to assess your life. The things you fill your time with. The habits you want to foster. What do you have to show for this year? How would you like things to be different in 2012? You don't have to make it a resolution, unless you'd like to. But regardless of what you call it, it may be time to do it. If not now, when? The perfect time will likely never come. You'll probably never have enough money, enough will, enough education, enough time, enough... whatever. So stop waiting for the perfect time, and just get started!

And if you'd like some social pressure to help you, tell us... what would you like to accomplish in 2012? What do you think you'll need to make it happen? What steps are you going to take?

Love, respect, unity... and other pipe-dreams

Earlier this fall I studied through the Apostle Paul's letter to the Ephesians with a group of friends. A great experience reading, paraphrasing, questioning and reflecting on what it meant to that particular group of Christ followers and what it means to us today. We covered a lot of ground, but our conversation on the topic of church unity as discussed in chapter 4 kept churning in my mind. It peaked recently while attended Soularize in San Diego a few weeks later.

Soularize was an event that pulled together an impressive list of speakers and facilitators from diverse backgrounds and perspectives including Jay Bakker, Rachel Held Evans, Mark Scandrette, Peter Rollins and others. We also had the chance to take in a pre-screening of Blue Like Jazz, a film based on Donald Miller's best selling book of the same name, directed by Steve Taylor. Soularize was a great opportunity to hear challenging theological perspectives, join the conversation in workshops, and make new connections. But one thing was strikingly obvious — this was a set of people, both the speakers and the audience, that by and large came from pews decidedly on "the left side" of Christianity. In the relatively conservative evangelical circles I spend most time in, these people represent the "liberal theology" many fear or at least criticize. Of course this was not a surprise. In fact, it was partially why I was there in the first place.

But why do I purposefully seek to participate in a forum where I'm pretty sure to find perspectives so different from my own? Most people do just the opposite. Why do I put myself through this?

Not because I necessarily agree with everything I heard. In fact some things I profoundly disagree with.

Not because I'm totally dissatisfied with my own faith communities. I love the churches I'm a part of.

Not because I wanted to be there to confront things I disagree with. I did little of that.

So once again, why do I put myself through this?

This is not a rhetorical question. I've literally been asking myself this. I think the answer is at least two-fold.

First, I came to faith as a young adult and I've had many questions along the way. At every turn I've found God and the scriptures up to the task of answering every one. In fact, I think I hear God saying, "Bring it on... What else you got?" So I've learned not to approach questions in a spirit of doubt, but rather with curiosity and an expectation that enlightenment will come. I've found great peace in this approach.

Finally, I have deep convictions about the need for Christian unity. I see great stresses to this unity in churches today, and for my small part I want to be an agent of change in the body of Christ that seeks to work with the Holy Spirit toward greater unity. But to find this unity, we need to know each other! If we are to know each other, we need to spend time together. I amazed at how often leaders in churches criticize, post blogs, and write books against each other, yet never actually engage in live conversation either privately or publicly. Unfortunately, this serves to polarize followers and increase divisions in an already fractured church rather than open dialog, promote understanding, and build unity.

I'm sure this is at least partially driven by the belief that disagreement is inevitable, and in fact that may sometimes be true. And as much as my bias favors unity, I don't think we should expect to find it in complete agreement on issues. Rather, I believe it's found in mutual respect and understanding of our diverse views.

"From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work." — Ephesians 4:16

The very nature of this verse suggests diversity. Physical bodies are made-up of many parts which are radically different from each other. Health does not come from making them all the same. Rather, health comes when they work together.

Liberals and conservatives need to talk. (While I direct this here at people of faith, it's equally true of political factions as well.) Rather than seeking to correct each other, both sides of a debate need to seek to understand each other. I'm not suggesting that there's never a time for correction. I'm also not suggesting that there's no such thing as a "single truth" to be sought. But I am suggesting that understanding should precede correction. And even in situation where agreement cannot be found, as we all make-up God's people, the church, we need to be able to love each other despite our differences and be united under the God we love and seek to serve to the best of our understanding. This requires a deep and honest humility and the willingness to admit to ourselves and each other that we could be wrong — that God might still have truth yet to reveal to us. That our own understandings might not yet be complete.

We seem to be living in times of increasingly polarized thinking. It's obvious in the politics of public policy. I don't like it there, but I have far less tolerance for it in the church. We all seek to align our lives, our wills, and our faith under the same God, though the working of the same Holy Spirit. While I might not give unity much of a chance from a human perspective, I believe as we acknowledge God's work in and through us, anything's possible.

But I could be wrong. What do you think?

Conquering the Foes Facing Every Artist

A book review of, "The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle" by Steven Pressfield

Whether your art is writing, painting, woodworking, or a medium known only to you, there's one thing all of us who count ourselves as artists hold in common. Call it procrastination or its seemingly more admirable cousin, prioritization, but at one point or another we all face it. The tendency to put our art on the back burner in order to do something else that seems more important or at least more urgent. There are a million justifications for what this makes sense, and you all know them. But however valid the case may seem, let's be honest that we know in our hearts we've given something-up. We've put something off that we know was important, perhaps the most important thing we'd ever do. What we've given in to here is called-out and named by Steven Pressfield in his book "The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle."
This book is not new, it was first published in 2003, but it's made enough of an impression on those who have read it that they're still talking about it, recommending it, and re-reading it from time-to-time. My introduction came through a Tweet by John Acuff of Stuff Christians Like, who calls it one of his favorite books ever. After reading it, I'd have to agree with Robert McKee's opening line in the forward saying that, "Steven Pressfield wrote this book for me."
I'm not going to attempt to summarize the book, because I'd actually recommend you read it for yourself. But here are some highlights I made as I was reading. I'll start with one of the last ones, late in the book. Speaking of the fact we artists often put other things before focusing on our work, Pressfield writes:

"If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children, you hurt me, you hurt the planet. You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite God Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter further along its path back to God."

He makes a strong point of the idea that we can't, or we shouldn't, do think of life as an opportunity to do anything we want to. Rather, we were put here to a job, a calling, something we were intended to do from the cradle. It's what we're wired for. Why we manage to find this or not he claims is a matter of how we see the world, and unfortunately we often see it improperly until thoroughly educated in the school of hard knocks!
A key concept introduced early in the book is that of, "resistance." Resistance is an invincible, internal, and universal force that works against us at every stage of creativity and is fueled by our fears. Defeat of resistance is found in the mindset shift that happens for those who manage to turn from being an "amateur" to a "professional." In this case, he's talking about changes in attitude, orientation and habits rather than simply whether an artist makes money at their craft or not.
I recommend this book from the standpoint of an artist who found Pressfield's observations and conclusions extremely insightful. My copy is riddled with highlights that hit home personally, and I suspect I'm not alone. Have any of you experienced resistance in pursuit of your work? What form has it taken? How have you overcome it?