“The idea for a sabbatical developed from a two-pronged stimulus: fatigue and frustration. I was tired. That’s hardly unusual in itself, but it was a tiredness that vacations weren’t fixing – a tiredness of spirit, an inner boredom. I sensed a spiritual core to my fatigue and was looking for a spiritual remedy. Along the way as a pastor, I had also become a writer. I longed for a stretch of time to express some thoughts about my pastoral vocation, time that was never available while I was in the act of being a pastor. A sabbatical year seemed to serve both needs perfectly. But how would I get it? I serve a single-pastor church, and there was no money to fund a sabbatical: Who would replace me while I was away? How would I pay for the venture? The two difficulties seemed formidable. But I felt that if the sabbatical was in fact the spiritual remedy to a spiritual need, the church ought to be able to come up with a solution.” Eugene Peterson (from Chapter Thirteen, The Contemplative Pastor p. 151)

There are some churches in America who understand the great need for sabbaticals. Some congregations demand that their pastors take regularly scheduled sabbaticals from their work, but, quite honestly, those situations are few and far between. The more common approach by most churches is that the pastor is to be treated just like the rest of the nation’s work force. Two or three weeks of vacation per year combined with a handful of personal-leave days. Oh, and by the way, we want you to be on call 24-7, day-in and day-out. And did we mention that we have several important church commitments on the calendar during those two-weeks of vacation you have scheduled, so can you work your vacation around those for us, pastor?

In our Vineyard family, which I’ve been a part of for nearly 30 years, we generally have an unwritten attitude that sabbaticals are a sign of weakness. “I’d rather burn out for Jesus than rust out” is a common expression amongst pastors I know. And while those words sound so brave and Rambo-ish, the truth of the matter is that many pastors in our Vineyard family are now running on fumes, working harder to make bricks for God, while using less straw (see Exodus 5).

So when my pastoral coach, Dave Jacobs, beginning talking to me about a sabbatical about three years ago, I did the typical thing most Vineyard pastors do. I deferred to the future. “Sounds great, Dave, but I just don’t have the time for one right now.” Too bad I didn’t realize at the time that my answer to Dave revealed, at my core, the very reason I needed a sabbatical ASAP! So I ran on fumes for another eight months and, lo and behold, things began crashing down around me.

Once again, Dave recommended that we plan a sabbatical. I relented and planned out a month in June 2010. And then June came and the tyranny of the urgent raises its head and I decide at the last minute to reduce the four weeks to two. I made the great excuse that over my 13 years of church planting in Cedar Rapids, I’d never taken a two-week vacation, and so I was kinda proud of myself for doing the two-week thing. Dave didn’t seem to be equally impressed. I wonder why?

Now fast forward to January 2011 and I’m going to the doctor asking him why I’m so depressed. He recommended a low dosage of meds to help me see above the dark cloud. Thank God for that recommendation, because I think that might have finally been my wakeup call for getting that full-fledged sabbatical finally inked onto our church calendar. But let me give you a warning, fellow pastors. Once you’ve scheduled a sabbatical into your calendar, know that the gates of hell will open wide to give you and your church hundreds of reasons to cancel. But fortunately, I had a board and ministry team at my church who got behind me and literally pushed Sandy & me out the door in June 2011. Ten weeks is what we scheduled. In retrospect, I think 20 weeks might have been better, but at least I got started with a sabbatical-light. And, my friends, I can’t speak it strong enough to you. If you haven’t had a sabbatical of at least a minimum of six-weeks in the last five years, you are long overdue and are risking your life and ministry if you continue on the road you are on. I don’t care how successful your church might be at this moment, don’t let the mirage of success (or failure) be the final judge on whether or not you need a sabbatical.

Peterson is right. All the hard questions will be there on how you can afford it and how your church can survive this thing without you. But, friends, trust me from personal experience, it will work! You do your part to get it on your calendar and God will do His part to make it happen. If you need coaching on how to get this thing done, contact me. My coach, Dave Jacobs, gave me a well-documented game plan to help me (and my church) plan for regular sabbaticals in my life and ministry. I’d be glad to share it with you.

For His Name’s sake.

“The definition that pastors start out with, given to us in our ordination, is that pastoral work is a ministry of Word and sacrament. Century after century, Christians continue to take certain persons in their communities, set them apart, and say, ‘You are our shepherd. Lead us to Christlikeness.’ (Yet) being a pastor who satisfies a congregation is one of the easiest jobs on the face of the earth – if we are satisfied with satisfying congregations. Flannery O’Connor describes one pastor (he knows) as one part minister and three parts masseur. (But) we set out to do something quite different. We set out to risk our lives in a venture of faith. We committed ourselves to a life of holiness. At some point we realized the immensity of God and of the great invisibles that socket into our arms and legs, into bread and wine, into our brains and our tools, into mountains and rivers, giving them meaning, destiny, value, joy, beauty, salvation. We responded to a call to convey these realities in Word and sacrament. We offered ourselves to give leadership that connects and coordinates what the people in this community of faith are doing in their work and play, with what God is doing in mercy and grace. In the process, we learned the difference between a profession, a craft, and a job.” Eugene Peterson (from Chapter Twelve, The Contemplative Pastor p. 139, 140, 143)

So, my fellow pastors, what is your profession? What is your craft? What is your job? No wait. Let’s ask the question this way. What is your calling?

I’m convinced that Eugene Peterson wrote chapter twelve in The Contemplative Pastor so that you and I would open it up every Monday morning, read it, and recall the high reasons we signed up for this enthralling-yet-highly-frustrating profession called pastoral ministry. As Peterson states it, it’s in the profession of pastoral ministry where “we have an obligation beyond pleasing somebody; (where) we are pursuing or shaping the very nature of reality, convinced that when we carry out our commitments, we benefit people at a far deeper level than if we simply did what they asked of us.” In other words, signing up for the ‘job’ of pastor is not our calling. Hirelings do that. But we’re not hirelings. We’re shepherds. And it’s shepherds, not hirelings, who respond to the holy call of God to go serve His Kingdom purposes in the midst of a people who are, most often (as Peterson states it), “dominated by a sense of self, not a sense of God.”

As I see it, it’s the hireling in us who comes very close to quitting on most Monday mornings. Not the shepherd. It’s the hireling in us who sets out on Sunday morning expecting to see heaven on earth. But it’s the long-obedience in the same direction shepherd who chooses to stay the course, even when we get much less in return than what we expected. And it’s that discrepancy between our high expectations and the low return-on-investment that tends to wear us down, pulling us away from the God we love. As a result, the hireling in us wants to jump from church assignment to church assignment, looking for that imaginary ‘holy people of God’ who will appreciate our passions. Or worse yet, it’s the hireling in us who chooses to scale down our expectations, settling for ‘doing church well’ in the midst of a society where mediocrity in faith is plenty-enough for day-to-day living.

But then, just when it’s getting cold and dark, there’s Eugene Peterson’s chapter twelve, stirring in our hearts, once again, the real reasons you and I stepped forward when God asked, ‘Who will go for me?” So what will it be, my friends. Are you tired of being like the pastor/hireling who is one part minister and three parts masseur? Take a peek at Jesus’ invitation once more.

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to Me. Get away with Me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with Me and work with Me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with Me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. (Matthew 11: 28-30)

How about it, pastors and shepherds? Let’s dump the hireling attitude, hobble back to Jesus, and see what He has to say about doing pastoral ministry well for the Kingdom of God. Sounds better than being three parts masseur.

Don’t you think?

“The word ‘sinner’ is a theological designation. It is essential to insist upon this. It is not a moralistic judgment. It is not a word that places humans somewhere along a continuum ranging from angel to ape, assessing them as relatively ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It designates humans in relation to God and sees them separated from God. Sinner means something is awry between humans and God. In that state  people may be wicked, unhappy, anxious, and poor. Or, they may be virtuous, happy, and affluent. Those items are not part of the judgment. The theological fact is that humans are not close to God and are not serving God. Sin is a denial of dependence on God and interdependence among neighbors, a refusal to be a ‘people’ of God and a counter-insistence that the individual ego be treated as something godlike. The people encountered in pastoral ministry today are sinners. But they don’t look like it, and many of them don’t even act like it. They rather look and act and feel like the youth they admire so much, struggling for ‘identity’ and searching for ‘integrity’. A quick theological eye that is able to pick up the movements of sin hiding behind these seemingly innocent characteristics will keep a pastor on track, doing what he or she was called to do: sharing a ministry of grace and forgiveness centered in Jesus Christ.” Eugene Peterson (from Chapter Eleven, The Contemplative Pastor p. 125-126, 133, 134)

Sin. A three-letter word that has captured the attention of saints and sinners alike from the beginning of time. In the original Hebrew language of the Holy Scriptures, ‘sin’ is simply defined as ‘missing the mark’. In other words, an archer who shoots an arrow at a big red & white target but misses the small center circle is a ‘sinner’ regardless of whether the archer hits the outer edge of the target or misses it all together.

When this definition of ‘missing the mark’ is applied to our sinful lives here on planet earth, ‘sin’ can take on a whole different meaning than what many in the church see it to be. Peterson, in this eleventh chapter of The Contemplative Pastor, hits the mark when he re-defines sin as “a denial of dependence on God and interdependence among neighbors, a refusal to be a ‘people’ of God and a counter-insistence that the individual ego be treated as something godlike”.

Hmm. And here I thought sin was primarily things like looking at a Playboy magazine, lying to my parents about my undone homework, and cheating on my wife and taxes. (Now let me stop here for a moment and say that I’ve not done all of those things I just listed above, but I will admit to some of it as being factual!)

John Wimber, founding pastor of the Vineyard, used to talk a lot about ‘sin management’ and how he had spent most of his Christian life trying to avoid or manage his sin whenever and wherever he could. But after years of trying really hard to become one of the best ‘sin-managers’ in his church; only to fail as much as the guy sitting in the pew next to him; the Lord finally revealed to John that he might consider a different approach to his sinful condition. The Holy Spirit suggested that John spend more of his time focusing on Jesus while actively involving himself on a daily basis with the in-breaking of the Kingdom ministry of God, and poof! Over time, John began finding himself having much more productive time spent following Jesus, saying and doing His work, than wasted time spent on avoiding and managing his own sin!

My guess is that Peterson is suggesting a similar approach to the sin problem we all have. Since theologically, everyone one of us will be ‘sinners’ (earth-dwellers separated from God, missing the mark on a continual basis when we try shooting arrows at the target of human perfection) the rest of our lives, we settle the issue quickly by living lives that focus more on embracing the God-sent Christ and His abundant grace and mercy toward our sin, and less on taking counts on who’s a sinner and who is not! As I see it, we need to let Jesus escort us away from the shooting range where our self-launched arrows are flying madly about at these always-moving targets of human-perfection. Instead, let’s let Jesus lead us back into the Father’s House where our Heavenly Poppa teaches his kids how to shoot arrows the way He taught His Son to do it when He lived on earth.

As we talked in session 7, Jesus is the one and only ‘perfected-self’ who never misses the target. And rather than being some independent archer who tries getting better at target practice, only to continually shoot himself in the foot, I suggest all us ‘sinners’ go over to Daddy’s House and let Him show us the Way, the Truth, and the Life of hitting the eternal targets of FAITH, HOPE and LOVE.

For His Name’s sake.

“ ‘Lord, how I loathe big issues!’ is a sentence I copied from one of C.S. Lewis’s letters and have kept as a reminder. He was reacting to pretentiousness that only sees significance in the headlines – in the noisy and large. Lewis warned of the nose-in-the-air arrogance that is oblivious to the homely and the out-of-the-way, and therefore misses participating in most of the rich reality of existence. Pastors especially, since we are frequently involved with large truths and are stewards of great mysteries, need to cultivate conversational humility. Humility means staying close to the ground (humus), to people, to everyday life, to what is happening with all its down-to-earthness. We simply (need to be) present and attentive to what is there conversationally, as respectful of the ordinary as we are of the critical. Some insights are only accessible while laughing. Others arrive only by indirection. The art of small talk. Such art develops better when we are convinced that the Holy Spirit is ‘beforehand’ in all our meetings and conversations. I don’t think it is stretching things to see Jesus – who embraced little children, which so surprised and scandalized His followers – also embracing our little conversations.” Eugene Peterson (from Chapter Ten, The Contemplative Pastor p. 122)

The old Shaker melody, made world-famous by Aaron Copeland’s orchestral compositions, comes to mind when I read Peterson’s tenth chapter of The Contemplative Pastor.

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,

‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be.

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain’d,

To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.

As I see it, ‘the gift to be simple’ is a God-gift seldom used by modern-day clergy across North America. In a world where the more you know opens doors of power and prestige, pastors who desire to climb the ladder of success in their denominational circles are required to be highly-trained, highly-productive CEO’s of rapidly-growing congregations.

Unfortunately, the model for success today in many of our denominations is the big-name rancher who can successfully herd God’s people into massive cattle drives, taking ministry mountains for God. Unfortunately, there is little room in American pastoral ministry for the simple shepherd of God who humbly desires to walk alongside his or her parish of people, loving and caring for the sheep as they live simple lives, hidden away from the bright lights of fame and celebrity.

Sadly, as Peterson states, the gift of small talk, (i.e. the ability to truly relate to the common man and woman in our society), is so often forgotten by pastors in American churches. How refreshing, for example, might it be to see some Christian leaders across the fruited plain choose to ‘come down to where we ought to be’, modeling simple lifestyles that buck the human zeal and ambition found so often in ‘successful’ churches across America.

Maybe there needs to be a grass-roots movement of pastors and shepherds who choose to restore this unique gift of simplicity back to the Church which bears the name of Jesus? Call me old-fashioned but I think most folks would still prefer to follow a pastor/shepherd who looks and acts more like the old family doctor who was never too busy to come to a home when a person was sick, compared to those slick-n-shiny super men and women of God who treat their congregations as cattle to be herded. Maybe the old Shaker melody is right, if we turn, turn, ‘we can come ‘round right’.

I’m just sayin’.

I’m interrupting my ‘The Contemplative Pastor’ blog series today, in order to insert this special word. Last Saturday, I posted a blog directed to my fellow-Vineyard pastors entitled, “WHAT I WANT TO SEE IN OUR NEW VINEYARD REGIONAL OVERSEERS.  This is a follow-up to that blog.

Over the last few years, I’ve found myself becoming more and more intrigued (and, quite admittedly, a bit troubled) with the overall approach we pastors of evangelical churches in North America ‘do church’. I’ve been actively involved with pastoral ministry for over 30 years, serving full-time since 1990. My wife and I planted the Vineyard church we are currently pastoring in 1998. My experience with ‘doing church’ as a senior pastor has had both its’ highs and lows. And I’m certain that most of my readers who have been personally involved with pastoral ministry for any length of time can fully understand the roller coaster we all ride, serving as pastors/shepherds of God’s people.

In recent months, I’ve been blogging a great deal about my personal trek as a pastor. During our recent 10-week sabbatical, our first ever, I finally took enough time to slow down, get re-acquainted with the God I serve, and listen carefully to, what I believe, is the voice of the Lord.

Bottom-line? I heard Him asking me to STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN.

Much like John Wimber (who in the earliest days of the Vineyard churches, found the Spirit of God coming to him, reminding John of the distinct differences between Jesus’ ministry and his own), I’ve been finding myself in a similar season of re-evaluation of ‘my’ ministry. At the core of this re-evaluation is a re-defining of the meaning of ‘success’ in pastoral ministry.

Add into this mix a healthy dose of pastoral writings from Eugene Peterson (i.e. The Contemplative Pastor, Long Obedience in the Same Direction, The Pastor: A Memoir, and Conversations: The Message Bible) and poof, you have one 60-year-old pastor who seems to be evolving into an interesting combination of one happily-disturbed man, angry as hell at wasting so much of my last 30 years majoring on the minors, and being led gently by God’s Spirit to reform my pastoral ministry in ways that, I believe, will better reflect the New Testament model I find in God’s Word. As John Wimber used to teach us through his prayer, “Lord, I want to grow up before I grow old.”

Now, with that being said, I want to clearly apologize to many of my good friends who pastor large churches throughout the Vineyard family. It’s come to my attention that some of my rants and ravings on my blog, ‘As I See It’ (especially those on the theme of The Small Church That Works) has made some to believe that I dislike large churches and think that those who lead larger churches are not nearly as spiritual as those who pastor smaller churches. To that, I politely say, ’bull’.

Let me say state clearly here. 1) I love the whole church, large, small and in-between; 2) I believe we have some of the most talented and anointed leaders in the Vineyard family currently leading us; 3) I thoroughly believe in church growth and Kingdom expansion; 4) I have absolutely no problem with churches that are big and getting bigger; 5) there are no bad guys or gals in pastoral ministry in the Vineyard family.

So with those things being said, let me summarize for you my TSCTW (The Small Church That Works) ‘agenda’.

I am thoroughly convinced, based primarily on my own experience, that pastors can easily get sidetracked on the mechanics of ‘doing church well’. I believe our American culture has thoroughly infiltrated our thinking, and in many cases, wooed us away from the primary job Jesus gave His first disciples. I will write more about this loss of vision in future blogs, but for now, let me simply say, I, for one, want to stop defining my success as a pastor by measuring the size of my church in same way corporate America looks at profit/loss margins.

Jesus wants me to ‘lead’ the people He has gathered around me by using Kingdom practices that He so clearly modeled in the first century. Eugene Peterson says it so much better than me. In his book, The Contemplative Pastor, he defines our biblical model of pastoral ministry as ‘the cure of souls’.

“A reformation may be in process in the way pastors do their work. It may turn out to be as significant as the theological reformation of the sixteenth century. I hope so. The signs are accumulating. The vocational reformation of our own time (if it turns out to be that) is a rediscovery of the pastoral work of the cure of souls. The phrase sounds antique. It is antique. But it is not obsolete. It catches up and coordinates, better than any other expression I am aware of, the unending warfare against sin and sorrow and the diligent cultivation of grace and faith to which the best pastors have consecrated themselves in every generation. Discovering the meaning of Scripture, developing a life of prayer, guiding growth into maturity. This is the pastoral work that is historically termed the cure of souls. The primary sense of ‘cura’ in Latin is ‘care’, with undertones of ‘cure’. The soul is the essence of the human personality. The cure of souls, then, is the Scripture-directed, prayer-shaped care that is devoted to persons singly or in groups, in settings sacred and profane. It is a determination to work at the center, to concentrate on the essential.”

I, for one, in the pursuit of growing my church and developing more successful ministries, had forgotten (or maybe mis-placed?) this ministry of ‘the cure of souls’ Peterson refers to. All around me, and quite honestly, inside me, the care of souls was taking a back seat to growing my church at all costs. As I see it, this approach to pastoral ministry has to change…in my church, and more than likely, yours, as well.

I believe this loss of perspective can and does happen in churches of all sizes in America. And as I said earlier, I love the church regardless of size. But I won’t go on in pastoral ministry without addressing this void that is in so much of our ministries (large and small) in our churches across America.

I hope this blog might better explain my heart as I blog on. As Keith Green, the anointed minstrel of God in the 1970’s once sang,

I need to say these things cause I love you so,
And I’m sorry you get angry when I say that you just don’t know.
But there’s a Heaven waiting for you and me,
I know it seems every time we talk I’m only trying to just make you see.

And it’s only that I care,
I really, really only just want to see you there.

For His Name’s sake.

“To will or not to will, that is the question. Without an exercised will, I am a dishrag, limp in a dirty sink. But the moment I begin exercising my will, I find that I have put a fox in charge of the chicken coop. I ponder St. Paul, ‘I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate’ (Rom. 7:15) The question at the heart of the intersection of God’s will and human wills is apparently at the heart of everything. The way we answer it shapes our humanity in every dimension. I now see that all the jobs I have ever been given have been apprenticeships in the work of God. We learn to live with praying-willing involvement in an action that we do not originate. The art is willed passivity. Humble boldness (or, bold humility) enters into a sane, robust willing – free willing – and finds its most expressive and satisfying experience in prayer to Jesus Christ, who wills our salvation.” Eugene Peterson (from Chapter Nine, The Contemplative Pastor pp. 105, 106, 109, 111, 112, 115)

Talk about trying to walk in the radical middle!

How often I find myself in a circus act of balancing my life between these two powerful truths. Truth #1) Without God and His Kingdom-will being exerted in and through my life, I am nothing, nor does anything I do in life truly matter. Truth #2) Without my human will being exerted, nothing in this life counts for anything; to God, to others, nor myself. So there you have it. Two truths. Both accurate, yet at first glance, they seem to contradict each other. But do they really?

Peterson’s ninth chapter in The Contemplative Pastor addresses this difficult balancing act between exerting our will and deferring to God’s. And as I see it, Peterson does a masterful job of positioning us in the place God wants us to be. Practicing the fine art of humble boldness, while living a life full of bold humility.

Jesus was the Master of this art form. If we study His life carefully, we find an amazing ability to walk in complete submission to the will of God, His Father, while also taking full advantage of His human will, changing the world in ways no other human has or ever will. A humble and fully-submitted man, always deferring to His Father and His interests, yet choosing to walk freely in this life, performing signs and wonders, speaking un-paralleled truth, gathering people to Himself, thus leading a world-wide revolution that continues even to today. Go figure?

In my 2002 book, The Perfected Self, I delve into this seemingly impossible idea of living a God-perfected life of humble boldness, while adhering fully to Jesus’ model of bold humility. My conclusion is much like Peterson’s. It all comes down to practice. In truth, this temporary life we’ve been given here on planet earth is simply ‘practice’ for the permanent life to come. In any true art form or human discipline, (i.e. from dance to playing football to learning to play a violin), ‘practice’ is just that. In practice, we are simply learning how to do something. And as my wife reminds me, practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect, it simply makes things permanent!

And if you’ve ever learned the fine art of riding a bicycle, you know that there are many times you fall off the stupid thing, skinning your hands and knees, while making a complete fool of yourself. But if one keeps practicing and working at it, eventually a certain skill set develops in us, allowing ‘bike riding’ to become something of a second nature to us.

So it is with practicing the fine art of humble boldness, while living a life full of bold humility. This life we have here on earth is all about practicing this fine art of balancing our ‘self’; learning to use (and not abuse) our self-will in ways that glorify, while always deferring to, the perfect will of our Father. Get it?

Well, time to stop talking about it. How about if you and I get out there today, and with the leading and empowerment of God’s Spirit, we practice this fine art of balancing ‘self’ for the glory of God? Sound like a good plan? Or am I over-working my self-will here?

January 26^th 2012.

That’s the deadline for the pastors in the Vineyard across the USA to choose our nominations for our new Regional Overseers. The new Regional setup, under the direction of our new national director, Phil Strout, will increase the number of Regions across the USA in order to make each one geographically smaller. By doing this, the hope is to make it easier for the ROs to manage, as well as foster effective relationship building among pastors. There will actually be a doubling of our regions from 8 to 16. Therefore, due to this increase and because some of our current ROs will be serving in other leadership roles, there will be a need for many new Regional Overseers. In an email sent out to all of us Vineyard pastors this week, here is the job description for our new ROs.

1.       Establish and cast a Regional vision that follows and underscores the vision of the National Director for Vineyard USA.

2.       Care for and coach the APCLs (Area Pastoral Care Leader) in your Region.

3.       Facilitate care for the pastors in your Region through the APCLs.

4.       Communicate with the pastors in your Region on a regular basis.

5.       Help local Vineyard churches in your Region to become strong, healthy churches through resourcing.

So how in the world does one go about picking a name to nominate for RO? Generally, this kind of process usually revolves around picking names you and I are most familiar with. And while I have no problem with selecting from those names I know, I’m guessing that God might have a better way to do this thing besides making it into a popularity contest.

Last year I posted a blog called WHAT I WANT TO SEE IN OUR NEXT VINEYARD NATIONAL DIRECTOR. The blog received hundreds of hits, with 186 views on March 26^th, 2011 alone. Now to many big-name bloggers, those numbers are peanuts, but for my little blog written in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the numbers were amazing. So now that our national director has been chosen, I’d like to resubmit my blog to you, my fellow pastors of the Vineyard, re-working it a bit to now encompass our important decisions facing us as we choose names to nominate for our new Regional Overseers.

WHAT I WANT TO SEE IN OUR NEW VINEYARD REGIONAL OVERSEERS. 

As our Vineyard-USA family journeys through this next season of our life together, we face one of the greatest challenges any organization can wrestle with. The selection of our new Regional Overseers.

Over the next month, Phil Strout, our new national director, we will taking the names we nominate for our Regions and choosing men or women who will faithfully work alongside Phil and his support team, leading our Vineyard-USA family into the next phase of our history. That’s a pretty heady thing to be doing, and I’m sure you will agree with me when I say, we truly need God’s wisdom and grace as we move forward with such big decisions.

As we, pastors in our movement, look forward to these exciting decisions, it’s vitally important to look backwards as well. As it is said, those who fail to learn from our past are doomed to repeat their mistakes. As one who goes back to the early days of Vineyard, I remember, of course, how God choose John Wimber to become our first national leader. After Kenn Gulliksen turned the Vineyard over to John in the early 1980’s, the Wimber family faithfully led our tribe through our formation years. It was John and Carol Wimber who faithfully took the reigns of the Vineyard, embracing the uniqueness of what the Holy Spirit was speaking to the church of America at the time, and formed a reproducible and transferable model of ‘doing church’ for Kingdom purposes. This model was, and still is, a fairly simple model in its original format, and is one that allows so many of us outsiders to become active participants with all Jesus is doing with His Kingdom ministry across the globe.

Now here we are in 2012, we’ve appointed Phil Strout as our next national director of an organization that is approximately 30 years old.

Like most 30 year olds, we have enough experience behind us to know that we can’t do everything nor are we called to be everything to everybody. Like most 30 year olds, we also have a lot of life left in us, and in fact, the next 20 years could very well be the most productive years of our life together. If we can hold tightly to all our fore-fathers and mothers have taught us over the last 30 years, the Vineyard can enter into the race at this moment, leading the way for the church in America, becoming, once-again, a model of Kingdom life and ministry, restoring the fire of God’s presence into a sometimes confused and scattered people.

As I see it, the next set of Regional Overseers in the Vineyard will need to be special men and women of God. These people will have a big job on their shoulders, taking our 600 Vineyard churches and encouraging all of us to stick together, following faithfully the unique path that God has set out for us.

As I’ve been praying about this huge decision that awaits our Vineyard family, I’d like to propose a few thoughts into the mix, speaking on behalf of some of the smaller Vineyard churches in our movement. While I don’t mean this as a criticism, I do sense that over the years, the larger churches in our movement tend to be seen as the successful ones, thus at times; the voices that speak into our movement tend to be those who are coming out of the larger churches in our organization.

At times, when I talk with other pastors of smaller Vineyard churches, I get a sense that smaller churches are seen as less successful, thus leaving our voices out of the mix. This, I think, is not a value unique in the Vineyard, but one of American values that say that ‘bigger is better’ and ‘those who have bigger boxes must know more than those with smaller boxes’. While I’m sure none on our current Vineyard board, ROs, or APCL’s intentionally want to ignore those pastors from smaller churches, it sometimes feels to us that the smaller your church is, the less important your voice is in our movement.

I, for one, would love to see that attitude change under the leadership of our new national director, the board and our new set of Regional Directors. As Phil Strout takes his new position, and as we are restructuring our regions, I’d suggest that we appoint many more pastors from smaller churches into the mix, allowing all voices to be heard in our movement. The truth is that nearly 75% or more of our Vineyard churches are 200 or smaller in congregational size. With that being true, I wonder if we might seriously consider appointing a good number of our new Regional Overseers from some of those smaller churches in our movement?

Which brings me to my final point.

I hope, as we make the decisions upon who to nominate for our Regional Overseers, we keep in mind the story of how David, the shepherd-boy made king, was chosen by God to lead the people of Israel. It would be very easy for us right now to be like Samuel, looking, at first, at the outward appearance of those we might be considering to lead us. As it is with choosing a U.S. President, the qualifications of looks, money, power and position weigh heavily in the decision-making process. Like Samuel, who eventually came to his senses and just didn’t feel that he was finding God’s anointed amongst the big boys, I pray we will humbly wait upon the Lord, and consider that many of our new Regional Overseers might just be out in the fields right now, singing their hearts out to God, oblivious to the candidate’s debate. May the Lord bring men and women into our midst much like David, who are, first and foremost, passionate worshipers of God and men and women after God’s own heart. Shepherds at heart, shepherding the flock we call the Vineyard.

Submitted humbly for His name’s sake.

“My secularized schooling had shaped my educational outlook into something with hardly any recognizable continuities with most of the church’s history. I had come into the parish seeing its’ great potential as a learning center, a kind of mini-university in which I was the resident professor. And then one day, in a kind of shock of recognition, I saw that it was in fact a worship center. I wasn’t prepared for this. Nearly all my preparation for being a pastor had taken place in a classroom. But these people I was now living with were coming, with centuries of validating precedence, not to get facts on the Philistines and Pharisees but to pray. They were hungering to grow in Christ, not bone up for an examination in dogmatics. The more I worked with people at or near the centers of their lives where God and the human, faith and the absurd, love and indifference were tangled in daily traffic jams, the less it seemed that the way I had been going about teaching made much difference, and the more that teaching them to pray did. (Quoting preacher George Arthur Buttrick) ‘Pastors think people come to church to hear sermons. They don’t; they come to pray and to learn to pray. Abba, Father.’ ” Eugene Peterson (from Chapter Eight, The Contemplative Pastor pp. 96, 97, 100)

One of the greatest revelations in my Christian walk came during a season of my life when my wife and I first ran across John Wimber and the Vineyard churches. It was the early winter months of 1985. One of our elders at Christ Church of the North Shore, a small community of faith in Evanston, IL (which we had been with since its inception in 1976), had talked with a relative from Southern California who was attending the Vineyard Church in Anaheim, California. The senior pastor, John Wimber, was teaching a Masters class at Fuller Seminary at the time. The class was MC510: Signs and Wonders and Church Growth. It’s that course at Fuller that eventually brought the attention of the entire evangelical church world to John Wimber, the Anaheim Vineyard, and the Kingdom of God message and ministry pegged as Power Evangelism.

Our leadership team in Evanston was quite impressed with the biblically-based messages that Wimber was teaching and before long my good friend and one of our church elders, Bill Hanawalt, ordered up a bunch of teaching and music cassettes from the Vineyard in Anaheim. As it turned out, Bill, who was also my next-door neighbor in a four-flat in Evanston, asked me to get his mail for him while he and his family made their annual mid-winter trek to Florida to visit family.

And wouldn’t you know it. Bill’s package from the Vineyard came in the mail a day or two after he left town. Knowing what was inside, I thought to myself. “Gosh, I bet Bill won’t mind me opening up this package and getting an early listen to some of these Wimber tapes.”  Now, I know what I did is considered by some as federal mail-tampering but I reasoned it out this way. Bill had borrowed my mini-van to take his family to Florida, so I thought it only fair that I could open his mail while he was gone!

Fortunately for me, Bill didn’t hold a grudge for opening that package! I’m fortunate as well that as soon as I plugged in one or two of those cassette tapes of worship music recorded from one of the evening services at the Anaheim Vineyard, I was hooked. As a long-time lover of old-time hymns, I’d never heard the kind of music I was hearing on these tapes. There it was. An acoustic guitar or two, a nice lead male vocal, a couple of melodic female backup vocals, some light drums, a bass, and oh yes, an electric piano. The songs were very simple. The arrangements very basic. The team would move from one song to the next, flowing from tune to tune with very little break between the songs. For a guy used to singing a hymn, sitting down, standing up, singing another hymn, sitting down, listening to a message, and then singing a final hymn, this was really unusual.

I finished up the first cassette, put in a second, and then a third. I was enthralled at what I was hearing. Each song was penetrating a deeper level of my heart. I found myself crying as each tape played. I was caught up in God’s presence and had no language for what was happening to me. I was particularly moved by songs sung by the electric keyboard player. His voice was so mellow, so sincere, and so full of a gentle love for Jesus. It was month’s later, as I attended my first Vineyard conference in Indianapolis, when I finally realized that the keyboard player who was melting my heart through worship was John Wimber himself.

Now you might be wondering why I’m telling you this old story of mine about hearing Vineyard worship music for the first time. The reason is that Eugene Peterson’s realization that people don’t come to church to hear good sermons or be taught information, but to pray and be taught to pray reminds me of the ahh-hah moments I had when I first heard a Vineyard worship song. As I sat in my living room, crying my eyes out, listening to John Wimber sing his simple love songs to Jesus, it hit me. I had been a church-attender at that time (1985) for much of my 34 years of life. And in all of my years of church-going and hymn-singing, I don’t ever remember singing a song to Jesus. Somehow, someway, the thought of singing a love song to Jesus had never crossed my mind. The only songs I could recall singing in church were hymns that we, the congregation, sang to one another. Songs about God, but never to Him!

And suddenly, there I was. Singing simple love songs to Jesus and crying my heart out to Him at the same time. It was, as I said earlier, a whole new revelation of intimacy with God that was opening up to me. Suddenly, like Peterson, I found myself unprepared for the new place God was taking me. Church is not about sermons and ministry programming. It’s not a place where the training of our minds is the highest priority. It’s a place for, first and foremost, finding intimate relationship with the God of the Universe; Jesus Christ, His beloved Son; through the powerful in-dwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Never again, would I go back to being satisfied with second-hand information taught to me by a preacher. Never again would I see church as a place for dry knowledge or high theological ideas. Once I heard Wimber sing an intimate love song to Jesus, I knew I’d come home. I’d finally found a place where my heart and God’s heart could meet.

My friends, as I see it, that’s what real church is all about.

“There are two great mystical traditions in the life of prayer, sometimes labeled kataphatic and apophatic. Kataphatic prayer uses icons, symbols, ritual, incense; the creation is the way to the Creator. Apophatic prayer attempts emptiness; the creature distracts from the Creator, and so the mind is systematically emptied of idea, image, sensation until there is only the simplicity of being. Kataphatic prayer is ‘praying with your eyes open’; apophatic prayer is ‘praying with your eyes shut.’ At our balanced best, the two traditions intermingle, mix, and cross-fertilize. But we are not always at our best. The Western church is heavily skewed on the side of the apophatic. The rubic for prayer when I was a child was, ‘fold your hands, bow your head, shut your eyes, and we’ll pray.’ My early training carries over into my adult practice. Most of my praying still is with my eyes shut. I need balancing. (Peterson suggests that we) pray differently: Spread out your hands, lift your head, open your eyes, and we’ll pray. (It will not be long) before we find ourselves in the company of saints and monks…psalmists and prophets who watched the ‘hills skip like lambs’ and heard the ‘trees clap their hands,’ alert to God everywhere, in everything, praising, praying with our eyes open: ‘I leap to my feet; I cheer and cheer.’” Eugene Peterson (from Chapter Seven, The Contemplative Pastor p. 92)

Recently I attended a series of concerts and lectures held at a local Catholic parish. John Michael Talbot was the musician/speaker. Talbot, for those of you not old enough to remember the wild-n-crazy 1960’s and 70’s, was a rock musician hippie-turned-radical long-haired Christian back in the day. It was folks like Keith Green, Barry McGuire, Larry Norman, and Talbot who were there at the very beginnings of what we now call contemporary Christian music. A wave of the Holy Spirit was hitting America back then and numerous pot-smoking, California-based, wide-eyed musicians, poets, and artists were getting radically-saved by Jesus.

After their salvation experiences, many of these artists (Talbot included) changed the type of music they performed on tour, singing songs about Jesus rather than drugs, flower-power, and the typical anti-war themes of the day. To make a long story short, John Michael Talbot eventually found himself being greatly influenced by the deep spirituality found in the Franciscan movement of the day. His earliest Christian music had a powerful yet simple message of peace, hope and love found in the quietness of a soul set aside for God. Many in the evangelical world didn’t appreciate the direction Talbot went with his music and his life (he eventually became a Franciscan monk), but despite the criticism, Talbot produced some of the top-selling Christian music of the late 1970’s and early 80’s. His classics, The Lord’s Supper, Come to the Quiet, and other albums combined ancient liturgies with modern melodies, making Talbot a voice for quietness in the midst of a busy world.

Now flash forward 30 years and I’m sitting in a Catholic parish, listening to a much older and even wiser John Michael Talbot. His simple acoustic guitar sounds combined with his gentle voice still bring a presence of God not found in many Christian circles today. Between songs, Talbot spoke softly yet firmly about the great need for contemporary Christians to restore quietness and rest in a society running at 200 miles per hour, filled with noise, noise and more noise. “Come to the Quiet, come back to Him,” Talbot whispers. In one session, John Michael taught us some ancient breathing exercises first introduced by early monks, designed to help followers of Christ to focus their mind, body and spirit on things from above. “Praying and meditating with your eyes open,” Talbot says, “is an long-lost method of prayer the western church has little appreciation of.”

As it see it, breathing in the presence of the Holy Spirit while exhaling out my sinful nature sounds a bit goofy to us westerners, but both Talbot and Eugene Peterson are right. We need to find more creative ways to restore the kataphatic approach to our more common apophatic prayer methods. In recent months, I’ve found that by adopting some of Talbot’s prayer exercises, I have truly found my devotional life moving into a whole new dimension with God. My friends and fellow pastors, it’s time, like Peterson suggests, to broaden the spectrum of our approach to our holy God as He moves in the realm of His created world. Kataphatic prayer anyone?

For His Name’s sake.

“A reformation may be in process in the way pastors do their work. It may turn out to be as significant as the theological reformation of the sixteenth century. I hope so. The signs are accumulating. The vocational reformation of our own time (if it turns out to be that) is a rediscovery of the pastoral work of the cure of souls. The phrase sounds antique. It is antique. But it is not obsolete. It catches up and coordinates, better than any other expression I am aware of, the unending warfare against sin and sorrow and the diligent cultivation of grace and faith to which the best pastors have consecrated themselves in every generation. Discovering the meaning of Scripture, developing a life of prayer, guiding growth into maturity. This is the pastoral work that is historically termed the cure of souls. The primary sense of ‘cura’ in Latin is ‘care’, with undertones of ‘cure’. The soul is the essence of the human personality. The cure of souls, then, is the Scripture-directed, prayer-shaped care that is devoted to persons singly or in groups, in settings sacred and profane. It is a determination to work at the center, to concentrate on the essential.” Eugene Peterson (from Chapter Six, The Contemplative Pastor pp.65-66)

These words you have just read, were written in 1989. A then-57-year old pastor, after serving nearly 30 years in one congregation, was calling for a reformation of the pastoral ministry in America. Eugene Peterson, now turning 80 as I write these words, must look at the American church in 2012 and wonder if the reformation he prophesied that was upon us in 1989, has actually progressed or, God-forbid, stalled out?

I guess the answer to that question quite honestly lies in the hearts and souls of us pastors and shepherds, who are still serving at our posts. And speaking of our hearts and souls, has your soul been cured yet? Has it undergone the ‘caring-curing’ process Peterson speaks of here? Has God brought to you yet His priority of re-discovering the meaning of life and ministry in and through the Scriptures? Has your soul been convicted yet that a fresh re-discovery of His written Word will eventually lead us busy, over-worked pastors into ones who will intentionally choose to live unbusy, uncluttered lives of prayer, listening and responding to God’s voice of manifest agape? Has your increased communion with Him through Scripture and prayer guided you to real Kingdom growth that leads to levels of wisdom and maturity found only in Christ?

Hard questions, huh?

Or are you a lot like me, where much of my last 23 years in ministry (since Peterson wrote these words in 1989) has been a singular focus on ‘doing church well’ or ‘running my church successfully’ in order to accomplish goals that are birthed more from personal ambition and drive, rather than being ‘born from above’?

The cure of souls. How strange is the sound of these ancient words to those of us living in the twenty-first century. ‘Doing church’, ‘going on missional assignments’, ‘working the 3-B’s of successful church life’ (Buildings, Bucks & Butts). Now those phrases are meaningful to our ears. But the ‘cure of souls’? As I see it, Peterson was (and still is) spot on correct when he calls for this radical reformation in pastoral ministry across this land.

But alas, will we, in 2012, respond to this ancient call?