Tag Archives: hope

Finding hope for the future

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REFLECTIONS ON 1 KINGS 19:1-15

Before launching into the reflections on our text, pause for a moment and identify/consider these three ideas in your life, ministry, business or organization:

  • Achievement – identify a significant achievement from your past, something that was a defining moment, and preferably one which outsiders also considered significant.
  • Challenge – identify a significant challenge in your present, something that presents a difficulty, obstacle or frustration around or through which you must work.
  • Hope – identify a significant hope for your future, something that you desire or dream to see come to fruition, though you may have no idea how or whether it is possible.

Now let’s return to Elijah – Elijah, perhaps not unlike many of us, has bursts of enthusiasm followed by waves of uncertainty, doubt. We get an idea and launch forward with it, trusting fully that we are taking the right course of action. Then, shortly after, we are confronted by an obstacle, a threat to our plans and goals, and suddenly we cower in fear. We run on and then off, hot and then cold. Now, in our defense, Jesus said he prefers this to a lukewarm response to everything, completely lacking in energy, passion and commitment either way.  (Rev 3:16) Jesus wants us to recognize the weight and import of life, to feel the full burden of this one wild life. In the story that precedes this, Elijah has just been witness to an awesome sign of God’s power – fire from heaven coming to consume the water-soaked offering and even the altar (1 Kings 18:17-39) followed by his slaughtering 450 prophets of Baal – a rival god to the God of Israel, Yahweh – in a fit of glory. That scene reminds me of the riots that occasionally follow the championship basketball game, where the fans of the winning team pour into the streets and destroy their own downtown. Elijah is at the very top of his power, both in terms of how he is viewed by the people and their kings, as well as his ability to participate with God in a dramatic show of singularity – there really are no true rivals. Elijah had a significant achievement from his past.

Elijah’s witness may be a hard pill for some of us to swallow – we tend to not think of the prophets as mighty soldiers or executioners, yet we are told that Elijah, whether personally or through his assistants, killed 450 of his enemies who were leading the king and people of Israel astray. I’m not sure what to do with this, particularly in light of Jesus’ teaching about loving our enemies. One thing I do notice is that God has not told him to kill these men – he makes this choice himself out of his great zeal.

Then king Ahab tattles to his wife, Jezebel, that Elijah has killed all the prophets of her gods, and she sends a messenger to say that she is putting a hit out on him – like some scene from a mafia movie. And Elijah runs and hides. And he whines to God that he is a failure and he just wants to die. Elijah now also has a significant challenge in his present.

How does he go so quickly from powerful witness for God to running scared and hiding in a cave? The text does not say. We may be able to draw some inferences from our own life experiences.

When have you felt passionate about something, ready to take a public stand even if you thought it might not be popular at first? Have you been compelled to confront injustice? Do you remember sticking up for someone who was being abused?

And then you lost your nerve because of what it would cost you. Doing the right thing is often difficult, at least at first. We may find ourselves shifting into self-preservation mode, just keeping our head down and trying to survive. People describe feeling this way when they work in a place where some misconduct is going on – perhaps someone is embezzling, or employees are not being treated well. But times are hard, the unemployment rate is up. If I speak up I may lose my job, and then someone will be waiting in line to take my place. How will I feed my family? What if I speak up and I am all alone, with no one to help or defend me?

What about as a church? Have you looked among yourselves and around you to your community and world and gotten a glimpse of what God’s kingdom might bring? Where do you see the mustard seeds of Jesus’ message waiting to sprout and grow? Where is God calling you to speak, and even just to be present? What might it cost you? Many of our churches can look back on days when there was more money, when there were more people. Congregations are finding themselves stretched between paying a pastor, paying for buildings, and investing in mission. Like Elijah, we can look back to a time when God’s work was great among us, when we were thriving, at our peak. But now, Jezebel threatens to destroy us. She represents all those opportunities to worship and serve anyone or anything other than the God we find revealed in Jesus, the Christ.

But following Jesus is not easy. Following Jesus costs us everything. You know the stories. The rich young man asks Jesus what he must do to enter eternal life, and the reply is, “Sell all that you have, give to the poor, take up your cross and follow me.” (Luke 18). Later he says, “They persecuted me, they will persecute you…” (John 15) Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it this way, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” (Bonhoeffer) This is the very thing that Elijah feared. And at this point he thought his journey was over.

If we are going to take this kind of risk, we want some assurance, some sign that God is with us, and that the course of action we have chosen is the right one. Again, we can look to Elijah hiding there in the cave. We might imagine this to be like his prayer closet. Elijah is there, wondering what has happened to his life. Things were going so well. He has basically given up on doing anything else useful or meaningful for God, or God being able to do anything in or through him. Perhaps he is in what John of the Cross called a “dark night of the soul.” Or what St. Ignatius calls “desolation.” He is at a particularly low place, spiritually. He wants and needs God to show up, to intervene, answer his prayers, do something.

Have you ever wanted that? Every wanted God to give some kind of clear, emphatic direction, something big and dramatic? Perhaps like Moses and the burning bush (Exodus 3:2). Elijah waits, and does have some dramatic experiences – a great wind, an earthquake, and a fire – the three natural disasters we fear most. Throughout the history of Israel these things had been taken as signs of God’s action. Yet somehow Elijah knew that God was not there. It was in the whisper, in the sheer silence, that God was found.

There has been a renewal in the church over recent years – a return to embracing periods of silence. Elijah’s story tells us that sometimes it is only there that we can hear from God, receive the guidance we need, and the affirmation that God is with us and love us, that we are not alone. In response to increasing challenges and declining numbers and resources, many churches are frantically looking for, and even creating, shaking the earth, and burning hot – we even say, “I’m on fire for Jesus.” Yet in this story God is not in any of that. Only in the silence is God known and peace and assurance found. Perhaps we need to, as someone cleverly put it once, “don’t just do something, sit there.” What if in our business meetings we found more time for prayer? What if in our efforts to reach new people we were less concerned with programs and more focused on listening to the hearts of our neighbors in the midst of a holy silence. In our culture we have the phrase “awkward silence” and people often feel the need to fill it. What if instead we used that time to listen for God in the sheer silence as Elijah did?

When God finally speaks, Elijah again rehearses all his woes, all the things that have gone wrong, as if to implicate both himself and God, as if to put God in the dock, to use C.S. Lewis’ phrase. “Look, God, what has happened, because you didn’t exercise your power and strength sufficiently.” Hear those last verses again: 3When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 14He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” 15Then the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram.

Do you hear how God completely ignores everything that Elijah has just said? Ignores the complaints, the frustrations, the guilt, even the accusations. God simply gives Elijah his next instructions. Elijah has at least demonstrated the ability to recognize God in the silence, and this is sufficient. This is enough for God to use, to send Elijah out on mission, not of his own design, not in his own cleverness or power, but out of the mystery of God’s wisdom. What God directs could not have been guessed, would not have been imagined by Elijah or anyone else. Elijah finds renewed hope for his future.

To develop a Missional imagination, we can do several concrete things:

  • Realize that God has a mission, and that we are a part of it.
  • Recognize that as a part of God’s mission, we are sent out to the world, just as Jesus was sent to us.
  • Wonder if the things we take as signs of success or effectiveness do not necessarily matter to God.
  • Accept that we may not get dramatic confirmations of what God wants for us.
  • Wait on the Lord patiently in silence

By identifying these three themes – Achievement, Challenge, and Hope – we become better equipped to understand how God might be trying to move us forward, not resting on our past, or being overwhelmed by our present, but realizing that life and love are continually calling us forward into God’s unfolding dream for us.

Experiencing resurrection hope in times of struggle

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Believing in the resurrection seems easier on a beautiful Spring morning, when children and flowers are newly clothed in bright colors and fresh pastels. Less so when we are facing struggles and an uncertain future. The Christian community, with the help and encouragement of our consumer culture, wants to focus on Easter, and forget about the week of struggle that preceded it. In the Jewish story of the Exodus from Egypt, it is easy to focus on the moment of rescue, and then the final entry into the land of promise flowing with sweet blessings – and ignore the suffering and struggle that accompanied the departure and the journey from where they were to where they ultimately would rest.

Life is not all fresh flowers, laughing children, and abundant prosperity. I read an interesting observation recently – that dependency is our natural state. We begin and end life that way – unable to fully care for ourselves. We are all in some way “dis-abled”. The notion of being independent, autonomous, all self-sufficient persons is a myth and aberration, fleeting and ephemeral. This is not to suggest that life is bleak and hopeless. That too is a myth – the idea that dependency equals deficiency; that we are somehow less if we need others. In the life and ministry of Jesus we see one who makes himself vulnerable. Paul says is Philippians 2:5-11 that Jesus “emptied himself.” The Greek word for this is kenosis. In Christ God chose to experience the fullness of human limitation, and thereby blessed it as holy. Whether or not God NEEDED human help, God chose to enlist and even rely upon the help, support and agency of humans, who were and are limited. We are at one time marvelously able some ways, and dis-able in others. God entered fully into this dis-abled state. God knows the road we walk, because in Jesus he has walked it with us.

There is some comfort in knowing we are not alone in our struggle. Yet this does not end or even ease our struggle. The fact that you are also sick with the flu does not lessen my symptoms. In fact, if we share life together, things become more difficult if we are both down at the same time. Ideally when one is weak, another is strong, so that we can adequately share one another’s burdens and joys.

The book Tuesday’s With Morrie by Mitch Album offers a wonderfully poignant illustration of this idea. In this story Morrie, a retired professor living (dying from?) with ALS tells Mitch, his former student turned reluctant biographer, about his own transition back to dependency. Morrie reached a point in his disease process where he could no longer perform the tasks of personal hygiene and self-care – in other words he could no longer wipe his own bottom, clearly not a condition from which he would recover. Rather than fight the humiliation and shame that often accompany this situation, Morrie chose to interpret his experience as one in which he was receiving tender, loving and compassionate care as he had in the first years of life. Think about this. Many people long for intimacy and are starved for human touch. Here Morrie is forced to receive both under less than ideal circumstances. By grace his is able to shift his attitude and thinking to humility rather than humiliation. What needs to happen in us to experience that same freedom and release from pretension?

In Morrie we see both emotional and physical struggle. He makes a mental shift that helps him receive care with a new attitude and emotional experience. But does this lessen his physical distress? Perhaps not. Yet many scientists and psychologists have demonstrated a connection between the mental, emotional, spiritual and physical experiences of being human. A positive attitude actually does ease our experience of pain, and a discouraged countenance will reduce our tolerance to hardship.

As someone who proclaims hope in the resurrection, I want to believe that suffering does not have the last word in our lives. We want to think and believe that things will get better. But sometimes they don’t. So what do we do with our hope in the resurrection and its power in our lives when things go from bad to worse? The cancer patient and his family pray and hope for treatment to work and to hear the words “remission” or “cure”. The cardiac patient and her family likewise hope for a full recovery from surgery and return to a vibrant and active lifestyle. This is our hope and prayer. Yet we know that none of us gets out alive. We will all die someday, from something. Our hope is not to avoid dying so much as to live a long and full life, and to avoid prolonged suffering. We want 70 or 80 years or more, and then we want to go quietly in our sleep, not being a burden to others. According to the Centers for Disease Control three fourths of the US population will die following a prolonged illness or injury. The vast majority of us will not “go gently into that good night“.

When we have this conversation in a hospital or long-term care setting, we are not saying anything new. One might even ask at this moment, “Where is the word of hope?” Yes, that is precisely the point. At Easter of all times we want to hear, believe and proclaim a word of hope. Let me suggest several things that can help us experience and share resurrection HOPE even in times of struggle:

  1. Honesty: Be honest about what we are experiencing. We cannot find true hope until we honestly face our real struggles, fears and even despair. This is not easy, but it is essential.
  2. Openness: Share our awareness. You can do this by writing in a journal or letter. You can talk with a trusted friend, confessor, or professional. We need to BOTH feel/think it and externalize it somehow.

When we do these two things, we begin to get a handle on our struggle, and gain some power over our fear and despair. This is why many spiritual traditions call for confession – naming the struggle is a form of personal agency and gives us mental, emotional, spiritual and even physical power in it. In AA this is revealed in the 4th & 5th steps. We may discover that things are not as bleak as we first believed, and that we are not alone.

  1. Projection: Identify and name positive outcomes – project them into the future. Remember how Morrie reframed his experience from shame to blessing. Consider how a funeral may become a time of when people give and receive forgiveness, mercy and grace to heal old wounds. The Apostle Paul presumes to use pregnancy and the birthing process as a metaphor for struggle followed by blessing. The struggle is real, but so is the potential for positive and life-giving future. What inspiration can be found in those who face illness and death with courage, integrity and even joy?
  2. Expectation: Anticipate the good that can and will come. As we read in Hebrews 12:2 “looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfector of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” This theme recurs in scripture, particularly regarding the experience of Jesus and his role as our example.

It may help us to also remember that no one believed in the resurrection until they personally experienced the risen Jesus. The Apostles and disciples had been repeatedly told, along with the rulers of the people and the crowds. It is hard to experience resurrection hope during our times of struggle, hard even to hope and believe. One great blessing of walking this road is that we are then in a position to offer real hope to others because of what we have seen and known. Everyone’s experience is unique, and yet we can draw strength and hope from each other. We proclaim the Easter resurrection of Jesus each year both to remind ourselves, and to tell the world, that we might all live in hope. (Acts 2:22-28; Psalm 16) There is always room for HOPE.

To explore these ideas further, please contact me: cell: 214-288-1663; email: Ken@SynchronousLife.com

Find this and more resources @: www.SynchronousLife.com. Please connect with me on Social Media: Linkedin: KenGCrawford; Facebook: KenGCrawfordCoaching; Twitter: @KenGCrawford.

May you live a Synchronous Life of integrity, vitality and harmony.

Reflection on a Visit to a Missional Micro Community

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“The Kingdom of God is among you,” said Jesus to the Pharisees when they asked when this supposed kingdom of which he spoke would come (Luke 17:21 [NRSV]). It is interesting that in this encounter Jesus says that the kingdom is not coming with things that can “be observed” – paratērēseōs (Englishman’s Greek Concordance on http://www.bible.cc). A brief word study reveals that only Luke uses this word, and its close cognates are used by him in describing the Pharisees “watching closely” to try to catch Jesus in something with which they can entrap and destroy him. They are looking for some big sign that Jesus is trying to overtly conquer and supplant the existing system of empire (political and religious) by force. Jesus makes the point here in Luke 17:20-21 that such will not be the case. Indeed, it is the very opposite. The kingdom is already here, in the very midst of empire. It is like a mustard seed and the shrub it produces, like the yeast in a batch of dough (Luke 13:18-20). In other words, the reign of God is something that arises unnoticed, right under your nose, and even the most watchful of adversaries cannot defeat it. Such is my experience of the New Day community at Amani House (Missional Wisdom).

My arrival at Amani house on a Sunday evening to share in the community celebration was preceded by a visit there led by Dr. Elaine Heath as part of the Perkins School of Theology at SMU Doctor of Ministry course “Evangelism and Discipleship for a Missional Church” which she led along with Rev. Wes Magruder. That earlier session introduced the location, some key leadership, and the general format of a New Day gathering. While the Sunday evening hospitality was warm and inviting, I imagine that my experience then was colored by the preceding orientation. Familiarity helped me to relax more than I otherwise might, and being known and recognized by some of the leaders added to my comfort and sense of belonging. Though I was aware that this was not my community, I nonetheless felt welcomed by them. This familiarity may also have given them some freedom to spend less energy and attention on me than if I were completely new.

Lastly and most personally, I tend to make myself at home wherever I am, even when I am a stranger in a strange land. This temperament has served me well, I think, in cross cultural settings because I have felt free to let down my guard. A risk is that I might assume a less formal interaction in new relationships than is customary in other cultures. I wonder how much of this comes to me by virtue of being a straight, white, middle class, Protestant male. As a member of the most privileged group in our culture, I have had the least need to overcome obstacles to opportunity. I was formed in settings where I was a member of the host group, which I think leads to a presumption of belonging and familiarity that may be false, particularly in settings like the one where Amani House is being formed – in a community largely of African refugees.

This turning of the tables was one of the greatest gifts of my experience – to receive the hospitality of those who were actively seeking to make a home in this new land – a true parable of the Kingdom of God. The last become first, the first last, the servant becomes the host and the host becomes the guest. This illustrates the way Sarah Miles writes in Jesus Freak: Feeding Healing Raising the Dead about her encounters with the vulnerable and marginalized (Miles 2010, 3). She is challenged by her own presumptions, and finds herself guilty of judging others though she herself has been an object of scorn (Miles 2010, 36-37). It is the encounter with others in surprising ways that prompts a new awareness of the deep humanity present in each person, a humanity that cradles the image of God. It is the recognition of this humanity and a growing love for it that finally leads us to transformation. We discover that the other has become us, and we have become the other, that truly Jesus creates “in himself one new humanity in place of the two” (Ephesians 2:15). I love how Miles frames Jesus’ formation of community as the means to eternity:

When Jesus enters into relationship with outcasts and shares their social death, he starts a process of resurrection. The unclean become full, living people, born again. They are reincorporated – that is, re-bodied – into the community. And the community is healed into wholeness from separation, made new.” (Miles 2010, 15)

One of the striking experiences of this visit related to food. Earlier that day my home congregation had a fellowship covered dish dinner where individuals and families bring a dish, or two, as they are able. For the fifty people in attendance, we probably had six meat dishes, eight casseroles, six salads and twelve deserts. There was enough food for each person to fill their plate three times over. By contrast, a simple, wonderfully nutritious and flavorful pot of beans and steamer of aromatic rice fed 30 people at Amani house. I was reminded of Elaine Heath’s three practices of Eco-Evangelism, the third of which is to speak prophetically about unchecked consumerism. (Heath 2008, 171) The buffet in the early afternoon was not a celebratory feast, but simply an example of gluttony, whereas the miracle of loaves and fishes was experienced by that New Day community, and I experienced far more satisfaction, physically and spiritually, from that simple bowl than from the lunch that had preceded it.

The first time I read Heath’s book I was taken by her statement that “Christians are yearning for a simpler, unfettered relationship with God in community, for a new day for the church” (Heath 2008, 36). This reminded me of a postcolonial critique of the contemporary church, and I wrote in the margin of my book, “This longing may be met in and through the liberative journey of the base community and the encounter with ‘the least of these’, who are Christ to us when we serve them and when we refuse. They are Christ to us in relationship. We encounter God anew when we encounter them, and if we refuse, then we will not encounter God in grace, but in judgment.” Later I wrote, “Redemption for the Middle Class church is found in relationship with the poor and oppressed,” in response to Heath’s description of the Beguines’ commitment “to know experientially the ‘otherness’ of God’s kenotic love. It was this that I found at New Day, at least for myself. This is, in part, the explanation and justification for the place of white middle class churches in relationship to Missional micro congregations among the two thirds world, whether as immigrant and refugees, or in their home countries, such as those found at New Day.

I think the key to New Day, to Missional Communities and Micro Churches broadly considered, lies in Jesus’ statements about the kingdom of God. It is already here, maybe only within us, but then by grace among us. It is about mustard seeds growing under the noses of the establishment. It is not about going toe to toe with empires, secular or religious, any more than Jesus did with his contemporaries. This may be the reason that “the church” must continue to do attractional evangelism, undergirding as much as possible the establishment. All the while, the very same people are doing missional evangelism, out scattering seeds on the wind, letting them land where they may, trusting that some of them will find their way to good soil in which God will produce good fruit (Mark 4). In the process of grafting in, of filling new wineskins, the old vine, the old wine skins are redeemed – all are redeemed together.

Reference List

Heath, Elaine A. 2008. The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemporary Vision for Christian Outreach. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

http://missionalwisdom.com/new-day/worshipping-communities/amani/ (accessed February 13, 2013)

http://biblesuite.com/greek/parate_re_seo_s_3907.htm (accessed February 11, 2013)

McNeal, Reggie. 2011. Missional Communities: The Rise of the Post-Congregational Church. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Miles, Sarah. 2010. Jesus Freak: Feeding, Healing, Raising the Dead. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Roxburgh, Alan J. and M. Scott Boren. 2009. Introducing the Missional Church: What it is, Why it Matters, How to Become One. Grand Rapids: Baker Books.

Download a pdf of “Reflection on a Visit to a Missional Micro Community.”

Launching Ministry Coaching

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I am excited that today I get to formally launch my ministry coaching with a display table at Ministers Week at Brite Divinity School, TCU and University Christian Church. I am looking forward to hearing the stories of friends and colleagues and sharing words of encouragement and hope. Each of us need someone in our corner, someone who cares about our faith, life and ministry, who is rooting for us and praying for us.

Ministry is hard, even in the best of circumstances. And the best circumstances are rare.

We are, like all others, broken people in need of repair, wounded people in need of comfort, sick people in need of a physician.

We are also, like all others, beautiful people, created to reflect the glory of God in the world.  We are precious and good and worthy of being loved.
We bear the in-breathed Spirit of God.
We are miracles to behold, and

WE ARE CALLED!

But it is easy to forget the latter in light of the former. We receive negative messages from all around, telling us that we are not…

Ministry coaching for clergy, congregations, and all followers of Jesus, is designed to restore us to the integrated and synchronous life God intends for those Christ calls. It is about being transformed into mature disciples of Christ. Transformation is neither a quick nor an easy process – it takes time and energy and prayer.

Whether a single conversation, an ongoing process, individually or as a group or institution, coaching has a way of opening our hearts and minds to the insights that are most often deep within us waiting to come out. It then helps us claim who we are and live fully the life and ministry that God dreams for us.

And I can’t wait!