Living from Big S and W

My personal rhythm flows out of having faced some deep questions over the last several years.

While I think my days as a church pastor, where our church mission statement was to lead everyone to full life development in Christ, caused me to face many purpose type questions, nothing has transformed me like the following battery.

• Who are you? Not as self but as Self?
• Why are you here? What is your Work not work.
• How are you unique? Confluence of all the stuff that makes up you.
• How can you make a dramatic difference? Best contribution.
• Who cares? Do you?

These questions come from a combination of questions asked from a consultant and a professor.

I wonder how often we operate aligned with well thought through answers to these types of questions and how often we are on autopilot doing whatever it is we think we are supposed to be doing…doing the daily grind so to speak.

The problem of course with these questions is a very egoic construction of self if you aren’t careful. If our ego is a container for all of our background, experiences, upbringing, geography, education and vocation, there are good chances that if we aren’t careful we will simply build our lives around a thinness that is self and not a richness rooted in Self. When that happens self tends to do work(s). The richness and depth of Self found in imago dei gravitates toward Work.

My sense is that in my life self and work lead me deeper into ego, whereas Self and Work lead me deeper into the pure sense of Being and I Am-ness placed at my core by the Creator God.

Maybe this is a function of personal maturity, vocational transition, personal pain, stage of life, wisdom, great coaching by those around me, or simply convergence of a number of factors, but my journey the last several years is that Self and Work, when they converge, lead to a deep sense of wholeness and shalom in me that naturally leaks out to others. It seems my life and ministry is deeper and richer these days. I have a sense of deep gratitude because of it.

Now to Rhythm…

This post started some time ago when I had been asked about my rhythm. Well finally we get to that issue.

Let me say a couple things before I share what a day for me looks like.

Rhythm should reflect health for you. Not health for me, for your friend or for the next guy. Rhythm by definition is created by contact then rests, contact then rests. The pattern of contact and rest is what creates rhythm. Please remember that.

Second, no one elses rhythm should create guilt in you. Reread the previous few lines again.

Third, when someone else’s rhythm appears attractive and inviting ask a couple questions. Why is it attractive? Is the reason a healthy and legitimate reason? If the answer to the previous question is yes then the next question is important. What are you to learn from this person that you can alter or be integrated into your rhythm?

A couple other things you should know. While my kids are now in college and high school and obviously require little if any monitoring, what I am about to share applied to me in one way or another even when we had no kids and even as the kids were born and were young.

So here goes.

Because life long learning is a premium value for me, I have always made sure I read no less than an hour a day, and usually more. Won’t miss it, can’t miss it, it is what makes me tick, stay healthy, lead well, remain fresh, and it is the primary fountainhead of creativity when coupled with the next inviolable piece. Steal time from sleeping, eating and day dreaming but make sure your input channels are flowing.

As far as content goes I have spoken and written about this quite a bit. You have to constantly work those areas you feel will help your life/ministry/leadership/parenting/vocation soar. I don’t know what that is for you but you NEED to know what they are. Plan your work in these areas and then work your plan. I have done this for almost 20 years now. And the dividends in my life are incalculable. I read between 100-170 books a year not to mention hundreds of book reviews. And by the way yes I have taken three professional speed reading courses. Worth every penny.

Spiritual solitude is key for me as well. I have already mentioned the value and importance of a regula fidei and I genuinely believe in it’s centrality. That said, there is one thing I do every day, that is centering prayer. I have been on this pattern for nearly 4 full years now. Two times a day/20 min. (sometimes only one but ALWAYS at least one) I do centering prayer of the Father Thomas Keating sort. This is the way I enact and live into Psalm 46.10. I am convinced a centering practice along with daily input channels are what accounts for whatever creative and theological reflection I have going on in my life. My writing flows from the confluence of these two patterns.

Be relationally deep with at least two or three other people who share similar passions, desire for dialogue and of course great food and drink. At least weekly I connect with 2-3 of my closest friends and confidants for a check in. Sometimes it is simply shooting the breeze over a bottle of some fine libation at other times it is theological conversation or ministry model deconstruction for understanding our current predicament in the church a bit better. But whatever the venue and reason, a couple times of week seems to be a minimum requirement for me.

Work out and physical activity is key. This is nearly daily. I am always at 5x/wk. On the road of course (which is about half the time) this is always a challenge. But it is a non negotiable. It is the thing that keeps my head clear, my sleep patterns regular, my eating healthy (I have always eaten more healthy when my work out has been consistent) and my body young. Over the years my workout has morphed. I used to be an avid runner. But my joints just don’t like pavement pounding like they used to. Seven years ago I started down the yoga trail. Ashtanga Yoga is the power yoga, get a hard sweaty workout type of yoga. Some of you hear the word yoga and all sorts of red flags go up. Get a grip and do some reading. Yoga practice does not require you to be Buddhist so relax. My nearly daily practice has improved so much. Yoga’s interface with a centering practice is actually a very interesting interplay. Maybe sometime I will write a post on that.

More to come. But feel free to make comments.

Personal Patterns pt 4 Axiom #3

Let me finish my comments on the three axioms and then next time will comment about rhythm. In my original post on this I said ….

Axiom # 3
Life long learning is a non negotiable for development and creativity.

I am going to be honest with you, this just happens far to infrequently. Not only does it not happen in the life of the average American (the number of Americans who actually buy non fiction to read is woefully small. The number who actually read more than the first chapter - miniscule) it happens as rarely in ministry.

I am not unrealistic in realizing the average person in ministry should have a balance between the various spheres of life. But never read a theology book? Never consider what is emerging in the world of cultural critique? Never consider a consistent practice of familiarizing themselves with cutting edge leadership and semiotics? This sort of laziness is just a recipe for church malaise; a vibe more common than anyone would like to admit. And it is a prescription for a boring, self absorbed person.

This is the single practice that has kept me fresh over the years. (in the next post I will talk to you about THE most important practice you could daily engage to revolutionize your life) You don’t have to read three books a week, listen to 12 podcasts and surf cultural trend websites daily. But you do need an intentional plan.

What areas will you become an expert in over the next 10 years (take the long view)? Why not commit right now to one full day in a bookstore getting book reading ideas and creative insights? I did this every month without fail over a 15 year time period.  It was enormously helpful. How much time will you commit to taking in new material whatever the format it takes? Input may be the most important determinate in creative flow and we just don’t take time for it.

One of the biggest reasons for input is to release our mental models from becoming to set up, read as in concrete.  Fresh input that jars and disrupts our current way of seeing things is the only way to make sure we don’t become smug and arrogant; certain we already have it all figured out.  Very little in life is “all” figured out.  There is always more to learn about almost everything imaginable.

Life long learning is not only the way to remain at an exciting place but it is the source of creative injection for the primary vocation into which you are living at the moment. Your ability to enact, creatively shift, and think beyond the box to the sphere or pyramid is dependent on your commitment to new idea intrusion. Go for it!!

Personal Patterns pt. 1

Lately I have been asked a lot about my personal rhythms, as in what kinds of reading, blogs, books, meditation, and spiritual patterns do I engage. With that question usually comes the personal balance question as well.

Since I haven’t written much about this lately I thought I would log a few thoughts for your consumption, critique or blatant disregard.

A few axioms to start the conversation. This will serve as installment number 1 and we will follow it shortly with a 2nd.

Axiom #1
The more you progress through stages of faith development (I am thinking Fowler’s stages here, but Scott Peck or Ken Wilber’s Altitudes apply equally well) the more important a changing menu of patterns and practices.

I have become increasingly convinced a locked in or set pattern is the quickest way to stagnation. I say be wary of the phrase “but you always have to do _________ don’t you?”

Stages of faith. Are you familiar with the concept? You need to be and you need to understand how a regula fidei changes as we move through various stages.

Axiom #2
In an external world of increasing noise creating an internal world of increasing quiet may be one of the premium patterns we need to learn.

I am quiet certain most of us in Western Christianity have little understanding of this and for us quiet means we pray silently, telling God what we need, how he needs to act on our behalf, and how to basically run the affairs of the world. But actually creating a quiet center and then sitting in it? That seems to be relatively rare in my experience.

Question. Can you sit for 20 or 30 minutes without daydreaming? Without your thoughts wandering? Without being distracted? Can you sit in utter interior silence? The great mystics say this is the beginning of insight and connection with the God.  And it can create a healing space, a sense of unshakable stability and even a crazy confidence.

Axiom # 3
Life long learning is a non negotiable for development and creativity.

I am discouraged by the patterns I see guys and gals in ministry engage when it comes to really stretching their learning. Many haven’t read a challenging theology or philosophy piece in years. Many haven’t done any cultural analysis in years. Very few have book lists with books that really force new thinking. Part of this though is we allow writers to write simplistic ruminations because we buy the stuff.

What is on your reading list? Oh….reading list? Let’s ask that questions first. Do you have a reading list? What on it is really going to intellectually stretch you, what on it is simply fluff?

Axiom #4
You have to have creative outlets for fresh insights to dawn.

I love to cook, paint, do digital art, and read architecture books. The one to one correspondence to these outlets and creativity isn’t visible but I am convinced it is present.

What are you creative outlets? When was the last time you had a real creative ah-ha or hit a creative zone that was off the chart? What things catalyzed it? What surrounded the experience? Can you reproduce the zone?

Creating Conditions and Contexts

I have often heard leaders talk about the need to transform others lives (presumably followers).  While we might be able to comment on the leader/follower relationship within the above idea, it is what leaders can and cannot do that I want to comment on.  As I speak and consult with churches I am continuing to find churches challenged by the consumerist mentality that manifests itself in people leaving because they aren’t “being fed.”  This is without doubt the #1 reason given for leaving a local church.  While I often think that is an excuse and smoke screen for other issues let’s talk a second about what underlies such a statement.

My sense is that we, the leaders/pastors, are the guilty culprit.  We tell people come and be served.  We want you to be comfortable here.  We want it to be fun and safe and inviting and non-threatening and and and.  The list goes on and on and on.  In other words we will transform you if you just show up.  While we never say that directly, and I don’t think we believe it either, it is what that front end value offers people that implies to them “Just come!”  we will do the rest.

The truth is transformation, as tricky as it often can be, isn’t the leaders responsibility at all.  It isn’t the churches responsibility, the small group facilitator’s or the personal mentors.  Leaders and churches, at best, create containers of possibility where transformation can take place.  In other words leaders create and monitor ethos.  This was the thesis and burden of my first book Morph!  Leaders broker tools, create context, coach application and model the way.  But what leaders do not do is transform lives.

While that may be to state the obvious it is not obvious to the scores of people leaving the church.  This is a national problem. On the front end we do not make clear to people all we can provide is a context of possibility and a bevy of resources.  Other than that the work is theirs.  Of course the Spirit is involved.  But the Spirit doesn’t  work against or instead of or unbeknownst to the individual.  The Spirit works WITH.

This is one glaring example of what we “market” on the front end biting us hard on the back end (double entendre intentional).  When people get past the first blush of hearing new things, making a few easy applications, they wake up one day to the reality that growth in the early stages seems easy, but not so much once the preliminaries are out of the way.

Leaders can’t transform.  In the words of the iconoclastic business guru Tom Peters…’Nobody “transforms” anybody else! Instead we create opportunities for people…and then encourage them to apply their latent talents to grasp those opportunities.  Leaders do NOT….”transform people.”  Leaders instead construct a context in which…. Voyages of Mutual Discovery….can take place. Leaders provide access to a luxuriant portfolio of of projects.  Projects that challenge people to express their innate curiosity and to visit places that they had never dreamed of.’ (emphasis and punctuation Tom Peters).

I think we might need a brash business guy like Peters to sometimes wake us up to our own short sightedness.  Let’s get to work creating context.

Creative Rhythms

There are 3 distinct phases in the creative process. Each phase has it’s

own life and class of actions.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi- Creativity

The well-balanced leader is continually learning how to bring their God-given visions into reality. We tend to see that ability for the super-gifted due it it’s near mystic basis. The honest fact is creative visionaries understand and use a process that helps the creation in their sprit come to fruition in reality.

Step #1 Germination: Idea generation and rumination, most leaders know when and where this happens best for them. There is lots of excitement in this phase and the newness of he idea creates lots of energy and drive. Truth is most visionaries of this sort have learned to be in the world in very present ways. They have learned to extract from intuition and how to be sensitive to the emergent. Germination usually happens in these moments of sensing what is trying to find air. Germination requires shifting the location of our listening from within the organism we serve to the future which is embedded at the junction of our presence, our imagination and God’s best possible future.

Step #2 assimilation: this is where things typically breakdown, this is the least obvious phase. Initial thrill is gone and work starts. Here there is a spinning out of the details of the “germ” or idea. More than anything though, this stage moves you from a focus on internal action to a focus on external particulars to put wings on the creation. This has recently been referred to as crystallizing and prototyping.

Step #3 Completion: Energy ramps up again because tangibility is just around the corner. Specifics are now acted upon and the creation is birthed. And from here we can begin to operate within the sphere of the new creation and begins adjusting it on the fly.

These three steps are all risky, exhilarating and intimidating. But that is precisely why not all people are Creators.

Solving or Creating?

The greatest statesmen in history have not been problem solvers. They have been builders and creators.

Robert Fritz – Author

There is a profound difference between problem solving and creating Problem solving is taking action to have something to go away – the problem. Creating is taking action to have some thing come into being  - the creation. Most of us have been raised n the tradition of problem solving and have little insight or experience in to the creative process.

Problem solvers propose elaborate schemes to identify and define the problem, and equally detailed analyses of the best solutions and options. If successful you may eliminate the problem; you have the absence of something. But you still do not have the presence of a result you want to create.

We do have many problems that constantly need solving. But from politics to education, from business to church ministry, problem solving will never create the outcomes, the preferable futures, the compelling alternatives that we seek. That is simply because elimination of anything no matter how bad never creates anything.

Is God fundamentally a problem solver or creator? What do we typically ask of God? What is you fundamental orientation? How much time do you spend on each? What are the concrete ways to move toward creating? Can you see creating something simultaneously that can solve some of the problems you had? What is your creative process?

Concretely?  Think about a personal best on creating something.  Go back and try and think about your state of mind, the environment you were in, the intuitional sense you had.  Now how did you prototype that new thing about to be born?  What experiments did you try?  How long did it take?  These questions will start to get you in touch with your process and what it takes to creatively birth instead of laboriously solve.

Two Notch Immersion Principle

“It doesn’t matter if you’ll never need calculus; you need to take it to learn to think in new ways.”

RJ Martoia, my dad.

Great leadership requires very good communication. This is no secret and has been stated in all the literature on the topic. There are two sides to the communication coin however. There is the “material I communicate” side and the “how well I verbally pass on the information” side. The material side is the focus of this little nugget.

Every communicator sooner or later (usually later) learns good communication down line or to teammates requires you having unusual clarity and command of your material. The 2 notch immersion principle says, to communicate well at a certain level requirees you to be conversant with the same material at least a couple notches above what you are passing on. Take an algebra teacher; algebra teacher training includes trigonometry, pre-calculus and calculus training. Why? Because understanding two notches above gives deeper and greater insight into the fundamentals of what is being explained at the algebra level.

This approach to better communication requires some immersion in the topic if you really want to feel equipped and be prepared. This is true in almost every area of communication. Are you reading 2 notches up in theology and biblical material (you are going to be increasingly asked biblical and theological questions in our postmodern world)? Are you reading 2 notches ahead in how teams develop (you are starting to teach others how to develop teams aren’t you)? Here is the diagnostic question; where do I need clearer communication?

Start working toward that 2 notch higher mark.

THE 12 STEP PRIMER FOR MASTERING CHANGE

Change. Some hate it, others fear it, some sleep through it. But a few select – the achievers – welcome it and throw the rest of us into turmoil.
Erik Olesen – Mastering the Winds of Change

 

Erik Olesen in a recent book discusses the 12 non-negotiables of being change resilient. His 12 steps are discussion worthy.

1. View change as an exhilarating challenge. Turn the challenge positive, convert fear to energy, seize the opportunity. Your view makes the difference.
2. Build commitment to your job. Learn to have passion, love and compelling goals; no heart without these in place.
3. Stay committed. Persist and stay missionally focused.
4. Know when to control and when to let go. You can’t control everything, so let go of what you can’t.
5. Deal with set backs. They strengthen and teach you. Don’t bury them. That will be counterproductive.
6. Be optimistic. Hope based on realistic evaluation. This is not idealism or pie-in-the-sky responsibility.
7. Use humor – lots.
8. Learn from mistakes. Don’t over inflate. No self-pity.
9. Maintain perspective. Spiritual input & day retreats. Sitting and walking Meditations
10. Tune the body. Exercise is key to balance.
11. Build your confidence. Great preparation, knowledge and visualizing the result will be great rehearsal.
12. Communicate and help others. Get and give support. The Lone Ranger is a TV show – not reality. Even he had Tonto.

Limitations and Innovations

Let Limitations guide you to breakthroughs.
Price Pritchett

 

When we speak of doing things in a ‘new way’ for some this brings feelings of frustration and stymied paralysis. Every great discovery, invention, or breakthrough was previously thought to be ‘impossible.’ Simply stated ‘limitations’ are pathways to innovation, creativity and paradigm shifting. But they only function as pathways (instead of roadblocks) if we can reframe them as exciting catalysts and opportunities.

Limitations and constraints, the seeking of the better approach, force us out of standard operating procedure. They often force us to look to the experts – whether in the print of podcast versions. But here is the downside of that solution approach, it may slam the door to creativity and make us rut ridden if the experts haven’t encountered our scenario. Only 5% of us can innovate a new model of anything says Stanford Research. Why? My guess is we have wrongly conceived that innovation and new paths are the domain of the genius. Instead, let limitations or the quest for a better way push you toward greater cleverness, solutions of simplicity and elegance. This is the domain of the spirit inside us all, this is the arena of the imago dei.

Feel cornered by a tough situation, pressured to cut a new path? Look for the trap door of innovation, resist the temptation for over-the-counter mass-produced solutions, and use the escape route of creativity to write a new recipe or redesign the blue-prints. Creativity is more exhilarating, productive and fits the context much better than the pre-packaged ones off the shelves.

This is the new leadership download, not established repertoire leadership, but the in-the-moment-make-it-happen inspiration rooted in the image of God at our core.