Good is the enemy of great.

And that is one of the key reasons we have so little that becomes great.

We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government,  principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of companies never become great, precisely because the vast majority of companies become quite good- and that is their main problem.

I was reminded of Collins’ work these past few weeks as I have reflected on what it takes to truly make disciples. Finally at 3DM in Atlanta it became clear to me. It takes desperation. It takes a fundamental belief that church as usual is so flawed that it will never accomplish what God ultimately asks of us. It takes a willingness to sacrifice that which is good for something great.

When we were gathered in Atlanta the 3DM team kept remarking that this learning community was the furthest along in the process of anyone they had worked with. The reason? Desperation had set in. We know that what we are doing isn’t going to cut it anymore. The group gathered there was simply open and hungry to a new paradigm for being the church. Our previous successes were no longer clouding our minds.

Ultimately that is the question we have to ask ourselves in the church. Are our perceived successes as a church getting in the way of listening to what God wants to do through and in us? Success as the world defines it (crowds, money, staff, facilities, fame, being cool, book deals, etc..) is the absolute enemy to humble obedience to the voice of God. It makes us soft. It makes us comfortable. It works as cotton balls jammed in our ears filtering out the whisper of God to be something more. It blinds us to the realities of how the world is changing around us. We see other churches that are behind the times and their people are leaving and their churches are dying and we pity them. We pity them as our churches swell with the sheep of other flocks and we confuse this migration for fulfilling the mission of God. All the while God is calling us to greatness in the kingdom of God and our own presumptive success is killing our will to listen to God. It is shutting us down to the truth.

Paul says in Romans 13

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. ¹⁰ Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. ¹¹ Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. ¹² Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. ¹³Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

¹⁴ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. ¹⁵ Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. ¹⁶ Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Paul is speaking right into the heart of our churches today. He is speaking right into our hearts as leaders and pastors. We have lost our zeal to hear the voice of the Lord. We have traded a continual zeal and humility to what God desires for the comfort of fitting in with everyone else. That exchange has left us woefully short of seeing the glory of God truly revealed in our midst.

I keep asking myself, where is good enough for me not nearly good enough for God? Where am I so comfortable or so arrogantly self affirming in my beliefs that I have long since stopped listening for the voice of God? If we are going to change the course of the North American church it is this humility and desperation to listen to the voice of God that will spark our new path.

May we all have such desperation that it supersedes our comfort and arrogance and leads us into the greatness that only birthed through obedience to our Father.

That is the question I have been asking myself for the past week as I have reflected on some of the teachings of Mike Breen I heard in Atlanta. Mike challenged us as leaders to evaluate the leaders we invest into not through their competency but according to their capacity, chemistry, character and calling.

The first one of those categories is the one I want to reflect on today, capacity. What determines one capacity for leadership? The more I have thought of capacity I have begun to think of it as bandwidth. As you use the internet, the bandwidth (or bit rate or channel capacity or throughput for my proudly geeky friends) available to you determines what you can do. It determines what you can upload, download, stream, view, and how long it takes you to do those things. As a leader your capacity determines the magnitude of leadership you can exhibit, how many tasks you can juggle, the output of your time, and your ability to lead others and organizations.

Instinctively I have always been drawn to high capacity people, without putting that name to it. I have always been drawn to people who have extraordinary abilities to impact others. Because of this I have a lot of friends with very high capacities. Capacity goes far beyond gifting, however, and that is the part that intrigues me. There are many things that affect our capacity.

Looking at my own life I recognize that the investment of others into me has enlarged my capacity. They have helped me enlarge my view of leadership, the kingdom and God. A bigger view, better understanding, and greater experience enlarge capacity. Education can grow capacity. Not information, but transformation through learning experiences enlarges our capacity. Life experience is huge for capacity. It is often the lowest moments of life that expand our capacity. The experience of leading a congregation through tragedy and healing grew my capacity exponentially. It was the type of learning that no amount of classroom time could ever provide.

Obediently living expands capacity. The longer and more faithfully we serve in the Kingdom of God the more capable we become of helping others do the same. Often times the people whose capacity surprises me are those who may not appear extraordinarily gifted, but they are so filled with the presence of God that their capacity is truly extraordinary.

Ultimately our kingdom capacity is determined by our openness and connection to God. The closer we are to God the more God’s power can flow through our lives. We get to be a conduit for God’s grace.

Wherever I have experienced great movements of God’s spirit it has happened because of high capacity kingdom people. They haven’t been leaders predetermined by education, gender, age, or business acumen. They have been faithful servants willing to be used by God.

So what is your leadership capacity? How has God expanded your capacity? Who are the people with the greatest capacity that you have encountered?

Two moments on Saturday afternoon brought me great joy as a father. First, my son sat with me on the couch and watched an entire Maryland basketball game with me. I could tell it was a moment of delight for him to have this time with me and it was a tremendous joy for me. His hunger to be part of whatever I am doing constantly teaches me about my relationship to God the Father and gives me joy I never have quite known before.

The other moment came when we played the Lego Star Wars game together and Logan learned what a Wookie is for the first time. He was Chewbacca and I was Yoda in our battle against the Storm Troopers. It was awesome. He has talked about it for two days. He loves those Wookies.

There are those among us who suffer. There are those for whom life is unfair. There are those who have never had a chance to make it in this world. Then there is Tom Brady. Following last night’s heart wrenching loss to the NY Giants in the Super Bowl Tom will somehow have to find solace in his super model wife, beautiful children, fame, tens of millions of dollars, 3 Super Bowl rings, passing records and good looks. Some of us have burdens to bear in this world. Some of us are Tom Brady.

Somehow Eli Manning turned into a clutch QB with more Super Bowl rings than his record setting brother. If you had to choose between the two – Peyton being a Hall of Fame QB with a shot at most passing records and plenty of success in Indianapolis or Eli who has grown into the king of NY leading two underdog teams to the ultimate prize which would you choose? I can’t believe I am saying this, but I think I might rather be Eli. He seems to enjoy life more.

Queso and chips or Hot Wings for the best Superbowl food? This is an intense debate in my mind.

Did I find myself actually enjoying Madonna’s half time performance last night? Yes, in fact I strangely did. It might have just been the queso high I was experiencing, however.

I will ultimately remember little of this game. It was actually pretty boring. But I will remember gathering with great friends to laugh the night away and enjoy the game. What a blessing it is to have a community of friends who allow me to be myself. What an extra blessing, as a pastor, that these are people from our church.

I am looking forward to watching Peyton and Eli face off head to head twice a year when Peyton accepts a huge offer from the Redskins to be their next QB. If Peyton wants to prove he is the greatest ever he can do so by resurrecting the Redskins. Come on Peyton, you are up to the challenge!

My favorite commercial was the Audi commercial that made fun of vampires and celebrated their fancy headlights. This was a perfectly created contextual commercial. It captured our culture in this moment perfectly. Three years ago it wouldn’t have made sense and two years from now it would seem a little outdated.

I have been processing the week in Atlanta and have a lot to share. The rest of the week will probably revolve around more thoughts on discipleship and leadership development. This doesn’t have anything to do with the Superbowl, that is why these are ramblings.

There has been a ton of teaching to absorb and a lot of reflecting and planning. There has certainly been too much to regurgitate or process all at once. But here are some of the questions I am chewing on.

The first one is about finding new leaders to work with. 3DM has challenged to stop looking for people based on competency and instead to look at the 4 c’s of character, capacity, chemistry and calling. While it might not sound like a huge shift it really can be, especially within our culture. I am working out what this means for us in the church. The character and chemistry part are already natural for me. The capacity part is a bit of a new angle and the way they presented calling it also was a bit of a stretch. What comes to mind first of all with this is that is definitely seems to be a way of describing what Jesus did in choosing the disciples. While Peter, James and John may have had competency in catching fish, that did not equate competency in being fishers of men. Jesus had to shape that competency within them.

Do I judge people’s viability in ministry based primarily on their competency? I hope not, but I am sure that I am guilty of doing so. I certainly know I have prayed that God would begin things by sending me people who were competent up front. But I know from experience that competency doesn’t equal fit or calling. I am intrigued by the way this works itself out in the church.

Another idea to wrestle with is the 5 fold roles of ministry that we find in Ephesians 4. Here Paul talks about the manifestations of grace in the lives of God’s children. He writes “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers..” These five roles are pretty distinctive in their work in the church. We were challenged to think about our primary gifting, and how God calls us to the other roles for different seasons or moments of our life. Here is what I am wrestling with or chewing on. All the gifts come from the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life. It is the same Spirit in all of us. So while we may have been given a specific gifting, the Spirit that gives all the gifts is within us and according to the Spirit’s desire he can manifest the grace of God in whatever gifting he chooses. That is a big wonderful idea for serving God.

As I look back over my ministry I can see season where God has asked and equipped me to each of these roles, That is an extraordinary reality to live in as the followers of Christ.

The other part of that I wrestle with is that I am primarily gifted as a teacher. Yet, ever since I have entered the ministry I have been told that part of my gifting is as an apostle. I have struggled with this because it is not a gift I regularly see in my life or experience. What I am beginning to see is that part of my calling will include times and specific manifestations of this gifting according to God’s purpose. People telling me this has been a somewhat frustrating reality but I am beginning to see where and how God might be using that in my life.

All in all there has been a ton to process these three days about how we raise up leaders in the church. I will be posting more as I reflect on this process and what it will take to do effectively in the church.

But many of us who have seen significant growth in our churches know a dirty little secret: Significant growth has its own ill effect on helping communities develop deep faith. Numeric growth of Christianity doesn’t indicate a more harmonious was of life with God. The metaphor of the body is a good one for churches. A body that’s too big puts a strain on the systems of the body. At the same time, communities who never embrace new people or new perspectives find themselves starving. Both obesity and starvation are pathways to death.

Doug Pagitt in Preaching in the Inventive Age

I have been wrestling with this quote for a couple of days now. Both obesity and starvation are pathways to death. It struck me because we are the most obese culture that has ever lived. Obesity is an epidemic that is radically altering the future of our country. It is going to bankrupt the health care system of this country. It is going to forever alter the generation that is growing up obese right now. It has changed our view of ourselves and the view the world has of us.

But until I read this quote I never associated obesity with the megachurch culture that dominates the landscape of American Evangelicalism. Can we equate, to a degree, over-sized churches with obesity? I am beginning to think that we can. Obesity goes beyond poor eating habits. It truly becomes a disease. Once the body has too much fat and has increased beyond a healthy mass it begins to effect the bodies ability to function properly. It takes a lot more energy for the body to simple keep running. It puts a strain on the heart. It puts strain on joints. It can lead to diabetes by effecting the kidneys. It effects movement, activity, flexibility, rest, and long term life expectancy.

Unfortunately, how we are being the church in our country can lead to a lot of the same symptoms. The amount of work and resources necessary to maintain a megachurch is immense. This always increases stress levels and the health of those responsible for making that church work. It certainly effects flexibility and the ability to hear from God and adapt quickly. It can certainly effect life expectancy, sometimes for the church itself, and certainly for the staff members involved. Obesity disrupts the natural healthy ways the body is supposed to function. In the church this can certainly be the case as well.

The major concern with obesity in our country right now is its effect on children. Growing up obese simply ramps up the medical issues that can accompany it and effect life longer and more severely. Young children who struggle with obesity very seldom grow up to be healthy adults. Might this be true in the church as well? If a church grows too big too fast at too young an age might it also have the same effects? If a church doesn’t have the depth and maturity to handle large crowds and large resources in a healthy way is it creating a ticking time bomb of destruction for itself and its staff? Interesting question to consider.

I am not throwing megachurches under the bus here, I am simply pointing out some of the inherent dangers at being over-sized. You can be over-sized and healthy, just look at some of the monstrous specimens in the NFL and NBA. However, studies show that the long term prognosis for these athletes isn’t good unless they take big steps to get healthy as they age and reduce their mass over time. The life span of an average NFL lineman is a depressing statistic.

At the core of this whole thing is the simple reality that God has designed the church like he has designed our bodies. There are healthy ways of living that maximize our ability to live productively and healthfully. Without careful attention to what we need to be healthy we can end up in a place where bad habits and poor consuming habits have rendered us unhealthy and unable to do the work God has created us to do.

What do you think? Is there more to this than I have stated? Am I overreaching? What do you think of Doug’s quote?

The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller – This one comes highly recommended by numerous people. I am just beginning it, but I can already tell it is going to be a worth while read.

Real Marriage – Mark and Grace Driscoll – This book has already generated quite a bit of publicity and controversy. I am reading it because of my desire to engage in conversations about sexuality and marriage. I don’t want to comment on it just by what others say about it. I am pretty sure I will have issues with the approach of this one, but I am working to have a very open mind going in. I am especially interested to contrast it with Keller’s book.

Preaching in the Inventive Age – Doug Pagitt – This one I picked up for $.99 on sale a couple of weeks ago. I meant to read it when it came out and never did. So I am glad to do so now almost for free.

The Church is Flat – Tony Jones – This is the work Tony created for his PHD program at Princeton. It is one of the most thorough accounts of the emergent church, its origins, and practices. Knowing that Tony invested a tremendous amount of his life into this, I want to give it a shake.

A Public Faith – Miroslav Volf - I am actively engaged in this book and there is a tremendous amount of excellence here. I need to really carve out some intentional time to finish reading it and really wrestling with it. A big recommendation.

The King Jesus Gospel – Scot McKnight – I am most of the way through this book and it is not only really good but really important. Scot hits this one out of the ballpark with his presentation of the gospel and what it means to gospel in our world.

Untitled – Blaine Hogan - This book is focused on the creative process. I am excited about its potential for writing, sermonizing and ministry ideas.

Quitter – Jon Acuff – Jon is the writer of Stuff Christians Like, which is the most consistently humorous and creative blog in Christendom. This book should be very entertaining and challenging. It is focused on the idea of why we never complete the dreams we set out to accomplish.

Veneer: Living Deeply in Surface Society by Tim Willard and Jason Locy - This one came highly recommended and seems like a good companion to the discipleship work I am doing right now.

Those are the ten for right now, what are you working on?

Whenever a field goal kicker misses my mother in-law feels bad, not for him, but for his mom. Watching your kid carry that kind of burden is tough. Well after yesterday’s games, Lawrence Tyne’s mom is relieved and Billy Cundiff’s mom is thankful her son used his college scholarship and NFL dollars to get a college degree and an MBA.

The tale of two kickers. One made it his kick. One missed his. In a moment their actions would decide whether they would be the hero or the goat. That really is the magic of sports isn’t it? Seldom in life does your legacy come down to a clearly defined moment. The limited time frames of an athletes career and the games they play make for artificially created and yet beautiful drama.

Tom Brady is Tom Brady not because of his good looks, model wife, or incredible fortune and fame. (OK those things kind of define him ) He is Tom Brady because he has been clutch in moments that really mattered. If he wins his fourth Super Bowl in two weeks he will establish himself as the greatest QB of his generation.

Michael Jordan is Michael Jordan because his unmatched competitive drive refused to lose in the biggest moments. Michael willed his team to victory, time and time again. Kobe is the only basketball player we have seen since that has remotely the same kind of drive.

John Elway was the guy who couldn’t get it done until he helicoptered through the air on a crucial play late in the Super Bowl and became a legend.

Dan Marino, Bernie Kosar, Karl Malone, and Charles Barkley, they are all fantastic legendary players who never got there. Sometimes it was a moment missed, other times it was simply having the breaks go the other way. But how people view them changed because of moments like the two we watched yesterday.

When I first became a pastor, I felt like my life was a series of game winning field goal kicks. The sermon I was preaching, the worship I was planning, the youth event I was leading, those were my moments. They would either make or break who I was. If I succeeded in those moments I would change people’s perceptions of me and if I succeeded in those moments lives would be changed. It all hung on my shoulders.

Thank God I recognize how wrong I was. Life in the kingdom of God isn’t like life as a field goal kicker. Our pursuit of God and our work for his glory is all about a life well lived in continual, sacrificial, redemptive service of the world. It is never one moment, as a success or failure that defines us. We are defined by the love of God that redeems us. And the measures of our success are measured over the long term. We will fail. We will have moments of success. But our goal in the kingdom is to spend our life continually experiencing moments of obedience that change us and impact the world.

The artificial drama of sports is intoxicating. It changes the outlook of fans, for the good and bad. But it is not the way life works in the kingdom of God. And for that I am deeply thankful. (Especially since as a fan of the Wizards, Redskins, Capitals, Orioles and Terps my outlook is mostly jaded, pained, and frustrated. There has to be a beattitude that applies to me. Blessed are you when you root for perennial losers whose owners make torturing their dedicated fan base a way of life for in the kingdom of heaven your team owner is Jesus!)

From a theological perspective I really love this protest. I agree with these companies that these bills are a bit limiting, even if the idea behind them isn’t bad. The urge to try and protect American jobs and intellectual property is a great thing. The way this bill goes about doing it may not be the best way in doing so. I understand the objections. I am not up in arms about the bills, but I get why people are so upset by them.

But what intrigues me much more is the way these companies have gone about their protests. Oh, I am sure they have spent a lot of money (because they have it) on lobbying Congress about this bill. But using the internet itself and their withdrawal from the system, even if for a day, is a great way of trying to promote change. Sometimes the only way to make the system stop and take notice is to withdraw from it’s support. Not every circumstance calls for that type of response, but more circumstances call for it than certainly we as American Christians want to acknowledge.

Sometimes not voting is the best vote. Sometimes not buying a product, or any product has a greater impact. Sometimes we have to use the system to do our work and sometimes we have to abandon the system to make change. A lot more people will be aware of these bills and their impact after today. Regardless of what the bills mean and whether or not we should protest them, I am very intrigued by the actions of these companies.

What do you think? Are there any lessons for us in the church that we can apply from this?

John 17

“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.  I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.  They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.  As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

This week I have been reading through all the prayers of Jesus recorded in the gospel. The culmination of the recorded prayers of Jesus is John 17 and Jesus’ extraordinary prayer for his disciples before his death. There is so much beautiful theology in this prayer that it has taken me a few days to unpack all the language around covenant, identity, incarnation, mission and holiness. One piece of this prayer I never truly noticed before is the section where Jesus talks about sanctifying himself.

Wait a second, Jesus needed to be sanctified? Being sanctified is being made holy and Jesus was born holy. Being sanctified is having our sinful nature replaced with the presence and direction of the Holy Spirit. Jesus had no sinful nature and was already fully in communion with the Holy Spirit. So how and why was Jesus sanctified?

In the context of the prayer it is clear that Jesus is talking about being sanctified as part of the process of being sent by God and being obedient to the will of God. Being sent to do the will of God and carrying through that will through obedience sets us apart and sanctifies us in a powerful way. So in this way, even Jesus who was without sin, as he obediently prepared to die on a cross was being sanctified. He was being blessed, shaped, and drawn into the presence of the Father through his obedience. He was also glorifying his Father in the most powerful way possible, through his own sacrificial obedience. Our glorification of God also works to sanctify us in powerful ways.

I have honestly never thought about Jesus being sanctified before. My understanding of sanctification wasn’t broad enough. It was too focused on sin management and personal change rather than obedience and the glorification of God. Through the example of Christ then we find another important part of our pursuit of God. We are made more like Christ when we learn to be obediently sacrificial according to the will of God. This glorifies our Father and changes us from the inside out. This prayer of Jesus is one we should really reflect on. Jesus has shown us the path to sanctification and made it possible for us to experience it through his own work. Thanks be to God.

Seeing a ship sitting on its side like that however, seemed to be a metaphor for so many things in our world right now. With whole countries on the verge of bankruptcy, with massive investment firms and corporations having already sunk below the surface, and with once vibrant and flourishing churches collapsing beneath the weigh of debt, overhead, and dwindling numbers the world seems awash with capsized cruise ships. Is there a common theme? Are there lessons to be learned?

Over and over again we find that the actions of those in leadership can have dire consequences. Not all is known of the actions of the captain of this ship. Why did he choose a different course? Why did he go so close to shore? Did he abandon the ship before the passengers were off? Was he asleep, not paying attention, or being stupid? We don’t know, at least yet. But we do know that on a clearly laid out route this ship makes all the time the captain deviated from the norm and the results were disastrous.

There are so many things that can make us deviate from our prescribed course. In the financial realms the disasters we are experiencing are the result of greed, short term gain vs. long term intelligence, and a love affair with debt. All of these are deviations from the prescribed path. All of them lead to bad choices and capsized cruise ships.

In the church our deviations are frankly very similar to the those in the financial realms. Churches regularly practice greed and pride in the name of expanding the kingdom. Christ called us to go and make disciples. He said that he would take on the task of building his church. But bigger buildings, more people, more money, and more fame are tempting for anyone. They are justified when you slap the “work of God” label on them. But we already see how quickly this road can lead to a church that is capsized, taking on water and simply trying to rescue the people who are jumping off into the water. We lose our way as the church when we chase a seat at the table of power. Whenever we think we need to take things into our own hands in order to do the work of God, instead of relying on God’s power, direction and methodology we risk running aground.

This cruise ship disaster is also a reminder of what is at stake. People are dead because of this mistake. People who were on vacation, on honeymoons, and gathered for family reunions lost their lives when that ship ran aground. In our churches people’s lives are at stake as well. Those who are broken and lost turn to us for hope. When we deviate from God’s will we lose our ability to give them hope. We lose credibility to our story. The lost stay lost, the broken stay broken and that is on our shoulders.

I think I will print up a picture of that cruise ship and hang it over my desk. I need the reminder of what is at stake for the choices I make personally and for our church corporately. There is too much at stake to veer from the course God has laid out for us and run the risk of losing it all.