Issue No. 440 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a timely book that pushes back on visionary leadership. Surprising and convicting! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my Zoom Review of The Art of Writing with commentary from four scholars/grandkids.
“Blah, Blah, Blah, Jesus”
Ready for a poke-in-the-ribs? After reviewing several decades of “visionary” church vision statements, John Koessler, author of Practicing the Present, came to three conclusions. Gulp—he nailed it in just one:
“Although their aim is to inspire, most vision statements are tedious in reality. My heart doesn’t beat any faster when I read them. They don’t make me say, ‘Yes, I want to be a part of that!’ When I read them, all I see is ‘blah, blah, blah, Jesus.’”
I’m guessing—during this COVID-19 era—that you’ve had enough with the “present,” are eager for the future (whatever that may be), and you’re a tad nostalgic for the past. Breaking news: THIS IS THE BOOK YOU SHOULD READ RIGHT NOW.
But first, hear my confession. With inappropriate motives, I began reading Practicing the Present: The Neglected Art of Living in the Now, by John Koessler. Good title. Solid publisher (Moody). Solid author (blogger/podcaster, Moody faculty, theologian, former pastor, 13 books and more). Well-respected endorsers.
“Yeah,” I thought. “My readers need this. I’ll breeze through this baby—no pen, no underlining. One and done.”
Oh, my. I needed this. By page 11, I grabbed my pen. I didn’t release that holy tool until I had underlined almost the entire book. This. Book. Changed. My. Thinking (and my heart). Oh, my.
Koessler writes, “My training as a leader taught me to focus mostly on the future. I thought my main goal should be to help the church become what it was not. Once our goals were met, I felt it was my job to find new goals and aim for those. Whatever we were doing could be done better.” So he focused on “more people, more programs, and more projects…”
But being future-focused has a downside. “I have been scattered in times I do not understand,” St. Augustine complained, notes Koessler. “He saw his life as one that stretched in many directions at once.” Augustine was “distended”—a good word “because it conveys the notion that time is not only stretched between the past and the future, but also distorted.”
The danger? “Unfortunately, the beauty and the value of the present is often lost. We are here in body but not in mind. We are only halfhearted in our attention and sometimes in our service.” (Published a year ago, I’m thinking Practicing the Present was prophetically written for 2020.)
The dilemma?
• If you focus on the future…the present “is only a way station. Its primary function is to serve as a staging ground for what comes next.”
• If you focus on the past…“the present becomes a cemetery filled with monuments to the glory days that will never come again…”
The author adds, “For the future-oriented, the past is a drag and the present an obstacle. Either way, the present is where we are but not where we want to stay.”
“Interestingly, C.S. Lewis saw both perspectives as strategies of Satan, pointing out that humans live in time but are destined for eternity. God wants us to attend to both. But this can happen only if we understand the importance of the present moment, which Lewis calls ‘the point at which time touches eternity.’” (Read more in The Screwtape Letters.)
Like me perhaps, your morning prayer during COVID-19 goes something like this. “Lord, teach me what you want me to learn during this present hour…and umm…gotta go now…oh, one more thing—how soon will my favorite restaurant be open? And when should I book those airline tickets?” Yikes.
Here are some more pokes-in-the-ribs from the nine meaty chapters:
#1. Practicing the Present. “Pastor and theologian Helmut Thielicke observed that Jesus Christ ‘always lingers in the darkest places of the world.’” Koessler adds, “…Jesus is equally present in the common places.” And “…the bulk of Jesus’ earthly life was spent living an ordinary life.”
#2. Take No Thought. “…our fears reflect a secret suspicion that the God who should be in control is actually asleep at the wheel.” And “…the root of our anxiety does not really lie in our circumstances but in our souls.”
#3. Race Among the Ruins. “Jesus’ reminder that every day has enough trouble of its own is not a warning. It is a road sign. Jesus points us in the direction of God’s presence.”
#4. Living on Daily Bread. “Since many of us presume we are not rich, we conclude that we are not greedy.”
#5. The Art of Being Self-Conscious. “No wonder Screwtape advised Wormwood: ‘You must bring him to a condition in which he can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts that about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office.’”
#6. Inspired Intuition. “We do see something like intuition at work in the lives of God’s people in the Bible.” One fat paragraph documents people who were guided by intuition, including Abraham and Paul.
#7.The Opportunity of the Immediate. “The basic command in James 1:2 is not to suffer but to consider. ‘Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”
#8. Leading from the Middle Space. “The church we are dreaming of is a false church. It did not exist in the past. It will not exist in the future. It is certainly not the church of the here and now. Ultimately, it is not a Christian vision.”
#9. Disciplines for Living in the Present Tense. “The practice of these disciplines does not make God present. We practice them to learn that He is already present.”
Breaking news!
THIS IS THE BOOK YOU SHOULD READ RIGHT NOW.
To order from Amazon, click on the title for Practicing the Present: The Neglected Art of Living in the Now, by John Koessler. (Note: As an Amazon Vine reviewer, I received a review copy of this book in exchange for a fair-minded review.) Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (5 hours, 46 minutes).
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) In a section on “selective listening” (a discipline in chapter nine), John Koessler writes, “When we choose to be silent, we find that God is able to manage things without our help. The things that we anxiously want to say are suddenly on the lips of someone else. Those who have not been permitted to speak, because we usually control the floor, now express themselves.” Give yourself a grade (A, B, C, D, or F) on your listening competencies.
#2. Where do you hang out the most: the past, the present, or the future? Thoughts?
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Slow Down!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook
The core competency in the Team Bucket says you should probably slow down—and be still. “We believe that a balanced life honors God, each other, our families and our friends…” So slow down for four minutes and listen to this YouTube video, a soulful affirmation from Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.” Click here.
Chuck Girard sings Slow Down.
For more resources, visit the Team Bucket.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you back to work with your team—or going stir crazy in your bunker? To refresh your communication strategies for this unprecedented time in your organization—you’ll likely need outside thinking with fresh ideas, insights, and frank feedback. Don’t go it alone! Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video).
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