“Affairs happen with a lightning speed on Facebook,” says K. Jason Krafsky, who authored the book “Facebook and Your Marriage” with his wife Kelli. In the real world, he says, office romances and out-of-town trysts can take months or even years to develop. “On Facebook,” he says, “they happen in just a few clicks.”

Even when extra-marital affairs develop with no help from Facebook, experts say the site provides a deceptively comfortable forum for people to let off steam about their lives and inadvertently arouse the suspicions of spouses. “The difference with Facebook is it feels safe, innocent and private.”

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2. Being fairly engaged with all things social media and with an upcoming book release there’s always a desire within me to get attention without doing the hard work of earning it. Few people want to put in the time it takes to truly care enough about people to have them care about what you have to share with the world. Chris Brogan has some strong encouragement toward this:

People pay attention to me for the following reasons:

• I write useful things you can use for your own purposes.
• I share mostly positive opinions about what might help in the future. (Sorry this post isn’t as positive.)
• I seek to do something more than talk about what everyone else is talking about.
• I intend for small and large businesses to use this information for their own needs.
• I write like I care about you (because I do).

Nowhere in there do I say that I earn attention by begging. Nowhere in there do I say I earn attention by pestering people beyond a few quick posts to the outposts. It’s all the basics: write useful stuff. Share useful stuff. Care about the people you hope to reach. Repeat.

It took me 8 years to get my first 100 readers.

Earn it.

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3. Especially in church I sense a very blurred line between what a volunteer is and what a leader is. Evangelicals, especially in America, are obsessed with leadership. Partly for good reason, because leaders are often the catalyst to start something monumental. But churches seemingly want everyone to become a leader and by having this mindset I think we’ve misunderstood what leadership is. Thanks to Mike Breen for this post:

Are our development programs about releasing leaders to the missional frontier? Or, more likely, are they about recruiting volunteers to keep the machine of the church running? To be sure, we should attend to the organization of the church, for it is a significant thing when the scattered church gathers. But as the Church stares precipitous decline in the face—as we look to re-embrace the missio Dei—we must learn again the art that Jesus exhibited: the task of multiplying missional leaders and releasing them into the cracks and crevices of society where there is little-to-no Gospel presence.

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PS. I wrote a guest post for Ron Edmondson last week and also had a post featured on ChurchLeaders.com. And I also updated my book’s description for online vendors. Let me know what you think.

Have a good weekend friends.

Having been at my current church, serving in the same roles for almost five years, I began to sense an itch within me for something different. Not something better, not something that would be a better position of title, just something different. I began to share with my dad, walking down one of the freshly cut fairways, how frustrated I was. Change was elusive and didn’t seem to be on the horizon, but I couldn’t imagine continuing with the status quo much longer.

I needed something to change quickly.

And my dad, in his typical mode of operation, dropped a nugget of wisdom on me that I still process through all these months later. He asked me…

Do you care more about your own gain or the church?

Mostly the words just stung because I quickly realized the desire I had to advance my “career” instead of serving faithfully where God had placed me. I was far more concerned about myself than I was my church. I was a leader in terms of overseeing people and having a position that allowed me to facilitate with ongoing ministries, but I was not stewarding the leadership God had given me well.

When leadership becomes more about self-advancement than it is about the service of our lives, we’ve gotten the whole thing turned upside down. Within the circles I run in, I title this calling God gives to us, as His disciples, the death of Christian leadership—the calling toward a dying to self for the sake of Kingdom advancement. Christian leadership begins with death.

Jonah

I’ve always read Jonah as a negative example of what happens when leadership becomes more about our desires than about following God’s leading. I can just picture Jonah sitting on top of a hill outside of Nineveh, looking down at the city he has just helped save from destruction, with a tree near him wilting, as a picture of his own heart’s callousness to what God was up to. God will accomplish His will, but our personal desires often get in the way.

I don’t think Jonah ever truly died to his own agenda in order to fully follow God’s. Sure, he went where God asked him to go (of course, that may have had something to do with a giant fish eating him), but He never saw how God desired to work through him.

Death

Saint Augustine captures the heart of true leadership: “Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending.”

All of us desire to make an impact with the lives God has given us. It’s a long road to die to self before God can truly use us for what He has in mind.

While influence and significance are high on the radars of many who have positions of leadership, we must first come to know that true influence and significance begins with a death to self for the sake of service to God and His church.

How have you experienced dying to self within a leadership position?

Generally speaking I think Christians have done a fairly poor job of engaging the conversation surrounding depression. Just last week I was reading a book by a pastor I highly respect, and in the book he, in so many words, explained that depression was always able to be overcome by entering into our God of hope through faith.

Imagine someone who has been medically diagnosed with medical or seasonal depression reading the words that they just need more of God or more faith, then they’ll be healed. If it were me, I’d burn the book.

No one needs to be chastised for something they feel helpless in dealing with on their own.

I love the conversation Parker Palmer had with a woman who asked him why God allows people to live in the personal hell of depression. His response, “I have no idea.” Here’s the fall out from that conversation:

My response had given her an alternative to the cruel “Christian explanations” common in the church to which she belonged—that people who take their lives lack faith or good works or some other redeeming virtue that might move God to rescue them. My not knowing had freed her to stop judging herself for being depression and to stop believing that God was judging her (pg 59).

Part of this struggle we sense to provide a good “Christian explanation” is a lack of comfort with mystery. I have a tendency to want to explain out the mystery of life and faith and God. Or I want to throw a book or Bible verse at someone’s problem. And all of this is really just my power-hungry self trying to declare victory with a perfect solution rather than doing the difficult work of declaring the mystery and walking the journey of the mystery.

Mystery surrounds every deep experience of the human heart: the deeper we go into the heart’s darkness or its light, the closer we get to the ultimate mystery of God. But our culture wants to turn mysteries into puzzles to be explained or problems to be solved, because maintaining the illusion that we can “straighten things out” makes us feel powerful. Yet mysteries never yield to solutions or fixes—and when we pretend they do, life becomes not only more banal but also more hopeless because the fixes never work (pg 60).

How do you handle conversations surrounding depression?

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The last thing my pastor told me before I left for seminary saved my faith. I think he was just trying to save me from having a rough time in my first New Testament class or from getting frustrated with my professors. As it turned out, he shared something that I have clung to over the past eleven years.

Settling into our breakfast at a Bob Evans where you could hear the roar of the New Jersey Turnpike a few hundred feet away, he told me the following about seminary, “Don’t expect to find all of the answers.”

He was responding to a comment I made about looking forward to really digging into the Bible. I’m pretty sure he meant that I wouldn’t learn everything there is to know about the Bible. That in and of itself was sound advice, but that wasn’t quite what saved my faith.

I don’t know what I expected from seminary. I’m pretty sure I expected lots of answers to all of the tough questions that Christians face—I wanted everything to compute. I also expected seminary to be awesome because I wouldn’t have to take science or math classes, while I could crack Greek jokes in the cafeteria all of the time.

Seminary certainly had very little math, but the Greek jokes left something to be desired (sigh).

Instead of finding all of the answers, seminary revealed all of the dirty little secrets that pastors aren’t allowed to talk about because they’d lose their jobs if they brought any of it up with their congregations.

I confronted controversial topics like biblical authority, inerrancy, the problem of evil, the character of God, how salvation works, the historic views of hell, women in ministry, where we got the Bible from, and the list goes on. My pastor had warned me that I wouldn’t find all of the answers in seminary, and he was right. I found many more questions and problems than the average Christian faces in Sunday School. Since he had warned against finding all of the answers, I was able to take it in stride.

His advice became my mantra as I faced fresh theological dilemmas that had no solution in sight.

I could have swung in any number of directions, but I ended up realizing that my foundation wasn’t some brand of theology or air-tight way of interpreting the Bible. Christianity also doesn’t survive by hiding from tough questions, even the kinds of questions that don’t seem to have answers.

I’ve seen Christians deal with tough questions in a variety of ways. Sometimes they just gave up, admitting that the answers of their childhood faith couldn’t cut it in the adult world. Others dismissed tough questions and the people who asked them—no doubt fearing their faith would crumble if exposed to tension.

Though my pastor was trying to save me from the disappointment of not learning the Bible inside out in seminary, he also planted a seed of doubt that has served me well. While in seminary I learned that my faith could survive the tough questions that seminary professors needed to ask because Jesus never promised us all of the answers.

Jesus promised us life, hope, peace, joy, and love. He promised that remaining in him is enough.

I struggle with the tough questions sometimes. I’m not afraid to face them, and I never want to settle for easy answers—even if I’m convinced that many of them can be reasonably resolved. However, at the end of the day, Jesus isn’t going to test us to see if we answered all of the tough questions correctly. He’s going to ask if we abided in him and let him reshape us into Kingdom people—members of his family.

God’s answer for our tough questions is his presence. When I can abide in him, I know him and suddenly finding all of the answers doesn’t matter.

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Ed Cyzewski is the blogger at www.inamirrordimly.com, co-author of Hazardous: Committing to the Cost of Following Jesus, and author of Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life. He lives in Columbus, OH with his wife (who is due to give birth in July!) and house rabbits (who do nothing but beg for treats and chew on his couch).

Being in school, working full-time, and finding creative space to write consistently doesn’t leave a lot of margin in my week to seek out relationships that can be the launching point for deeper and truer community in my life and their lives. So I’ve struggled with this feeling of wanting to make and continue developing meaningful friendships in the midst of knowing I have very little time to offer to that endeavor.

Recently my sister called to talk with Rose and I. As the phone rang I felt this incredible urge to run away from the phone. I told Rose I didn’t want to talk and after a quick 10 second argument, Rose agreed to answer the phone while I sat on the couch. This is my sister who I hadn’t talked to in over a month, even I was confused as to why I had no desire or energy to spend time with her. After thinking about this while Rose was on the phone I realized I had been around people, in conversations, the entire day. As an “INTJ” I was spent. I had nothing left in the tank, not even for my sister.

Community isn’t easy and I often find it especially difficult for my more introverted disposition. However, God still calls all people toward the difficulty of relationships for the sake of formation of community. I ran across a truly profound statement from professional golfer and Portland native Ben Crane, who had this to say about the relationships he has on the PGA Tour with other golfers:

People ask me what’s the highlight of your career. For me it’s not like a victory, it’s doing it with my friends and family and doing it for the right reasons, which is to glorify God.”

We bring glory to God by fostering true community with our lives and by inviting others to experience the true life found in them through God’s presence.

But none of this is easy. With roughly half the population being more introverted, and Western cultures promoting values of independence and autonomy, it’s no wonder so many of us would describe community as fleeting.

Deep Community is an Outcome of a Deep Reality Within

Community does not fall out of the sky. It does begin somewhere. Relationship with others flows out of a relationship with God. It is that deep-seated relationship ongoing between the believer and God that allows for sustainable relationships with others.

The security we have in our “deep reality within” or assurance of faith through our relationship with God allows us to enter into relationships with others without looking for them to save us or make our lives better.

Community With Others is Not the End

This should be fairly straight forward. Community with God is the end and while community outside ourselves with others is an outcome, it is not the end. Community is the first step beyond ourselves, but so often community can become an insular group of alike people who no longer desire to look beyond themselves.

True Community Welcomes People For Who They Are

As I look back on the communities I’ve been fortunate to be a part of, one common denominator is that I always felt accepted for who I was. I was able to bring my pains, my baggage, my past–all of it to the table where people would welcome me and help me work through them.

Too often we welcome people into our communities in spite of who they are and what they’ve done. I think God calls us to welcome people with full recognition of who they are, knowing that through God’s presence in our relationship with them, God will begin to heal them.

My friend Rhett Smith had this to say in his new book:

All relationships have the possibility of refining us more and more to reflect the image of God, helping us reach our fullest potential that we could not otherwise achieve alone (pg 150).

I wish community was easier, but it’s worth the struggle.

I recently read Working the Angles by Eugene Peterson, the guy most known for writing The Message translation or paraphrase of the Bible.

Over the past few years in seminary I’ve grown to respect Peterson more and more. He’s the antithesis of the celebrity pastor where pastors tour and lead incredibly large organizations. Peterson lives in a small Montana town and has never led a large church. He’s devoted to the discipline of study, writing, and running—all things I care about being consistently devoted to.

But this post isn’t about Peterson, as encouraging as his life, writing, and pastoral ministry is to me, this is about something he wrote in that book, Working the Angles.

I’ve taken several classes on bible study, even one class titled “Bible Study Methods.” 95% of my seminary education has taught me that good bible study is all about good exegetical work in preparation for leading individuals or groups through a passage of Scripture.

In all of those hours of reading outside of class and listening to lectures in class nothing has stuck out to me like what Peterson shares about Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch spoken of in Acts 8 (read the whole passage here).

Philip has to make a choice: will he stand alongside the chariot, providing information and answering questions about Scripture, exegetical work that comes easily for him, or will he involve himself in a spiritual quest with this stranger? Will I? It is the difference between the shopkeeper who sells maps of the wilderness and the person who goes with you into it, risking the dangers, helping to cook the meals, and sharing the weather. Philip decides on hodegesis (to guide). He climbs into the chariot and shares the journey.

I don’t know about you, but far too often I don’t look at studying the Scriptures with others as a sharing of the journey. So often I view myself as the master imparting knowledge to others.

So often I’m the shopkeeper selling maps of the outside wilderness while staying in my comfortable shop never risking the adventure of going on a hike with those who are exploring.

Will we involve ourselves in the spiritual quests and explorations of others?

Stop selling maps.

Go on hikes.

It’s easy for us to point the finger to the senior pastor’s sermons, or the music that no one enjoys as to why a church struggles, but I believe those frustrations within people all stem from a lack of authentic relationships within the church body.

Certainly I think churches should do well in their sermons, music, and ministries, otherwise, why have them? But they are not the focus of church. I appreciated this quote I came across in some of my reading recently (it also seems to fit well with another quote I’ve highlighted before). I think it captures the heart of what truly ineffective church is.

“In our day, whenever the church is ineffective in its witness and remains unproductive, the first questions that must be raised are whether the church functions as authentic community and whether it lives out the reality of its oneness. In a community-starved world, the most potent means of witness to the truth of the gospel is the magnetic power of the oneness that was committed by Christ to his new community at the center of history” (Bilezikian, Community 101, pg 37).

Thoughts?

The day was full of “the lyrics need to be changed on that slide” and “let’s end that song 4 beats earlier in the outro” and “make sure you go to an F#m chord at the beginning of the bridge or we’ll all sound like we made a mistake.” In reality none of that is much different than any other Sunday.

I put on my happy face. Often when I’m leading worship the last place I want to be is on a stage. I feel I have nothing to offer. I’m fairly confident the people could careless about the whole singing in church thing. But something usually happens in the midst of the worship. I begin to have compassion for those I’m helping lead. I begin to sense God’s presence infiltrating my life in a way that I could barely describe here.

But this day was not one of those days. Despite my best preparations, my best motives, the best energy this introverted worship leader could bring–none of it seemed to be making a difference.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m used to people staring at the screens, yawning, sitting with arms crossed, talking loudly with everyone nearby…you name it I’ve seen it while leading churches in worship. Some people make it obvious they want no part, others are more subtle.

This Sunday I remember because by 830pm I was convinced it was time to think about some other church job than worship leader. Sure I can lead bands, I can sing songs, but maybe I’d worn out my welcome with these people I thought. God can use anyone, but on this day I wondered why he wasn’t using me. I was failing.

I walked off the stage to get some water. My throat was as dry as a hot afternoon on the high desert after singing the entire day. A student came up to me that had never spoken to me before in my life. He said:

I liked that new song tonight.

That was it. Nothing more. And it was as if God had tapped me on the shoulder and said:

I’m at work underneath the surface far more than you’ll ever know or understand. Be faithful.

Is it a stretch to take the words of that student and turn them into those words from God to me? Absolutely. Is it the truth? Absolutely.

This was a student who I have never, ever seen sing along with any of the songs during our time of corporate worship. He came to our high school group gathering inconsistently at best. And yet somehow in the midst of my awful day, God was working in him to engage on a level differently than what I could see on the surface.

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I think ministry in church is often the simplicity of 25% being faithful–25% showing up–25% a willingness to serve–and 25% trusting God to do things only He can do. I tend to make it quite a bit more complicated than this. My own heart and head often get in the way and I start to listen to negative voices in my head that say it’s time to do something different.

That night I learned one valuable lesson…The biggest truths often show themselves in the smallest and subtlest of ways.

God doesn’t have to show up with a lightning bolt or a thundering roar from above for Him to be felt in the depths of my being and on this night I heard Him loud and clear.

Has a big truth shown up in a small way in your life before?

Let’s get one thing straight, church ministry jobs are more than just jobs. This doesn’t mean that pastoral jobs should be highly sought after, instead it is the reality of ministry being a lifestyle vocation more than something we punch in and out of everyday. Signing up to help lead a church is a high calling, one that should not be taken lightly. But the pastoral profession is not immune to the psychological need many of us have for change.

I’m not thinking of any specific circumstances, but I can think of many situations in which a pastor (in my mind) clearly needed to move on for the betterment of their own life and the life of their current ministry context. Sometimes this is forced by a congregation wanting change and the pastor being unable to do so. The statistics on pastoral turnover in churches is not good. Worship and youth pastors are said to change jobs every 2 years. And really all of this is centered around an unhealthy understanding of the ways God points us in new directions. What I want to focus on is change and trying to discern when transition is necessary within the church ministry context..

Every couple weeks I meet with a professor at my seminary along with a few fellow seminary students to talk life and ministry. Last week I brought up this subject of how we, as ministers, can know when God is leading us somewhere else. Everyone, at some point, will have to deal with wondering whether it’s time to go, but it seems very few are equipped to notice the cues that point us in new directions

Here are some good indications (all brought forward by my fellow seminarians) of how to know when God is saying it’s time to move on:

Is your heart in it?

Here’s the first question to ask. This isn’t the end-all, be-all question, but it does put into place whether God may be leading somewhere else. Self-evaluation through prayer and meditation is where this process must begin.

Is it just a paycheck?

Understanding the motivations of our hearts and minds in the midst of church ministry is key to knowing why we serve the church. If it’s just a paycheck we’re likely only motivated to serve because it pays our bills rather than because we’re operating exactly where God desires us to be.

However, this must be said as well…Sometimes (for a season of life) God puts us in difficult and trying situations in order to help us grow in the long run.

What has God given you a passion for? How is God directing your passions?

This goes hand in hand with the last section on change and transition. Our passions change. None of us are the same today as we were 10 years ago. It is important to continue evaluating what God is doing within us and how that affects where God is leading us. If our passions no longer fit our current position it might be time to move on.

Seek out trusted peers

All of us have blind spots and none of us have perfect perspective, so seeking out the advice and input from trusted people is incredibly vital when considering where God is leading.

Certainly we shouldn’t base a decision entirely on the advice of others but often God will use the people around us to help push us in the direction He desires. I often find the people I trust are able to articulate where I sense God moving much more than I can when I’m left to my own thoughts.

Evaluate the difference between change and transition

William Bridges’ book Transitions was a challenging read for me as I processed through how he outlines the difference between change and transition.

Change is situational. Transition, on the other hand, is psychological. It is not those events, but rather the inner re-orientation and self-redefinition that you have to go through in order to incorporate any of those changes into your life. Without a transition, a change is just a rearrangement of the furniture. Unless transition happens, the change won’t work, because it doesn’t “take” (page xii).

Pursuing after a ministry change without understanding the psychological transitions going on deep down in ourselves is a foolish thing to do.

What advice would you give to someone trying to discern whether it’s time to move on or not?

(Let me know also say I believe God often calls us to stay in difficult situations because we are apart of His solution. Ed Stetzer wrote a thoughtful and encouraging post for those considering what God is up to when He seems to be keeping us in situations that would be easy to run away from.)

Introverts make up anywhere from 40 to 50% of our society and yet so much of church life seems focused around creating frenetic environments of noise, busyness, and talking.

If you haven’t read Introverts in the Church by Adam McHugh add it to your must read list. If you’re an introvert you’ll feel like he understands all your frustrations. If you’re extroverted you’ll begin to think about how your church can create better environments that value people of all personality dispositions. Here’s a favorite quote of mine from his book that gets at the heart of this 2nd class citizen idea:

“People who enjoy reflection and solitude, and listen more than they speak, are often viewed as enigmatic, antisocial and passive.”

A great challenge for our churches, and society in general, is to create space for introverts and extroverts to both be welcomed and given the freedom to be themselves.

A few weeks ago Susan Cain (fresh off releasing her new book on introversion) gave a TED talk on introversion that meets well with this 2nd class citizen idea Adam McHugh speaks of in his book. It’s 19 minutes long, but highly valuable for all of us to consider when it comes to how we interact with others and how different personalities operate best.

I love so much about this video and the line of thinking Cain is presenting toward how we view introverts. Probably what I love best though is that she doesn’t shy away from her introversion. It comes across as she struggles to think of her next line or as she leaves longer pauses than is typical for most TED talks. She embraces this part of who she is instead of apologizing for it.

Here’s a great line from Cain’s book which dives into how Christians often view personality dispositions:

Evangelicalism has taken the Extrovert Ideal to its logical extreme…If you don’t love Jesus out loud, then it must not be real love. It’s not enough to forge your own spiritual connection to the divine; it must be displayed publicly.

Have you experienced the idea of introverts being 2nd class citizens?