Category: Leading and Helping When People Want to Stay Stuck

How can we use our limited resources to make the biggest impact in the world?

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A Christian Response to Two Very Scary Things

Right now, we are dealing two interrelated and very scary things: a deadly disease and an economic depression. Both are extremely scary, and both are real threats.

How do we as Christians respond to these two very scary things? We can think of this on two different levels. How do we respond in a godly way to the scary things? And how do we respond to the scared people?

The answer to the first is courage, and you can read a summary of what courage means in this situation here.

The second question is more difficult. Here’s why. When we are scared, we have laser focus on the thing that scares us. We also want others to focus on what scares us. This helps make us feel safer.

When there are two scary things, it’s hard to focus on both and easy to want to focus on one or the other. Different people feel more scared about one or the other of the scary things and to different degrees. There is a spectrum of fear or concern on one side or the other. When someone doesn’t focus on the scary thing we’re focused on, it’s easy to feel threatened. This can lead to anger, accusations, and polarization.

So, how should we as Christians respond in this very difficult situation? Let me suggest four things: listening, humility, patience, and service.

1. Listening. The Lord commands us to do this, “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” (James 1:19) This means that when we see someone who is scared, we should seek first to understand and then to be understood.

But it means more. It means we should listen not only to people. We need to be open to reality and the best sources of information wherever they may lead us. That is what it means to be a good listener in a more profound sense.

Let me give you an example. I am one who has been concerned about COVID-19 and has even said that the lockdowns are helpful. However, various people have brought Sweden to my attention because they are the one country in Europe that is trying to take some precautions but not asking people to shelter in place. Life is going on (with some qualifications). Some predict that the results will be an historic massacre. Maybe they are right. So far, we have not seen it. If Sweden does as good or better than those countries that locked down, then we will have some evidence that the lockdowns were not needed. That will be painful to admit, but we need to be open to it. That’s listening. That’s being open to reality.

2. Humility. We need to have a high value of others, even those who disagree with us. This is especially true of those who are in authority or those who have expertise. That doesn’t mean we should agree with everything they say. We just owe them respect and honor.

In these times, we as Christians are going to have plenty of opportunity to show honor to authorities with whom we disagree. Here’s a couple of examples. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida decided to open the beaches last week. Many people were outraged and attacked him because they were scared of the virus. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer gave quite a few regulations in her state that many people thought were too restrictive or even unconstitutional. People were outraged and attacked her because they feared an excessive lockdown. Now, you may disagree with those governors, or you may really like what they did. You may feel the need to protest, or you may feel the need to cheer. Both are fine, but either way, we have an obligation to disagree respectfully with everyone we disagree with but especially governing authorities.

A classic statement of the faith, The Heidelberg Catechism, captures this well. It asks, “What is God’s will for you in the fifth commandment [“Honor your father and your mother”]?” That I honor, love, and be loyal to my father and mother and all those in authority over me; that I submit myself with proper obedience to all their good teaching and discipline; and also that I be patient with their failings—for through them God chooses to rule us.” We can show by patient and respectful honoring of our leaders that we honor God. We have that opportunity in this time.

3. Patience. “Love is patient.” Says the Apostle Paul in his famous chapter on love (1 Corinthians 13). Patience with other people recognizes that people are at different places. We come to different conclusions based on different experiences at different times and at different rates. That is O.K. Patience is a willingness to allow for this difference and accept others where they are.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:14, the Apostle Paul has a great statement on the different places people are. “And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone.” Notice that he distinguishes the different ways that people can struggle. He even says you have to warn people sometimes. However, he says that with everyone, “be patient.” That’s what we need right now, too, patience, to allow people to work through these two scary things in different ways and at different paces.

4. Service. One problem with getting too focused on our fears, whatever they are, is that we can miss opportunities to serve those around us. Excessive anxiety can keep us from loving service. When we can overcome our fears and anxieties (not deny them!), then we can move outward in service. It also works the other way. When we move outward, it can help us overcome our anxieties.

The Christians in the early Church in the Roman Empire were well known for this. They went and served those dying of the plague when no one else would. We may not do that without taking some precautions that they did not know to take, but could we be known for that today? They will know you are Christians by your love, Jesus says. If we keep asking, who needs love? Who needs care? Who can I serve? What are my opportunities? It will keep us focused on the right things.

What a powerful thing it is to see Christians in a variety of ways stepping up to serve the people of their church and those around them. We need to lean into this in this time. We have a unique opportunity to show the power of God’s love in the face of fear through serving others.

Conclusion

These are scary times. It’s OK to be scared, but, as Christians, we can’t let it overwhelm us or keep us from loving other people well.

I commend to you listening, humility, patience, and service as four characteristics that can help us navigate a time when there are a lot of scared people. It’s not easy. The fear takes hold, and we want to run away or lash out.

But we’re not alone in trying to do this well. We have the Spirit of the risen Christ with us. We have the Church. We have innumerable examples of believers and Jesus Christ Himself who’ve walked through the toughest times and loved God and others well through them. That is our heritage, power, and opportunity.

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Photo by Anastasiia Chepinska on Unsplash

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How to Share Your Faith

Me Talking with Students at the Embassy in Pigeon Forge
In their Book Good Faith, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons present statistics that demonstrate that Christians in the U.S. feel very hesitant to share their faith. This fits with my own experience. People are less likely to talk about their faith than ever before. But this does not need to be the case. Here’s why.

Why are people hesitant about sharing their faith? People are hesitant about pushy salespeople, whether they are selling Mormonism or a new car. We’ve all had experiences of salespeople that made us uncomfortable or got us to purchase things we don’t want. We don’t like those experiences, and we don’t want to be that person. It’s easy to think of sharing your faith like that.

Another reason is that we lack examples of good engagement on controversial issues. Most of our experience of engagement on these issues is from Twitter or Facebook. These venues do not encourage us with examples of productive engagement on any issue, let alone religion or politics.

Finally, people lack positive examples. People in the church can experience those who are obnoxious about theological issues or who accept everything in the name of loving people. They may not have experienced someone who can engage with love and respect and yet hold to their convictions with clarity and grace.

I am no expert on this topic, and I am often afraid of talking to people about anything, let alone my faith. I have an aversion to being pushy or high pressure. At the same time, I want to share my faith. My relationship with God is central to my life. I believe that my views on these matters are true, important, and helpful.

So, how do I do it? How do I deal with that tension? For me, the key is “honor and respect.”

This begins by valuing people because they are people. God values people, and I believe that I should, too. If I don’t value people enough to connect with them, then I will have no opportunity to share my faith. On the other side, if I only care about people if they agree with me, then I will not communicate love the way God wants me to.

To me, this means being a good listener. We should take an interest in what people think about life and faith. We can ask them questions: how does God fit into your life? What do you think of religion? How do you make sense of life? How do you find the resources to go forward? Then, we need to listen, really listen, to the answers.

Once someone has shared with us, then we can ask them if we can share our answers to these questions. If they say, “yes” (which they will probably do, if they feel listened to), then we can share the substance of our faith. If they say, “no,” then that’s OK. We have heard someone’s perspective and hopefully learned something.

Miroslav Volf in his book Flourishing noted that the Golden Rule applies to sharing our faith. If we want to share our faith with others, then we should let them share their faith with us.

If we begin this way, then we will find many doors open up for us. The key is to honor and love others and to be ready to listen.

I have had the opportunity to do this over the past couple of years with foreign students who have come to our area to work. I have a natural curiosity about these folks coming to our country. I love to hear about their country. I have also felt free to ask them about their religion and what it means to them. Whenever I have had occasion to share my faith, I have always told them that I would be interested in hearing about theirs. The result has been good. They have ended up asking me many questions about Christianity. I have had some wonderful times of discussion and ample opportunity to share my faith. It always begins with my curiosity and interest in them as human beings and their unique experiences.

We do need to speak to share our faith. However, as the Apostle James admonished us: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” (James 1:19). This is a way of sharing our faith that honors our faith and the relationship.

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Renewal in an Organization with a Long History of Hurt and Failure

The temple, the glory of the people of Israel, was in complete ruins. The Babylonians had destroyed everything and taken many of the people into captivity. Now, thousands had returned but returned to devastation.

In spite of the disappointment, those who returned from exile did not give up. They saw the place where the altars had been, and they rebuilt them. There, with no walls or temple, they held a feast to the LORD, the feast of tabernacles, where they remembered how God was with them in the wilderness when they came out of Egypt.

Then, they got to work. In the 2nd year of their return, they began building the foundation of the temple.

When the foundation was complete, the people began to praise the Lord: “He is good; his love toward Israel endures forever” (Ezra 3:11). They all gave a great shout to the Lord.

But shouts of praise were not the only sounds. “Many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid” (Ezra 3:12). The result was that “no one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise” (Ezra 3:13).

This reminds me of many churches, families, and organizations I have observed. When renewal begins to take place, good things are happening, but it is hard for those who have experienced disappointment or hurts in the past to see the good. This makes it hard for the work of renewal to move forward.

So, what should we do? For those rejoicing in the present, it is important to remember:

  1. Understand that the organization has a history.
  2. Understand that good things have been lost.
  3. Understand that there have been hurts.
  4. When people express pain or longing for the past, don’t get defensive. Ask for stories.

For those who are grieved at the losses of the past, it is important to remember:

  1. Remember that new didn’t experience those earlier times.
  2. Remember that people are there because they see good things.
  3. Remember that there are challenges in the present to even carrying out the work, and people need encouragement.
  4. When you hear the good things, ask them to share them without bringing up your bad experience. Just let them give thanks and rejoice with those who rejoice.

So, who goes first? Who reaches out? The person who is more emotionally mature. Someone has to step up and say, “I understand my own emotions and sympathize with the emotions of others. I will step outside myself to consider what others need.” Whoever has the strength to do this should do it.

In all of this, we should remember that this is God’s work. He is the one who is at work in the church and in creation to bring about good things. That should encourage us, and that’s why the prophet Zechariah encouraged the people of that day: “What are you, mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel (the Israelite’s civic leader) you will become level ground. . . . The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this temple; his hands will also complete it. Then you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you” (Zechariah 4:7-8).

Zechariah reminded them that whatever their personal feelings, the temple needed to be built. He encouraged them that it would be built, and he promised a glorious future. These same considerations can help us to move forward with the work of renewal in ourselves, our families, our churches, and our governments.

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Scipio Africanus

Many people know the great Carthaginian General Hannibal. He took his elephants across the Alps from Spain to invade Rome and Italy during the 2nd Punic War (218–201 BC, the Punic Wars were a series of three wars between Rome and Carthage). This famous act memorializes Hannibal’s military prowess.

But less have heard of the man who defeated Hannibal: Scipio Africanus, Publius Cornelius Scipio (236–183). Scipio not only defeated Hannibal, he never lost a battle. He was Rome’s greatest general.

Seeing that Scipio’s rise was connected with the threat of Hannibal, it made me wonder, would there have been a Scipio without a Hannibal?

I tied that question into a larger question I had been pondering related to the Roman Empire. Carthage was Rome’s most formidable enemy. It was a vibrant and wealthy empire that controlled much of the Western Mediterranean outside of Italy. It’s easy to speculate, what would have happened if Carthage had won the war? Would there have been a Roman Empire?

But my question was a little bit different. It was this: without Carthage, would there have been a Roman Empire? Without this powerful opponent, would Rome have remained content as a land power in Italy?

Military historian Richard A. Gabriel’s book Scipio Africanus demonstrates that these two questions are interrelated to a much greater degree than I would have initially expected. According to Gabriel, Hannibal’s success allowed Scipio to arise, and it was Scipio who developed the idea of an empire as away of solving the long-term security threat posed by Carthage.

Here’s how it happened.

Hannibal was a great general, but Carthage had great generals. They had well-developed tactics, and they knew how to use their diverse armies as a tool of their will. Hannibal was simply the most capable and daring of these generals.

Hannibal dealt Rome its greatest defeat at the Battle of Cannae. There, Rome lost 80% of the soldiers who participated in that battle. However, this was merely one of many defeats that Hannibal inflicted on Rome. Hannibal remained in Italy as a threat to Rome for 14 years!

Rome could not defeat Hannibal in pitched battle, so several Roman strategists believed that the way to defeat him was to attack his base in Africa. Scipio is credited with this strategy, but he was not the only one to think of it. He was, however, the one who actually successfully carried it out.

When the 2nd Punic War started, Scipio was a junior cavalry officer. He did come from a prominent Roman family, but he advanced quickly because he actually survived and lived and so many of the officers above him died. Scipio’s own father was commander of the Roman forces in Spain, and he died fighting Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal at Battle of the Upper Baetis.

Scipio was chosen to replace his own father as commander of the Roman forces in Spain. Scipio eventually defeated the Carthaginian forces in Spain and began planning the invasion of Africa. Beyond that, he began working to implement a broader vision. As Gabriel explains:

Scipio’s grand strategic vision was based in the new Roman class that looked to overseas expansion and commerce for Rome’s future. In Scipio’s view, Carthage’s predations in Spain and Sicily were forcing Rome to become a world power for it was the only way in which its legitimate security interests could be satisfied (140).

But he first had to defeat Carthage.

Scipio’s Africa strategy worked. The threat to the city of Carthage led to Hannibal’s recall. At the Battle of Zama, Scipio defeated Hannibal and quickly brought an end to the 2nd Punic War.

Following the war, Rome established its rule over Spain and other areas of the Western Mediterranean. Scipio established the first of Rome’s overseas colony cities: Italica. It was the first of the many Roman colonies that would spread throughout the Mediterranean world. From this one city came three emperors: Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius the Great (Gabriel, 138). Even though Rome was a republic at this time, this was the real beginning of Roman empire.

So, why does all this matter? When we consider large and difficult challenges, it’s easy to get discouraged. However, these sometimes scary things test us and enable us to grow. We should not seek out powerful enemies, but when we face them, we should be less daunted. Big challenges can defeat us, but they also present the biggest opportunities for growth.

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Expect Opposition

In every good endeavor, expect opposition.

As soon as we get a vision for something good, our tendency is to think, “I’ve got the vision! It’ll be easy!” I want to lose weight, so I can do it. I want to become a writer, so I can do it. I want to make the basketball team, so I can do it.

Then, we crash. We give up. Why? We face opposition.

Recently, I listened to a podcast with author Steven Pressfield. He wrote a book called The Warrior Ethos. In the podcast he explains that the warrior ethos is one that applies to all of life. He noticed this when he started to write. He realized that there was opposition–laziness, distractions, perfectionism, worry, people. Within and without, life was battling against him to keep him from writing. Like a warrior, he needed to go to battle against that opposition.

Opposition to the good comes primarily from three places: the world, the people around us, and ourselves.

The world system seems to oppose us. It’s almost like it conspires to keep us from doing good. We have good plans, but things keep happening that derail them. We want to save money, but things keep breaking down. We want to devote ourselves to writing, but urgent demands keep getting in the way. The world presents us to us innumerable alluring things to lure us away from the good that we would do.

Other people also oppose us. Sometimes, they do it deliberately. They say, “You can’t do that!” “That’s a waste of time,” or “You’ll never amount to anything.” Sometimes opposition is not deliberate. People just have their own agendas, and they subconsciously apply emotional pressure to get us on their agenda.

The world and people would not be nearly so powerful, though, if it did not have an ally within our own hearts. We are our own greatest opposition. We were excited about doing something, but now we’re not as excited. We think we should wait until we feel more “in the spirit” to do something. We see things around us that excite us more in the moment. We think we need more rest than we do. We waste our energy on fruitless things. We just get lazy. The list goes on and on. This is just opposition.

I think here of exercise. Food and diet advice comes and goes, but if there is one thing that doctors are sure of, it is that regular exercise will help us. We all know this. So, why don’t we do it? Opposition, mostly from within ourselves. When it comes to exercise, there is rarely a time that you really feel like doing it, especially tough exercise. You just have to do it. It’s one of those touchstones of discipline in our lives.

In the Christian faith, God gives us great and precious promises to enable us to live a whole, virtuous, and good life that reflects His glory. He forgives all our sins and sets us on a new path. We don’t have to live as slaves to our lust or our pride or our anger anymore. This is good news. When people hear it, they like it.

But one thing the Bible also teaches us is: expect opposition. It drills this into our heads, but the moment we as Christians face opposition, what do we do? We cry out and complain as if God had never warned us about this! We don’t expect opposition. We always seem surprised by it.

When it comes to doing that which is good, we should expect opposition.

That’s a hard truth, but a helpful one. If we can learn to say in every good endeavor, “there will be opposition,” then we can prepare. We can plan. We can engage. Expecting it, we won’t be as discouraged when we encounter it. Additionally, when we take opposition seriously, we have the opportunity to consider the resources we have to stand up against it.

On the other hand, if we think that there won’t be opposition, then we will get discouraged the moment we encounter it. We will take it as some sort of sign that things are amiss and abandon the endeavor.

To steel ourselves to do what is good, expect opposition!

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