one beautiful mess

Yesterday, I was in a conversation with some friends and local pastors that I have been journeying with for the past year and I realized something new about myself.

In the last few weeks, there are two books that I have found myself frequently carrying around with me. The first is a book called The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky, and Alexander Grashow.

The second is a book that the leadership of our church will be reading together during the last part of 2009 called Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation by Robert Mulholland.

In one hand a business book about "the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive." And in the other hand a book about our spiritual journey with God and how God transforms us to his image of his Son Jesus in order that we would lay down our lives for others. My question is, how can anybody in their right mind carry around these two books and be reading them at the same time?

My genius answer, "Me." I love this stuff and more and more so see how a business book and a spiritual journey book relate to one another in God's Kingdom or God's Economy. When we see and hear the world with the perspective of God's Kingdom, we begin to realize that "everything is spiritual" as Rob Bell says. We begin to see how God wants to make all things new, whole and right; a place and experience of the world that is centered in God and is encompassed by God.

As I read and reflect more on these two books, there are surprising similarities because as I have discovered leadership comes from the core of who we are. As God transforms my identity so that I lay down my life for others, leading people through difficult challenges becomes more natural to who I am and more rooted in my inward life that no one else sees on the outside.

So, I guess I can walk around proudly with both books, set them on my table in Starbuck's, pick up my coffee and not wonder what the person across from me is thinking as they see the jacket covers of my two intriguing books.

which Jesus are we talking about?

Recently, I've been reading Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch's book, REJESUS: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church and some of what they write I've heard before in their talks but I love the following quote on 111: "we need to go back to the daring, radical, strange, wonderful, inexplicable, unstoppable, marvelous, unsettling, disturbing, caring, God-Man."

This morning I was speaking on a story that Jesus tells (Matthew 21.28-32) and Jesus tells it in the midst of a crazy series of events...Jesus enters Jerusalem and the people hail him as King, they are excited and the people are asking, 'Who is this?'

Jesus answers their question in an intriguing way…by entering the temple and driving out the money changers and sellers of high priced animals for sacrifice. Next, he heals the blind and lame in the temple courts. He leaves the city and the next morning, he curses a fig tree and it withers. It is plain to the reader or hearer through these experiences that Jesus is demonstrating who his power comes from…his Father in heaven. Later in the day, he enters the temple courts again and teaches the people. The chief priests and elders challenge his authority. They doubt who he serves and how he serves.

In response to their questions about his authority, he says this, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven (God), or of human origins?”

They don’t know how to answer his question honestly and answer “We don’t know.”

So it is after Jesus stumps the leaders about the origin of John the Baptist’s authority that he tells this story about two sons.

This is one baffling Jesus. I wonder if this is the Jesus we have become familiar with.