Latest / Church Staff Book Club / Wanna Be Healthy? Be With God.
Transcript
- Jonathan Malm: I don't trust that it'll happen unless I do it. Hey, welcome back to the Church Staff Book Club. My name is Jonathan Malm and I'm here with Jason Young. Dr. Jason Young. You never say that. I feel like if I had doctor in front of my name, I would say it regularly. Yeah, you can just buy any of those initials on the internet. I married my brother-in-law and his wife. I married, you know, I was the... did the officiating of it. for the clarification. Yeah, yeah. I married my brother-in-law. But yeah, it was pretty easy to get that certificate online. ⁓ I know that maybe some people listening might not prefer that I did that, but it was It was my way of showing love to them. So yes, we can buy anything, but what we can't buy is emotional health. ⁓ yeah. Nice. Nice. Which is the book that we're going through right now, The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero. We are talking about chapter four. which is loving union is what the title is, right? Yeah. Engage in loving union, I think is it, right? And yeah, Jason, what is this chapter about? Well, this is going to sound cliche and I know we're going to unpack it, but it's transformative, right? ⁓ Think about your leadership. Talked about the title book, Mostly Healthy Leader. Think about your leadership that it flows from being with God. not doing for God, which we probably all agree with. But when we do a few click downs, our behaviors might not agree with that because I think a lot of leaders move too fast and that can slow down or prevent cultivating that being with God part. So, you know, we're going to, we're going to talk about that. We'll unpack it. Yeah, Peter opens the chapter with a story about a pastor who the church is growing rapidly. It is exciting, new staff, new ministry is starting. Everyone is just so excited about this church. And then what happens is a scandal. It turns out this person has been having an affair for, you know, months and months, and it comes to light. And of course, the church craters and people are talking to the board saying, how did we not know this? And the board had no idea what was happening because everything on the outside looked good. Everything was growing. The metrics were indicating that there was health. And so often that can happen in our lives where the metrics, the outside appearance can look good to others. But if we're not cultivating that deep relationship with Jesus behind the scenes, eventually it catches up with you. I mean, I've seen this time and time again, like I've worked for a pastor that had that failure, right? He just, again, they weren't a building campaign. Everything was growing. Everything was exciting. And then it turns out there was an affair and everything craters and their bloody bodies left along the way because everyone was looking at this person as this great example. And then it turns out that they were living a double life while serving God. They were neglecting God in a weird way. Yeah. No, it's true. I mean, if you know, you're listening, watching right now, you may think to yourself, well, Moral failure is not on my radar. Think about it in some other practical ways that maybe externally things are exploding or maybe not, but it may look good. So it doesn't have to be a moral failure, but it could be you feel alone. You make decisions in a vacuum. You are experiencing burnout. You are focused on production over communion. So it doesn't have to be this major thing, but it still doesn't mean that you, you're not crumbling in inside. And so I think I have a question for you and it almost sounds too elementary to ask. And, but maybe that's the problem is we're, we're not good at the elementary things. need the basics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So why do you think leaders, I don't know if it's often, always, but let's say often settle for working for God instead of being with God. I think there's this reality in Western culture and American culture where we do develop our relationships in a working environment. mean, yours and mine, Jason, we write books together, right? And we check in on each other. We, you know, I try to remember what's going on in your life. You remember what's going on in my life. If one of my kids are sick, you ask how they're doing, right? Like there is this element, but a lot of our relationship is built on the working relationship. That's a normal thing. feel like a lot of my relationships in life, I work with them in some capacity. If I'm not careful, I can not be checking in on my friend and just, hey, we're engaged in work together. We're working alongside each other. The relationship is there. And that does work to a degree, but whenever we're talking about the most important relationship in our life, which is our relationship with Jesus, it needs to go deeper than that. And I think so often we get so busy, so busy, so busy that we say, okay, well, I'm working with Jesus, that's fine. Instead of saying, I'm not sitting with Jesus, like, right? Like, he's in another room the whole time. I'm working on my thing, he's working on his thing. We're good, right? That's not really how that works. And I think one thing to think about is so often, you know, when we talk about this like moral failure, we think about like moral failure meaning an affair, I stole money, I'm looking at something on the internet I shouldn't be looking at, right? Whatever, whatever that is. And we look at these like big things. But if you think about what sin is, Sin is literally just the idea of missing the mark of how we were designed to operate. And so could it be that even though you're not having an affair, but because you're not engaging in the relationship with Jesus, you are sinning in the fact that you are missing the mark of the relationship that you were created for. You were created for a relationship with Jesus and to operate within that. And there is a moral failure that happens whenever we don't engage in that. intimacy with Jesus. Yeah. And speaking of intimacy, again, cliche phrase, but potentially ministry becomes this substitute for intimacy, the very thing that you just were describing. And, and I don't know why. I'm sure there's reasons. You just, we just talked about it, but there's this thing we intellectually know. Yeah. Jonathan, Jason, agree with you. Yeah, I'm with you. But there's this thing is frustrating that doing for God. I mean, I'm just gonna say this is often easier than being with him. And- Well, you look at it like a marriage relationship. This is what happens so often in marriages is you have, you know, you get married a couple of years later, you have kids, and then for the next 18 to 24, however many kids you have of your life, years of your life, you are so engaged in the work of the kids that if you're not fostering the relationship in your marriage, the kids move out and you realize we don't know each other. We have been so engaged in the work of parenting. that we don't know each other and we haven't fostered that intimacy. And I think that's what can happen in church is we're so engaged in the demands of ministry that we've not fostered the relationship with Jesus. And then we find out we don't know him. And that's a scary thing. There's a line in the Bible, depart from me, I do not know you, right? I mean, think about this. I know we're going to talk about speed and all of that kind of stuff, like just at the rate. of speed, you know, that we move and throttling. I think sometimes I have bought into this, I have done this, confession, but we wouldn't say it like this. The goal of spiritual life is not productivity. And, you know, if you're in a church somewhere, if you're, you know, serving in a local, like, nonprofit community organization, the goal of the spiritual life is not productivity, right? There's not this like, Like when you're in first or second grade and your balloon moves up the wall or you got three gold stars and, know, ooh, I'm outpacing Jonathan or all the teachers prouder of me than so-and-so, you know, I'm more proud of you, buddy. The goal is not productivity. The goal is communion. And that is challenging. Communion, like I have to be with, and I think one of the number one barriers that gets in the way is speed. Skazero talks about this. even says that the pace of leadership is incompatible with intimacy with God. that's like, I mean, when you think about that, because maybe you're wired that way. I'm wired that way. Jonathan, we, know, for those listening right now, like Jonathan, I've talked about, yeah, speed and production and you know, all of this kind of stuff. And when Skazero is like, hey, the pace of leadership, is incompatible with the intimacy with God, you're like, what do do? I don't know if anybody has been in this boat. My wife, Stacey, we just were talking about this ⁓ today. She showed me a post somebody did and we mean well these posts. I get it and I agree with it, but yet I disagree with it. Here's the idea. I think sometimes in ministry, we buy into and we promote production. Example, read your Bible, pray, volunteer, like a list of things you say, well, Jason, you're saying I shouldn't do those things. No, like those things are great. The challenge is we can, if we're not careful, we can look at all of those things as production or doing for. when really Jesus is inviting us in too. So it's not a production for him. There's an invitation to be with him. He said, well, where do those things help? Let me go a step further. And maybe you're listening right now are going to disagree. I think sometimes I am just like the Sadducees and the Pharisees. And what I mean by that is this. We criticize them or like, man, I would never be like that. I would never. Yeah. Yeah. I would never like. You know, we judge them silently or, you know, out loud. But sometimes I'm like them and here's how. They are doing these things, right, in order to gain X. If I'm not careful, I can do things, read my Bible, pray, volunteer, you know, on down the list to gain, favor with, prove myself to, you know, ⁓ receive more love, you know, all of these things as it relates to God. And the flip side is, well, okay, if you believe that Jason, if you don't do those things, you miss a day, you miss three days, does that mean you're bad? And the whole idea is, it's not about production doing those things for, you know, gain. It's about intimacy with. having communion with, or Scazzero calls it, this loving union of just being alone with treasuring time, slowing down, because I do think, and I agree with Scazzero here, that perhaps the greatest threat to our leadership, or the greatest threat to emotionally healthy leadership, isn't failure, it's speed. Yeah, speed will lead us to failure. But we're moving the failure part. We're worried about the end. cratering, the blow up, whatever we want to call it. But the road that takes us there is so often where we lose our health and then we find we're in a place we don't want to be. Yeah. Let me ask you this. How do you imagine, and maybe this is a personal response or maybe what you've seen with other ministry leaders, but how does speed, so the rate that we're moving, keep us from awareness of our own soul or the things we're doing or not? doing or not becoming as it relates to a loving union. Yeah, it can, it can easily be autopilot. I, this is the way that I function and it's some, it's an asset. It's awesome is I have my to-do list and I'm, whenever I need to do something, I'll set it for like a month from now or a week from now or tomorrow. Like, but I put it out of my mind and I no longer need to work, worry about it. Right. And I can very often get to the end of the day and have no idea what I did during the day. Cause I just knocked off the to-do list items, right? Like I'm just go, go, go, go, go, go, go. ⁓ I'm all done. Okay. Now what do I do? Right. Okay. Now I go pick up the kids, right? That's, that's my day is just a series of tasks and there's no like presence to it. Like, okay, my wife texts me and that's an interruption in my day. ⁓ and so I try to engage in it, right. But then I go back into my task list, into my, into my, you know, my sequence of events. And I think that's what can happen with our relationship with God is we go, go, go, go, go. And then we find out, I did not talk to my wife all day. If my wife hadn't texted me, like she's sometimes, she's Latina, right? So she'll sometimes test me. She'd be like, it's two o'clock. You didn't text me today. I'm like, ⁓ I didn't. Like I did not think about you for the last six hours of my life, which is really bad for a relationship. And she engaged by, so like, think that can happen is like, if, if God's not checking in on us, God's rarely interrupting us, right? We don't hear God saying, Hey, how you doing over there? Right? Like we just, we go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And then we get to the end of the day when we realize we have not even thought about God while we have been quote unquote serving God, which is insane. Yeah. And I talked about, you know, wife and I think about, you know, family, kids, relationships, you know, and I think so often we are love or relationship with them as contingent on what we do or don't do or we show up or not show up right. And so there's probably an element of that that we project. Even though like five love languages is kind of based on that what we do, know, acts of service. If I do this thing and fill your love tank. Very, I mean, it's a wonderful tool, right? It's a wonderful framework of understanding love, but it's very workspace. It's very like, if I do this, you will feel loved and I've done the thing. And sometimes they're just like, that's why my wife, my wife hates like, ⁓ quality time people. My son, my, my four year old is a quality time person where he just wants you to look at him and he wants you to watch someone playing a video game with him on TV and like. Put your phone away, like just watch with me. it's, and there's no end to it. There's no like, it's all encompassing and, and she can't stand that we're both quality time. So I'm down. I'm just like relaxing with my son. We're watching a video game and like we're both of our love tanks are being filled. like, if that's not your love language, it's hard to check off that list. And I think that's even our love and even our love, we love being able to understand how to, how to do the thing. Yeah. When we are talking about slowing down, I wonder if hurry, fast speed, again, we're not saying don't do it, right? But we're just saying be aware of the impact because I think potentially that hurry can numb our soul or hurry, you know, said a different way. Hurry could be the enemy of depth, right? And so I think about, I think about, you know, Jesus. And reading his stories, and again, people have unpacked this, you know, in a better way than I will right now. But when I look at his life, there wasn't this aspect of hurry, hurry, hurry. And he had eight people in his life. Yeah. And he had every reason to hurry to the next town or hurry to be with. And you often saw him like withdraw and you're like, dude, you got work to do. Right? There's more people. Can you go do something about that? Yeah. Or, these people need or, you know, and my temptation would be, you know, do it, problem solve, you know, things of that nature. But like there's this aspect of, of not hurrying because there is a benefit of, you know, intimacy with his father, loving union to use a schizero phrase. And, you know, Jonathan and have written a book, you Don't Burn Out Burn Bright and burnout shows up here because what we've discovered is that burnout can often be the result of speed without spiritual depth. And so there's this aspect of, you know, slowing down. ⁓ I know John Mark Comer wrote a book on, you know, ⁓ gosh, yes, the ruthless elimination of hurry and like, you know, the ruthless elimination. You know, and so it's like a, it's a great read. So my question is we, we, we're talking about speed, you know, it's a barrier and how it plays in a spiritual depth. Here's what I think the problem with speed is. And as, as we're thinking, as we're talking about this, I'm realizing Jesus could slow down because he trusted the father so much that he believed anything was possible. his friend was sick. You got to come heal him. Jesus is like, We're good three days later friend dies, but Jesus trusted the father so much that he knew that even death Wasn't impossible, right? I think so often my speed comes from if I don't do it. It won't get done Yeah, I miss the opportunity. It won't happen I mean I'm using Claude code this tool that's available right now and like I'm like I want to make this game that's available and like if I don't do it someone else is going to do it no one's thinking about this right I'm the only one has this idea in my head right but like There's this reality like, don't trust that it'll happen unless I do it. I don't trust that God can accomplish what needs to happen in my ministry if I don't do it in this certain timeframe. And I wonder if that's sometimes why, which is again, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. We don't spend time with Jesus because we need to do the thing because we don't trust it to be done if we don't do the things, which keeps us from spending time with Jesus. It like becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy. Sometimes we just got to stop. Yeah, and that's really good. That'll preach. So, I mean, you maybe not stack on top of speed, but when you look at speed, there are some adjacent things, if you will, that can maybe, I think he calls them barriers to loving union. So speed, right? But inside of that, it could be, or adjacent to speed, it could be like ambition or drivenness or fear. I mean, for some, think I've struggled with this in years past that your identity is directly tied to impact. So can identity Or your job, your role. So, and then like, if I don't, if I don't do this thing in ministry, I'm going to lose my job as a pastor because the board or my pastor above me or my direct report, whatever, is going to see me failing. And now suddenly my identity is shaken because I'm no longer that pastor that is my identity. Just terrible. So let me ask you this. So with these adjacent things, right? Ambition, fear, drivenness, et cetera, we're not knocking those things by the way. We're not saying don't be ambitious. Yeah, can knock fear. Okay. That's fair. That's fair. flip side of the same, two sides of the same coin. Where does ambition help leadership and where could ambition potentially corrupt it? Yeah. I think ambition, I mean, I don't know if we said this in another podcast episode, but I always think of sin as, my pastor said something that just kind of sparked this idea that sin is rarely us looking for something bad. Usually sin is us trying to get something good, but outside of the timing of God, right? So theft is something we want to get something, you we need food for our family or whatever. That's a good thing, right? But stealing it means we're getting it outside of the timing of God, outside of the, work for it, I make the money and then I buy it for my family. Or, you know, an affair is sex and intimacy is a good thing, but it's getting it outside of the timing of God, which is through the loving union of your spouse, right? So, ⁓ ambition is a good thing, but where it becomes a problem is when we get it outside of that loving union with God, outside of the timing of God, of what God's plan for us is. I think that's ultimately what it comes back to is, we sinning? again, sin does not necessarily mean that we lied or we stole or we murdered, Sin is the idea of us missing the mark of God's plan for our life. And are we sinning through our ambition where we're achieving this without God even having had his fingerprint on it at all, right? Yeah, that's good, bro. That's really good. And I wonder sometimes if slowing down or trying to, when you think of, I don't want to say figure out the timing of God. There's years ago, I think I've referenced this before, but I was in an Uber last night coming home from the airport and Uber driver and I were talking about God's timing to your point and experiencing God written many years ago by Henry and Richard Blackaby. There's a phrase in there. And it's like, you know, find out where God is working and join Him there. Because like, He's already working. He's in charge of the timing. And for us, like me, impatient. Maybe I think I have a better idea or at least that's how it comes off. And sometimes when we slow down or when we, you know, it's quiet, sometimes we... We don't like the noise because in silence, what can happen is, you know, things get revealed or set a different way. Flip side is when we're really, really driven, it can often hide insecurities because drivenness is busy and loud and production. Driveness is sexy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And silence can reveal what the noise hides if we're, if we're not careful. I love this quote from Martin Luther. It might be like a myth that he said this, right? But he said, he said, it's quoted to him and said, I have so much to do today that I dare not spend at least three hours in prayer. And I'm like, what? I can't fathom the idea that like, if I have stuff to do, I got to get going. He's like, no, what if God can reorganize my priorities? What if God can tell me you don't even need to be doing that? So what his is that loving union, like God, I got to do this stuff, but I can't do it without you. And that's such a good. response to it. I want to get into these three ideas that ⁓ Peter gives us for how to foster again, because we're like, let's okay, like, how do we check off the box? How do we how do we get this love union? He gives us some tools really cool. ⁓ Before we do that, I want to talk about our sponsor, which is something that we're starting called lobby lab. Yep. It is for connections, guest services leaders. ⁓ If you feel like you're just every Sunday drowning, you can barely get above water to breathe to get air. We've created this for you. has a great community of people, of coaches, of people who've been in this role before, high level people that are going to help you develop systems, develop frameworks, just maybe sometimes vent about what's going on in your life and share resources that can help you again, catch your breath, get above water, really excel at leading volunteers in this space. So lobbylabs.co, check it out, sign up. Let's talk about these three ideas. ⁓ first one is find your desert. Second one is a form, creating a formal rule of life. And the third one is Sabbath. Sabbath will be next, ⁓ next, ⁓ podcast episode because there's, there's a whole chapter about that. But what I really loved is this idea of finding your desert. And he talked about the idea that, you know, I mean, Jesus did this, he, was driven into the desert, into the wilderness. And there's this stuff that happens in the solitude, in the escape from. the noise that can create that loving union that we're looking for. he, talked about actually finding desert, you know, I mean, he talked about, you know, ⁓ people will actually go to a desert, right? They'll go to a place of solitude, but he also just gives this idea of like, okay, how can you get away in a micro desert, if you will. And I think about it as a place of like, there's nothing sexy about this place. I'm not known in this place. I'm not special in this place. ⁓ and that's, that's a, I mean, What would that look like? Yeah. Well, you're special known to God and that's, you know, I'll go to a Starbucks and like, cause I'm on social media and every now and then I'll be like, I follow you on social media. And that's really fun. there's, there's, it's a, it's a sexy place. just, it just continues to feed the noise in my life of, I'm, I'm achieving something. So people recognize me pastors this way. If you're, if you're a pastor, people know you around town, they visited church, they saw you on TV, maybe, or they saw you on social media. They kind of know you, there's something sexy about that, right? Like, is there a place that nobody knows you, except for God, nobody thinks you're special. And so you can get away to get to that silence that, that like, I even think about it is it's not even, you know, Peter says, go to a park bench or something, right? Like, but I almost think about like something that's not even visually exciting, something that's not beautiful, something that the desert is a place of loneliness, of dryness. And he says, actually seek that place out, which I It seems kind of counterintuitive because we always think of desert places as being bad places. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you referenced, I mean, Jesus did this and I mean, sometimes like just- it as a bad place. He went into the desert to be tempted, right? But like, could it be that that was one of the most vital parts of this formation? ⁓ Yeah. I mean, I think for me, just examples, like I've done this at a monastery that's not far from my house. I used their facility. you know, just to get away in silence. I'll be honest with you, it sounds, even that just sounds, that's so cool. It was a bit of a struggle because it was, it was silent. I did a silent retreat all day. And yeah, and I'm a talker and you know, verbal processor. And so I'm like, I wanted to talk to these people and you know, others and you know, and really it was, I think about this, I think about it this way. Love requires attention. So if we're in this loving union, my relationship with God, not productivity for God, but relationship with Him requires attention. And we're like, well, duh, like, like that's not rocket science. I know that that's what we're saying. The basics are hard enough. And so I did that once at a monastery. But it doesn't get your attention to the things that you see visually. And that's, that's one of the hard parts about God is I don't see Him. So how do I? give him my attention when my eyes, when my ears, when my nose, and my whatever, know, all of our senses are not being invaded by him. How do we give him that attention? That's the struggle. And that's where solitude gives you that opportunity. It really does. And I don't know this is a good example or not, but this week I was in Florida and it was just me. And I almost felt compelled to have this little desert moment in the car. And I don't, I mean, God always wants to be with us, right? But I just felt like this moment, just to be with Him, we're not achieving anything. It's just this communion, be with me. And I'm thinking, well, what do want me to do? You know, or perform. And it's like, I mean, you're my kid. Sit with me. I used, I listened to three particular songs on purpose, chose these three particular songs. And it was just this, communion and being with silence, nobody else around. It wasn't like earth shattering, but it was like an invitation to be with. And a lot of times we talk about these rhythms and silence and this kind of desert, like it could be a rhythm and these rhythms change, right? So for me, know, rhythms change. And so one of those rhythms could be, you know, silence, solitude. I was at a leadership summit recently and One of the speakers said that every year, this again works for him. He does a week focused just on the very thing we're talking about, but he goes ⁓ to this international place and no phone, no computer, nothing for this purpose right here. So for him, that is that desert space. So it could be physical, could be a week. It could be kind of rhythmically throughout the year, but it's doing it. It's figuring out where can you be and what can it look like and things of that nature. So sorry, I used a lot of words, but for me, those are some examples and just thoughts on what it could look like. Well, hey, this is the end of this episode. ⁓ We hope you're enjoying it. If you're reading the book, if you're not reading the book, we hope you still got something from it. It is worth grabbing the book if you're going to be tuning into these podcast episodes. Next week, we'll be talking about chapter five. Again, if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, be sure to do that. Find us on social media if you just want to chat about it, but we will see you next week.