Pete Greig's Blog: Scrambled Greig, page 4

3 Keys to a Truly Remarkable Life

a.k.a. Life Lessons from the Late, Great Aretha Franklin 'Queen of Soul'.

1. GIFTING - this you get from God.

You’ll find he’s generous. You are way more gifted than you think. If your friends are any good they’ll be telling you what you’re good at. ‘Being a singer is a gift,’ Aretha acknowledged again and again. ‘It means I'm using to the highest degree possible the gift that God gave me to use.’

2. SKILLS - this you get from other people .

It’s about learning stuff. Takes time. No one wants a brain-surgeon who merely means well. ‘You had to work at it,’ recalls Aretha of her road to success. ‘You had to learn your craft: how to take care of your voice, how to pace your concerts, all that trial and error.’ 

3. CHARACTER - this you get from yourself.

Mostly by making costly decisions. It’s by far the most important of the three ingredients. What you build with your gift, and sustain with a well-honed set of skills, you can destroy overnight with your character. It’s a story played out again and again in the music industry, in politics, in sport and sadly even in church leadership as we have seen again in recent weeks. Aretha’s friend Stevie Wonder put it like this:

“Ability may get you to the top, but it’s character that keeps you there.”

Aretha certainly understood character. ‘Who hasn't had a weight issue?’ she said. ‘If not the body, certainly the big head!’ It can’t have been easy being dubbed the “Queen of Soul” when you’re the child of a broken home, when you lost your mum at nine, became a mum at twelve, and were beaten by your first husband. Aretha’s life was TOUGH. 

But Aretha Franklin overcame racism, sexism, addiction and abuse to inspire respect, to sing like an angel, to stand before a black president and make him cry with “a glimpse of the divine”. Yes, it was certainly a gift. But it was also a finely-tuned skill. And most of all it was a life that overcame through years and months, weeks and days of costly choices - more of them right than wrong .

Thank you Aretha.

The Lull After the Storm

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that 3 festivals in 8 days is perhaps a bit much. Everyone has their own kind of 'busy' but for me the last couple of weeks have involved preaching a lot (1,000 people in a cathedral, 2,000 people in a circus tent, and 30,000 in a couple of fields), with loads of meetings behind the scenes, hundreds of emails, poor diet (basically chocolate, curry, crisps and gallons of coffee), crowd-surfing a sheep, and inadequate sleep (sorry mum).

The lull after any storm (and yours doesn’t have to look like mine) is one of the most vulnerable and dangerous times in anyone’s life. One famous pastor locks himself alone in a darkened basement for a few days after every preaching tour. To me that sounds... a bit mad.

I’ve lost count of the number of friends who’ve been on the verge of making terrible life-decisions during the vertigo-drop from a spiritual high. The late, great British renewal leader David Watson once confessed that he sometimes drove away from week-long missions in which hundreds had given their lives to Christ, questioning the very existence of God.

Over the years I have developed 3 simple rules to help me navigate these lulls without doing anything too stupid:

Go slow Go low Go steady 1. Go slow.

You’ve been operating at an unsustainable speed, your engine is screaming and it's time to change gear. God does not have ADHD. He’s not a workaholic. He’s the most relaxed being in the universe.

On the seventh day, we are told, God rested.

God enjoyed his creation. He paused to admire the fruit of his labour. Rabbi Abraham Heschel observes that, while other ancient religions hallowed particular places and things, the Jews alone hallowed time. We are commanded to keep the sabbath. It has to be planned carefully, and guarded jealously (I’ve not been too good at this these past few weeks). There are external pressures that make it hard to slow down, but also an internal drive to maintain the buzz of self-importance that comes with busyness. 

2. Go low.

After feeding the five thousand we are told that Jesus was tired and withdrew to a lonely place. The crowd must have been clamouring for more - singing his praises. But instead of seizing the moment and capitulating to their demands he withdrew very deliberately for a night of solitude and a fishing trip with his closest friends. Jesus wasn’t just resting from busyness, he was also retreating from the spotlight.

After any kind of high, it’s easy to show off, to be impatient if we are tired, or to feel 'entitled' so that we spoil ourselves in ways that are not healthy. It was when King David had won all his battles, that he fell into sin with Bathsheba. 

The quietness after a busy season is essential for quiet reflection. To do this I will often take a long walk with Sammy, or we’ll go for coffee, and she will kindly, patiently let me talk. Journaling can also be a great tool in this period for capturing learning, and giving thanks to God.

3. Go steady.

The lull after a storm is a very bad time indeed for making big decisions. Don’t quit your job, question your faith, or say too much on social media. Don’t take any of your emotions too seriously for at least three days. It’s completely normal to feel quite low, a bit flat, or even depressed - there are physiological reasons for this. I’ve come to expect these emotions and to welcome them as a sign that my body is finally detoxing from an overdose of adrenaline.  

After his triumph on Mount Carmel, Elijah felt like this.

“He prayed that he might die. ‘I have had enough, Lord,’ he said. ‘Take my life.’

A little later Elijah informs God that he is the only prophet left, which isn’t even remotely true. It’s easy to loose perspective, to get isolated, to get lost in self-pity and self-importance (which are really the same thing) when we are exhausted. God’s response to Elijah is exquisitely practical. He ignores his moaning and just tells his servant to eat and sleep. And then, after a couple of days rest, God finally speaks, but only in a gentle whisper.

It is often the case that the Lord comes particularly close in the lull after the storm when we are exhausted. He ‘leads us beside quiet waters, he makes us lie down in green pastures, he restores our weary souls.’

The Irish priest John O’Donohue says it beautifully in one of my favourite poems -

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted:

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,
The light in the mind becomes dim.

Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.
Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.
You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of colour
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.

Be excessively gentle with yourself.
Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

 

 

BEHOLD, I BRING CHOCOLATES

People tell me they have the gift of hospitality by which I think they mean that they like dinner parties. 

They mean that they have (or aspire to have) a beautiful home with an underutilised spare room, in which they enjoy entertaining exotic, interesting, appreciative guests who confirm just how lovely their home is. 

This is not the gift of hospitality. This is the gift of a box of chocolates. Biblical hospitality starts in the heart and not the ikea catalogue. It is a really bad lifestyle choice. True hospitality allows for interruption, goes the second mile and above all it is *present* to people. (This is where I fail the most). "Listening is the highest form of hospitality," says Henri Nouwen - "not to change people but offering them space where change can take place." 

Hospitality like this rarely comes with a box of chocolates. It can often hurt our schedules, our emotions, our bank accounts and, yes, it can even mess up our homes.

Journey to the Centre of the Universe

Wherever I go in the world and whatever else happens in my life, I know that eventually, inevitably everything will reconvene around the circle of an old, Celtic knot that sits at the centre of an old kitchen table in the heart of our home.

Many years ago, through a set of quite extraordinary circumstances, I found myself staying with an elderly gentleman called Donald MacPhail in the village of Arnol on the Outer Hebridean Isle of Lewis. Arnol is the sort of place where people still dig peat and the branches only grow from one side of the trees. Donald lived through the spiritual awakening which erupted in this archipelago in the years 1949-53 (You can find out more about this in Dirty Glory). In fact, I discovered that Donald had been one of its main intercessors. 

Benediction

Donald had snowy white hair by the time I met him. He was tall and wiry with the most piercing blue eyes I’d ever seen. Some Viking blood in there for sure, I thought. Donald yarned about the good ol’ days of the great revival, took me to the house that shook when they prayed, and laughed at my ignorance about his rural ways. (OK, I admit that I said a sheep had fur instead of wool.) On the day of my departure we stood together in his kitchen, and the old man quietly offered to give me his blessing. 'So how do you want me to pray?' he enquired.

It was a big moment. I didn't want to say the wrong thing. Donald was kind of scary and he still hadn't let me forget that whole disastrous 'sheep fur' thing. So I decided to play it safe. 'Um, could you maybe, um, pray please that I would... become more like, um, Jesus?'

Donald snorted his disapproval. 'Certainly not,' he said. 'That happens automatically. You get transformed from one degree of glory to the next. That's what The Good Book says.'

I stammered a couple of other equally unacceptable suggestions.

'Shall I tell you what I'd like to pray for?' he said in the end.

'Oh, yes please,' I said a little too quickly.

'I'm going to pray,' he paused and those eyes bored into mine, 'I'm going to pray that your ministry always flows from your home, and not from a platform.'

Disappointed

To be honest I was a bit disappointed. Here was the last great intercessor of the last great British Awakening offering to bless me, but all he wanted to bless was my domestic arrangements. I wondered if he was just trying to project something quaint from his old-fashioned Gaelic culture upon me.

“‘I’m going to pray that your ministry always flows from your home and not from a platform.’”

— Donald McPhail

But of course I look back now and realise that Donald's benediction was the wisest, richest most insightful prayer he could possibly have given to a young firebrand like me.

I travelled home, told Sammy, and we got ourselves a house and found ourselves a table. We filled that house with all kinds of people - our own children, of course, but also teenagers from the local housing estate (who set about nicking all our stuff), artists and activists, missionaries and students, friends who were succeeding at life, and friends who clearly weren't and just needed a safe place to hide away and kick their habits. And then there were the guests who came from so many countries we lost count. Some stayed for a night and others for a week or a year.

Family, journey, eternity

Along the way we moved house a couple of times, but that table always came with us. It convened countless conversations and hosted well over ten thousand meals (yes, I counted). Over the years, we've danced on it, performed plays from it, broken bread around it, laughed and prayed and argued night and day around this sturdy old piece of solid Parana pine.

“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

And so, reflecting on Donald's Benediction one wet Saturday several years ago, I sat down and cut that Celtic knot-work deep into the table by hand. It's a traditional, interlacing design familiar to the Hebridean people, a pattern that speaks of community and family, of the great unbroken journey circling into eternity.

As for Donald, the old warrior is long gone now, but I think perhaps his blessing lives on. We are ghosts in time, you and I, until the day we finally decide to root ourselves in an imperfect place, commit ourselves to an unimpressed people, earth ourselves in a maverick community, limit ourselves to a particular postcode and proudly call it 'home'.

“There is a day
When the road neither
Comes nor goes, and the way
Is not a way but a place’”

— Wendell Berry

Permalink

Love-song Blues to my Vocation

This year marks my silver jubilee as a Pastor. The space-time continuum has clearly warped. Somehow I have clocked up a quarter of a century in church leadership. 

Back at the start, newly graduated and sporting a pretty decent mullet, I sort of stumbled into the way of life that has become my life. A staff vacancy had suddenly and unexpectedly appeared at church and, without a second thought, I quit my job and stumbled into this thing they call 'full-time ministry'. The ensuing twenty-five years have been the most arduous, the most marvellous and peculiar of adventures.

People used to want to be pastors. Not so much any more. These days they want to be abolitionists, or human rights lawyers, or 'creatives', or tech-entrepreneurs, or Youtubers, or coffee-roasters, or ethical bankers (if such a thing is even possible).

And who can blame them? People are leaving the church in droves. There isn't a lot of kudos in church leadership any more. The country parson of Trollope's England, the square-jawed evangelist of post-war America, these men are relics of dead Christendom. When I rock up at parties in my half-crappy car and my cheap shoes and tell sophisticated millennials what I actually do, they change the subject or compulsively describe their Great Aunt's funeral arrangements. It's all a bit #awkward. 

And I haven't even mentioned the money...

“Men and women who are pastors in America today, find that they have entered into a way of life that is in ruins.”

— Eugene Peterson

The greatest commission
And yet I'm convinced that this call to care for Christ's church is the most challenging, the most rewarding, the most meaningful vocation - the greatest commission which can possibly be bestowed upon any man or any woman by God himself. 

I see this more clearly today than I did back at the start, when I was all gung-ho and idealistic, unbruised and fired-up to change the world. Which is why, I suppose, I'm writing this piece now. It's a sort of love-song to my vocation. I want people to aspire to pastoral ministry once again. I'd even like to provoke a little healthy envy amongst mere bankers and barristers and baristas - those 'unlucky' enough to have been called elsewhere into other, lesser vocations!

And then there are my fellow pastors; those just starting out in ministry and those who've been at it longer than me. I know it's not an easy job. Rick Warren says it takes a few years of practice to become a good preacher but decades of pain to become a wise pastor! He's probably right. Leadership can break your heart. It can be lonely. I know the crazy hours. I know the feeling of being 'left-behind' when others begin to get bigger houses and better cars and nicer holidays and can pay for their kids to have opportunities you can't afford. I also know the secret temptation to quit - to become a banker or a barrister or a barista with your own chain of independent, ethical coffee shops.

“It takes a few years of practice to become a good preacher, but it takes decades of pain to become a wise pastor.”

— Rick Warren

We all want to be Joan of Arc
Westerners who believe in reincarnation and past-life regression have always been remarkable people in their previous lives. They were Joan of Arc, they were a Saxon King, they were a bejewelled courtier for Henry VIII, they were an archer in the battle of Agincourt. No-one was ever a housewife with piles, or the underachieving son of a muck-spreading serf.

Disgruntled pastors suffer from a similar dillusion. We kid ourselves that if we weren't doing this form of ministry we would be successful elsewhere - entrepreneurs, executives, medical consultants, freedom fighters, millionaires with happier kids, better kitchen appliances and perfectly balanced lives. The vocational grass is always greener. No one ever imagines themself a middle-manager in a company making orthopaedic insoles in a warehouse near Biggleswade.

“Be shepherds of the flock that is under your care, not because you must, but because you are willing.”

— 1 Peter 5:1

The apostle Peter reminds us in the verse above that shepherding is a privilege, not a chore. And then he offers a pretty large carrot: 'When the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.' (1 Peter 5:4) Let's face it, the pay may be lousy but this is quite an impressive incentive scheme.

The great Pentecostal theologian George Eldon Ladd said that the church is the primary agency of the Kingdom. Whilst all Christians everywhere are called to advance the Kingdom wherever they can - in their workplaces and their families - only a few are granted this privilege of nurturing and serving its primary agency, the gathered congregation. As pastors we get to prepare the Bride of Christ for her wedding day!

It's a wonderful life
In a single week a pastor might marry a couple on Saturday, welcome a baby into the family of God on Sunday, pray with a dying church member on Monday, and lead someone to Jesus on Tuesday. It takes some beating. Surveys tell us that we actually enjoy some of the highest rates of job satisfaction in the world. 

I can honestly say that there hasn't been a single boring day in 25 years of church leadership. Frustrating days, yes. Arse-achingly boring meetings, for sure. Painful months of failure and misunderstanding, absolutely. Entire seasons of soul-searching, yep, that too. But along the way I have been released from the routine to sow the minutes of my days into the lives of others. It a wonderful way to live.

Pastors also get to preach, of course. And preaching never loses its thrill. It remains an unspeakable privilege to open hearts and heads to the timeless truths, the provocations, the comforts, and the razor offences of God's eternal Word.

Like thousands of my peers, over the years I have had the privilege of baptising new believers in swimming pools, and dirty, freezing rivers, in yellow builders skips, and half-inflated paddling pools, in baths (tricky with the taps) and sometimes too in the sparkling sea..

Over this quarter century, Sammy and I have planted four churches (plus a fifth by accident). One of the five failed miserably after a few years of hard graft. One quarter of our planting team was using, or had recently been using, drugs. I do not advise this approach. That church was a disaster and I nearly burned out.

But then, last Sunday, I bumped into a vicar at an event and he told me he'd first encountered Christ as a student way back in that particular little failure of a community. Go figure.

“Jesus does Judo. He flips failures into successes if we will just keep loving him regardless.”

— Romans 8:28

Today, as I type this, we are praying like mad for someone who is critically ill and undergoing terrifying surgery. She is constantly on my mind as I write. Meanwhile Sammy is away leading an Alpha Holy Spirit day. Soon she will get home. She will be exhausted. But she will tell me stories of new Christians and non-Christians encountering God supernaturally and we will smile and then later, when I climb into bed tonight, I will probably whisper 'thank you, Lord'.

This then is the way of things. The way in which weeks become years on this long road of vocational ministry. We do our best to cultivate hope, to create home, to throw parties and to make some small part of our world a bit less ugly, a little more known. 

"Be shepherds of God’s flock in your care. Watch over them – not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.” ~ ‭‭1 Peter‬ ‭5:1-4‬ 

 

 

 

 

Experimental Jazz

The journey of life and love and faith is supposed to progress along a clear freeway on a perfect summers day, in a German car on auto-cruise. 

It is meant to move smoothly and predictably in a fairly straight line from A to B, guided by an inbuilt GPS, sipping cappuccinos and listening to David Bowie.

We realise that the sun will eventually set, but it is expected to do so at the precise point where the highway intersects the horizon, at the perfect moment when the jangly guitars of Space Odyssey begin: “This is Ground Control to Major Tom, You’ve really made the grade”. The stars will start to shine, and this whole heavenly explosion of light and colour and music will take our breath away. 

Unfortunately, we discover quite quickly that the journey upon which we have embarked is actually leading us along arduous, circuitous country lanes, through variable conditions, in a French car with a dodgy radio and an unreliable GPS on muck-spreading day. 

For entire weeks we suspect we are heading in the wrong direction and the only radio station we can pick up is experimental Jazz. 

We plunge into valleys so deep that the sun is obscured from the sky and then, occasionally, unexpectedly crest hills round bends and suddenly see the shining road miles ahead. But only for a few fleeting moments, until we descend again into the twists and turns of the valley below.

Some people reverse furiously, even traversing off-road in search of another way. Others drive at suicidal speeds on these winding lanes, honking at those who are slow, overtaking on blind corners until they crash and burn. 

But a few perverse pilgrims turn to old-fashioned paper maps. They learn to cherish unexpected views, experimental jazz and the vagueries of French engineering. Relaxing into the absurdity of the journey they relinquish the need to be right, or in charge, or in front, or efficient.

These old folks pause to picnic beside their ancient Renaults, their dented Peugeots, their rusty 2-CV’s, waving at the German cars speeding past, discussing bebop and avant-garde (as if they’d never even heard of Bowie or The Beatles or Bach’s Mass in B Minor). 

Their GPS is off. The map is buried somewhere on the back seat. It’s as if they have reached their destination already while still in motion. And along the way these scribbled roads, this disappointing sunset, this blemished reality has become their greatest joy.

NY Examen

First of all, I review the year in two practical ways (we’ll come to the prayerful bit in a moment):

1. By reviewing my journal, but only at a cursory level.
2. By walking through my calendar in some detail, one week at a time, recalling (and writing down) the notable events, emotions and experiences of the year gone by. 

I find this exercise brings clarity and joy. It’s like that moment when climbing a mountain, you pause and turn, as much to catch your breath as to catch a view of the valley. A review of the year is literally that - a ‘re-view’, a new view - of the places I’ve been and the things I’ve seen.

As someone who often feels like a failure, it’s wonderful to gain perspective and to discover surprising symmetry in the chaos of my life. Experiences which seemed isolated at the time emerge as fractals of a greater unfolding pattern. I perceive ways in which I’m changing, lessons I’m learning and evidence of God’s faithfulness in the cracks and details of my days.

This process is a form of the prayer of *Examen*. The Ignatians used Latin words to outline its four stages, but I do it more simply, like this:

#1. RECALL - the year in as much detail as I can. It’s not a showreel!
#2. REJOICE - wherever God‘s blessings become evident.
#3. REPENT - wherever sinful patterns or attitudes become clear.
#4. REBOOT - How can I be more like Jesus in the year to come?

“I will be joyful in God my Saviour.
The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.”

Hab.‬ ‭3:18-19‬