Donald Miller's Blog, page 86

The Best Viral Videos We Found This Week

The Making Andrew video won the vote last week. What about this week? Leave your vote below in the comments.

The Best Viral Videos We Found This Week is a post from: Storyline Blog

Would Your Faith Survive if Your Leaders Began to Doubt?

What if you went to church this Sunday, sat in your usual spot, sang along to worship songs with the usual worship team, then watched your pastor step to the podium and explain he now found it impossible to believe in the premise of Christianity?

What if he discovered his faith could not stand up to the evidence against it, or believing in a God that would allow cruel things to happen to loving people no longer made sense? What if he apologized but offered his resignation, effective immediately?

Would this shake you at all? Make you question what you believed?

*Photo Credit: Mike Babiarz, Creative Commons

I have often doubted my Christian beliefs, and sometimes just knowing the person standing up and preaching each week believes is the only thing preventing mine from unraveling.

I confess I can be dependent upon my spiritual leader’s faith.

But I’ve started to see this “dependency” differently. Rather than a sign of weakness, I see it as a model for strength. Because in a real way, this is the legacy Jesus left us. What I mean is, we aren’t independent beings. We do, in ways, deeply affect the beliefs of those around us.

I once believed this dynamic weakened the argument for Christianity. If we are all a bunch of people dependent on someone else’s faith who is dependent on someone else’s who is dependent on someone else’s… then who actually really believes? This would quickly spiral me into a tunnel of doubt and confusion. Then I would feel ashamed for thinking it, so I would put the thought away and hide it until it came back again.

• • •

The early church began not long after Christ’s death. They were close to Jesus, maybe some had seen him pass through their town or perform a miracle. Perhaps one guy told a few friends about his eyewitness account of Jesus, and then those friends multiplied into a crowd which turned the first guy into their leader–their pastor. He was simply relaying what he knew to be true to those who then relayed it to others. Until eventually, the church was just a group of people relying on each other, remembering, believing and encouraging.

These days, I can’t imagine having faith on my own—a fact that used to make me feel weak and question what I believed, but now I think has more to do with being the way Jesus intended his people to be: dependent on him, dependent on each other.

If your pastor gets on stage this Sunday and announces he’s calling it quits with the whole Jesus thing, maybe you will feel sad, confused, maybe scared. But I hope becoming independent in your faith will not be your reaction. Do not attempt to strike out on your own, that never goes well. Instead, look at the person sitting in the pew beside you and, no matter how uncomfortable it is for you, lean on them.

Would Your Faith Survive if Your Leaders Began to Doubt? is a post from: Storyline Blog

How To Spot a Manipulative Church Leader

I grew up in a small town in Texas and attended a small church. I loved my church. I loved the jovial pastor, all the men in suits who rubbed me on the head as I came in and out of the sanctuary, the kind ladies who always brought us muffins in Sunday School and especially the youth camps we’d go to over the summers. Church was my second home, and it almost feels like I spent more time there than in my own home.

One winter, though, our pastor decided to retire. We threw an enormous party in his honor. I’ll never forget person after person walking to the microphone to tell stories about the many years he’d shepherded our congregation. People cried, we sang, we brought gifts, we ate food, we laughed until late into the night. It took a full month for everybody to say their goodbyes.

I am eternally grateful the first minister I encountered was such a good man.

Because the second minister I encountered wasn’t.

*Photocredit: Cornell University, Creative Commons

A committee was put in place to replace our pastor and the committee decided to hire a dynamic young man from Louisiana. The man had been a traveling preacher, moving from church to church to perform revivals, to tell people about Jesus. He was a tall man and loud. He flailed his arms as he spoke. He talked about God’s power, about God’s wrath, about God’s love and to be honest he was quite moving. He was incredible at getting people to respond. He had a sharp sense of humor, would occasionally say shocking things to test our loyalty and see if we would turn on him or go with him, he knew the Bible inside and out and knew how to play human emotions like a fiddle. On any given Sunday we would experience a range of emotions from guilt and shame to fear and sometimes joy.

I even remember his first sermon. It was entitled “Appoint those you trust and trust those you appoint.” That should have been an obvious sign to everybody. He was saying, without question, if you hire me to be your pastor, I am the boss. You must never question my authority.

Soon, the entire congregation fell under his spell. We loved it when he delighted in us but feared screwing up. One Sunday he snapped at the man working in the sound booth so sharply the man turned red from embarrassment. The pastor, realizing he’d gone too far, explained, ferociously, that God is a God of excellence and wouldn’t stand for mistakes, even from volunteer sound guys. He then quoted a passage about how we were supposed to be perfect even as Christ is perfect.

Looking back, this was all manipulation. People who care about the truth understand they are capable of self-deception and surround themselves with accountability. This pastor got rid of the accountability. He drove off any elder who wouldn’t submit, once again, quoting scripture and spinning the Bible so that those questioning his motives looked like infidels. He even said he felt justified using violence against them, simply because they refused to trust the leader God had appointed.

What made the situation so difficult is that the church in fact grew. His off-color sense of humor seemed relevant and even worldly while his knowledge of Scripture gave the congregation a sense of security. In fact, I’d say a sense of security is the main reason people were drawn to the church.

• • •

Don Riso and Russ Hudson, perhaps the worlds leading experts on the enneagram, talk about controlling, bully-personalities as being secretly afraid. Many of them had been molested as children and subconsciously believe people are out to get them. Determined to never be molested again, they make themselves big, try to sound tough, try to intimidate people and will never allow themselves to be vulnerable. They insist that anybody close to them be submissive and will lie and cheat to protect themselves and their empire, all the while posing as a righteous hero. When extremely unhealthy, controlling personalities are stressed, they get great relief and a feeling of power by dominating others, even sexually. It is thought that many Priests who have molested young boys did not have a purely sexual motive, but took comfort in dominating young men to gain a sense of security and power, all the while acting as a shepherd in the church.

What happens under the spell of a master manipulator is people unknowingly submit their sense of security to somebody else. They relinquish the responsibility God has given them to govern their own lives to a powerful figure who says to them “look, just do what I say and you’ll be fine.”

What they don’t realize is the extremely insecure manipulator is gaining security from controlling people, not from protecting them. Being wounded himself, he only wants to surround himself by those who are weak and who will not question him. He subconsciously considers this his layer of armor. The manipulated masses are his protection against outside intruders.

Many people came to know Christ under the manipulative pastors regime. And anytime he was questioned, he used his knowledge of Scripture statistics about church growth and Christian conversions (though they were greatly exaggerated) to bolster his case and run off accusers. Most people were afraid to contend with him because they knew he would attack them ferociously.

The church, then, became a revolving door. More than half the people who visited smelled him out and went away, and the pastor didn’t mind this at all. He only wanted the submissive, those who would allow him, using scripture, to guide and command every aspect of their lives. He even posted the names of tithing and non-tithing members in the lobby. Those who disagreed with him were written up as insubordinates to God in letters sent to the entire congregation, humiliating them and running them off for good. He even went as far as to threaten lawsuits.

And yet, as said previously, the church grew, filled with submissive people. The more intuitive walked away rolling their eyes.

The pastor, of course, grew more and more controlling. He told the congregation what they could and couldn’t read, what they could and couldn’t watch on television, what they could and couldn’t see at the movies and even who they could and couldn’t vote for.

• • •

Things grew very dark, however, one evening when the pastor found out one of the elders he wanted to get rid of had visited a bar on the edge of town. The man and his wife had gone on a double date with some friends and went out to the bar to hear a band. Somebody informed the pastor and he had the elder paged and told him to meet him at his office. What unfolded was nothing short of a scolding and a witch hunt. The pastor embarrassed the elder and belittled him and informed the church he’d asked for his resignation from the elder board. The elder hadn’t so much as sipped a beer, but the pastor wanted to get rid of him anyway.

Within a few weeks, the elder took a gun from his gun cabinet, and took his life.

The pastor, of course, felt no remorse, blaming the event on the elders secret life in which he visited bars.

Ultimately, the power-mongering was too much and too many people began to leave. Manipulators, however, do not care to restore anything and will gladly take the ship down with them. They need to feel their power, whether that is to raise somebody up or tear them down. This pastor needed to destroy the church before he left. He slowly fired every member of the staff, then resigned to start a non—profit that mobilized Christians to take up conservative political causes and fight the democrats.

Shortly after he left the church, the pastors own daughter committed suicide in the bathroom their family home. He had one other child, a college-bound freshman. To this day, his son will not speak to him, and the pastor does not speak of his children. His wife is thought of as a kept woman.

The church, some twenty years later, has not recovered from the destruction. There will never be restoration or reconciliation because the manipulator will never repent.

Repentance, is, after all, an act of vulnerability. Manipulators will not put themselves in a place of vulnerability for fear they will once again be abused. They do not trust anybody. Instead, they demand trust from everybody around them. Those who do not submit are considered enemies.

The devastation from a manipulator goes beyond the loss of life. Too many to count walked away from their faiths because of his tactics. Manipulators are skillful movers of people, so we often see their many accomplishments, but they are even more skilled at hiding the devastation caused behind the scenes. Christian leaders who are manipulators bring people to Christ at the expense of pushing many, many more people away.

Here’s how to smell out a manipulator in a religious setting:

A Christian leader who is manipulative will:

• Never be truly vulnerable. They will never tell stories about their weaknesses. If they do, those stories will be about how they are too strong, too devout and too many other things that are more or less humble brags.

• Always have the true answer, and truth is truth because they said it. The truth is the Bible is complex, but a manipulator knows they can’t get you to submit if they don’t have ALL the answers. Certainly trained pastors have answers, but nobody has all the answers. Manipulators do. They want to tell you how to live.

• They make you jump through hoops. If you want to get married, you must go through hours of classes so they can approve. If you want to be a member, you must sign a contract or a statement of theological belief. Now many wonderful churches do this sort of thing, but when there is a manipulative leader, you’ll normally find an endless number of hurdles to jump over. They want to test you, over and over, to make sure you’re being submissive.

• They will never let you off the hook. A manipulative leader can never, ever let you be fully free in Christ. There must always be something wrong with you or else you will no longer need them and will no longer have to submit.

If you’re in a church with a manipulative leader creating the culture, I believe you should leave. The only way a manipulator stops manipulating is when the manipulation stops working, and by staying, you’re saying to the manipulator that it’s working. If you fight them, you’ll lose.

For more about dealing with manipulative people, I recommend Harriet Braiker’s book Who’s Pulling Your Strings.

Don’s new book (still untitled, October 2014) will talk about this phenomenon a bit more. If you’d like to know when the book comes out, sign up on our mailing list. You’ll also get a free copy of Don’s audio book, Through Painted Deserts.

How To Spot a Manipulative Church Leader is a post from: Storyline Blog

What to Do if Your Dreams Feel Unachievable

I have never written a book before, but I have always wanted to. I started journaling at the age of 12 and found delight in the power of words. I began reading with fervor, holding books with reverence for their ability to paint images and emotions on a page. I dreamt of being able to inspire readers the way other writers have inspired me.

Recently, my dream became a reality. I have been commissioned to write a book and to live out this life-long dream of mine. I was so excited with the task at hand. I jumped in with high expectations and the elated satisfaction of becoming a true writer. And in the strangest of ironies, I have spent most of my writing days staring at a blank screen, feeling as though I have nothing to say. Nada. Nothing. It has been disorienting, and it has been discouraging. I have found myself second-guessing my own dream, telling myself I was foolish to think I could achieve such a thing.

Have you ever found yourself finally living out your dream, only to realize that it wasn’t playing out as you expected?

I thought writing a book would be easy. Perhaps I thought it would come naturally for me because I am a chronic journaler and I come from a family of writers. But I was wrong. I was swept up in the idea of the dream, forgetting that the most satisfying goals in life are the ones for which you work the hardest – not the ones that come the easiest.

• • •

When I was 14, I dreamt of climbing Longs Peak, the highest mountain in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. Yet I knew that it would require training. I had to begin by climbing smaller mountains to acclimate to the altitude, to practice moving across boulder fields, to build the endurance required to make the 15-mile roundtrip journey in a day. After a summer of training, my friends and I hit the trail at 3am and pushed ourselves harder than we ever had before. My lungs and my legs ached from the demand of the climb, and I worried that we wouldn’t make it. It seemed as though the peak was getting further, not closer as we continued to hike. But I had prepared for it, and I pushed through the hours of pain and the voices of doubt. Hours and miles and sweat and tears later, we were greeted with the majesty of the peak as we towered over the panorama of the Front Range.

Our dreams are mountains.

*Photo Credit: ledana9, Creative Commons

Our culture sells instant-gratification. But the real things in life require time, patience and resilience.

Our calling finds its way through the paths of practice and commitment in the midst of demanding trails or fruitless days. For some, it is about faithfully putting one foot in front of the other, even if you can’t see the peak from your vantage point. For me, today, it is about staring down that blank screen and filling it with words.

Which mountain are you trying to climb?

May you stay with it today and tomorrow and the next. Here’s to you, all you mountain climbers, all you dreamers on the run.

What to Do if Your Dreams Feel Unachievable is a post from: Storyline Blog

Does Trying to Impress People Make You Sad?

Acclaimed writer Penelope Trunk spent a year obsessing on what really makes people happy. She gave up a high-powered job as an executive to raise kids and blogged nearly daily about her trade. She wondered out-loud whether what her life would look like having given up one dream to pursue another. The first dream would have been more impressive to the world, she reasoned, but the dream of having a family and raising children was more appealing to her heart.

Many people were fascinated with what she discovered. She said people are often torn between two seemingly equal impulses, and could as such be be divided between two dominant instincts: the instinct to be impressive or the instinct to be happy.

To develop her theory she created a survey of seemingly random questions, questions like Do you have an opinion on Picasso? Do you have overweight friends? and Do you think Christmas is a national holiday? A person’s answers to these questions, according to Trunk, revealed how much they wanted other people to think they were impressive, and the more interested people were in being impressive, the less happy they tended to be. People who had an opinion about Picasso are more quick to form opinions about subjective topics, people with overweight friends cared more about the quality of their relationships than they did with the social value of their associations and those who think Christmas is a national holiday (it isn’t) tend to be more homogenous, and homogenous people are more happy.

*Photo Credit: Nathan Laurell, Creative Commons

Interestingly, the more impressive we try to be, the less we really know ourselves, apparently. And the less we recognize what others think of us, the more happy we are. The bottom line is if we obsess with getting people to like us, we’re less likely to be happy.

Don’s new book (still untitled, October 2014) will talk about this phenomenon a bit more. If you’d like to know when the book comes out, sign up on our mailing list. You’ll also get a free copy of Don’s audio book, Through Painted Deserts.

Does Trying to Impress People Make You Sad? is a post from: Storyline Blog

Does Trying to Impress People Makes You Sad

Acclaimed writer Penelope Trunk spent a year obsessing on what really makes people happy. She gave up a high-powered job as an executive to raise kids and blogged nearly daily about her trade. She wondered out-loud whether what her life would look like having given up one dream to pursue another. The first dream would have been more impressive to the world, she reasoned, but the dream of having a family and raising children was more appealing to her heart.

Many people were fascinated with what she discovered. She said people are often torn between two seemingly equal impulses, and could as such be be divided between two dominant instincts: the instinct to be impressive or the instinct to be happy.

To develop her theory she created a survey of seemingly random questions, questions like Do you have an opinion on Picasso? Do you have overweight friends? and Do you think Christmas is a national holiday? A person’s answers to these questions, according to Trunk, revealed how much they wanted other people to think they were impressive, and the more interested people were in being impressive, the less happy they tended to be. People who had an opinion about Picasso are more quick to form opinions about subjective topics, people with overweight friends cared more about the quality of their relationships than they did with the social value of their associations and those who think Christmas is a national holiday (it isn’t) tend to be more homogenous, and homogenous people are more happy.

*Photo Credit: Nathan Laurell, Creative Commons

Interestingly, the more impressive we try to be, the less we really know ourselves, apparently. And the less we recognize what others think of us, the more happy we are. The bottom line is if we obsess with getting people to like us, we’re less likely to be happy.

Don’s new book (still untitled, October 2014) will talk about this phenomenon a bit more. If you’d like to know when the book comes out, sign up on our mailing list. You’ll also get a free copy of Don’s audio book, Through Painted Deserts.

Does Trying to Impress People Makes You Sad is a post from: Storyline Blog

How Should we use Intuition in Decision Making?

I make a lot of decisions using intuition, which researchers are beginning to understand as more reliable, and less mystical than previously thought. Intuition is really about pattern recognition, about subconsciously picking up on conflicting patterns in a situation. One of the more discussed examples of intuitive decision making has to do with a fire chief who, shortly after entering a burning house, commanded all his men leave the house immediately without really understanding why. He said the decision came from his gut, that “something wasn’t right” and he wanted his men out of the house.

That decision saved the lives of his men, as seconds after exiting the house the floor collapsed. If they’d have stayed in the house, everybody would have been killed.

*Photo Credit: Ada Be, Creative Commons

When interviewed about his decision, the fire chief couldn’t explain his decision logically. Some of the men under his command attributed the command to a higher force, a sort of guardian angel. But guardian angel or not, by design our brains work to protect us from making mistakes, and often we have no explanation as to why.

On further investigation, several things were happening in that fire that worked to inform the fire chief’s subconscious. The first was that the firemen already on the seen had been pouring water into the kitchen, where the fire was supposedly focussed. With a normal fire, this would have solved the problem and put out the fire. But in this case, no amount of water helped. The second oddity that fed the fire chief’s subconscious is that the fire was unusually quiet. Fires normally rage and they are loud. But when entering the house, the fire wasn’t making a sound that aligned with what the fire chief was seeing.

Without knowing it, the chief subconsciously understood something really basic, and that’s that he didn’t understand what was happening. And because he didn’t understand, he knew his men could be in danger. By commanding the evacuation, he was pulling his men from a situation in which he did not know how to guide them, protect them, or solve the problem of the fire.

What was really happening in the house was that the fire was not in the kitchen, it was just burning up through the kitchen. The fire was actually raging in the basement, burning the underside of the wood floors. This would not be understood until later.

• • •

All this to say, as leaders, intuition matters. But we should also understand, perhaps in hindsight, why we are feeling cautious about a situation. Here are some tips on better using intuition:

1. When something seems wrong, back off and use caution.

2. Look for conflicts in patterns. If you’re wanting to hire somebody but they’ve been through three jobs in the last two years, there is a pattern conflict. A person who is dependable and productive should be able to keep a job longer than a few months. Inquire as to why their pattern is in conflict with their ambition to hold a job.

3. If you suspect something is amiss in a situation, don’t interrogate whoever you suspect too soon. Wait and watch and try to understand why your intuition is sending alarm signals. Once you identify some problems in patterns, sit down with the person you’re dealing with and ask them to explain the pattern conflicts.

How about you? How do you use intuition in your decision making process?

(this is a repost from the archives)

How Should we use Intuition in Decision Making? is a post from: Storyline Blog

Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins On God as the Future of Rock

A fun interview with Billy Corgan sheds light on what he thinks the future of rock and roll is, and amazingly, he believes it’s God. And not the Beatles God (or non-God) but the Jesus God. He calls it the unexplored territory of rock music. Billy is an interesting cat, self-involved and self-important, but interesting. He does make one comment about U2 being the template for Christian rock, commenting that he thinks Jesus wants us to improve. I disagree. I think DC Talk is the template for modern Christian rock and it all still sounds the same, mostly because the members of DC talk are now fronting every other band. And, to be honest, I don’t think any of them sound that bad. Maybe I’m getting old.

Regardless, very fun to watch Corgan explore these ideas and I hope, for spiritual reasons and entertainment purposes alike, it leads to some great, thoughtful music. Prayer twerking. That’s what we need. Bring your foam fingers together and bow your heads.

Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins On God as the Future of Rock is a post from: Storyline Blog

The Best Viral Videos We Found This Week

Your favorite video last week was Terrence Stephens singing, which I loved. What about this week? Cast your vote below in the comments.

The Best Viral Videos We Found This Week is a post from: Storyline Blog

A Message For Those Who Try to do It All

Have you ever seen a one-man-band? After strapping various musical instruments to his body, he begins to make music by simultaneously playing them all. When done well it is impressive: one person doing everything. Yet, it is more of an athletic accomplishment than a musical event . . . more side show than concert. One-man-band music does not top the charts and is not purchased on iTunes because what is memorable is the novelty not the music produced.

*Photo Credit: slgckgc, Creative Commons

Too many of us buy into the idea that we have to do it all – that we have to do everything well without breaking a sweat and always looking like things are under control. I think this springs from a distorted understanding of independence.

In the name of autonomy and individualism we can fall into trying to live our lives like a one-man-band. It takes a lot of extra work. Although we may hit all the notes, without community we can’t make beautiful music.

I think we were created by a community for community – to be with the people in our lives. We were designed for engagement more than isolation. To live full lives we must rely on others and others must be able to rely on us. Depending on others can be messy and scary – they will let us down. Yet, building walls to protect ourselves from the rough edges of community condemns us to a life of lonely rugged individualism.

What would happen if we admitted that we cannot do it all – that we cannot be our own harmony? Instead of playing every instrument, what if we learned to play the instrument of our lives with excellence and relied on other people to play theirs? We would find moments of symphony instead of a disengaged life of fragmented solos. Living in community rescues us from the self-imposed pressure of living like a one-man-band.

A Message For Those Who Try to do It All is a post from: Storyline Blog