A Resilient Life: You Can Move Ahead No Matter What

by Gordon MacDonald

Among my most enjoyable activities is my participation in conferences around the world, where men and women in Christian leadership gather for a few days of spiritual refreshment. I like to start the first presentation by saying, “I’m not here to urge you to make your church bigger, or to talk about casting a larger vision, or why you should launch another program. That’s for others to do. I’m here just to talk about you and the state of your soul.” It may be my imagination, but when I say this, I sense a feeling of relief sweep through the audience. The speaker has urged the listener to forget about all the busy stuff and simply concentrate on his or her own spiritual well-being for a few hours. Leaders don’t get to do that very often. Talking about the state of one’s soul doesn’t go very far before the subject of one’s “happy few” comes on the table. Who are the people who populate that inner circle that, presumably, will walk through life with each of us and who will make an inestimable contribution to the development of our resilient life? Raise that subject, and you get a lot of attention. For many there is no happy few. Henri Nouwen was thinking about this when he said, “Most Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love.”