I spent this past weekend on a silent retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani near Bardstown, Kentucky (You can see it at www.monks.org). It’s a beautiful place. The first monks established the abbey in 1848, and they’ve said daily prayers there every day since.

Three days without talking. Well, almost without talking. At first, the silence was nearly overwhelming, but I realized on Saturday morning that I was enjoying it. I didn’t really enjoy getting up at 3am for the first of the seven Daily Offices of Prayer with the monks, but I guess you take the good with the slightly-less-than-good. Getting up at 3am doesn’t feel like getting up early; it feels like getting up the same day you go to bed. But it was worth it.

Thomas Merton was a monk at Gethsemani from the late 40s until his death in 1968. Merton was famous for his contemplative writing, poetry, art, and support for the anti-war movement in the 1960s. Google him — lots of good stuff on the web about him.

I bought his book “New Seeds of Contemplation” at the Abbey bookstore on Friday. Deep stuff. Really challenged me to think about the pace I live and the need to slow down and let silence be a regular part of my schedule.

Here’s a piece from chapter 5 titled “Things in Their Identity”: “Do you imagine that the individual created things in the world are imperfect attempts at reproducing an ideal type which the Creator never quite succeeded in actualizing on earth? If that is so, they do not give Him glory but proclaim that He is not the perfect creator. Therefore each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity, with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its own inviolable identity, gives glory to God by being precisely what He wants it to be here and now, in the circumstances ordained for it by His love and infinite art.”

God is the perfect Creator. He made us just like we are. Not to say we can’t all get better or more whole, but God likes us regardless. Merton’s words are a great reminder to stop comparing ourselves to anybody else. Not to somebody else’s success or lack of success. Just be comfortable in our own skin, letting go of the things we can’t control.

Gravité from Renaud Hallée on Vimeo.

I’m writing from the Georgia Hotel in Kumasi, Ghana in West Africa. Duane Parker, a member of Christ Church, and I arrived in Accra on Tuesday night and flew to Kumasi Wednesday morning to teach with John Maxwell’s EQUIP organization. EQUIP’s vision is referred to as “The Million Leader Mandate” – a vision for business people and pastors from the US to travel the world teaching Christian principles of leadership from Maxwell’s work and equip one million leaders. EQUIP passed the million mark a few years ago and the organization’s impact continues to grow as the leaders trained around the world train other leaders. As Maxwell says, “Only what is shared is multiplied”, and the leaders who attend EQUIP are expected to share what they learn.

Pastors processing after teaching session

Duane and I are working with Rev. Philip Tutu, the country director of International Christian Ministries, an organization representing EQUIP, Purpose Driven Life, Walk Through the Bible and the Willow Creek Association. (Look at http://www.icmusa.org/partnerships.php for more info about Philip’s organization.) We finished our two days of teaching yesterday, then travel back to Accra later today, where Dr. Charles Kyker and Mike Bell will meet us for  two days of teaching there. Charles and Mike will continue on to Liberia and Duane and I will return to the US next Thursday.

We are teaching from Maxwell’s book “The 360 Degree Leader”. Good stuff about how you can lead and be a valuable member of the team regardless of your position. CEO, middle manager or brand new ground-level employee, senior pastor or volunteer layperson — all can lead and make an impact. You can lead up and affect those above you, lead down and benefit those below you and lead across to add value to your peers.

We leave for the five-hour drive to Accra soon. If we make good time, we’ll visit Ghana’s Cape Coast. (Google it — it’s some of the most beautiful beach in the world.) But we’re expecting traffic jams – this Saturday is Ghana’s Independence Day and the whole country will be on holiday.

Ghana is an incredible place. At once a place of third-world poverty side-by-side with the ultra-rich. Sometimes on the same block. This is my second trip, and I hope it won’t be my last.

More later…

Most days I feel capable. Capable of doing a fairly good job with most of what comes my way.  I guess the danger in that is “capable” can drift over into “pride” pretty easily. When that happens to me, God has a way of humbling me and reminding me that I might be capable, but the real power to do anything comes from Him.

I slid from “capable” to “prideful” one Sunday afternoon back in the summer. And I got humbled real quick. Adele and I were going on a Sunday afternoon motorcycle ride after church with about 15 friends. Since I sold my motorcycle the year before, a friend named Jon let me borrow his new Harley Ultra-Classic. I’m sure some folks questioned Jon’s sanity when he let me borrow his bike, but he assured me his insurance was up to date.

After church, packed up the campus (see the post “This is What We Do” from Dec. 2, 2009) and fired up the bikes. Adele and I were leading the ride — See where this is headed? — so we rode single file out onto Springs Road and headed for I-40.

We were maybe a quarter-mile into the ride when I slid right from “capable” to “prideful”. I thought, “How cool is it that one of my friends loves me enough to let me ride his Ultra-Classic? How great is it that 15 of our friends are on their motorcycles on a beautiful Sunday afternoon headed for Judge’s Restaurant in Morganton and back?”……..So far so good, right? Then I slid. More »

We’ve all heard that there are two things in life that are inevitable — death and taxes. Actually there are three.

The third one is disagreements.

People disagree. It can’t be avoided. So the bigger issue is this – What do you do when you disagree with somebody?

There are as many options as there are disagreements, ranging from “I do nothing at all” to “I steal their lawn furniture.” Through my own experience in disagreements large and small and from wisdom shared with me from others, I believe that just about any disagreement can be solved if the two parties are mature and willing to talk about it.

But that’s easier said than done and often it feels better to hang on the issue instead of resolving it. But here is the bottom line – if two or more who disagree can talk and stay focused on facts rather than emotion, one of four things happens:

1. I come to see things your way (problem solved)

2. You come to see things my way (problem solved)

3. We find it’s a misunderstanding and there really isn’t a disagreement (problem solved)

4. We agree to disagree. (problem solved)

All four of these are valid resolutions to a disagreement, but it takes maturity on both sides to get to there. Whether it’s 1, 2, 3 or 4, the result is problem solved.

What do you do?

About ten years ago, my wife and I were in a group of other parents doing a study about how to develop close, tight-knit families. Honestly, the lessons were a pretty boring, but every week the author had a hook. Always the same hook. Must have been a good hook because we endured the boredom week after week. We wanted it bad.

Every week, the guy said, “Come back and I’ll give you the ONE SECRET to having a close family.”

Call me Guppy, but we swallowed the hook and kept coming back. Last session of the study, he says, “Okay, here’s what I promised. The one secret to having a close family is camping.”

Camping? What the heck? I came to six weeks of read-the-paragraph-and-answer-the-question boredom just so I could find out that camping is the answer to having a close family?  I was so disappointed I could have hit him with the chips-and-salsa bowl if he’d been there in person instead of on video.

Camping. How stupid. Wait……maybe he’s right. More »

I was in the mall yesterday, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. There were two elderly women fighting over the last Moravian Sugar Cake at the Dewey’s Bakery stand. Two teenage boys in a tug-o-war to the death over an Abercrombie t-shirt.  A  young mom losing her last nerve over her toddler’s  nuclear meltdown when she said “No”  to a second Ice Dream cone at Chick-fil-a. And those were the happy people.

So I’ve decided to solve your shopping problems. With 22 days to go.

And the answer is not at Abercrombie or Hollister or the Apple Store or even the mall.

The answer is More »

Like many new churches these days, the St. Stephens campus of Christ Church in Hickory, NC meets in a high school. I wish St. Stephens High School had an auditorium, but no such luck.

I thought you might like to see what an amazing group of volunteers does every weekend since we began worship in October, 2006. This is the main gym, but we also set up in the cafeteria, entrance lobby, band room and six classrooms.

Come join us anytime. We work around weekend school stuff like basketball and wrestling practices, but we start most Saturdays at 9am. Details are posted weekly at http://christnc.com/rsc/levites/.

Sometimes I’d rather be somewhere else doing something else when the clock goes off on Saturday mornings, but then I remember that it’s a privilege to get God’s house ready for company. And with more than 700 people showing up on Sundays, it’s one of the best things I get to do all week.

Why? Because this is what we do.

And we’ll do it until we move into our future campus on Spencer Road. More about the plans for that later.

Hope to see you on a Saturday morning soon……

After a couple months of hard work, Christ Church’s new website is going live this month. Keep an eye out for it at www.christnc.com.

“I’m going to Blorida to see Nicki Mouse.”

That’s a recent quote from Carson, my three year-old grandson. And yes, I know I just dated myself. I’m a grandfather of two grandsons – Carson and his seven year-0ld brother Cole. That means I’m old. I’m 46. I’ve been the proud owner of an “Old Guys Rule” t-shirt since my oldest son Chris gave it to me when I turned 40.

Carson thinks there is a real place called Blorida where a real mouse named Nicki lives. The idea really came from his mom. She’s making plans to take the boys to a place that rhymes with Blorida to see a mouse whose name rhymes with Nicki. So Carson’s version is pretty close to reality. More »