photo by David Trotter
In recent days, I’ve had a couple of people ask questions about the spiritual aspects of the story I share in Lost + Found: Finding Myself by Getting Lost in an Affair. My guess is that the questions reveal a general curiosity and a lack of information in the book pertaining to my spiritual growth and transformation process as I reconciled with my family and was welcomed home.
I think my best thoughts are found in the chapter entitled “Spiritiuality” in my new book Life Launch: Creating a New Normal One Intention at a Time, which the majority of this post comes from…
As I recovered from my own life implosion, I was able to deconstruct a great deal of what I had been experiencing over the previous 10 years. Here’s what I began to see about the spirituality I had developed…
1. God became a product I sold.
While starting a new church, it can be extremely difficult to rally a sufficient amount of people to create momentum and ultimately pay the bills that go along with the venture…including my own salary. I gave in to the temptation to help God develop a more appealing persona by creating a slick and sexy package.
There are an abundance of tools available to pastors to attract potential church attenders…fancy lighting, booming sound systems, ginormous video screens, and eye-catching graphics. We used every bit of it…all in an effort to help people connect with God.
Hundreds were positively impacted, and countless lives were changed. Marriages were healed, and addictions were left in the dust. Meanwhile, I was coming up with every possible way to prop Jesus up and make him look more sexy so that people would come and worship him.
During the two years of re-launching my own life, I clearly saw that I had made God into not much more than a slickly packaged product…and I was sick of it. I wanted God to be God…not a product I had to hawk at a makeshift flea market every Sunday.
2. I connected with God so I could teach others.
Rather than creating an awareness of God in my life so that my soul would be fed and my attitudes and actions would be transformed, I was more interested in coming up with something powerful I could teach others. With Sunday morning rolling around every seven days, creating an entertaining, life-changing message was more important than nurturing my own relationship with the One who created me.
After leaving ministry, I realized that there was no reason to read the Bible, because I wasn’t going to be giving a Sunday message. There was no real reason to spend time meditating and praying, because I wasn’t trying to be inspired to pump people up. In reality, I had very little need for God.
3. My life was more focused on ‘doing’ rather than ‘being.’
Because my full-time job was to lead a church, I was consumed with thinking of projects I could enroll others in. Whether it was a mid-week group to study the Bible or a multi-thousand person event to impact the city…my focus was on performance.
I was a driven leader that coerced my staff and hundreds of volunteers to perform with excellence and efficiency…all in the name of reaching out to our community with a message of Hope and Love. There was very little time or space in my spirituality for ‘being.’ In its very essence, ‘being’ is the process of simply existing in the presence of God. In this space, peace, hope, and transformation began to develop. It’s more an attitude than an action…more a way of the heart.
4. Doing good things for God was my total focus.
There is a passage in the ancient scriptures that warns us about growing “weary in well doing.” That was me. I had such a deep desire to make a positive impact on the world that I didn’t stop to ask myself what was driving all of this energy. And, I definitely didn’t consider the negative ramifications upon my own health. Good deeds were more of the focus than God’s desires for my family and my life.
5. I didn’t take the concept of Sabbath (or rest) seriously.
The last thing that became crystal clear as I deconstructed my spirituality was the lack of attention to what’s called the Sabbath. In the Bible, God instructed the Jews to set aside one day a week for rest. Although this is widely understood in Christian churches, it isn’t widely practiced. Frankly, I rarely took a day off, and when I did, I was still thinking about work. Somehow, I thought God would reward this, and I thought the church would benefit in the process. Not so much.
Spirituality…Take Two
As I lived alone and then ultimately moved back in with my family, I was slowly making changes to my spirituality. As I deconstructed certain parts, I allowed the rubble of what used to be to simply lie there. I wasn’t in a hurry to find all the answers or put something back together. As I started reconstructing my faith, here are the things that started to truly come together for me.
1. God loves me and never leaves me – no matter what you say.
I blew it big time! I left my wife and kids and resigned as the pastor of a church in order to have an affair. It was horrible…and yet, God loves me. In my faith, the Bible is central to my knowledge and understanding of who God is. The ancient scriptures tell me that God will never leave me nor forsake me. God is with me no matter what. Although some people may try to convince me that I’m tarnished in the eyes of God, I just don’t buy it. I’m a sinful human being, and I’m forgiven by God because of Jesus’ death on the cross some 2,000 years ago.
2. Jesus seems to know how to live a rich, meaningful life.
As I re-read the gospels, I was convinced that Jesus seemed to have a good handle on how to live an amazing life. Up until 2.5 years ago, I was living a frantic, hurried, stress-filled life. I wasn’t living the life of hope, joy, peace, and love that I saw Jesus living. I wasn’t experiencing what he taught about, and I knew that something had to change.
Instead of being consumed by doing all sorts of good stuff for God, what if I just started following Jesus? In the Bible, Jesus called all his disciples with two words…”Follow me!” That’s it. He challenged them to leave everything else behind and join him on the journey. So, I’m trying that perspective out now. What if I just learned from the teachings of Jesus and followed him?
3. I’m out of the sales business – now I want to model, share, & encourage.
Full-time church work feels like a sales business to me. Maybe it’s not for other people, but it’s a brutal field to be in. Ironically, I feel just as ‘called’ as ever to help people connect with God and live an amazing life, but I don’t ever want to ‘sell’ God again.
For me, selling God looks like creating a slick package to make God look attractive to people who wouldn’t otherwise be interested. I just can’t do it anymore. I’m not knocking it for other pastors and leaders, but my weaknesses get triggered too easily by orchestrating a big weekly hoopla to praise Jesus.
At this point, I just want to model a life of following Jesus authentically. I’m focused on sharing my learnings along the way with anyone who is interested in listening. And, finally, I’m passionate about encouraging people who are trying to love and follow after God themselves. Model, share, and encourage…feels much more natural than package, promote, and proselytize.
4. People are more important than anything else in this life.
I love projects. I love envisioning, strategizing, and executing a plan that results in the accomplishment of a goal. There’s something powerful and adrenaline-producing about that experience. Unfortunately, much of the reason why I focused so much on building a church in the past was a deep desire to reinforce my own identity. I was more concerned about the hit of adrenaline and the boost to my ego than I was about the people involved.
With the help of some anxiety-reducing meds and the retooling of my heart, I’ve chosen for people to be the most important thing in my life. Not so I can leverage them to accomplish my goal…but so I can partner with them to see their vision come to fruition.
More than ever before, I love spending time with people (despite the fact that I’m a slight introvert). It is my belief that God created every single one of us uniquely, and we are made in God’s image. There is something extraordinary about human beings, and every person deserves love, care, and compassion. This is as much part of my spirituality as anything else.
5. Rest, playfulness, and creativity seem important, too.
I believe these three things truly flow out of my relationship with God. They aren’t disconnected from who God is. Rest is something that God commands me to do, and I’m learning to embrace God’s directive. It is for my own benefit, and it is a spiritual practice. Playfulness is an outgrowth of my ability to enjoy life moment by moment. If God gave me this one and only life to live, I want to playfully enjoy it. Finally, I want to express the creativity within me. If God is my Creator, I believe that God put the ability to create within me. I don’t have to be the best artist in the world in order to express these unbelievable gifts.
These breakthroughs and insights came primarily through conversations that I believe were led by the Spirit within close friends as we processed life, spirituality, and ministry. Although reading Scripture and connecting with God through specific times of prayer is important, I found that God used daily conversations with my three friends and therapist to speak in profound ways. You’ve got to remember that all things associated with ‘church’ and ‘ministry’ were part of the process of selling God. Reading the Bible and prayer represented the process by which I received a message to share with my congregation…and less about connecting with the Creator of the world. As I continued to deconstruct my faith (and view of ministry) and reconstruct a new relationship with God, I find myself turning to Scripture and prayer more often than ever before.
Recent Comments