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- Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Serie: Transforming Resources
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
Spiritual Practices for Burnt Out Leaders "I'm tired of helping others enjoy God—I just want to enjoy God for myself." With this painful admission, Ruth Haley Barton invites us to an honest exploration of what happens when spiritual leaders lose track of their souls. Weaving together contemporary illustrations with penetrating insight from the life of Moses, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership explores topics such as - responding to the dynamics of calling - facing the loneliness of leadership - leading from your authentic self - cultivating spiritual community - reenvisioning the promised land - discerning God's will togetherEach chapter includes a spiritual practice to ensure your soul gets the nourishment it needs. Forging and maintaining a life-giving connection with God is the best choice you can make for yourself and for those you lead.This expanded edition includes the popular "How Is It with Your Soul?" assessment for leaders and a flexible six- or twelve-week guided experience for groups.
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FOR MY PARENTS
Rev. Dr. Charles William Haleyand JoAnn Neburka Haleyon their FIFTIETH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY JUNE 7, 2008
By your words and your example you taught me never to stop seeking solid God in the crucible of ministry
CONTENTS
On the day I called, you answered me,you increased my strength of soul.
FOREWORD
Gary A. Haugen
In October of 2004, I gave each of my colleagues at International Justice Mission two gifts: a blank leather journal with the words “8:30 Stillness” embossed on the cover and a book by Ruth Haley Barton.
As an organization, we were experiencing incredible growth on a global scale. We were bringing rescue to victims of violent injustice in the most desperate places of suffering in our world, and we did so by working directly with local law enforcement and government officials to prove that justice for the poor is possible. We were witnessing miracles from the hand of God, and it was clear that the adventure had only just begun.
In the midst of this season of tremendous growth and change, I took a sabbatical with the intention of setting apart time to talk with God about what he was doing in our midst and where we were headed as we pursued his work of justice. As I emerged from my sabbatical, I shared with our team the conviction that had grown within me and presented my colleagues with the mysteriously named “8:30 Stillness” journal and Ruth’s book.
I sensed that God desired for IJM to experience more of his presence and his power. But we were not yet ready to receive it.
As an organization, we had a regular rhythm of praying together every day at 11 a.m. And yet, all too often our work would veer into prayerless striving rather than expectant abiding. We longed for transformation—in ourselves and in the lives of those we sought to serve. We longed to know more deeply the love of our good Father who leads us in transformation. And yet, we needed a more disciplined attentiveness that would ready us to receive more of God’s presence and power. We needed to learn to be still, to wait on the Lord, to simply be with him.
The gift of the journal and Ruth’s book Invitation to Solitude and Silence was a signpost of sorts, pointing us toward a new season. Perhaps more aptly it was a toolbox, equipping us for the journey into deeper readiness to experience God’s miracles of transformation—both in the world and our souls. With the blessing of our board of directors, beginning on that day when staff received their gift of the journal and book, 8:30 a.m. was declared to be the formal beginning of every IJM workday and also a time of complete stillness for all—a time we simply call “8:30 Stillness.”
Now imagine with me for a moment, a staff of high-performing lawyers, criminal investigators, social workers and professionals in Washington, DC, and offices across the developing world, rushing into the office to begin their day, faced with the task of fighting slavery, human trafficking, police abuse, and other forms of violent oppression. As these staff arrive at their desks, their first order of business is to stop. All phones are off. Laptops closed. No email. No meetings.
Just silence. Solitude. Stillness. For thirty minutes.
On any given day, stillness can be hard. Even awkward, frustrating. We come to each day like a jar of river water that has been shaken. The water is murky, impossible to see through. But as the jar sits still—unmoved—the silt and sediment begin to settle. Clearer waters emerge. So too, in the stillness that enables solitude and silence, the mud and mire of our souls begin to settle and clarity emerges. In solitude and silence, we become aware of the inner needs and desires that we bring to the day. Then we can talk to God, our good and loving Father, about what it is we actually need for that day, asking for his wisdom, his guidance, his grace to prevail.
I am utterly convinced that God works miracles of transformation in the world through miraculously transformed people. God is eager for us to be with him, to know his love and his goodness, even as he calls us to lead with great courage in the world around us. What we have learned is that the transformation we so long for comes when, whether we feel like it or not, we actually show up and choose to be still in the presence of our good God.
It doesn’t matter who you are or what kind of work faces you on any given day; facing the demands that confront you and choosing to be still and wait on the Lord before rushing into action is a feat that only the Spirit of God can make possible. And yet the choice to pursue daily stillness has the potential to be, perhaps more than anything else, the very crucible for the world-altering transformation every Christ-following leader is longing for.
Ruth Haley Barton has dedicated her life to distilling the wisdom to be found within these spiritual disciplines that position us to be strengthened and renewed at the level of our souls. Her guidance has been indispensable in the body of Christ at large, but also in particular to my colleagues and me at IJM. Leaders at IJM have been well guided throughout many seasons by the companionship of this very book in your hands, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, the assessment tool this new edition now offers (see the appendix “How Is It with Your Soul?”), and the quarterly retreat experiences Ruth leads through the Transforming Center.
Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, alongside Ruth’s wise counsel and friendship, has ministered to the entire IJM family and to me in extraordinary ways. It is a great honor to commend this book on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. Indeed, like Ruth’s leadership, the wisdom in this book will guide us into the decade ahead knowing better how to seek the restoration of our souls that can lead to the transformation of the world.
How deeply we need this restoration and transformation, and all the more as we move further into the work of the kingdom and the promise of Jesus that he is, with us, making all things new.
T
S
M
Moses remained in a solitary, nonpublic existence for a long time. It was as if—in some deep and fundamental way—he just let go. He let go of his dreams of fixing anything, helping anyone or even living among his people. Instead, he received what was given. He was offered a home in Midian, and so he settled there. He was given a wife, and so he took her as his own. He fathered a son, and it became a touchstone in his life, an opportunity to name something about himself with more courage and realism than ever before. When his son was born, he named him Gershom because “I have been an alien residing in a foreign land” (Exodus 2:22).
This was a profound admission. It had taken a very long time, but finally Moses was able to acknowledge what was underneath the behavior that had gotten him where he was. He was finally able to admit that all his life he had struggled with his identity and he was mad as hell about it. People around him were confused about who he was because he was confused about who he was. His relationship with Zipporah was a case in point. After Moses helped her water her sheep, she brought Moses home to meet her father and introduced him as an Egyptian. Moses didn’t even bother to correct her. He was so accustomed to being unclear about his identity and adapting himself to whatever situation he found himself in that he just kept quiet and let people believe what they wanted.
But one day, after he had been in the wilderness long for enough for solitude to do its good work, he was able to claim his greatest pain and brokenness. It is doubtful that Moses knew exactly what was going on in that wilderness place. Most of us don’t when we first begin entering in. But solitude does its work whether we have any cognitive understanding of it or not. Just as the physical law of gravity ensures that sediment swirling in a jar of muddy river water will eventually settle and the water will become clear, so the spiritual law of gravity ensures that the chaos of the human soul will settle if it sits still long enough. So, after weeks and months in solitude, the chaos in Moses’ soul settled a bit. He began to make sense of his own history, and he was finally able to say, “This is who I am. The experience of living as an alien in a foreign land is what has shaped me.”
Finally he had come home to himself.
All of us have need of this kind of homecoming in which we claim our experiences as our own and acknowledge the ways they have shaped us. Then we are in a position to take responsibility for ourselves rather than being driven by our unconscious patterns of manipulating and controlling reality. As Parker Palmer observes, “A leader is a person1 who must take special responsibility for what’s going on inside him or her self, inside his or her consciousness, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.”
Taking responsibility for oneself may well be more demanding than taking responsibility for a congregation or an organization! Whether it happens early or late, it is crucial to our capacity to lead spiritually.
WHEN OUR PATTERNS GET THE BEST OF US
Former President Bill Clinton is a well-known present-day example of how our unwillingness to face the unresolved pains of our past can diminish our current effectiveness as leaders. It is common knowledge that Clinton’s growing-up years were spent in a home with an alcoholic stepfather who was violent, abusive and unfaithful to his mother. By his own admission, Billy’s job as a young boy was to take care of the rest of the family and to act like the “father” in the situation. This was a heavy and unnatural weight for a young boy to carry, but even so, when asked about his early life Clinton has insisted that he had a good life and a normal childhood.
A more accurate assessment of the situation offered by a psychologist provides what is perhaps a more realistic perspective:
The perception that2 he had a normal childhood indicates Clinton’s deeply ingrained denial of his youthful experiences. . . . But one must grasp his deep-seated level of denial when he describes a childhood of repeated episodes of abandonment; parental alcoholism; marriage of his mother; divorce; remarriage; his stepfather’s death, violence directed at his mother, brother and himself; his second stepfather’s death; gunshots discharged in his home as a normal life. A true description of Clinton’s childhood would be: chaotic and highly abnormal.
Apparently, Clinton’s ability to deny what was real and to describe his childhood as something it was not developed at an early age, and it helped him survive psychologically. It is what he needed to believe in order to cope with his situation; however, the long-term result was that he developed unconscious patterns of denial that did not serve him well as an adult and as a leader. When Clinton, as president of the United States, responded to accusations about drug use, draft dodging and marital infidelity with this deeply patterned denial of reality, it was disastrous to his credibility and effectiveness as a leader. He was likable but he was not trustworthy.
While it is tempting to sit back and make smug judgments about a leader whose foibles have become very public, let us be quick to acknowledge that none of us are immune to the results of being born as a tender self needing to find ways to protect ourselves from the wounding elements in our environment. Some of us are just better at hiding it than others! But we are no longer children. As adults on the spiritual journey, we have a responsibility to name and claim these ineffectual and destructive patterns as our own, as one step toward the repatterning that must take place if we are to live into the love, trust, and courage that God is inviting us to. Even though our coping mechanisms and sin patterns may be more subtle than the ones described here, they are just as detrimental.
A LOOK IN THE MIRROR
Part of the reason that leadership is a crucible is that if we stick with it past the initial euphoria, the demands of long-term leadership usually push us to a place where our patterns are clearly revealed. The demands of ministry keep our face pressed up against the mirror until we are able to acknowledge the hidden dynamics that are driving us:
A leader whose father was stern and demanding and who never heard a full and unconditional “I love you” finds himself on a performance treadmill, always working unconsciously to gain approval and a sense of self. The drivenness that results can become a debilitating source of exhaustion.
A leader who was raised in a punishing environment where there was an inordinate emphasis on “being good” and behaving develops perfectionist tendencies that keep feelings of shame and inadequacy at bay. The longer this perfectionism remains unacknowledged, the more likely she is to hurt herself and others with unrealistic expectations and ideals.
A leader who experienced not being wanted at conception or birth learns to doubt his basic self-worth and develops patterns of hiding his real self from others. This type of leader remains distant and aloof because that seems easier than risking more rejection. It prevents him from entering into authentic community, which is essential to spiritual leadership.
A leader who has experienced profound loneliness, abandonment or loss learns to keep busy as a way of avoiding the deep feelings that such experiences bring. While staying busy, she is able to maintain a superficial peace; however, over time it becomes obvious that she is unable to “stay in the room” and deal honestly and rigorously with the most challenging issues that need to be faced.
A leader who has lived with significant emotional or physical deprivation in childhood may have developed a scarcity mentality that causes him to be stingy and ungenerous. The emptiness he experienced may also result in narcissistic tendencies, which are expressed in an insatiable need to be in the limelight or to be associated with a person or an organization that is in the limelight. Eventually others tire of his self-centered approach and no longer want to be around it.
A person who was raised in an emotionally volatile and unpredictable environment develops a tendency toward fear and undue caution. Consequently, she refuses to take the kinds of risks that are necessary for spiritual journeying and soulful leadership.
It is impossible to overstate the exhaustion that results from all of this. But we need to remind ourselves that these are unconscious, reflexive responses to past realities and it is a work of God’s grace if we are made aware of them—as painful as it may be. The more volatile and out of control our responses are, the more we can be sure that we are reacting out of old adaptive patterns rather than God-graced, Spirit-filled responses. While there may be dynamics in our current leadership situation that trigger such reflexive reactions, most often our reactions are more connected to the past than to what is actually going on in the present or what is called for in our current situation. Such reactions are not reflections of our true self in God—the person God created us to be and is creating us to be.
CONVERSION IN THE WILDERNESS
Moses discovered what we all must discover: that solitude is the place of our own conversion. In solitude we stop believing our own press. We discover that we are not as good as we thought but we are also more than we thought. As we slowly come in contact with our own dysfunctions, we unveil our need for security and all the ways we try to use God and others to get it. We are alarmed to discover that when the shepherd is starving, he or she may start devouring the sheep!
In solitude our illusions fall away and we see—sometimes with disturbing clarity—our competitiveness, our jealousies, our rage, our manipulations. We get in touch with our fears: fears of loneliness and abandonment, fears of really loving and allowing others to love us, fears of our sexuality and how powerful it is in combination with our spirituality. When we are in the company of others, it is easy to project our fears and negative feelings onto them; when we are in solitude, we must claim these inner experiences as our own. We discover that we are not who we thought we were in all of our self-aggrandizement, nor are we who other people think we are in all of their idealized projections.
Those things we cannot accept in ourselves
we project upon others. If I do not admit my shadow side,
I will unconsciously find another
who will carry my shadow for me. Once this projection
is made then I need not be upset with myself.
My problems are now outside and I can fight them out there
rather than within the real arena, myself.
JOHN ENGLISH, SPIRITUAL PILGRIMS
If we stay in solitude long enough, we become safe enough with ourselves and with God to say, Yes, this is who I am. We are able to surrender to who we are—our limitations, our clinging and grasping and possessiveness, our selfishness and our fear. This is not a yes that says, I will remain the same. This is a yes that says to God, “I recognize what I am now, and I am none other than what I am. Whatever it is that most needs to be done in my life, you will have to do.”
This is a very hard place for a leader to be. We are so used to being able to fix what needs fixing and push ahead with whatever needs doing that for a while we may find ways to try really, really hard to do something about what we are now seeing. Some of us will wear ourselves out trying to change ourselves before we realize that it is not about fixing; it is about letting go—letting go of old patterns that no longer serve us. This is frightening, because we are not sure such an approach will really work. And we are not sure what we might lose in the process. At this point it is helpful to remember that all we have to lose is what we don’t really want anyway. All we stand to lose is the false self—the adaptive behaviors that are ultimately in opposition to the life of love and trust and being led by God that our hearts long for. To give ourselves to this process, we must trust that our true self is hidden with Christ in God, to be revealed as God sees that we are ready to live into it.
When we fail to name reality accurately, we are left to wander around in the wilderness of our illusions because we are hiding from ourselves and from God. We remain in bondage to that which does not take us forward in the life of grace, which is the very thing we say we want. The good news is that when we name our situation correctly—even (and perhaps most especially!) the parts that are so painful to acknowledge—we become more real. This is an awakening that leads to what is described in Christian tradition as the purgative way.
The purgative way3 is a commitment to self-knowledge, which is essential preparation for serious Good News. Purgation (or self- simplification) is a way of “clearing the decks for action.” The house is swept and polished and the garbage is collected and burned. The purpose of purgation is always remedial and never punitive. It is meant to help and not to punish. . . . The purgation of the soul provides an opportunity for growth and for the integration of the warring elements inside us.
Purgation leads to conversion, which is primarily about the “movement to a fully integrated4 and maturing life directed towards its true end and home.” In that sense it is deeply hopeful. Conversion has to do with self-knowledge that brings with it an awareness of the discrepancy between what we are now and what we are meant to be. We may also discover with shock that even our “faith” has been, in part, enslaved to the ego. This awareness is accompanied by confession and repentance and maybe even a sense that we are falling apart. As the warm feelings associated with our earliest conversion experience are withdrawn, we are left with questions of the deepest kind. We long to be released from our own particular bondage, but we are also aware of our powerlessness to bring about this release.
The opportunity for conversion is brief,
and our lives are littered with missed opportunities.
ALAN JONES, SOUL MAKING
I will never forget reflecting on these dynamics with a group of pastors while on retreat. After receiving teaching, they were released for a time of solitude to reflect on their own. When we rejoined one another, I asked them to tell us something of what had taken place in their time alone with God. One pastor blurted out, “I think everything I have done in ministry so far has been from my false self!”
My spontaneous response to his spontaneous outburst was to laugh—which is very unusual for me given such a sobering comment—but it was a laugh of sheer delight. Delight at seeing God at work in his life. Delight at his honesty. Delight in knowing that this is exactly the kind of self-awareness that opens us to new (and really good!) places on the spiritual journey—places of encounter with God that result in health, healing and greater authenticity in ministry.
INNER AND OUTER FREEDOM
These aspects of conversion along the purgative way are never meant to be harsh or punitive. Rather they are to facilitate a letting go that opens us to receive what we are being given. As we face who we are more honestly, we find we are finally ready for an encounter with God. The first leg of Moses’ journey as a leader, then, was not to lead anyone else anywhere; it was to allow himself to be led into freedom from his own bondage. Before he could lead others into freedom, he needed to experience freedom himself. In solitude he was able to let go of the coping mechanisms that had served him well in the past but were completely inappropriate for the leader he was becoming. Yes, anger and the need to prove himself through the misuse of power would probably always be temptations for him (as we see in Numbers 20:1-13, for instance), but they would never again be his normal and accepted mode of operation. Now it was time to relinquish the weapons of false security, to come out of hiding and make room for something new to come.
Theophane, a Cistercian monk residing at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, tells a striking story that beautifully illustrates such letting go:
I saw a monk working alone in the vegetable garden. I squatted down beside him and said, “Brother, what is your dream?” He just looked straight at me. What a beautiful face he had.
“I would like to become a monk,” he answered.
“But brother, you are a monk, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been here for 25 years, but I still carry a gun.” He drew a revolver from the holster under his robe. It looked so strange, a monk carrying a gun.
“And they won’t—are you saying they won’t let you become a monk until you give up your gun?”
“No, it’s not that. Most of them don’t even know I have it, but I know.”
“Well then, why don’t you give it up?”
“I guess I’ve had it so long. I’ve been hurt a lot, and I’ve hurt a lot of others. I don’t think I would be comfortable without this gun.”
“But you seem pretty uncomfortable with it.”
“Yes, pretty uncomfortable, but I have my dream.”
“Why don’t you give me the gun?” I whispered. I was beginning to tremble.
He did, he gave it to me. His tears ran down to the ground and then he embraced me.
PUTTING DOWN THE GUN
Most of us have a gun—some way of protecting ourselves and making ourselves feel safe, hidden under the robe of our leadership persona. It is fairly easy to keep our gun hidden most of the time, but we know that it is there and that it is incongruent with the person God is calling us to be. We also know that if it were to “go off” unexpectedly, it would do great damage. We are uncomfortable living with it, but we are afraid to live without it. Sometimes we let ourselves dream of being free, of traveling without the need to pack a weapon. Holding on to our self-protective patterns is one manifestation of our unwillingness to surrender ourselves to God for the journey that is ahead.
The freedom question, then,
is not whether we can do whatever we want
but whether we can do what we most deeply want.
GERALD MAY, THE AWAKENED HEART
But there is another desire that is greater than our desire to be safe. It is the desire to abandon ourselves to God and the life to which he is calling us. It is the desire to leave Egypt and journey with others to the Promised Land. Sometimes we hear God’s whisper, “Why don’t you give me the gun?” We feel ourselves trembling with longing and with possibility, with fear and with hope. He waits quietly, patiently. And as we are ready, we give him that behavior, that pattern, that sin that we have relied on all these years, our tears running down to the ground. At least for a moment, we let ourselves feel what it’s like to be free.
PRACTICE
Take a few moments at the close of this chapter to sit quietly in God’s presence. Breathe deeply as way of loosening any tension you might be feeling or fear you might be holding. Allow yourself to “settle into” your humanity: your own history, your own personality, your own heritage, your own past and your own present. Without trying to fix anything or figure anything out, just let it be what it is and experience God’s unconditional love for you and everything that has made you who you are.
After resting in God’s presence, invite him to help you start seeing and naming the experiences that have shaped you. What are the patterns underneath the behaviors and situations that are disturbing to you at this time? Are there places in your life and leadership where you recognize that you are holding yourself tight rather than experiencing full surrender to God, where you recognize that you are not free? Are you aware of hidden patterns or even addictions that are hindering your spiritual journey and your effectiveness as a leader? Do not allow this time to degenerate into morbid introspection. Do invite God to guide the process and illuminate those areas that are important for you to see and name at this time. Remember that this part of Moses’ journey took a very long time, so do not expect it all to come in a day or two.
O God, gather me5
to be with you
as you are with me.
Keep me in touch with myself,
with my needs,
my anxieties,
my angers,
my pains,
my corruptions,
that I may claim them as my own
rather than blame them on someone else.
O Lord, deepen my wounds
into wisdom;
shape my weaknesses
into compassion;
gentle my envy
into enjoyment,
my fear into trust,
my guilt into honesty.
O God, gather me
to be with you
as you are with me.
