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Two weeks ago, I reviewed with our New Life Fellowship pastoral staff team our “Rule of Life.” First drawn up in 2007, it has been the abiding document to order our life together for over five years. I read through the document paragraph by paragraph, giving history, context, and theology  around important sections.  Our new staff asked many very good questions. I walked away convinced, more than ever, of how important, and powerful, this tool is for each church leadership team.

How can we lead others to transformation in Christ if we are not experiencing transformation ourselves?

I share this document with you with the hope and prayer you will consider thinking through some of these issues for yourself and your leadership team.

I invite you to read the entire Pastoral Staff Rule of Life on our website.  I am including here a few paragraphs that are particularly significant.

NLF Pastoral Staff Rule of Life: Excerpts

Yet we recognize that leadership brings out the best and worst in us. In many ways, the crucible of pastoral ministry “introduces us to ourselves.” We affirm, as Parker Palmer has written that “a leader is someone with the power to project either shadow or light onto some part of the world and onto the lives of the people who dwell there…A good leader is intensely aware of the interplay of inner shadow and light, lest the act of leadership do more harm than good.” (Let Your Life Speak, pp. 78-9)…

We are essentially called to seek Him above all else (Ps. 27:4), that is, to be contemplatives, out of which we carry out our active ministry. At the same time, we recognize God has called us to a level of intensity to bring Jesus Christ to our city and world through serving in different roles as a pastoral staff at New Life Fellowship Church.

1. Scripture – Our lives are built on the Word of God. It is our food and primary means of revelation from Him. We spend time each day in Scripture, seeking God’s face, dwelling in His presence and praying out of His Word.

2. Silence and Solitude –We spend at least one full day a month in silence with God. (Note: We eventually moved to choosing the third Wednesday of each month for this. Each person goes to a place outside their home, whether it is a beach, a local retreat center, or a park, to be alone with God for the day. The one requirement is not to do the work of church on that day, but to be with God.)

3. Daily Office –  We pause to be with God two to three times a day to remember Him, spending time in communion with Him, preferably with Scripture, silence, meditation and prayer.

4. Study – We are consistently growing and taking steps to keep learning.

5. Sabbath – Each week, we set aside a 24 hour period to keep Sabbath to the Lord, structuring our time around the following four characteristics of biblical Sabbaths – Stop, Rest, Delight and Contemplate.

6. Simplicity – We model percentage giving (using the tithe as a minimal guideline) in giving to God’s work here at NLF.

7. Play and Recreation – We have a life outside of New Life Fellowship for balance and health.

8. Service and Mission – Another critical issue for healthy service is having clear and realistic expectations. Together with our supervisors and the elder board, we regularly update our job descriptions and goals in order to meet these challenges.

9. Care for the Physical Body –  We seek to regularly care for our physical temples through healthy eating habits, consistent exercise, and sufficient amounts of sleep, respecting our God-given limits.

10. Emotional Health –  We embrace emotionally healthy skills and behaviors that put feet on our theology to love well (1 Cor. 13).

11. Family – We believe in the equal value of God’s call to both singleness and marriage. We affirm with Scripture the gift of singleness for leadership (1 Cor.7:25-40). We desire high-quality marriages, out of which we are able to minister to others.

12. Community – We encourage all staff members to be in relationships with mature people outside NLF; these relationships might be with a spiritual director, a mentor, a counselor or a mature friend, depending on each person’s unique needs and season in God.

How else have you seen leadership teams model integrity and transformation for their churches?

I don’t like endings.I prefer not to ask: “What is it time to let go of in my life right now? And what is standing backstage in my life waiting to make its entrance?”

Endings are painful and slow. I like to know exactly what is God’s new beginning before I end something. I have written about embracing grief and loss so that God’s resurrections might come in The Emotionally Healthy Church and in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality.Yet, after 25 plus years of leadership, I found William Bridges and his book entitled, Transitions:Making Sense of Life’s Changes filled with golden nuggets around this process.

He breaks down our transitions to three key elements:

1.Endings. You can’t have new beginnings without endings. Neither nature, nor God, work that way. When I have tried to keep a program, a staff position, a ministry, or a role alive when it was ending, it has died regardless. The only difference was my fears kept me from making room for God to birth a new beginning.

Bridges unpacks the nature of endings into 5 areas: disengagement (a separation from the familiar), dismantling (we feel like we are being taken apart one piece at a time), dis-identification (death to our previous roles, not being sure who we are anymore), disenchantment (what gave us life at one time no longer does) and disorientation (things that seemed to be important no longer seem to matter much now).  More important than the exterior change is the interior letting go of what no longer fits.

2. Waiting. This is the  “no man’s land” between the old way of being and the new that has not emerged. It is the neutral zone of emptiness, chaos, meaninglessness, confusion. Yet this is the place of God birthing new seeds, dreams, insights, directions, revelations  to us. All the major shifts in my leadership and in NLF were all germinated in the waiting period.

3. New Beginnings. These are often untidy and messy as they begin. Only in retrospect do they look clean and orderly.

Is it any wonder why we have such an aversion to the pain and struggle that accompany endings? I am learning, finally, that endings truly must come first for God’s new beginnings to come forth.

What chapter might be ending in your life right now? What new chapter might God be writing for your life?

I recently finished Eric Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. It was, by far, the best biography on Bonhoeffer I have read. After pondering his life, the following were three key questions I asked myself:

1. Do I really have the courage to follow Jesus wherever He leads? Between his natural talents and upper-class, family connections, Bonhoeffer could have done anything with his life. Yet he became a pastor and theologian.

When Hitler came to power in Germany, passing legislation that German Jews without Aryan blood be removed from the German Christian church, Bonhoeffer immediately saw the contradiction. He was one of the first to speak out: “Only he who cries out Jews can sing Gregorian chant.”  We must “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves” (Proverbs 31).   As a result, he lost his position, his security, his reputation, his opportunity to marry the woman he loved, and his life out of his deep convictions. Knowing the atrocities being committed in concentration camps, he became a double spy and participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler (after much struggle I may add). In following what he believed was Jesus’ path for him, he was misunderstood by both non-Christian and Christians. When I think Scripture and the urban poor, racism, global poverty, sexism and the drive for comfort that surrounds me, I am challenged by Bonhoeffer’s courage and clarity. How is my “courage quotient today?”

2. What new kind of monasticism is really needed today to restore the church? Bonhoeffer became head of an underground seminary that engaged in lectio divina, praying the psalms, Offices, silence, etc. Why? He believed: “The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount. I believe the time has come to gather people to do this.” I believe something deeper within EHS and other movements around the world is emerging – if we have the courage to follow His voice. In his book on Ethics, he wrote about the way people worship success. The topic fascinated him. What might obedience to God’s will look like today over and against a focus on success as numbers of people in our ministries and budgets?

3. How foundational is theology to my leadership, or am I still too busy and focusing too much on ‘what works’ ? Bonhoeffer was a person of Scripture. He loved the Bible, spending a great deal of time on theological reflection. This drove his decisions. The churches he pastored the classes he taught were small. He lost his positions of “privilege.” His focus was on obedience to the Father in his context. Yet his impact was enormous both in Germany and around the world.  Am I taking the time needed to truly wrestle with the theological questions around leadership and the church in the midst of the demonic powers seeking to seduce and silence us in our day? Have I too been swept up by growth, hurry, cultural expectations? And do I have the courage to fully embrace where God’s truth leads, especially when He calls me to something costly where I too might be misunderstood?

There are many other lessons I could mention. What might you add?

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