by Elizabeth | Mar 7, 2011 | Learning Story
An opportunity to bring restoration to the broken beauty of Toomer's Corner's oaks
But if I say, “I will not mention him
or speak any more in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire,
a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
indeed, I cannot. Jeremiah 20:9
One of the great joys I have in coaching and teaching is helping people discover their calling. Two core questions of calling are, “Who are you? What is your purpose in life?”
Last night, at an installation of SGA officers for the year 2011-2012, I heard many young women and men summarize the past year’s work and express gratitude to various folks who had helped them in their job. Many of them spoke to the core realities of calling. One young man thanked his parents, saying, “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here.”
Another young man’s concluding words were more remarkable, in part because they are not the kind usually spoken in a public university gathering: “I am excited about the big story that lies ahead for Auburn University, and I am thankful to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who is writing this story.”
Afterwards, he asked me, “Was that too much?” I didn’t say ‘no’ just because I’m his mom. I said ‘no’ because it was clear that the words were not pre-meditated, that they had arisen to the tongue and spilled out. No force could have stopped them — they were the proverbial fire within his bones. And they were the truest summary of his calling. Everything he does in the coming year will be defined by the Story he claims. In his passion to bring beauty and justice to the campus, he will deeply bless many, but not without sinning and harming some. He will work in unity with his team; but at times, he will fight against division. He will be part of a team that brings deep and lasting impact to a major university. In all that arises in the coming year, his story will be wrapped in a larger story of a God who knows his heart, forgives his sin, and redeems him to be a restorer of broken things. It sounds like a calling to me.
What about you? Stop where you are and give a few minutes to consider your calling. Who are you and why are you here? (Hint: you can start with the very basic question — ‘why am I here’ literally — right where you are in this moment. Trace that back to see the larger realities the answer reveals.)
by Elizabeth | Mar 5, 2011 | Learning Story
A good day for A Good Day from Sojourn’s new album:
by Elizabeth | Mar 3, 2011 | Learning Story
I’ve spent the last week or so preparing a workshop for leaders. Concluding a section on leadership struggles, I thought, “This is beginning to sound like a downer! Leadership, as tough as it is, also brings great joy.” I took out a sheet of paper and wrote, “The surpassing joy of leadership is…” and began filling in the blank. Here’s what I came up with. What would you add?
The surpassing joy of leadership is resting in Christ’s righteousness to draw those we shepherd to rest in Christ’s righteousness.
The surpassing joy of leadership comes in inviting the weary and heavy-laden to come to Jesus and exchange yokes of performance, pleasing, pressure, and independence for his “light and easy” yoke: trusting his mission, doing his work, telling his story, loving his creation.
The surpassing joy of leadership is doing higher math: watching as one become two, two become four, four become sixteen…exponential multiplication of men and women living and loving in the Gospel Story.
The surpassing joy of leadership is growing unity: helping twelve become one, each part functioning fully in its purpose and beauty, to present a living body glorifying the God who formed them.
The surpassing joy of leadership is tending a garden: weeds, shrubs, roses, sunflowers, herbs, string beans, and more: God’s multi-variegated species growing and flourishing in wild worship service of the Creator God.
by Elizabeth | Mar 2, 2011 | Learning Story
Cruciform: Living the Cross-Shaped Life Coming April 1
This blog is a regular attempt to remind us all of what it means to live God’s story for His glory. Today I am thrilled to offer you a tidbit from Jimmy Davis’s new book, Cruciform: Living the Cross-Shaped Life. I can’t wait for you to read the entire book — if you want a sample, read Chapter One on www.cruciformpress.com. Meanwhile, read this and rejoice in how God created us:
“When God made mankind he created a people with a purpose, sons who would serve. They were not only meant to take delight in one another, but also to take dominion over all that God had made (Genesis 1:28). As his ―kingdom of priests, the mission of God‘s son-servants was to ―work and keep creation, to cultivate and care for the place in which he put them so that it would be the dwelling place of God and his people, for the glory of God and the good of others forever (Genesis 2:15; Numbers 3:7-8; Exodus 19:6; Revelation 1:6, 5:10). God is a relationship that rules, a being who is doing. So those made in his image and likeness are to relate and rule, to be someone special to him and to one another as together they do something special for the glory of God and the good of all he has made.” Jimmy Davis, Cruciform.
by Elizabeth | Feb 28, 2011 | Learning Story
LIVING THE STORY INCLUDES EVERY MOMENT OF THE DAY
“Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the Lord promised on oath to your forefathers.” Deuteronomy 8:1
Have you ever noticed how many “today”‘s and “this day”‘s are in the book of Deuteronomy? I never had, until I read this introduction by Eugene Peterson. I get jazzed about Living THE STORY — about what it means to take the Words on the Page of the Bible and walk right into TODAY living them. Don’t get me wrong — that doesn’t mean I’m going to get everything right. But the Word also has Words about people not getting things right. What it does mean is that I have Hope for the many moments when things in the day go wrong. This is a great word to preachers and teachers, but even more a great word for all of us:
“This sermon does what all sermons are intended to do: Take God’s words, written and spoken in the past, take the human experience, ancestral and personal, of the listening congregation, then reproduce the words and experience as a single event right now, in this present moment. No word that God has spoken is a mere literary artifact to be studied; no human experience is dead history merely to be regretted or admired. The continuous and insistent Mosaic repetitions of ‘today’ and ‘this day’ throughout these sermons keep attentions taut and responsive. The complete range of human experience is brought to life and salvation by the full revelation of God: Live this! Now!”
Eugene Peterson’s introduction to Deuteronomy in the Message.
I challenge myself and invite you into the challenge — let’s LIVE this Word TODAY!
by Elizabeth | Feb 25, 2011 | Learning Story
Not THAT kind of COACHING!
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a profession like this?” No one has actually asked me that question, though I think a few of my friends have thought it, and I know I have. People know me to be all about heart change, not behavioral modification, about gospel transformation, not the American religion of “bootstrap-pulling.” “Is coaching even biblical?” some folks are wondering.
Not necessarily. There is a kind of coaching that believes in the basic goodness of humanity and suggests we can look within to find the power to live a life we design.
That, thankfully, is NOT the only coaching approach. I coach because I believe we have a story in which we are called to live. I coach because I believe there is freedom in Christ Jesus to live more fully in this story. I coach because I love being a part of people growing in their capacity to learn, live, and love in their unique story.
Because there is so much misunderstanding about coaching, I’m always on the lookout for helpful ways to describe the process. Recently, I returned to Proverbs for a thorough study. Eugene Peterson’s words danced off the page, inviting me to join in.
Listen to his words. Coaching is all about walking alongside a person as they grow in the wisdom to “live skillfully in whatever conditions we find ourselves.”
Many people think that what’s written in the Bible has mostly to do with getting people into heaven – getting right with God, saving their eternal souls. It does have to do with that, of course, but not mostly. It is equally concerned with living on this earth – living well, living in robust sanity. In our Scriptures, heaven is not the primary concern, to which earth is a tagalong afterthought. “On earth as it is in heaven” is Jesus’ prayer.
Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves in.
Wisdom has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our sexual lives, going to work, and exercising leadership using words well and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthily, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes toward others that make for peace.
Threaded through all these items is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do.
Proverbs concentrates on these concerns more than any other book in the Bible. Attention to the here and now is everywhere present. Proverbs distills it all into riveting images that keep us connected in holy obedience to the ordinary.” Eugene Peterson, Conversations: The Message Bible with Its Translator
