Transforming Church

For three hours that evening, I could feel His presence in the room, and a plan unfolded, providing more clarity than I've ever had about the call on my life. The last few years, God has been revealing a path for me, a few steps at a time, shapes in a mist. As I move towards the shapes, I find more detail revealed. The pieces of the puzzle that came clear that night will guide my work for years. I described the plan in my article last month, Are We Equipping our Future Leaders.

The Spirit Calls. I am one of those rare people who came to the Lutheran faith through adult baptism. The Holy Spirit first touched my heart as I started my family and my business career. I had a sense of dissatisfaction, and a melancholy feeling, "There must be more than this."

Growing up in the midst of Vietnam and Watergate, I had lost faith in institutions and the rampant materialism gripping our country. As a child of the counterculture, I began a spiritual quest that took me through a study of Islam, Eastern religions, and the spiritual practices of the American Indians. I looked everywhere but the church, because I couldn't see Christ for the Christians.

Two weeks after we were married, a fire destroyed our apartment burning most of our wedding gifts. Genie and I took it as a sign that we were too attached to possessions. So, we took the insurance money, bought camping gear and took off for a three-month trip to the mountains of the American West. Carlos Castenada, in his book The Teachings of Don Juan, introduced me to the idea of a Path with a Heart. I would translate that today as, "God has a plan and a purpose for your life."

As we traveled through the Rocky Mountains that spring, camping in the snow and discovering the wilderness, God revealed himself through His creation. The majestic splendor of the Rockies, the backbone of our country, struck me in its grandeur and the interconnectedness of life. My conclusion was "This can't be an accident, there has to be a God."

Much later I determined this was the touch of the Holy Spirit on my life, drawing me to Him, calling me, reaching me through my dissatisfaction with life and leading me to look for more. A couple of years later, after the birth of our daughter, we came back to the Lutheran church. Genie grew up Lutheran, and we were married in the church. Vernon Luckey, a gifted charismatic pastor and friend, touched my heart. For the first time in my life, I saw someone for whom, I could clearly see, faith was real. Vernon baptized me into the church, and started me on my Christian walk.

I wrestled in the first years after my baptism with whether God was calling me into the ministry. By then, I had two small children, and was working in the family construction equipment business. The Spirit touched me in a powerful way at Cursillo (Via de Christo) in 1982. For the first time, I truly felt forgiveness. I realized that it was the Spirit that had touched me in the mountains. For the first time, I had an experience of the Spirit and God's grace in a church setting. To that point, I had a very difficult time connecting with God in church or in Lutheran worship.

Where is God leading? One of the themes of Cursillo was, "Bloom where you're planted, God needs people in all walks of life." So, I decided to continue on the path I was on, to work in the business, to offer my gifts to the local church and to wait on God to illuminate the "path with a heart." In my meager prayer life, I continued to seek God's will, but mostly heard nothing. I made this commitment: "God, I don't know what you are calling me to do in this life, but when you make it clear, I will do it." In the next decade or so, I stumbled across the "path" a few times and the energy was incredible. I got glimpses of the holy, and lived for the rare "mountaintop" experiences. Mostly, I stumbled through the spiritual desert.

The feeling of God tugging on my heart planted the first pieces of vision in our life. We had our two kids in our early twenties, and realized they would be out of the house by the time we were in our mid-forties. So, Genie and I agreed to work to achieve financial independence by age 45 and walk away from the business and do whatever we felt called to do with the rest of our lives.

For the next two decades, I struggled to find balance between my work responsibilities, my family, and my leadership work in the church. Most of my involvement in church just burned energy away. I found very little of my work on Council and Committees rewarding or energizing. I realized we in the church were trapped in structures that did not work well anymore. The easiest way to burn out volunteers is to have them serve in areas where they are not gifted and called.

By the time I hit my early forties, I had no clarity of what I would do after leaving the business. So, in my mind, I moved the deadline for "walking away" to age 50. We stay in our ruts because it is the path of least resistance. To change the path, we must find a compelling picture of a desired future that will motivate us to climb out of the rut.

Out of the Rut. Charlotte Roberts, a wonderful mentor and friend, led me through a visioning exercise as part of a Leadership and Personal Mastery course in the mid-90's. I revisited my plan to "walk away" and realized I must clarify my vision. The Personal Mastery model creates structural tension through the contrast between a clearly articulated vision (a preferred picture of the future) and an unflinching look at current reality vis-a-vis the vision.

This process started me in a round about way to discern my gifts. I spent about a year with the antennae up, trying to sense the energy flows in my daily activities. I became conscious that many things that I did very well just drained energy away. Other things were generative in nature, where I would feel energized by the activity. I found that my work with bright young people early in their careers was most satisfying. So, I developed a design principle for my evolving picture of a second career. I wanted to do more things that energized me, and less that just drained energy away. I have since learned that our gifts and our passions are pretty closely intertwined, so this process helped me discern my gifts.

I realized that I had some proclivity towards teaching, speaking and consulting. A look at reality told me that even though I had some business success, my southern accent (which causes people from other parts of the country to whack your IQ by about 20 points), and my lack of a college degree would impede the accomplishment of a second career in this arena.

So, as I developed a vision of a second career, I found the energy in the contrast with my current reality to return to school. I talked the good people at Georgia State into giving me one of the two or three slots a year in their Executive MBA held out for non-degreed candidates. I finished the program in 1998. I may be the only person you know with a Masters, but no Undergraduate degree.

Breaking Free. The untimely deaths of three dear friends in their early fifties within a year convinced me to act on my vision. These losses hit hard, and I realized there were many things I still wanted to do. I had an opportunity to sell my business interests at the end of 1999, and to leave the company in 2000. I entered into what I call my "decompression" period, as I left behind the busyness of a decade of sleep deprivation and 60 hour weeks.

We bought our first place in the Colorado mountains, and began looking for land to build a log home above Boulder. We only looked at one parcel of land, surrounded by the National Forest, looking at Rocky Mountain National Park and the Continental Divide. We immediately said, "This is it." The sense of peace about the decision was incredible. We bought the land and began construction of Eagle Peak the next year.

God's hand was surely in this, because the previous owner had already constructed foundations for a log home and a separate garage. The garage foundation was almost as large as the home foundation, which we found curious at the time. When we designed the garage roof to hold our solar panels (we are off the grid), we found we had created an upstairs space large enough to hold retreats for 10 people or more. So, creating a retreat center became part of the plan.

At the same time, I began studying with Robert Fritz, who first developed the idea of Personal Mastery. I had an offer to join a very successful consulting firm as a partner, but I did not feel led in that direction. God had blessed us with enough so I did not have to earn a huge living. So, I began to meditate and pray for Him to illuminate the path.

Hearing the Call. Over the next few months, God revealed a call for me to bring the leadership and management skills I had spent 25 years learning into the work to bring renewal to the church. At first, I could only perceive shapes in the mist, as He revealed one piece of the puzzle at a time. All along the way, I would encounter people God had brought from many different life experiences to a place where we shared a common vision.

First, I learned that my partner, Al Sagar, had been asked to create what has become the Academy for Transformational Leadership. Then, Mike Foss came as keynote speaker to our 2002 Synod Assembly. I immediately bought into his vision of Discipleship, outlined in his book, Power Surge. We began a series of events with Mike in Atlanta, and joined in collaboration with his Vital Pastoral Leadership Network. In 2003, Al and I came to the Transformational Leader Gathering, and broadened the collaboration. The TLG had been seeking grant money to develop a web presence. Over the next year, we found enough common interests to partner together to create the TransformingChurch.com community.

At each step of this journey, God revealed additional pieces of the puzzle. Each time, as I pondered the shapes in the mist, and asked, "Lord, is this the path?", I would hear nothing. It was only when I took a step in faith towards the shapes in the fog that I would hear confirmation.

A Plan Comes Together. Now, God has revealed how seemingly disparate elements fit together to reveal a whole picture. Like pieces in a puzzle, when you put enough of them together, you can see the big picture. Now, I know why we built the retreat center in Colorado. Now I see how Fritz's Creating What Matters, the Academy and TransformingChurch.com all fit together. It's all part of a larger collaboration that seeks renewal of the church, and a return to first century discipleship as a model. Last month's article describes this plan.