So much of what is written or spoken about in Christian leadership seems to be about the organisational task of moving a church towards its ‘vision’ or intended direction. Not wrong and I agree that there is that element to leadership, but anyone who lasts a while in ministry knows that the real work of leadership and ministry is actually done in the micro-setting – one to one in personal relationships.

It’s as we help people grow and develop that our ‘organisation’ actually becomes what we want it to be. More specifically its as we help people become more like Christ that the church takes on the shape it is intended to have. ‘Equipping the saints’ may have a ‘skills’ aspect to it, but I am increasingly convinced it is more to do with shaping character and helping people tap into what God is up to in their lives.

You just can’t do that anywhere near as effectively by running a program or preaching a sermon. Even a small group has a limited impact. But as you sit with someone and spend time fully engaged with them, you have the potential to make a significant difference.

These days I tell people I have 3 simple roles leading, teaching and meeting with blokes – just 3 things. I’ll also meet with women where its appropriate, but by and large the most important stuff I do is in those purposeful connections with men. Its where the bulk of the ‘leading’ gets done.

I remember as a young pastor knowing I needed to catch people one to one and doing it, but not really knowing quite what I was doing, why we were meeting or what I was hoping for. I often felt awkward and like I was spinning my wheels, and even wasting people’s time because unless it was a Bible study, I lacked a sense of purpose and I also didn’t feel genuine permission to ask significant questions of the people I was meeting with. I’m guessing they felt it too – nice to see you, but so what?…

I can’t say I feel that now, nor do I have many meetings where there is no sense of purpose. Sometimes the purpose is simply to catch up and shoot the breeze. Many of those in our church community are my good friends and its nice to have lunch and talk cars, caravans and surfing. But most often if we are meeting one to one it will involve deliberate inquiry as to a person’s life trajectory, particularly their spiritual formation, and then helping them reflect on their experience of God and prompting them to consider what God may be saying in their life. Its not about how often you’ve read your Bible, prayed and gone to church. Its focused on helping them pay attention to the work God is doing in their own experience and as they encounter scripture. Its intentional and unapologetically, direct at times.

Of course people can do this themselves but sometimes its easier when someone else is guiding and prompting than just listening to your own thoughts.

I’d say that any Christian leader who isn’t spending intentional one to one time with a small but significant number of people is actually neglecting the core work that is required to shape a community and lead it purposefully. Preaching only makes sense if we know the people we are preaching to, leading only takes form when we know the people we are called to lead.

Its the real work of leadership that we have been called to – helping people form into the likeness of Christ and then seeing what takes shape out of that.

You probably wouldn’t have even known the under 19 World Cricket championships were happening earlier this year except for one incident. A West Indian bowler ‘mankaded’ the last Zimbabwean batsman as the game drew to a close, denying the Zimbabwean team the opportunity to go thru to the quarter finals.

Chances are unless you know cricket you also have no idea what ‘mankading’ is, but if your name is Vinoo Mankad you probably regret the day you decided to play by the letter of the law rather than the spirit, because now a piece of universally regarded unsportsmanlike conduct has been named after you.

Mankading can happen when the bowler is running in to bowl and the batsman at the non-strikers end is walking down the pitch in preparation for a potential run. The batsman is out of his crease and the bowler can dislodge the bales and make an appeal. Technically the batsman is fair game and needs to be given out.. The etiquette of cricket is that you need to give at least one warning before taking a wicket in this way. Even then its considered a pretty dodgy practice.

Vinoo Mankad will be remembered for all of history now, but for all the wrong reasons.

A bit like Aussie cricketer Trevor Chappell…

Oh yeah… we did that whole underarm thing against the Kiwis didn’t we?… That happened 35 years ago now but its still one of the ugliest moments in Trans-tasman sport. Acting on instructions from his brother Greg who was captain at the time, Chappell bowled the final ball of the day… underarm. Yeah – he rolled it along the ground… What an insanely dumb thing to do… The Kiwis needed a 6 to win the game and by bowling the way he did he denied them any opportunity of making a shot that would give them the result.

I think we might now call that ‘un-Australian’… But the fact is we did it. It was legal – it was permissible in the rules of the sport, but it just goes to show there can be a canyon of difference between legal and ethical or ‘permissible’ and ‘good’.

But its always been that way.

You can be perfectly correct and yet obnoxiously wrong. Mark Twain once spoke of those who were ‘good people in the worst sense of the word.’

I think of the story in the gospel of John where Jesus is confronted with the woman caught in adultery and he chooses not to play by the rules of his own religion. Those who were ‘good in the worst sense of the word’ have arrived and declared her guilty and punishable by stoning – which was true.

Jesus knows this is the case and says ‘sure go ahead – kill her – but let’s start with the person who has never sinned throwing the first stone.’

It gets a bit quiet in the street and John writes that one by one they dropped their stones and left.

So the woman is then left alone with the one man who could genuinely pronounce a condemnation – the one without sin – and yet he chooses not to enforce the law as it is written. Maybe its his law – he can do what he likes with it… but its not that… Its not an abrogation of the law but an awareness of what the law was there for in the first place.

He says to her ‘so… no one left here to condemn you then hey?’

‘Nope’.

‘Well – I don’t condemn you either.’

I think its really important we see that first statement Jesus makes because his second statement gets a lot more attention. His first action is to not condemn – to withhold whatever punishment was due – because that is what God’s like.

Then he says ‘alright – go and don’t sin any more’.

Because God’s also like that. He calls us to a better life, but that call comes out of love and grace rather than fear of condemnation.

In John 1 Jesus is spoken of as the ‘one full of grace and truth’, which I find a beautiful tension. We so often err on the side of grace – allowing sin to go unchecked, or on the side of ‘truth’, pointing out the rules divorced from their context.

What’s the point?

Simply that we can ‘get it all right’ and yet get it so terribly wrong. We can create a culture of law abiding and even ‘enforcement’ in Christian communities (whether its overt or subtle) and yet miss the heart of God that loves, accepts and forgives all of us for our screw ups.

If Jesus came to set us free then it won’t be because we live in trepidation that one day someone is going to Mankad us – or nail us on a technicality – because God just isn’t like that.

So if I were to ask you now how ‘full’ your life is and you were to express it as a percentage what would you say?

60%?… 70%?… 80%?…90?… more?…

When is ‘too full’? And what implication does that have?

If that seems like a strange question then maybe its because you haven’t come to appreciate the importance of ‘margins’.

By ‘margins’ what I mean is living in such a way that you have plenty of space in life. You are not perpetually rushing – not hurrying from one activity to the next – not feeling like there is never enough time in the day, and even in the quiet moments feeling edgy because there must be something to be getting on with.

I remember as a 20 something living such a packed life that I simply ran fast from one activity to the next and it set the pattern for my existence for the next 10 years. It was largely ok as a single guy with boundless energy, as even emergencies managed to get catered for by just having a later night. In that phase of life the goal was to get as much done as was physically possible in one week.  There simply were no margins and if there had been I would have filled them to overflowing!

But I don’t believe its a healthy way to live – running hard and squeezing as much in as is physically possible. In fact I would suggest it is a way of depleting the soul, draining joy and slowly but surely bringing us undone in every way.

The absence of margins inevitably means an absence of time in reflection – because reflection will be seen as unproductive time. And the absence of reflection leads to a life lived without examination. What was it ole mate Socrates said about the ‘unexamined life’? I don’t think I have ever heard of a more ‘contemplative’ leader having a moral failure (which isn’t to say it hasn’t happened), but far more often it is the driven, type A workaholic who finds themself here, and my guess is that it is in part related to the absence of reflective space and the ability to see their own vulnerability.

The absence of margins will see a productive body but a withering soul.  However… because busyness and accomplishment is valued so highly in our society you can often get away with a depleted soul for longer than you can the lack of achievement. In reality busyness and hurry are like cancer to the soul and while their effect may not be immediately visible, the damage is being done. That’s not to undervalue achievement because I still love to get stuff done and I want to be successful, but its to say that it cannot be at the expense of the soul.

The absence of margins will inevitably have a detrimental effect on relationships. You simply can’t stop and be present with people if your brain is constantly focused on the next thing. You will piss people off because you clearly ‘need to be elsewhere’. You have better things to do than sit back and fritter a few hours away with friends. If you’re overly busy then it will show in your speech. You will talk fast and people will not rest easy in your presence… and if people don’t feel at ease around you then relationships will always struggle to take shape.

The absence of margins will also show up in your availability to people who call outside of your schedule. Margins are the space in life where the unexpected stuff can be attended to – and with care and focus rather than just as a duty to be dispensed with as quickly as possible.

I find it hard to measure ‘margins’, but I know when they are there and I know when they aren’t. Its been a long time since I lived with narrow margins and I doubt I ever will again.

To live with generous margins could be perceived as lazy, as wasteful even and at times I have struggled with being seen that way. But to live with margins also means to live in such a way that both people and God are paid attention to and given the time they deserve rather than being quantified as a task and allocated a slot in the diary.

In speaking of this I used to say that since living with margins ‘I get less done, but I’m a nicer person for it’, but more recently I’ve been questioning whether I actually ‘get less done’, or if in fact I just accomplish different things.

I guess it all depends on what we believe really matters in the end…

Each evening when my head hits the pillow, the last thing I do is an ‘examen exercise’, a focused reflection on the day that has passed, giving thanks, looking for high points, low points, energy spikes, darkness, relational connections and the presence of God in all of it.

It’s a very simple but effective way of daily noticing what is happening in life and of seeing Gods hand. In the movement of the day it’s a bit harder to be conscious of the spirit’s work, but in the silence and dark of the night as I replay the day’s events in my mind I am able to join some dots, glean insights and get curious about what God may be doing.

Yesterday was a fairly typical Friday – a ‘church’ day for me – with meetings, people connections, admin and a bit of down time. It was so typical that it would have been easy to miss the moments of joy and fun. But an examen allows you to tune into the often unseen moments of gladness and pain that may otherwise go unobserved.

And it was a surprising few minutes of reflection.

As I turned the light off and gave thanks the first images foremost in my mind were some Facebook pics I had just seen of my 13 year old son Sam, doing his first talk to the kids groups he is involved with leading. It was inspiring and joy giving – to see him doing it – but also to hear him articulating the nature of his own faith as we drove home.

As I looked for stuff to be alert to I was reminded of a conversation from earlier the day – a person who wasn’t doing so well and needed prayer and probably a follow up conversation. I prayed for the person.

When I looked for moments of joy where my energy levels rose, I found two that I didn’t expect. One was when I fixed the sound system in my car. A dodgy earth wire was causing an amplifier to cut in and out randomly. I don’t know much about sound systems but I managed to track and fix the problem.

Satisfying. I like fixing things especially things I have little grasp of.  In ‘noticing’ that I was reminded that I find enjoyment in the accomplishment of stuff and I like problem solving. Perhaps I should do more of it…

The second was a funny moment when we picked the kids up from youth group and I noticed the high school boys having a chin up competition. I joined in and my 14 chin ups raised a few eyebrows – hardly olympic standard, but always nice to keep people guessing about what a 52 year old body is capable of… I chuckled as I drove off with the kids. The joy was in the surprise.

There was much in that day to be grateful for, to ‘pray about’ if you like, but I find the examen is most helpful for tuning in to the activity of God and to the more specific and unique moments that bring energy to my soul.

You can’t manufacture those moments, but noticing them, seeing a pattern and then living in line with them is just another way of being more fully the person God has created you to be.

Lately I’ve been pondering the concept of ‘trajectory’ as a way of making sense of the shape that our lives take, especially the faith dimension.

You see no one just wakes up one day and discovers that they are fat. Obesity is a result of a series of many interconnected life choices that have leant in the direction of over-consuming. Neither does anyone wake up fit, and in great shape. Again a series of many, many choices over many years will have contributed to this outcome.

So the idea of spiritual maturity takes form in a similar way. No one wakes up one day as a ‘spiritual giant’, nor do they suddenly find themselves spiritually empty. From the time we surrender our life to Christ we make choices that either move us in the direction of more substantial faith or we we can head the other way and make choices that run at odds with our stated intention of becoming Christlike.

Most of us lumber around and have fits of passion followed by periods of indifference, or maybe even despair.

But our choices matter.

Small choices here and there that conflict with where we hope to head are like a donut in the middle of a strict diet. Not ideal, but not likely to make an significant difference to the final destination. But if a person were ‘on a diet’ and knocking back a donut a day – while stating their intention was to get slim, then we’d view them with a bit of skepticism. Its a repeated pattern of choices and it will have an outcome in due course.

I’m certain that where we are in faith today is the result of a series of choices we have made over a long period of time, and equally where we will be in 15-20 years time will be a result of the choices we are making now.

So perhaps the question we need to grapple with is ‘who do I want to be in 20 years time?’ Because if we don’t have any sense of our ‘life trajectory’ then chances are we will unknowingly take the path of least resistance and finish up in a place we never intended to be.

Now that I’m nearly 52 I’ve seen this so often – some gradually move into spiritual maturity and health while others slowly drift into a life where faith has diminished to a vague memory.

So who do you want to be?

And what choices do you need to make to ensure you remain on a trajectory that allows you to become that person? It isn’t just going to happen.

Ok so discipleship and Ikea are two juxtaposed ideas…

But… if you have ever been to Ikea then you know that the people traffic is set up to go in one direction only, to guide you thru the tempting array of sterile and banal euro-furniture that is currently trendy.

All’s good so long as you follow the plan and keep moving with the crowd, but if you want to back track – if you want to shop ‘in the opposite direction’ then you inevitably find yourself bumping into people and weaving against the flow.

Its easy to flow with the crowd in the direction you are expected to go, but try challenging that and it becomes awkward and difficult. In Ikea you aren’t meant to move in a contrary direction… (you might not hit the cash register and buy stuff)

Its a snapshot of discipleship – choosing not to go with the flow, but to swim upstream and to move in a whole different direction. Jesus’ sermon on the mount is your guide here. You never leave the environment, but you choose to live differently within it.

If you do, expect the forces of society to try and constrain you back into the ‘right direction’, but also know that you don’t have to go…

You can walk right back out the door you came in thru and buy your stuff on Gumtree…

(Thanks to my mate Billy for the conversation over coffee this morning that percolated this thought)