Category Archives: character development
Repentance that lasts a lifetime (part two)
Buried in the archaic curiosity of the King James translation is a gem: “…godly sorrow worketh repentance … not to be repented of…”. [2 Cor 7:10]
Repentance that sticks.
Consider that when God sorrows, it’s not the self-serving, feeling-sorry-for-myself kind of sorrow that leads to death. God sorrows for others.
There’s the key to deep and lasting repentance: you must enter into the suffering of others. In this case, the suffering your sinfulness has caused those around you: your spouse, your family, your coworkers, your friends.
A decade ago I was in a workshop participating in exercises and discussions designed to help me see my impact on those I claim to love. Like most everyone I know, I’d made a practice of overlooking how my preference to look good, feel good, be right, and be in control had affected those closest to me. There was so much frustration and sadness and hurt and resignation that I just didn’t see.
Didn’t want to see.
Until… one particularly powerful exercise about the value of life.
In an instant I saw myself as an analyst, with lab coat and clipboard, standing on the sidelines of my own life, carefully studying its complexities. Once I understood, I’d lay down my clipboard and lab coat, walk off the sidelines and into “the game” of life.
Trouble is, while I’m on the sidelines, I’m not in the game.
And, without me, people I love were suffering.
Most poignant, when our kids hit adolescence, the game-changers came with such ferocity and velocity that – for years – I couldn’t figure it out. So… I stayed out of the game. Annie, essentially, parented all six kids through the turbulence and discontinuous change of their adolescence– alone.
In the awful hours that followed, I drank deeply from the cup of their suffering.
Slowly, thoroughly I considered each child and what it would’ve been like for them to traverse the stormy uncertainties from child to adult without their dad… without my love, assurance, encouragement, tenderness, confidence, collaboration, sensitivity, and wisdom.
Not that I’d actually gone anywhere. I’d mastered the art of being present without being present.
Then, I imagined what it must have been like, instead, to get a steady diet of my disappointments, judgments, distance, comparisons with my [idealized] recollections of my own adolescence, demands, and ever-present distraction.
I chose to enter into the loneliness, confusion, isolation, frustration, loss, sorrow, fear, perplexity, discouragement, de-valuing, and opposition they likely experienced because of the way I’d chosen to be.
I let myself feel everything.
Deeply. Influentially. Unrelentingly. Sickeningly.
It broke me.
It devastated me.
It undid me.
THANK GOD!
Coaching Distinctions #11
Repentance that Lasts a Lifetime (part one)
I thank God for the gift of repentance. For the provision in the atonement, of forgiveness, cleansing, and restoration of relationship when I do. What’s troubled me, though, is how often I seem to be “returning to the well”: asking forgiveness over and over again for the same things.
What about you?
Since “repentance” means to turn and walk the other way, why is it that we so often turn back?
Why do we repent of our repentance?
I get that I’m fallen. Human. Frail. All that. And I get that Christ lives in me [Col 1:27]. That God has given me everything I need for life and godliness [2 Pt 1:3].
So, what of all this repenting and turning back and repenting again?
What does it take for repentance to stick?
Long ago, when I was a devoted “King James Christian”, 2 Corinthians 7:10 caught my attention. “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.” Godly sorrow produces repentance we don’t repent of. Repentance that sticks!
So, what kind of sorrow is “godly”? How does God sorrow that is so different than the “sorrow of the world”?
When the “world” sorrows, it sorrows for itself. It is sorry it got caught. It is sorry for its loss. It is sorry things didn’t turn out better. Sorry there are prices to be paid because of its poor choices. Sad that it behaved the way it did. Poor decisions produced outcomes it didn’t intend or choose.
That’s why worldly sorrow leads to death.
It is self-consumed.
Consider how differently God sorrows. As mentioned last time, when God sorrows, it is for us. Why did Jesus weep at the tomb? He was impaled by the grief of Mary and those who loved her and Lazarus [Jn 11:35].
As Jesus approaches Jerusalem, he contemplates the difficulty that’s about to befall its residents, and he weeps for them [Lk19:41-44]. God’s concern is not himself but others.
And, I think, that’s the key.
Repentance that sticks emerges from truly and deeply and honestly and gut-wrenchingly sorrowing for others.
In particular, for those our sinfulness has hurt.
This kind of repentance requires that we drink deeply from the cup of their suffering. The suffering we have brought on, whether intended or not.
It is slow, awful work to honestly consider the impact of our selfishness on others. To climb into their skin and feel the pain we’ve caused them.
Yes, it’s horrible.
And, life-giving.
The Formidable Four (part four)
When someone behaves in ways that don’t seem to make sense it’s usually due to one of the “formidable four” motivators: looking good, feeling good, being right, or, today’s focus: being in control.
The older I get the more sure I am that it is impossible to control anyone … other than myself.
And, controlling myself is a full-time job.
Ironic that we invest so much energy and effort trying to control that which is most uncontrollable: another human being.
Don’t believe me?
Try raising a child.
You may eventually soothe your bellowing newborn, but not before dozens of attempts to quiet her went unheeded.
Teenagers? We had six… at one time. Honestly, I don’t know if any of us were under control at all during those chaotic years.
Undaunted by the reality that we can’t control our kids, co-workers, congregation, or spouse, we continually employ strategies in an attempt to do just that.
The beleaguered clerk who, after being humiliated at work, comes home and browbeats her spouse.
A teen who, feeling powerless to communicate effectively with his parents, steals the car and runs away from home.
The spouse of the rapidly-ascending politician who suddenly comes down with a mysterious illness and can no longer make public appearances.
An elder who, being confronted, deftly pivots and attacks the semantics or logic of the person raising the concern.
The denominational executive, discouraged by the anemia in the churches under her influence, who travels from one seminar to the next hoping something will happen to stem the tide of attendance and financial declines.
A minister who pretends not to see troubling immorality among church officials, hoping it will all take care of itself.
These control strategies have enormous prices attached to them. Prices are extracted from the perpetrator and those connected to him. When I’m with a coaching client who’s operating out of the formidable four, we explore the impact on those closest to the client.
What prices are your loved-ones, co-workers, congregants paying?
What do you think it’s like to be in relationship with you?
The key is to drill down far enough until the client has embraced – both mentally and emotionally – the devastation caused others. This is slow, painful work.
To be impacted by the pain one’s control strategies have caused others is central to repentance.
The Apostle Paul noted: “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation…but worldly sorrow brings death.” [2 Cor 7:10] See, worldly sorrow is sorrow for myself.
But when God sorrows, God sorrows for us. [Lk 19:41] So, to truly repent from our commitments to the formidable four, the pathway runs straight into the suffering we cause others.
From this place, repentance lasts a lifetime
Coaching Distinctions # 9
The Formidable Four (part two)
It’s true. You never do anything for no reason.
So, whether you’re coaching yourself or someone else, it’s helpful to dig to discover what actually motivated apparently incomprehensible behavior. Four basic motivations are often at the root of such actions. I call them the formidable four.
Looking good.
Feeling good.
Being right.
Being in control.
We’ll examine the second one today.
Have you noticed society’s growing intolerance of anything difficult, painful, challenging, or distressing?
The desire to feel good and to avoid feeling bad are enormously influential in American culture and, sadly, in the Church today. It influences contemporary theology.
The ridiculous notion that ‘God’s great aim is to make you happy’ has helped undermine our stamina as people of faith. When distress occurs, we no longer interpret it as a normal feature of faithfully following Christ [Act 14:22, Phil 1:29, I Pt 2:21]. Rather, we consider it evidence that something’s gone wrong. Gravely wrong.
Consequently, we prioritize the deliverance from suffering over the development of our souls.
The result? An anemic witness and a society gone awry.
Feeling good quiets pastors when it’s time to forcefully confront a sinning member—particularly when she wields enormous power or money.
Feeling good keeps denominational leaders moving incompetent ministers from parish to parish—instead of directly challenging his dysfunction.
Feeling good invites elders to ignore a series of relatively mild, but troubling, ethical breaches—because to take decisive action might be misinterpreted.
Feeling good confines a senior pastor to the seclusion of her study rather than mix it up with church members who are unhappy or unpredictable.
Feeling good beckons Christians to ignore the impact of their self-centeredness on those God’s called them to influence.
Our Enemy, knowing this vulnerability, loves to pile on. When I’m facing opposition in one area of ministry, trouble will often beset another. Before long, the wheels have come off in a third area of life, then a fourth and a fifth. As the challenges mount, determination can evaporate into discouragement and morph into despondency.
To shield myself from additional difficulty, I can begin to withdraw from life.
My life.
This creates a vacuum. When I am absent from my own life, mayhem takes over. Since I’m not present, those who are accustomed to my participation try to make sense of my absence. Since they don’t see me, they make stuff up. And the rumors start. In time, the congregation’s confidence in the pastor’s leadership is so eroded that there’s no coming back.
When you catch yourself withdrawing from your life or ministry, my invitation is to trust God and leap back into the middle of your life.
Amazingly, you’ll usually find God there waiting for you.
Coaching Distinctions # 7
The Formidable Four (part one)
Last time, I suggested that no matter how astonishing, everything you do, at some level, made sense, at the time you did it. Almost always, in situations like this, you were motivated by one or more of the formidable four.
I once worked for a clinically-diagnosable narcissist. This psychological malady renders a person unable to recognize anything that disagrees with the favorable fantasy they hold of themselves.
One needn’t be a narcissist, though, to succumb to the first formidable foe: looking good.
Every one of us prefers to look good—particularly in the eyes of the people we decide are important to us. Those whose childhood was particularly punitive when a disappointment occurred will relate more closely to the motivation to avoid looking bad.
As kids, many of us made innumerable blunders when taken over by one or the other of these motivators.
Remember your first crush?
If you’re like me, you made a million mindless moves to appear as smooth and slick as your favorite Hollywood hero. In the decades since, our heroes may have changed, yet we’re still vulnerable to the desire to appear in as favorable a light as possible. Sometimes, even more favorable than possible.
Not long ago, I helped a pastor work through a difficult situation. He’d been caught preaching other ministers’ material, failing to fully credit his sources. As we unpacked Ralf’s failure he discovered he’d long felt inadequate as a rhetorician. He’d come to believe the swelling numbers in his congregation needed better sermons than he could bring. So, he “juiced” his messages by plagiarizing others.
For a brief season early in my business career, I enjoyed fairly stunning success. Near the pinnacle, I was flown by corporate jet to New York to receive some accolade for the performance of the business unit I ran. The return flight was so turbulent I expected to lose my lunch—literally—at any moment. Facing me, just inches from my knees was the Chairman of our parent company’s board. Rather than admit my intense distress, I tried to ride it out— barely avoiding a career-limiting disaster. Had my greatest fear been realized, the potential damage would’ve been far greater than the brief humiliation of admitting my weakness.
Ministers are particularly vulnerable to looking good.
It seems many congregations would prefer to follow an idealized image of a minister rather than an actual human being who, like every bible character, is flawed, needing the Savior. So, rather than model what it means follow Jesus amidst struggle and disappointment, ministers hide their scars, failings, and vulnerabilities from an adoring, albeit intolerant, church.
Detrich Bonhoeffer commented on this in Life Together: “The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everyone must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship…So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy.”
The tragic result, too often, is the eventual revelation of gross immorality, which mushroomed in the damp darkness created by the collusion of minister and congregation—both desiring to look good.
Coaching Distinctions # 6
Prices and Payoffs
Crazy people do things for no reason.
For the rest of us, there is always a reason for whatever we do. You might not like it, but it’s true.
We prefer to imagine that “something just came over me” when I chewed out the State Trooper while pulled over for speeding. Or, we claim innocence when we’re caught doing something impulsive and out of character: “I have no idea” where that came from!”
Here’s the thing, since you’re not nuts, you actually had a reason for doing what you did. True, you’re likely unaware of your motivations. I’m inviting you to consider that, if you’ll look honestly, you’ll be able to uncover why you behaved as you did.
When coaching a client who’s in some kind of trouble, one helpful practice is to examine the prices (costs) and payoffs (benefits) of the choices that contributed to the mess. It sounds something like this:
What prices are you paying, because of the choice you made?
What prices are being paid by the people on the other side of this difficulty?
What payoffs, or benefits, do you receive by making this decision?
It’s this third question that stumps most folks. The assumptive answer is “nothing”. So, I remind my client that they’re not certifiable, and to dig deeper. You see, no matter how incomprehensible your choices now seem to be, they made sense to you at the time. Inevitably, the client will discover that there was rationality behind the action.
Over the years I’ve learned that at some level, every decision made sense at the time to the person who made it. How it made sense is worth investigating.
Even more helpful is what comes next.
We collaborate to identify the beliefs that lay beneath that logic. For example, a pastor I’m coaching might realize that she distrusts an elder, and afraid of being manipulated like in her last pastorate, she’s unwittingly locked in a conflict she didn’t know was there.
Such a belief can be articulated this way: this [situation, person, experience] reminds me of that [something troubling from the past], so, I reacted as if I was in the same situation.
Problem is, this isn’t that and when I’m living in the present as if it’s essentially what happened before, I behave in ways that undermine my effectiveness now. What might surprise you is that this recurring drama plays itself out all the time.
You do it, too.
It’s also common to be unaware that you’re motivated by of these four powerful desires:
- To look good
- To feel good
- To be right
- To be in control
More on this next time.
The seedbed of envy
I remember it well. Helping with a character development workshop in Grand Rapids, my trainer, Lawrence Edwards, made this startling observation: Comparison is the seedbed of envy.
Huh?
Envy – that ugly, distasteful character defect that fuels pettiness, judgments, isolation, and division – grows in the soil of comparison?
I never thought about that before… comparison.
Hmmmm. I do that a lot, I thought.
It’s been how I orient myself in life.
“She’s much smarter than I am, but him — not so much”. “That guy’s career is in better shape than mine, I’m glad I’m not in her shoes”. “Shoot, I’m fatter than she is, but not as heavy as that slob…”.
Comparison seems so natural. 
In my marriage with Annie the thought stream is endless: which of us is messier, better with money, more consistent with the kids, more creative, less fun to be around, healthier, harder working, better with people, etc, etc, etc.
Comparison, I learned, breeds envy and it’s impossible to love the one I envy. Impossible.
See, comparison invites me to focus on all the areas where you and I are different. Rather than serving to bring us together, the practice of comparison divides, distances, isolates.
So while the differences between us may be real they don’t have to be important — at all. It’s possible to surrender the practice. It can be eradicated from your thinking. I can choose to focus on what we share; what we have in common; what connects us. The more I do this, the more rich and satisfying my relationships.
In coaching this practice is indispensable. To coach well, I ‘get on the same side of the table’ as my client. When a client perceives that we’re together, she’s less defended, more open to what I bring. Conversely, if you sense that I think I’m better than you, even if you believe you could benefit, you’ll likely resist what I have to say.
Ever sat with a couple heading for divorce? 
It’s terrible. All they choose to see is what divides them. As if they’ve made a ritual of examining and magnifying every difference between them while ignoring and overlooking the wonderful things they have in common.
Envy, jealously, resentment, bitterness – these grow in the seedbed of comparison. Unchecked, they’re deadly to intimacy, to collaborative effectiveness at work, to friendship.
Catch yourself comparing. Catch yourself ten times in the next week or two. With Thanksgiving family reunions on the horizon it shouldn’t be hard. When you do, choose to find something you two have in common — and focus on that.
Watch what God does in your relationships, and your heart, as you do.
Coaching Distinctions # 4
Throwing my Body into the Middle of the Room (part two)
Last time, I introduced the phrase: Throw your body into the middle of the room and see what God does with it. Let me clarify.
When you’re surprised by life and find yourself frozen in uncertainty, the pervading impulse is to stop.
Ponder.
Evaluate.
Assess.
Trouble is, often life’s reality won’t give you the luxury of opting out. Action is required—and it’s the last thing you want to do.
So, while my brain is screaming: “Stop!” “Wait!” “Protect yourself.” “Stay safe.” another option appears: Kirk, throw your body into the middle of the room…
Trust God and leap into the chaos.
I imagine myself picking my body up and – literally – heaving it into the midst of whatever it is that has stymied my brain. It’s a decision of my will – my heart – overriding the cautioning calculations of my head.
Once I’m there, in the middle of all that mess, God seems to show up. Options appear. Resources seem to arise. And, maybe best of all, I’m 100% alive and awake looking for God to step in.
Driving home from work, I come upon an accident. It’s just occurred. Broken glass, twisted metal, a stunned, vulnerable fellow amid the wreckage. I leap toward his car… An hour later the police have left. He and I are talking about Jesus who has preserved this young man’s life… I’ve thrown myself into the middle of the room.
We’re in Washington, DC touring with our young sons. The hotel room phone 
rings and I learn that my brother Glen, on a short-term mission trip in Irian Jaya, is dead. Malaria. We didn’t even know he’d been sick…
Without hesitation, I book a flight to tell my sister and parents the horrible, terrible news. They must hear it in person. I am the one to tell them. I throw myself into the middle of the room, trusting that God will be there in the brutal, painful hours that must follow.
Our word crisis comes from the Greek. It means “to decide”. In moments of crisis you are thrust into conditions where you must decide—right away. To hesitate is to decide. Not to decide is a decision. Each has repercussions.
All through life you are training yourself, preparing yourself for an uncertain future.
It can be no other way.
Practice throwing yourself into the middle of the room. The more you do, the more effective you’ll be when you don’t have the luxury to sit and wonder and weigh and ponder.
Throwing my Body into the Middle of the Room
A while back I was training in an evocative character development ministry. Central to my struggle — in that training process and in life—was my reluctance to move, to leap into action, before I fully knew what to do. And, more importantly, if it would turn out. I’d trained myself to make plans, and back-up plans, and sometimes, plans to back-up the back-up plans.
The night of my conversion to Christian faith on the Baker Library lawn, I discovered that my penchant was borne of the unwillingness to trust God with my life and the most important parts of it. At that moment, I knew it was really important to God. The surrender that accompanied my conversion was deep and thorough and whole-hearted.
A bunch of it didn’t last.
Years later, in the midst of that deep character work, I was challenged to consider how much our culture loves to analyze, to assess, and to reflect. We in the Church have just about perfected the art— reducing a vibrant, adventuresome life following Jesus to sitting, listening, learning, pondering, evaluating, judging, and isolating ourselves with those who most closely have reached the same conclusions. Christianity isn’t so much a way of being in life as a series of ideas and ideals we agree with. Sad.
Friends in that ministry who I respect and trust challenged me to throw my body into the middle of the room and see what God does with it.
To do whaaaat?
The “middle of the room” is where the action is. It’s where the messiness is. It’s where God’s provision is needed most.
When uncertainty invites me to stop and study and analyze and consider and hedge my bets – I stop moving. Ceasing to move had become a way of life. As I’ve aged, life’s become more intricate, interwoven. As my career advanced, the challenges have become more pernicious. As my children have grown, so has the complexity of their difficulties. All this entices me to stop, to evaluate, to assess … to not take action.
What about you?
Life is meant to be lived in action. When you’re in motion, learning accelerates. Discoveries come quickly. Feedback is instantaneous. Mid-course corrections yield immediate results. The provision of God that you are is added to the mix. As you engage, trusting God, divine resources appear—sometimes through you, sometimes not. Often, they surprise everyone.
When I don’t know what to do, the last place I wanted to be was the middle of the room. Funny thing is, that’s exactly where God’s waiting to meet me. My friend, Dan Tocchini told me: if I will give all that I am, God will make up whatever I lack.
I’ve found this true too many times to doubt it.
What about you?
Compendium (part ten)
Leadership Courage Series # 44
Go first!
Leaders go.
They take action.
They leap.
Managers, strategists, futurists, idea practitioners, educators, and visionaries can all get by without going—and particularly without going first. Leaders, however cannot.
Leaders lead. It’s just what they do. That what Jesus did. The apostles, too.
Somehow, as Christianity has passed from generation to generation the profile, role, and expectations of the local pastor has morphed—radically.
I work with pastors. Lots of them. These pastors can exegete the biblical text, minister the sacraments, craft and deliver a sermon, counsel, comfort the hurting, and coordinate the dozens of moving parts that go into a weekend service. All these things they do well. Seminary prepared them. Others modeled how it’s done. And they are busy, busy, busy with ministerial commitments of all kinds.
And yet, it doesn’t seem to be working. Offering a pretty wonderful worship experience, a variety of ways for friendships to flourish, and reasonably good religious education and entertainment options are not provoking the kinds of life-change we intend. Christianity in the US is not growing. Our influence in society is waning, too.
Remember Tom Skerritt’s character in A River Runs Through It? That brand of pastoral ministry just won’t do—not in this day. The “Reverend Maclean” of today has to be a leader and one who draws, develops and deploys leaders who advance the Kingdom of God in the community outside the local church. To lead like this takes risk. And, risk involves pain.
My friend and mentor Ennio Salucci says that fundamentally, there are two types of pain in life: the pain of sacrifice and the pain of regret.
To go first, with all your chips in play, trusting Jesus to rescue you as you attempt God-honoring exploits … this is to experience the pain of sacrifice.
To sacrifice the comfort and safety of what’s familiar for the danger and uncertainty of the unprecedented. To live the life God’s given you — with your whole heart engaged — is to be fully alive, awake, and influential.
To pull back from this to settle for what’s safe, easy, and predictable— is the short route to the pain of regret. You know people in their later years who are going through the motions… asleep to the amazing life God’s made them for.
Think about the movie Rudy. The conversation between Daniel Ruettiger Sr. and his son: “Chasing a stupid dream …causes nothing but you and everyone around you heartache…” his father intones, half-awake. You see the pain of regret all over this man’s visage.
As American society becomes increasingly anxious and intolerant of difficulty and challenge, the Church can leap into the fray—led by pastors who have grounded themselves in the fidelity and goodness of God, who’ve learned to govern their emotional reactivity, and who are willing to lead by going first.
Will you?
