Tag Archive - Journey

The Journey Continues…A Stage Along the Way

November 5, 2009 in Marriage-Family, Ministry-Theology, Therapy-Psychology with 7 Comments

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[image by Maria Keay]

For those who choose to take the journey, it is lifelong. The longer the journey, the more nuances it takes on and the more it opens up to broader experiences. Yet, a journey must progress step by step. So it is with our spiritual journey. (pp. xvii, The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith by Janet O. Hagberg and Robert A. Guelich).

I have been meditating on Exodus 17:1 for a good eight years now. The idea of journeying from “place to place” or from “stage to stage” as some translations state has always captivated me.

In fact….it brings me a sense of peace and comfort knowing that I am not expected to journey from A to Z (a one chance shot to move from beginning to end, or to have life figured all out), but rather God moves me from place to place as desired. Where I am now is not my final stage in the journey, but rather one step along a path that will continue to guide me throughout my lifetime. Sometimes the stage may require a lengthy stay, and at other times it may be a quick stop. But each stage is designed to equip and prepare me for whatever step lays next. Whether I move forward, backward or lateral…that does not matter. What matters is that stages are just steps along the way in our larger journey. Or in our larger story as Donald Miller would say.

Why all this talk about stages and journey?

Because after seven months in one stage, I am moving on to the next, and I thought I might share what I have learned, and hopefully you may glean some nuggets for your own journey.

In March of 2008 I decided to leave PCEC so that I could move into my own private practice. And now after seven months in my private practice I am moving on again. This time to HopeWorks in Plano, TX. There are several reasons for this, but one thing my wife and I decided early on was that whether or not I stayed in private practice, it was that risk/step to private practice that moved us out of situation we felt stuck in, and into a new breadth of opportunities, as well as new opportunities for discernment.

Why Am I Moving On?

  1. I have learned that I enjoy working more in a collaborative group environment.  Being my own boss was great, but it was also lonely at times.  Being in a group setting allows me to still be my own boss, but in a supportive environment.


  2. Part of the journey has been learning what I am good at, and what I am not so good at.  As well as learning what skills I want to strengthen, and which skills aren’t as strong, nor should be spent inordinate amount of time working on.  What I learned was that though I can do all my own administration (I am pretty organized), I didn’t thrive on doing Quickbooks, scheduling, bills, etc.  In fact, it zapped my energy for much needed areas that I should be devoting my time to (i.e. therapy itself, study, marketing, etc.).  Now I’m in a setting where people who are gifted with billing, scheduling, payments, etc. will take care of all that for me, and I can focus on what I think I do best.  Working with people in a therapeutic setting, as well as providing education for churches, speaking and writing.


  3. I’ve learned that to become the best therapist I need to become it will require that I give all my energy to that.  (A minimum of 10,000 hours according to Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers).  This new setting allows me to do that, while still allowing me to do the other things I love as I mentioned above (speaking, teaching, writing).


  4. This situation I think allows me to set better boundaries and take better care of my family.  I’m no longer thinking about all the bills and paperwork when I go home at night, because someone does that for me.  I found that because of that I’m more attentive to my wife and daughter.  And shouldn’t I be practicing that if I’m going to be telling couples and families they need to be doing the same thing?


  5. I really do get the best of both worlds: I’m still my own boss, set my own schedule, building what is essentially my own practice/clientele, but in a group setting under the auspice of HopeWorks.  I love it.

I am already seeing new clients at HopeWorks, but will also continue to see current clients in my private practice until the end of January. I would appreciate your prayers…as well as any referrals to me, or any opportunities you may have for me to speak, teach, or write.

So I feel very blessed and content believing that this is what stage God has me in along my journey. And even though at times I feel like I should be farther along, or because at times I feel like a failure because I moved on to a new place in seven months…I’m at peace knowing that life is full of nuances, and to fully live life we must be prepared to move where God leads us…even if it’s not what we had expected. My father and I were discussing a while back that the longer we live life, the more we realize that God provides us with opportunities in areas that we have never expected or envisioned if it were left up to our own making.

So a key to our journey…to writing our story well, is to be open for God to lead you in those unexpected ways.

Can you share an example of the stage you feel God has you in now and how you got there?

Has God ever brought you to a stage totally unexpected from what you had planned?

Depression: Getting Honest With Our Journey

July 20, 2009 in Ministry-Theology, Technology-Social Media, Therapy-Psychology with 2 Comments

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[image by Church Online]

This week I have had the opportunity to share some thoughts around depression with LifeChurch.tv. You can watch the 4:34 minute video, An Anchor in the Journey-Exodus 17:1 as I talk about the importance of seeing our lives as a journey, and the experiences we will come up across during the journey…such as depression.

Whether you are struggling with depression yourself, or just know someone who is, I hope that you can resonate with the video and the post below.

I remember where I was at the exact moment I read the words below by Rob Bell in his book Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. I was sitting on our couch in Pasadena, CA and as I read each word the resonance grew deeper and deeper within me until I finally felt like I was hit by a ton of breaks…but at least understood. At least there was some pastor out there I thought, this one in Michigan, who put words to my feelings and thoughts in ways that I was not able to at the time. Bell says,

Once again I am going to give you some numbers, and I hesitate to do so, but it is part of the story and it helps to explain the rest. Two years into it, there were around 10,000 people coming to the three gatherings on Sundays.

In the middle of all this growth and chaos was me, superpastor. I was doing weddings and funerals and giving spiritual direction and going to meetings and teaching and dealing with crises and visiting people in prison and at the hospital–the pace and the workload were unreal.

I can’t begin to describe what it was like because it was happening so fast. One minute you have these ideas about how it could be and the next minute you are leading this exploding church/event/monster. All of a sudden there are all of these people who know who you are and want something from you and think you’re a big deal, and you are the same person you’ve always been. Everything has changed and yet it hasn’t. It’s hard to explain, but I found myself asking, “Where is the training manual?”

Continue Reading…

Emerging Into Our Identity

March 5, 2009 in Marriage-Family, Ministry-Theology, Therapy-Psychology with 9 Comments

windingroadEmerging Adulthood
I have always seemed to work with a lot of people in the midst of that life transition from college to young adult, or to what is often referred to as emerging adulthood.  So because of the extension of adolescence, and the pushing of adulthood and it’s responsibilities to later years (late 20′s to early and mid-30′s) people often find themselves wrestling with questions that have often been resolved, or at least grappled with in early developmental stages.

In my work as a college admission recruiter, college pastor and marriage and family therapist, I often work with people who come to me with questions that they can’t quite formulate themselves, but that touch at the core of who they are, and are very existential in nature in many ways.

They are questions of identity, or “Who am I”, “What am I to do”, “What do I believe.”

Fundamental Questions
Over the last 6 months my supervisor has helped me formulate some questions that touch at the heart of clients that I work with that are going through this life transition.

So I often tell my client that they are asking 3 very basic, very fundamental questions:

  1. Who am I?
  2. What am I to do with myself?
  3. How am I to be loved?

Questions that we have been asking for thousands of years, and in reality, each of the questions are components of one another, and sometimes one must be answered for the other to be answered as well.

Continue Reading…

Helping Your Staff Transition Through Life Stages

February 26, 2009 in Ministry-Theology with 6 Comments

mcbd04912_00001When I took my first full-time church job I was as 27 year old single college director.

When I resigned I was a 33 year old husband and father of a baby girl.

I had no idea what that stage or life transition would look like, and it was a tough one to make in ministry. When you are a single pastor, especially in youth related ministries there is a huge spoken or unspoken expectation that you have all the time in the world to be with people and spend those late night and long weekends with students. And often that is what you find yourself doing.

I wish early on I had set some better boundaries and expectations around the ministry that I was pastoring. And I also wish that there had been someone to help me navigate all those life changes that really throw curve balls at you while you are doing ministry. There were definitely people speaking into my life, but I think as a whole we don’t think about ways to help those who serve alongside of us in ministry help make that transition successfully.

When I was single I burned the candle at both ends…In hindsight I came to see just how unhealthy that was, and that I really lacked some clear boundaries and was not differentiated enough from the ministry and people that I led.

When I became a husband I no longer wanted to spend weekend nights out at events, or long weekend retreats and week long mission trips away from my wife.

When I became a father I no longer wanted to come home late from work and miss my daughter’s meal times and baths and bedtime.

Something had changed in those 7 years…I had changed…and I was no longer so sure of how I could pastor the ministry effective…or if I even wanted to or had the same desire. That was a lonely feeling and only a few people recognized that and were able to resonate with me and speak into my life. Now, 8 months removed from the job I am finding out that I’m not alone in this transition and I’m starting to wonder if we (the Church) can help those going through the same transition, better navigate the landscape?

Have you ever experienced this before? How did you deal with it?

Do you have any suggestions of how we (the Church) can walk alongside people and support and encourage them during this joyous and life changing time?

Lent: The Beginning of a Journey-Do You Participate?

February 25, 2009 in Ministry-Theology with 2 Comments

lenten_ashesGrowing up in a non-denominational Bible church as I did, I had no concept of Ash Wednesday. Rather, that was something my Catholic friends did, but not Protestants, and certainly not Evangelical Bible church goers.

It was not until about 1999 that I attended my first Ash Wednesday service at a Lutheran Church, where my friend was a youth pastor. I remember to this day being very nervous at the prospect of going. What would happen? What did they do? Did I have to get the ashes on my forehead?

But that service was a real turning point for me, and marked the beginning of a real transformation in how I celebrated the life, death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I had always grown up just going to the Easter service where I celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And of course, that aspect is vital to our faith, and is in fact the pivotal event on which our faith is built. According to Paul in I Corinthians 15, that if we don’t believe in the resurrection, and if Christ did not rise from the dead, then our faith is basically in vain, and we are to be pitied.

But there was something mysterious and life changing as I started my Easter season, not with resurrection Sunday, but with Ash Wednesday, where I marked the beginning of Christ’s journey of suffering to the cross. Those 40 days to Easter (not counting Sundays) was a time of intense reflection….of ups and downs, but each day constantly moving us closer and closer to Christ’s death.

As Christ’s crucifixion was the culmination of many events along his journey of suffering and betrayal, Ash Wednesday places us as Christians on a journey as well. It puts us on a 40 day journey to reflect and explore our sin, our suffering, our trials, our joys, our mountains and valleys. And as the pastor or priest puts the ashes on our forehead, the words are a reminder to us that:

“Remember, man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”

It is a reminder of our position or status before God. That we were created out of the ground of the earth, and that one day we shall return. Those are sobering words. But those words are words that set us on a journey for 40 days to really bring us closer to the miracle event of resurrection.

There is no resurrection without death. And as we are reminded of our own mortality, we know as Christians that resurrected life awaits us. But do we really ever think and ponder and pray about these things, or are we so quick to move to Easter.

The journey from Ash Wednesday…to Maunday Thursday, to Good Friday, and then to Black Saturday is quite sobering. We start with a reminder that we are but dust….we move to the betrayal of the Last Supper…then to the dark Friday of Crucifixion…and finally to Saturday….silence. As Christ is in the tomb. We know as Christians that Christ will rise on Sunday, but think what that experience must have been like for the followers of Christ and his disciples. All of their hopes and dreams dashed….death, and then silence. This Lenten journey gives us the opportunity to reflect on the journey of Christ and his followers, and for us to really take more seriously those events.

When I do come to Easter it is a most amazing day….it is most amazing because I have been on the journey, and the culmination of any journey is only worth something because we have been on it. To simply move us to Easter without reflection on Christ’s life, suffering, betrayal, crucifixion and death, is to rob us of the importance of that resurrection Sunday.

There are many traditions that do and that do not celebrate the Lent Season. I grew up without it, but I am now thankful that I am a part of a community and tradition that celebrates it. The Lent season has brought me more meaning to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ than it had in years past. I think that as Christians we often take for granted many things, as we sometimes too often have the luxury of hindsight and history. But for the first followers of Christ they did not have this luxury. And sometimes I wonder if we too often take for granted the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the Lent journey that I think can make our Easter, our life…more meaningful.

Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble for the day of the LORD is coming, it is near–a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from old, nor will be again after them in ages to come……Joel 2:1-2.

Questions:

  1. Do you celebrate Lent?  Why or why not?


  2. What does Lent mean to you?


  3. How does the journey of Lent impact Easter Sunday for you?

Read Mark Roberts How Lent Can Make A Difference In Your Relationship With God