Author Archives: ericcase

Leadership Commandments, 6-10

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As promised, here are the last five “Leadership Commandments” I gave to my friend as he entered into ministry.

  1. (6) Thou shalt remember that people need you to lead them; don’t be afraid to. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, people actually crave legitimate leadership. If they trust you, they will entrust a lot to you, and they will do it willingly. Don’t miss an opportunity to lead just because you’re afraid to speak into someone’s life.
  2. (7) Thou shalt remember that it all starts with what God is doing in your life. Though I don’t necessarily agree that you can’t take a person somewhere you haven’t been yourself (because God is way, way bigger than that), you do need to take your spiritual life seriously, and you do need to minister out of the fullness of your own life. Tend to your soul.
  3. (8) Thou shalt realize you reproduce what/who you are. I learned this the hard way. You can talk and lead until you are exhausted, but ultimately you will reproduce who you are, not what you do. In one of my first ministry callings, I worked extremely hard to build a great team; we did great work together. However, I began to notice that a couple key members had become cynical and sarcastic, and lost the sense of wonder that they’d had when they began their journey with me. I realized that I had helped them become that, because that’s what was stirring around in my soul. That’s who I was becoming.It still crushes me.
  4. (9) Thou shalt lead by faith, not by sight. When you lead musical worship, it’s tempting to either watch people “really getting into it” and decide that you’re doing a great job, or watch people sitting on their hands and decide that you’re doing a horrible job. Both are error. We minister to God first, and we trust that He is working. If you watch the people who are enthusiastically responding to your leading and decide that you are really hitting it, you are actually closer to idolatry than it is to leading faithfully. If you watch the people who are not responding at all and decide that you are failing, you are allowing yourself to become needlessly discouraged. Do your best, and trust God for the results.
  5. (10) Thou shalt immediately begin working yourself out of a job.More than any other vocation, ministry is not meant to be hoarded. There’s a fine line between allowing yourself to “do the things that only you can do,” and just holding on to ministry roles that you really should be giving away. Ministry is meant to expand, which means you need to actively look for people to pour into.Caveat #1: It will take a long time to find them. 

    Caveat #2: There will a couple instances where you think you’ve found “your replacement”, and you will be disappointed. 

    But keep looking.

So that’s it. There will probably be a “third tablet” of commandments, someday, but these were enough to get him started.

Leadership Commandments, 1-5

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Last week I had the privilege of sending out a dear friend to the beginning of what I believe will be a long career in ministry. I decided to jot down some leadership “commandments” for him, and I thought I’d share them (with commentary) here. Here are the first five:

  1. Don’t forget to care for yourself artistically and spiritually. It’s simple, but we lose sight of it all the time. You have to have something in your tank in order to give something out. My wife and I bought our first really good kitchen knife just last year. When we first got it, it would slice your skin effortlessly. By now, however, it’s beginning to get dull. If we refuse to sharpen it, eventually it be as useless as the $19.99 set of 9 steak knives that I bought for Christmas one year (but that’s another story).
  2. Closely watch cross-gender relationships. Again, it should go without saying, but … um … it doesn’t. When you step into a position of leadership, it becomes very, very easy to confuse relationships with all kinds of people, particularly with those of the opposite sex. Lines are too easily blurred, too easily crossed, and then every single thing that you have you have invested in in your ministry will be incinerated, and you will be left with wreckage and ash.
  3. Know your job description, but know what you are paid to do (they don’t always match). Knowing your job description gives you a target, and makes sure that you are giving the church what they need. Knowing what you are actually paid to do, however, can focus your efforts even more, and relatedly allow you to say “no” more freely. When I started in my first ministry job, I was overwhelmed. I asked my supervisor, “How am I supposed to do this overwhelming task?”He replied, “I just want you to do two things: ensure excellence on Saturday (when we gathered) and shepherd the music team. That’s it.”That was what I was paid to do.
  4. Don’t be afraid to “just” be faithful. There will be times when you simply don’t want to lead people. There will be times when the feelings and emotions of praise and worship won’t be there. At those times, you must commit to just opening your mouth. Don’t confuse the feeling of worship with obedience. Sometimes it’s just enough to show up and lead the best that you can, out of whatever reservoir is available to you. Doesn’t mean you want to stay in that place, but neither can you just walk off the stage and leave it up to someone else.
  5. Character trumps ability. It will always be tempting to look for a “short-term” win and add an amazingly gifted—but fatally flawed—person to your team. Do this at great risk. They have the capacity to sabotage your efforts, and also to hold the rest of your team emotionally “hostage”. Choose long-term, holistic growth over the short-term sexiness of the glittering image. I’m not saying character can’t change; I’m merely saying that you should keep guard the safety of your team fiercely.
The next five are coming shortly…

“All I Did Was Pick Up the Phone…”

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Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath

If you deal with any kind of change—whether personal or organizational, internal or external—this book is really amazing.

One of the key concepts that Chip and Dan Heath communicate is that in order to achieve really big goals you have to “shrink the change.” Our brains can get overwhelmed with the enormity of some of the “big things” we are trying to accomplish, so in order to keep from being paralyzed, we need make change manageable, turning it into small bite-sized chunks.

For me, an unexpected result of “shrinking the change” was that sometimes I lose a bit of the sense of doing some crazy, enormous thing (the goal or change), and instead acquire the thoughts of doing these seemingly meaningless tasks.

Sometimes it actually feels less inspiring to me.

But then I got to thinking: I wonder if people who do really amazing things are aware that they are doing really amazing things.

I wonder if they just know that they are simply following the next logical step in a sequence in order to accomplish their given task…

  • To write that book…
  • To lose that weight…
  • To change their character…
  • To complete that record…

It’s tempting to focus on the “Big, Hairy, Audacious, Goals” in our lives, and to use that focus as motivation to do them.

But it’s more important to actually accomplish the goals than it is to dream them up…

… and that’s considerably less sexy.

So, the irony is that to accomplish really cool things—to change your life, to produce something, to “ship”,  you have to sometimes surrender the thought that you’re doing really cool things, and simply do the next thing that’s in front of you.

  • Taking 10 minutes out of your day to pray can change your character forever
  • Picking up the phone to call someone who is lonely and isolated can send a powerful message of significance and love
  • Writing for 10 minutes a day can unlock the creative ideas for a book or a song
  • Going to bed 30 minutes earlier can give you the added energy you need to be more engaged at work

Is it sexy? No.

Does it work? Probably.

Surrender a little of the grandiosity of your dreams in order to actually achieve them.

Ira Glass, pastor.

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Well, not quite, but take 2 minutes and watch this.

 

Now ask yourself, “What if instead of ‘creative work’, Ira Glass was talking about the spiritual life?”

Does this change the way you view growth, sin and “failure”?

It should.

Three quick thoughts.

  • We don’t necessarily need to be “people of taste” in order to determine what God might want for us; rather, we are a people of “The Book”. The scriptures tell us what God wants for us; that’s where we find the vision for our lives.
  • Knowing that there’s a “gap” between that vision and where we are at, we should expect to fail. We won’t be perfect. Not for a long time.
  • That being said, the point is to keep doing the things that pull and push us toward that vision. I’m not talking about merely “exterior”/visible things like service; I’m referring to the quiet, secret things like prayer, meditation, scripture study and reflection. These “creative” things make room inside us for God’s Spirit to take hold and begin to mold and change us.

The point is to allow God’s Spirit to “close the gap” between where we are and what He wants us to be.

To become “Gospel Artists”

To “ship” our lives.

Keep the Inside In and Outside Out

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We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.

We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.

Yes, we live under constant danger of death because we serve Jesus, so that the life of Jesus will be evident in our dying bodies. (2 Corinthians 4:7-11 NLT)

When I was young, I used to be really intrigued by the concept of “inside out”. When I came out of my room before elementary school, my mom would occasionally to point out that my shirt was inside out. As I set out to remedy the situation, I dwelled on the question, if “inside-out” was wrong, was “outside-in” better? When I figured out that inside-in (or the outside-out) was the goal, my mind was pretty near blown.

I had a lot of time on my hands.

I think about that when I think of Paul’s metaphor here. Paul says—quite beautifully—that no matter what happens on the outside, our inside is safe and protected. Though our exterior—our actions, our emotions, our bodies, our circumstances—is actually fragile and occasionally even broken, something else is going on inside. Inside is a treasure that cannot be touched.

That’s Good News.

This treasure—the love God as represented by Jesus Christ—was effected and cemented at the Cross, and nothing that happens to these jars we have can change the love that was expressed there. Though we are called to bring what is inside out to the world, nothing that the world—or life—tries to do to the treasure inside is ultimately effective.

Our “treasure” is safe.

One of the great deceptions of life is that our “treasure” can somehow be diminished or harmed by the outside circumstances of life: by the mistakes we make, by the subtle, damning whispering voices in our souls that accuse and intimidate.

But for those of us who have allowed God’s love to seize us, that can’t happen.

Our inside stays in, and the outside stays out.

Jesus is just that strong. 

Do we need to pay attention to that work? Yes.

Do we need to make room in our lives for Jesus’ voice of love and acceptance? Yes.

Do we need to quiet ourselves in order to see that treasure inside us? Yes.

But the treasure remains. Yes we are jars, yes we are broken and fragile.

But the treasure isn’t. It is solid…

beautiful…

golden.

And it’s inside you.

  • What voice do you need to hear this week?
  • Are you focusing more on your “jar”, or on the treasure that rests inside it?

Grace, peace, and mercy to you…

Thoughts on THE Prayer Pt 2 :: “In the heavens…”

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Our Father, who lives in the heavens,
May Your name be kept holy.
May Your Kingdom come,
May Your will be done,
On earth just like it’s done in Your presence.

Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive our sins
As we forgive those who sin against us.
Don’t bring us to the times of trial,
But deliver us from the evil one.
Amen.

Where does God live, and why does it matter?

This phrase introduces two ideas about God that exist in constant tension: God’s transcendence and God’s immanence. 

God’s transcendence is the “clouds-in-the-sky” part of God: the I-created-the-whole-world aspect of God’s character. This incredible power was important to God’s people; it established YHWH’s credentials as the ultimate power in the world. This is the power that is present at, over, and above creation; in fact, you could say that the point of Genesis 1 and 2 is not to show that God can count to seven or invent the platypus. It’s to show that God is separate from and has power over the creation.

Jesus is not using this phrase so that his prayers have the correct “address” to get to God. He uses the phrase as a form of worship, as a way of reminding himself of God’s infinite power. No matter what life on earth looks like, Jesus prays to the God who created the whole operation, and is more than capable of intervening at any point.

Simultaneously, the phrase “in the heavens” indicates another—and almost more profound—mode of God’s existence. Simply put, “the heavens” doesn’t just indicate a specific address beyond the clouds where God lives (with an awesome beard).

The heavens can mean anywhere.

Even right next to you…

even inside you.

To pray to “our Father in the heavens” is not merely to call on God’s infinite creative power, it’s to call on his intimate presence. 

It means that He is not standing (sitting?) far off watching us succeed or fail, watching us walk or stumble or crawl or fall. He is capable of being everywhere: in our vehicles, in our classrooms, in our dining room, in our cube farm.

Because of His infinite (transcendent) power, He has can be absolutely (immanently) anywhere.

A couple of questions:

  • Does your prayer life involve worship? What would it mean to turn your thoughts to God’s infinite power during prayer, to dwell on the fact that He is in control of everything? How powerful (or weak) is the God of your prayers?
  • Does your prayer life address the fact that God is very, very near? That He has not left us to languish, but is dynamically and constantly present with us? What would it mean to understand the infinite as intimately present with you? How close is the God of your prayers?

Father God you are infinitely present in the heavens; in control of all. You were present before creation, and at creation, and will exist forever. You are all powerful, and nothing is beyond your doing. I thank You that You in control of all the situations that stress me out, or that cause me distress, and I ask You to sustain me through them. At the same time, Lord, I know that You are very gently present with me, even as I sit in this kitchen typing. Not only are You ‘Lord Most High,’ You are also ‘God With Us.’ You are here as I walk through my day, and are always inviting me into a deeper, fuller life of submission and obedience. I pray that I might exist more completely in Your presence, in order to see Your creative power at work in my life. Amen.

James Brown and Lent

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(I originally wrote this for my church. I added a couple of thoughts).

Bear with me just a minute.

One of my favorite records is James Brown Live in Paris in 1971. It is one of the most intense sets of music I’ve ever heard. In terms of flat out energy, I’d put it up against releases from most metal and industrial bands. For 73 minutes (the entire CD), the band just cooks. There are, however, breaks: times when James needs to hang back and sing a ballad, in order to give the band—and the audience—a break.

In short, funk—and art, and life—needs contrast. 

Dark so that light can stand out.

Silence so that noise can be pronounced.

If all you ever have is noise, life gets exhausting. If you only ever go “full throttle”, sooner or later you run out of gas. A holistic, healthy life needs to swing back and forth between exertion and rest, engagement and retreat, waking and sleeping. A holistic life needs silence, needs rhythm, needs diversity.

Our spiritual life is no different. In a sense, every Sunday is a miniature celebration of the resurrection, and all of the joy and excitement that comes with it. However, it can be easy to become addicted to “resurrection,” and to begin to think that our spiritual lives should only ever be full of joyful shouting.

For our own spiritual health, sometimes we need to engage in a different perspective.

That’s where seasons such as “Lent” can be helpful. Lent is a traditional season of the church that is useful for preparing for the earth-shattering, paradigm-shaking event of the resurrection at Easter. To that end, it’s historically been a season where Christ-followers reflect on their lives and thoughtfully contemplate the forgiveness that God offers us through Jesus, often through activities such as fasting, silence, and confession.

The season of Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, where we are invited to remember our mortality, to remember the beginning of Jesus’ journey towards the cross, and to symbolically begin our own. E3 will have two traditional Ash Wednesday gatherings—at 7:30 am and at noon—on February 22.

… Because even the hardest working man in show business needs some occasional quiet time.

Lent is traditionally about reflection, fasting, and giving. Here are a few questions to get you thinking:

  • Where/how do you need contrast in your life? Do you need silence? Or maybe you have the silence thing down, and you need “engagement”; where can you give—but give secretly—over the next forty days?
  • What have you become too dependent upon for life? What needs to be removed in order for you to re-orient yourself towards your dependence on God?
  • How can you follow Jesus to the cross this season?

Remember

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Remember how the LORD your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands. (Deuteronomy 8:2)

I used to read about how worship was about “remembering”.

I disagreed.

I didn’t like that language. To me, at the time, worship was about passion, intensity… Tears, repentance, joy.

The list went on and on; I preferred words like that over “flat-line” words like “remember.”

I mean, I remember to get milk from the store; I remember to pick up a pen before I leave for work (no really, I do).

I wanted worship to be more about “remembering.” I wanted it to be like … well…

A Rage Against the Machine Concert…

… Or … what was that band from Ireland?

THAT was what I wanted worship to feel like.

(and yes, EVERY Sunday)

But this weekend I reconsidered.

To put it bluntly, worship is absolutely based on remembrance: of our salvation, of the things God has done for us.

If it’s not, it’s idolatry.

Harsh, I know, but if worship isn’t grounded in the acts of God, than we are either making up things up or worshiping “worship.”

And that adds up to idolatry.

It’s easy to sing songs; it’s not too difficult to get people to sing with you  (well, some Sundays it is).

But that’s not the point.

Over and over, God tells people to “remember” how He set them free from slavery, and brought them through the wilderness to the land that He promised them. He could’ve put on an amazing light show; he could’ve parted the sea (again)…

… He probably could even have played “Fix You” (just to get ’em all crying and to show how relevant He is).

But He didn’t. He just said, “Remember that I’ve done this thing for you and for my mission in the world. That tells you everything you need to know about me.

The point is to get people to remember their salvation, and to thank God for it, and to remind themselves what He is capable of, what His character is.

That’s a bit harder.

 

Thoughts on “THE Prayer”, pt 1 :: “Our Father”

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“The Lord’s Prayer: (or the “Our Father”, depending on your tradition) is a simultaneously a prayer of vast width and incredible intimacy. I thought I’d do a series of blogs on it.

If you’re looking for a way to begin your prayer life, this is a great place to start. You can just start off by praying the words, and allow your mind to expand the phrases as you come to understand them.

Here’s the first one.

Our Father, who lives in the heavens,
May Your name be kept holy.
May Your Kingdom come,
May Your will be done,
On earth just like it’s done in Your presence.

Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive our sins
As we forgive those who sin against us.
Don’t bring us to the times of trial,
But deliver us from the evil one.
Amen.

Right off the bat, let’s be clear: Jesus’ use of the word “father” (or even “abba”) in prayer was not unique. There are plenty of ancient examples of folks addressing God in this way. Jesus’ use of the phrase is much more incisive, much deep than this.

In the book of Exodus, God tells Moses to tell Pharaoh, “‘Israel is my firstborn son. I commanded you, ‘Let my son go, so he can worship me'” (4:22). God is about to decisively act to free His people, and begin a new phase of His great rescue operation that began in Genesis 2, and will eventually end in Revelation 21. After God frees “his son,” he declares in Exodus 19 that they are now “my kingdom of priests, my holy nation” (v6).

So one way of understanding these two simple words is that we are identifying ourselves as Israel, God’s redeemed people. In the same way that God claims “his son” as Israel, we are claiming Him as “our Father”, and also saying, “I’m a part of your people; I want to be a part of your redemption in the world.” Along with our participation in that mission comes our forgiveness, the opportunity for transformation, and membership in the family of God.

In some liturgical traditions, the prayer is introduced by reminding the congregation that “we are bold to pray” this prayer.

True enough: It’s bold to walk right up to the Creator of the Universe and just declare, “I’m yours!”

But that’s what we’re invited to do.

Remember that God declares that Israel is His son before they’ve done anything for Him. 

He just pronounces it.

As a gift.

Jesus ultimately is saying, “I’m leading a new Exodus from evil and oppression, and you are welcome to join. Come and be a part of a new freedom movement, an ultimate  defeat of evil and oppression, and the beginning of the era of resurrection.”

So, “Our Father,” is a big declaration of the graciousness of God, of His ultimate victory, and of our role (as priests!) in His world and in His plans.

You can pray it with a sense of awe, but you can pray it boldly.

A Professional Faith

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Stephen King has written 49 novels. Forty-nine. 

Since 2000, Ryan Adams has released 13 records. He released five records—Cold Roses, Jacksonville City Lights, and 29—in 2005 alone. 

King and Adams have a mutual admiration society. King has included excerpts of Adam’s lyrics in his books, and has said, “I won’t say that Adams is the best North American singer songwriter since Neil Young…but I won’t say he isn’t either.”

For Adam’s part, he has said that King “works harder and twice as fast and has more valid ideas than many people know how to deal with…”

Both guys are relevant, vital artists who are well respected in their genres.

In Steve Jobs’ (and others) words, “They Ship.” 

How do they ship? How do they work through the laziness, the fear, the doubt and just produce over and over again?

While I’m not ultimately sure, Stephen Pressfield says that real artists work through all of these barriers—he calls them “The Resistance”—by doing one thing:

Becoming Professional. Being a professional means that you do “the work”—write, research, create, play—no matter what. It means you arrange your life in order to facilitate this work, and that you remain relentlessly focused on getting the work done. You make an appointment to write; to sketch; to play; to sculpt. You don’t wait for “inspiration,” because inspiration is capricious, and is easy prey for distraction.

Someone asked William Somerset Maugham asked if he only wrote when he was inspired. He replied that yes, he only wrote when he was inspired, but that fortunately inspiration struck at 9am every morning. 

Okay, okay, we got it: professional. ship. Got it.

What does this have to do with faith?

Simply this: as God’s people in the world, we are charged with being transformed in God’s likeness; bearing fruit, producing works of righteousness out of the overflow of the love of God in our hearts.

We have work to do.

Unfortunately, most of us never dream of the fact that we could be as prolific as Ryan Adams or Stephen King; furthermore, we have a tendency equate “professionalism” with “mechanical”, “detached”, and “unemotional”.

However, do you think Stephen King isn’t passionate about writing?

Do you think Ryan Adams’ music is uninspired?

So often, we save our spiritual “work”—praying, worship, service, scripture study, meditation, etc.—for the times when we feel inspired. We would never think about becoming “professional” Christians, until we consider that we have something to ship: namely our gospel-infused lives. 

If we consider our lives as a work of “gospel art” than we realize—like Ryan Adams and Stephen King—that nothing else matters besides “shipping our art.” 

And the best way to “ship” is to become a professional.

A professional Christian. We pray; We don’t wait for inspiration. We worship; we don’t wait until we feel like it. We embrace community; we don’t wait until it’s convenient.

  • Is your life arranged in such a way to become a professional? Are you still relying on inspiration—rather than faith and determination—to foster the Holy Spirit’s presence in your life?
  • Can you make an appointment to pray, to read the Bible, to worship, each day?

… Because the most important thing is to get the work done…

… To have our lives transformed…

… To produce fruit…

… We have lives to ship.