Week 2

I have been so inspired by reading Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders. I’ve found myself reading and rereading sections, underlining, making notes, and even getting up from the book to put certain principles in action immediately. I have been primarily inspired by seeing the image of a devoted leader who will stop at nothing to accomplish his or her calling. The description of self-imposed discipline is encouraging me to take many personal steps, particularly as my life is extremely busy right now. The leader described by this book works very hard and is very productive with all of his time, which is an excellent goal. However, I have been feeling concerned by the message here – while describing my recent life to a friend, she quickly reminded me to take my day of rest, something I’ve been unable to do in weeks. I am reminded of leaders I have known and read about who sacrificed their personal lives, particularly their friends and families, in the pursuit of working nonstop. Finding balance in my life is extremely important, and I am still struggling to find that when between two jobs, school, and other obligations it seems like all but a few hours of each week are spoken for when the week begins. Hopefully the discipline described in this book will help me to find that balance without taking to extreme the principles of hard work described in this book.

Week 1

I am fascinated by the journey that God is bringing me on as I enter the MAGL program. When I graduated with a business degree in 2007, I didn’t have any clue what direction I wanted to go with my life. I tried to enter the nonprofit world doing world relief and development, but didn’t get any calls back, so after falling into a youth ministry job at my home church I started a Masters in International Development online at Tulane University. After two semesters I realized that another secular degree was not what God was calling me to, and that such broad-based work was very important but not for me. So I dropped out of that program and took some time off to focus on my new job in inner-city church planting and community development. I then began to enter a Masters of Social and Civic Entrepreneurship program at Bakke Graduate University, but before beginning classes the Lord convicted me that He hadn’t intended me to get another business degree. I immediately applied to Fuller and was accepted! My story since graduation has been 100% by the hand of God. I always tell people that I graduated with no job during a recession and God gave me two jobs that I didn’t apply for and helped me to start a 501(c)(3). Not only that, but despite having yet to even approach the concept of making $20,000 a year, the Lord has sustained me, even with schooling! I am truly blessed.

Things I've Been Learning

Seems to me like the past couple of months have been a pretty remarkable time of learning for me. While it's a lot of things that I pretty much already knew, getting them reinforced is great.

• Knowing yourself is the most important thing
• You can talk yourself into a new mood
• There's 3 parts of your psyche: parent, adult, and child. Not only does each part relate to different parts of different people, but you relate to yourself. The parent is either critical or nurturing, and the child is either adaptive or rebellious. In this mindset, how you relate to yourself has a lot to do with your psychological health, and how you relate to others has a lot to do with your relationships.
• If you're a people-pleaser, people don't end up liking you, they end up using you
• You've gotta be open to anything relationship-wise...those whom you discount might become your closest friends, and if you open your eyes there are lots of ladies around worth getting to know a lot better
• Take the things that you're good at in life and apply them to yourself...for example, if you're good at making a goal and building a plan to get there, do the same thing with your life
• You don't have to wait until you think you're going to marry someone to date them
• Values, passions, and interests all change. Consider people to date based on the things that don't easily change: character and personality.
  
• You don't have to marry someone who has all the same qualities as you, you only have to date someone who has the ability and potential to value, understand, be inspired by, and encourage them
• It's not about finding the right person to marry, it's about being the right person to marry
• In a relationship, you bring a lot to the table, the other person brings a lot to the relationship, and the combination creates a certain type of situation. The person you always have a beer and watch the game with won't likely become the person you have a great conversation with or the person you do ministry with. Therefore, in looking for someone to date, consider what kind of combination you want to have in your relationship.
  
• There is a lot to be considered about the relationship between how you see yourself and how you present yourself
• Focusing on other people is not only the most fulfilling thing you can do with your time, it also the most productive and valuable
  
• God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble, so humble beginnings are usually a good sign
  
• When you don't know what to do, do something
• There is no substitute for a good beer and good music
• Listening is far more important than speaking, and getting other people to talk about themselves and open up is far more important than talking about yourself
• Your place in life is where your strengths and your passions align with what the world needs
• Being intentional about building relationships with friends of friends and other acquaintances is fulfilling, exciting, and valuable

Application Essays

I am applying to the Master of Arts in Global Leadership program at Fuller Theological Seminary. Here are the essays that I will be submitting with my application. Anybody who has the time, I would sure appreciate feedback!

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A. Reflect on your past Christian experience, including the most significant spiritual event/influence in your life, the role of Christ in your religious experience, the effect your faith has on your worldview, your involvement in Christian service, your perceived gifts/calling for ministry, and your reason(s) for attending your church.

Many people speak of faith in abstract terms or as something you pull out for the hard times, but for me, faith is a constant reality of relying on God. I've chosen to live my life in such a way that there has been no other option for me. Although I grew up in a Christian household, my walk with Christ took a very real turn for me in July 1998 at a youth camp when I decided to offer God my entire life. Prior to that, I had put off the decision, feeling like Christians never got to have any fun. I soon realized that my life as a Christian would be as adventurous as I allowed it to be.

Early on, God made it clear to me that He had my life in His control, but that He wasn't going to give me very much advance notice of anything or make it easy to rely on money. Each of my three summers during college really tested my faith. The first summer, I decided to do a discipleship training program with the Navigators. Having heavily relied on family and friends for three past international mission trips, I knew that God was calling me to pay for it myself. A similar thing happened the next summer, when I was planning on interning with my church when the budget was cut. I made the decision to continue with the job unpaid. The third summer, I hoped to return to Kenya and stay the entire summer with a team, but the team never materialized. I chose to go alone. Each of these three decisions had to be made at nearly the last minute, but each was incredibly rewarding. Since college, the trend has continued. It took two years after graduating to begin to earn a salary that covered my basic monthly expenses. My job change was also unexpected, but when the opportunity came it was clear that God had it planned for me. At every step of the way, I can have no doubt that God was in control.

My experiences in my life have really served to change my worldview. I have learned to see Christ in everything. I have had to work hard to know His voice and recognize it above the others. And my experiences traveling in Central and South America and Africa have continued to stretch my worldview to see the way that believers around the world see God. I have grown to love seeing different sides of God through the lenses of other cultures. I believe that I have a calling on my life for international service, but also for leadership and management. I also believe that God has called me to a higher level of holistic ministry. Fortunately, God has and is continuing to equip me for these callings, because I could never accomplish them on my own!

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B. Reflect on how attending Fuller Theological Seminary would complement your present Christian experience and/or help you to achieve your future professional and vocational goals.

God has called me to His ministry by an unusual road. As my church believed that every member was called to serve, I grew up involved in ministry but never had a vision for it being my life calling. In college, I studied business, not out of any desire to be a businessman, but out of a desire to learn skills that would be useful in any setting. It wasn’t until during college that I began to realize that God had planned for me to be in full-time ministry. For the past two years, since graduating, I have pursed full-time ministry out of a passion to see people’s lives changed, both spiritually and in more tangible ways. Now I recognize that my business education complements skills that God had already gifted me with in a way that I can be a leader in developing new methods of ministering to people around the world holistically.

However, due to my unusual path into ministry, I am now trying to find my role in ministry without any Biblical education. I have been in public schools my entire life and so the lack of formal Christian training has become an impediment to my career progress. Not only am I looked down upon by many, but I also recognize that I am lacking some of the essential training that I need to keep myself well-grounded in a life of ministry. Just as I was thrust into a role of leading a high school ministry suddenly in 2008 without any preparation or warning, I now find that in my life I have found myself in ministry without adequate preparation. My preparation has been purely experiential, from travelling around the world to working in ministry roles. If I am going to move forward with my calling, it is essential that I receive formal Christian education to complement my already-growing body of experience.

I am eager to begin my education at Fuller as soon as possible to learn about leadership in a global world, particularly from a Christian perspective. I had initially begun learning about international development from a secular university, but I soon realized that missing theological training was not God’s will. I then began to apply to a business program from a Christian university, but then realized that God has not called me to a life of business. God has called me to ministry, and I must follow Him! Therefore, I am applying to this global leadership program at Fuller, where I know that I will receive both the character, practical, and theological training to fulfill God’s plan. I believe that He is leading me toward a career of leadership in holistic ministry on a global scale, and thus I can think of no better program than the MAGL.

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Provide a resume listing your professional experience over the last 5 years. Please provide the name of the organization, title of your position, a brief description of duties, and years of employment.

My ministry experience began during the 2005-2006 school year with co-leading a Bible study and discipling several men. I spent the summer of 2006 working at my home church as an intern for the High School ministry. I helped lead a summer camp, a mission trip to Peru, and joined a team to Kenya. During the 2006-2007 school year I left the leadership team of the Navigators to be President of my dormitory and be part of an inter-ministry effort to reach my dorm. In the summer of 2007 I returned to Kenya and remained by myself working in a slum church, teaching a business seminar, and opening an income-generating water project. I continued as President of my dorm until graduating.

In February 2008 I took a job at my church as the High School Assistant but soon found myself responsible for the program when the youth minister abruptly left. I directed the program, a summer camp, and a mission trip until August, when I returned to my role as Assistant and also became an assistant to the Young Adults and Missions Ministries. I remained in that role until November when I accepted an offer to come to LINC North Texas, where I handle the finances and human resources. I am also part of our ministry efforts all over Dallas and Fort Worth, including networking, fundraising, helping with inner-city youth, and more. I have also stayed part of the project in Kenya, traveling back two more times since graduating and recently assisting with starting a nonprofit organization to sponsor the education of youth from the slums.

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Briefly evaluate your personal ministry, and identify perceived strengths and areas needing improvement. Please indicate what has prompted your interest in the Master of Arts in Global Leadership and how you hope the program will address this need.

My personal ministry is based first and foremost on people. As a naturally relational person, I lead through relationships and minister through relationships. People say that I am dependable and reliable, a good listener, and good at speaking to people's levels. However, I add to this relational focus a strong skill for administrative work. I am naturally good at managing things, planning things, and problem solving. This combination of strengths leads me to be an adept leader, manager, and hard worker at the same time. Combined with my varied passions, which include social justice, development, and anything international, my life has taken a turn toward finding the proper relationship between spiritual ministry and practical ministry. I do have plenty of weaknesses, of course, which include being overly independent, idealistic, and sometimes self-centered. I have struggled to find my role in teams, as my natural tendency is to either sit behind the scenes and work or take charge. I have been accused before of having trouble operating under authority and of being prideful. I believe that I am a very self-aware individual and that this allows me to see my weaknesses and work on them.

I am very interested in becoming a better leader. The emphasis on personal development and leadership training with a global focus attracted me to the MAGL program. I place a high value on being a lifelong learner and on continual self-improvement so I hope that this program will be part of propelling me toward greater opportunities personally and professionally. I believe that I am called to be a leader wherever I am and so I know that I need as much training as possible.

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What are the two biggest struggles facing the churches in your context?

As I am currently in a role where I work closely with many churches and experience many different types of churches, I believe that I get a good perspective of what the church culture is like. The biggest struggle facing churches that I work with in Dallas is to be outward-focused. Nearly all of the churches that I have experience with are focused on internal issues such as ministry styles, following traditions, and internal measures of success. This causes them to struggle to effectively outreach to their communities. With metrics such as Sunday attendance instead of real life change, they struggle to place an emphasis on reaching people outside the church and ministering to their deeper needs. It also causes churches to struggle to cooperate with other nearby churches as they are competing to be the biggest, best, and most self-sufficient.

The second biggest problem facing the churches in my context is related to the first: it is the challenge of being multicultural. Nearly all churches are essentially monocultural - not only are they segregated on ethnic lines, but low-income communities rarely attend church with middle- and high-income communities and young people rarely mingle with older generations. As the book of Acts describes the reversal of Babel with the bringing together of different cultures in worshiping Christ, the book of Revelations shows an image of all nations worshiping the Lord together, and the mystery of the Gospel described in Paul's epistles is the uniting of Jew and Gentile under one head, I have heard it said that segregated churches is one of the most dangerous heresies of our time. Through these two problems, many of our churches have become places of comfort for believers where a "club" mentality is held and outsiders feel unwelcome.

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What are the two biggest opportunities that you feel you are not properly resourced for?

At my current job, I am working primarily on the administrative side of operations. I would like to be more on the leadership side of operations. We are a church planting and community development organization and so I am being held back due to my lack of experience in either of those fields. The organization is in need of leaders who are capable of running entire projects or ministries and I believe that I could be the right person, but I need more leadership training and experience. I believe that my lack of qualified education for the job is also holding me back. As I have no Bible school training and only a business degree, I feel like my education causes people not to initially trust me. I feel like the MAGL program would really help me to develop into the right kind of leader and gain the trust of others to move our organization forward.

There is also an opportunity with the project in Kenya that I've been involved in for three years. A friend and I have just started a nonprofit organization for it, but since the longest that I've lived there is 2 months, I do not yet have the ability to take more of a leadership role. I believe that I am lacking the same resources in this opportunity as well: experience and education. My experience gives me a start, but I need more. My education, however, only qualifies me to work on the administrative side of things in this organization. The MAGL program would equip me with the leadership skills and character to step forward and get more experience while also helping me to grow my capacity for taking leadership in this organization.

Striving

Recently I have begun to notice in myself what I will call a "Striving Spirit." Over the past two years I think that I have developed a self-identity that basically consists of:

• young
• inexperienced
• unqualified

This is probably because I've spent most of that time surrounded by people older, more experienced, and more qualified. Unfortunately, that identity created in me an insecurity that I am:

• alone
• not good enough
• not going to make it

Therefore, I have been striving to rectify this identity. Pursuing friends, trying to get better experiences, and greatly desiring more education, to name a few of my strivings. Overall, I'm really just seeking some approval and some applause.

Galatians 1:10: "For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ."

John 5:44: "How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?"

It's all well and good to tell yourself to give up striving, but how?

Luke 10:20: "Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven."

It's a change of attitude. Paul has some more interesting things to say about striving in Philippians 3:

"But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith." - verses 7-9

This is a powerful message to give up striving. Not only can you not achieve righteousness (salvation) by your actions, but everything is subordinate to the fact that you have Christ. Nothing else really matters. Not titles, nor degrees, nor accomplishments, nor friends.

Matthew 6:33: "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."

Jesus is speaking there of abstaining from worries, but the same applies to strivings - seek Christ first and foremost! This presents an interesting dichotomy, for Paul is not done in Philippians 3:

"Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet, but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." - verses 13-14

Paul is now instructing us to return to striving! Now that we have abandoned striving for things in order to pursue Christ foremost, we must return to striving after God, who is calling us upward and forward! How then do we reconcile this?

Philippians 3:15: "Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude..."

Paul uses a powerful Greek word here for attitude (phroneo) which he has made a nice habit of using throughout Philippians. Other uses of phroneo in Philippians?

• 1:7 - love for the Philippians, confidence in their progress
• 2:2 - unity, love, joy
• 2:5 - the extreme humility and meekness of Christ found in the next few verses
• 4:2 - harmony and unity
• 4:10 - loving concern for the right things

Let us then give up strivings for righteousness in favor of focusing on Christ, but let us strive for righteousness with the attitude which Paul promotes throughout Philippians!

Live Simply

In Christian circles, you have probably heard of Shane Claiborne. He's a fascinating man who has undertaken an incredible ministry - he gives up material comforts in order to discover true community in inner-city Philadelphia. You are likely to hear many people call him "cool" or say that it would be awesome to do what he's doing. While I've met him, I don't know him, so I don't know whether or not he is "cool." Maybe he is. What he's doing definitely isn't "cool." There's nothing cool about the way he lives his life, nor would it be particularly awesome to do what he does. For some people, it would be awesome, but the vast majority of us could never live his life. He has an incredible ministry, and has a very special calling and it's great to see him living in that calling. I'm still looking for my special calling. If you see it anywhere, please tell it that I'm looking for it, and let me know which direction it went.

Anyways, he advocates living simply. When I heard him speak at a conference not long ago, I was pleasantly surprised to hear him humble himself a few times, such as when he admitted to having a "major libido" and that he had for a time made singleness his idol. He also said that he was still figuring out exactly what living simply meant, and he said that he now thinks that living simply means all different things to different people. We know what it means to Shane. To somebody, it might mean giving up a few extravagances so that a few kids can go to school in a developing nation. But I'd like to suggest another option.

I think that for me, living simply has less to do with material possessions (I don't have too many anyways) and more to do with attitude. In my life thus far, and I think that I want to make it part of my identity, I have always taken major events, problems, and changes in stride. Leave all my friends and move to college, no problem. Hang out in western Kenya without the benefit of any of my American friends, of course. Graduate with no job lined up and recession looming, whatever. Parents divorce, guess that means move forward. I think that for me, living simply means remembering my place in life. I'm just a guy doing my thing and that's all there is to it. Stuff happens, and of course it affects you, but I don't see the need to get dramatic about it.

I'll get dramatic for other people. My coworkers in Kenya who wouldn't go out with me to eat because they couldn't afford it, and wouldn't even go home to eat, but rather took their lunch hour to go to their second job - I'll get dramatic for them. They deserve it. I've never carried that burden. The young girl who gets tricked away from her family and carried to another country and forced into prostitution - I'll get dramatic for her. She deserves it. I've never carried that burden. The kid who has to kill at a young age because his country is in a civil war - I'll get dramatic for him. He deserves it. I've never carried that burden. I feel humbled when I look around, so I'll live simply.

So when times are tough, and things are crazy, and it seems like the pressure is heavy, I want to strive to live simply. For me, that may just mean cranking up the country music on the way home and singing loudly and happily, despite all the negative potential around me. That, for me, is living simply. Not too concerned by the small things, but easily satisfied by just a little bit. Even keel when the waves hit, but smiling all the way as I enjoy the adventure. And in the meantime, I just might impact somebody else's life for the better as I do my best to love them.

Idealistic

Tried by exposure
Sick with existence
Remnant of my many losses
Will this follow me forever?

Stained by the failure
Spent with my striving
Could my life by cleaned of anguish?
My identity is buried

Burnt by their falsehood
Jaded with people
Cynicism lingers longer
I am not the ideal image

Drawn to the hopeful
Eager for trying
The chance to live and dream again
An optimistic man will soar!