Thoughts on humility

Photo credit: shelley_e from morguefile.com

In our closing session today at WorldVenture's renewal conference, we watched a message on humility by John Dickson, recorded at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. The message was convicting and thought provoking. After a long 2 weeks of meetings, messages and prayer, this video successfully broke through my tiredness and touched my soul.

In some ways, preparing for the mission field has forced us to be humble. We are fully dependent on others, and on God really, to meet our everyday needs. We are depending on the financial support of others. We can no longer live the self-sufficient life that we had led for years. This is all humbling.

But on the other hand, I find myself having to fight to stay humble. There is a tendency in the American church to place missionaries on a pedestal, and sometimes I'm the worst offender. We are expected to be super spiritual people, hailed for making the ultimate sacrifice of home and family for the sake of the gospel. Boy, talk about a bunch of stuff that can go to your head and make you feel "holier than thou", right? And as God meets our financial needs in ministry, it can be so easy to congratulate ourselves on a job well done. "Look at all the money we've raised"! We can be so quick to believe these lies, even subconsciously, and forget who really deserves all the credit.

In reality, we are completely undeserving of any of this praise, and we should be humble. We are imperfect people, trying to figure out faith and life just like everyone else, completely undeserving of a pedestal. We are learners, moving to a new culture where we know nothing and will humbly start our lives over. Most of all, we are sinners, completely undeserving of God's grace.

Christ's act of coming to earth and dying on the cross makes Him the ultimate example of humility. He is the one that does deserve praise and here He was, washing the disciples' feet! He made himself nothing, born in a stable and dying a horrible death on the cross when He belonged at the right hand of God. How much more should we pursue humility and emulate Christ?

Today's message has caused me to reflect on Philippians 2:3 - 8:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
 Who, being in very nature God,
   did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
   by taking the very nature of a servant,
   being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
   he humbled himself
   by becoming obedient to death—
      even death on a cross! 

May He increase our humility and His glory as we continue each day on this journey!

Are Multi-Cultural Leaders the Future?

Over on Out of Ur, Skye Jethani just returned from a trip to Spain where he was training and speaking to missionaries.  Besides affirming the "from everywhere, to everywhere" reality of missions - which is another post - Skye made some keen observations about the challenges that the American church leadership community will face as the church becomes increasingly non-white, non-American, and non-western.  Here is a quick quote from his post:

 Most of what I’ve read/heard about church leadership says we should fight tenaciously to maintain clear purpose, vision, and values within our organization. And recruiting other leaders who conform to these is vital. Allow too many people inside who hold divergent ideas and you’ll derail the organization. But this mindset assumes that efficiency is the ultimate value to which all others must surrender. But in many cultures efficiency is not the highest good. And third culture leaders understand that in many cases clinical efficiency simply is not possible when seeking to lead diverse populations.

Read the rest of his post The Post-American Church (Part Uno).

My question related to all of this is:
Do you think that the current church leadership structure will make this change, or will it take an emergence of new multi-cultural leaders?


Do you disagree with these ideas entirely? 

It's Not You...It's Me

Oh, the classic break-up line... "It's not you. It's me". So well intended, but so overused. But this week, those words have taken on an entirely new meaning for me.

While on retreat with our WorldVenture team in Grundlsee, Austria, we watched the video of a sermon by Louie Giglio (here is the beginning of it) about how INDESCRIBABLE God is, as displayed in His magnificent creation. The universe and all that is in it - the moon, stars, planets, galaxies - are SO much bigger than we can comprehend! If our creator made them, He is clearly magnificantly indescribable!

The same day we watched this message, I was later listening to this sermon by Matt Chandler from Habakkuk. At one point in the sermon, he talks about how BIG God is and how SMALL we are. Do you see the pattern here?

Through these two messages, God has been reminding me this week that He is so big and I am so small. This is not leading me to get down on myself for my insigificance, but to rejoice in the fact that no task is too insurmountable for God. He made the heavens and the earth - how much more is He able to use me for His purposes, despite my failings! How much more is He able to provide for the financial needs of our ministry, that at times seem overwhelming. And how much more is He able to shine light in the darkness of Austria, where there are so many lost and hurting people.

In the end, any ministry that is accomplished through us in Austria or any provision that occurs to enable that ministry is not because of my gifts, efforts, talents, abilities, or personality. It is all from God. He is the creator and the source.

So basically, God is saying... "It's not about you. It's about ME!"