Running Around and Chasing a Ball

I (Nate) tend to enjoy solo sports. It is fun to compete against myself and see how I grow as I train and work hard. But when a guy at our church wanted to start a soccer group, I jumped at the chance to build relationships with some of the younger guys in our church. I also love the chance to stay fit and run around. I have accepted the fact that many of these guys have been playing soccer a lot longer than I have and are way more skilled, but I can run hard and have a good time. This last weekend, we had a practice tournament against a few other teams on Saturday morning. It can be hard for me to make time for an event like this. Saturdays are important family times, as well as the chance to spend time with people we are connected to inside and outside of the church. But I think this time with these guys is also important. So as we stepped out onto the field, I was genuinely curious how the day would go.

Well first things first, we lost... Every. Game. It was hard to be at the bottom of the pile. I played defense most of the game, and man, some of the other offensive players were small and fast and just way beyond my abilities. In no way did my few seasons of grade school and middle school soccer prepare me to face these guys. I honestly didn't expect anything different for myself. I knew it was going to be a challenge, but I am not sure I expected it to go this badly. I had heard we hadn't done well in previous games, but I didn't know that we would lose all of our games. And that we would lose them so decisively. Most of the other teams were just better. But here is something I realized: this is practice. Not just actual match practice. Not that we are practicing soccer. We are practicing life. This brings up a basic question: How do I handle failure? What do I do when I screw up? What do I do when it feels like the failure of your team is someone else's fault? How easy is it to undervalue my own failures and overvalue others? Once you start thinking of things this way, it can be hard to stop asking these sorts of questions. Each question has a subtly different answer. Each question peels back the layers, showing us the selfishness and sinfulness in each of our hearts.

The challenge is we often face true failure so seldom in regular life, that it can be hard to apply the personal gains to the next instance. But in this environment, where we get to accelerate the exposure, we can also learn more about it in our own lives. I said this is retrospect to a few people after the games, and the more I process it, the deeper in strikes home for me. The way we win or lose is far more important than the outcome. Displaying godly character is far more important than a number on a page. Scoring goals is fun. Winning is fun as well, but my identity is not defined by the number on the page.

I think the ultimate question I'm sorting through here is: Is there a Christian way to win and lose? Can we glorify God and be a witness in how we treat people when emotions are high on the field? I've seen it before, and I strive to model it as well. I want to be someone that works hard, that pushes and gives it my all, but also someone who doesn't lose a kindness that stems from remembering the image of God in each of my fellow teammates and the people I'm playing against. It is possible to show people Christ as we play together because I've seen it. I've seen players that work hard, but are selfless and charitable. I've seen and made my best effort to grab onto the chances to encourage others and to tell them when they did well. This is a habit that should extend into our daily life. We should be generous with our encouragement.

I found this to a be a pretty valuable experience, even though my 35 year old body is hurting, and we lost every game. Where do you see unexpected discipleship opportunities around you?

Learning Through Failure

As some of you know, I did a pastoral internship at our church here in Vienna. The experiences were so varied and challenging. In the beginning, I spent a lot of time learning and absorbing information. It was a lot of learning through listening and observing. This is an important first step, but at some point you have to jump into the pool and get wet.

The internship has been a chance to do that. At some point during the internship, I was asked to give a short devotion at the beginning of an all church meeting. These are great chances to share something and engage, without the larger time commitment of preparing a sermon. (Some will argue that shorter time constraints are harder, but that is another blog post.)

Me demonstrating the rubber band 

Up to that point, I had used a full manuscript for speaking engagements, where I wrote every word I wanted to say before hand. I am bad with a manuscript in English, but I felt I needed it in order to speak fluidly in German. This time around, for the devotion, I tried bullet points and I felt so much more fluid. I was able to just talk, instead of needing to read what was on the page. It felt really great.

So everything went well and I was feeling good. I talked about 1 Kings chapter 8 and Solomon's benediction after he build the temple. It is an amazing prayer. I talked about the constant need for repentance in our lives as Christians. I focused on the idea that at this very high point in Israel's history, Solomon talked so much about sin in our lives. Not just sin itself, but the beautiful cycle of recognizing sin in our lives, confessing it to God, repenting and turning away from those missteps and focusing our attention on God.

Or so I thought. The problem was...that wasn't what I was talking about. There is something special in German - prefixes. I talked about the Christian's need to continually "sich bekehren." Unfortunately, this does not mean "to repent" but instead it means repentance in the context of conversion... "to convert". I told them we continually need to convert. The word I was actually looking for is "sich umkehren." That's right, just one prefix changes the meaning from conversion to repentance. I have to be honest, I have made plenty of mistakes in language learning, but this one stung. That was a big difference.

In our training, we talked about a "rubber band" principle. Imagine that you have a giant rubber band around your waist. On one side, there is my expectations and on the other is what actually happens. When the distance between the two is small, the "snap" of a negative situation is minimal. But when I expect something, and something completely different happens, the "snap" hurts more because the two ends are farther apart.

Being at the stage in language learning where we are right now, these "snaps" happen less often than they used to. But when they do come, they can hurt more. We are required to continually put ourselves out there and take risks. When it works, it works really well! But when it doesn't, it can hurt.

One other thing that has been important for me to remember is that this is still actually learning! As frustrated as I can be with myself at a mistake like this, I will never make that mistake again. Language learning is tied to experiences. It takes humility to constantly place yourself in the position of learner. It is not easy to accept critique and input from others, but it is worth it because it is the only way to develop the language skills that we desire and need.

Failure in general is often considered wrong. In principle, we laud people like Edison who took so many tries before discovering the proper material to put in a light bulb, but it is different to personally put ourselves in a situation where failure is possible. I am noticing more and more that the longer I speak German, the less inclined I am to dive back into that role of "learner" or someone who doesn't know all the answers.

There is value in admitting ignorance and asking for help...spending time listening or asking good questions instead of just jumping in with our own knowledge or experience. There is value in being a learner and a disciple.

A Big Step Forward

Last Sunday, Nate took a big step forward in his language accomplishments and role at the church. He served as the "moderator" of the Sunday morning worship service, i.e. the point person who provides introductions and transitions. He welcomed everybody, facilitated times of prayer, read announcements, and most importantly, gave a 5-minute devotional. This was a HUGE accomplishment for him in regards to his progress in German. Although he spent a lot of time preparing his remarks, it also included quite a bit of extemporaneous speaking, and he did a great job. To be able to speak in front of a crowd that much is a great milestone to reach and demonstrates his comfort in and grasp of the language. I really enjoyed seeing him up there and was proud of him for being able to fill this important role at church, after only being here for less than 2 years.

His devotional thoughts were also good, though I thought I would share them with you. Here is a rough translation of the devotional he shared with the congregation:

"I have just begun reading a book* about failure. Normally, we think that we should try to avoid failure at all costs, but this author sees it the other way around. She suggests that it is only through failure that we truly learn. When we accomplish things successfully, the list of things that we do is relatively short and we are not given the chance to grow.

The more I think about this idea, the more it seems true to me. When one thinks about the how he learns something, it is always through trying and failing. This makes me think about our daughter, Ellie, and how many things she needs to learn and find out on her own. But no one believes that failure is pleasant. No one wakes up and thinks, "today, I'm going to try to make mistakes as much as I can!" Of course not!

Last week, I was in the States to attend a conference and this idea was constantly on my mind. The head of our organization posed a question during one of our sessions about failure. He said that the gospel gives us a model for how we should understand failure. And this indeed depends on our beliefs about the idea, that our relationship with God is broken and that we could never pleasure God through our own strength and ability. We need to accept failure, in order to truly understand the gospel and to accept the grace of God. We must be honest with ourselves and God about our weaknesses. We are saved through grace and not through our own striving. "

*Book credit: The Upside of Down by Megan McArdle

Getting Acquainted with Failure

Language learning has been a great experience for us so far. We are having a lot of fun, and it is amazing how quickly we are progressing. It is encouraging to look over the last two months and see how much we have grown in our language skills. I still remember what it felt like to have an entire conversation in German for the first time. I didn't understand everything, but I was able to express my ideas and understand the gist of what the other person was saying. Cool! But here is the thing. Even in the face of all this learning, we have also become close friends with failure.

We fail all the time. We make mistakes in class, when we are doing our home work, when we write anything or speak to anyone. We can't get away from it no matter how much we try. If we were to completely form all of our sentences and check them against every grammar table and dictionary, we would never say a word. One phrase has really stuck with me from our language training in Colorado: "You have to destroy the language on your way to mastering it."

Failure has become a close friend as we continue to live with the language barrier...but pressing into our failure also brings about humility. In our language class, there are lawyers, architects, and micriobiologists - all highly educated, highly competent people. And in class, you find us all speaking at a kindergarten level about zoo animals and going to the super market. We are being humbled. We know that we need to make 1,000,000 language mistakes on our way to mastering German, and so we have decided to start now and get as many as we can out of the way! We want to make accepting failure a step towards success, and this is the perfect testing ground to work out that idea.

Photo credit: lyns from morguefile.com

Thoughtful, Funny and Surprisingly Christian

I was just watching Conan O'Brien's recent Dartmouth commencement address to graduates and "old people who come to these things."  Besides being completely hilarious, Conan opened with the self-deprecating humor he is known for, observing that while a decorated war hero and former president sit on stage, a cable TV host is giving the commencement address.  Based on this, he observed, "I pray that I never witness a more damning example of what is wrong with America today."

Something surprising starts to happen about two thirds of the way into the message.  Conan goes from self-deprecation and shameless pandering of insider collegiate references (if I was giving a commencement address, I don't think I could shy away from these either), to a completely different speech.  He turns on a dime.

Conan shares very candidly about his dream of hosting "The Tonight Show" and watching that dream crumble around him.  That moment of failure brought clarity and forced him to innovate and strike out into the comedic "wild wild west".  His failure to live up to the ideal ultimately led him to cast the vision for his redemption and his future. It led him to strike out into new territory, living in freedom from his failure.

With these concepts, Conan crossed into grace territory. Parallel to his words, it is not our ability to please God or to live up to His standard that makes us right before Him.  When we embrace the free grace of God and accept our failure and inability to achieve God's standard, we are given a chance to live freely and be redeemed.  This profound embracing of failure is not defeat, but it sets the tone for sin's ultimate defeat.  Death destroyed by death.

I'd encourage you to watch Conan's speech and ponder. What stands out to you from Conan's commencement address?