Devotional Reflections

Why am I so Angry: The Coffee Shop Conversation

~ Mike Schwiebert ~ 3 Comments

CoffeeShop

After some direct message conversations on Facebook and Twitter and some texts messages and emails, I wanted to have a chance to respond to some push back about my last rant. First of all, thanks to all those who jumped into the fray with an angry man. You are brave and appreciated.

My rant had three parts:

  • The first section was about me being angry when my friends are abused by the ministry.
  • The second was about me being mad about people who are leaving their churches to go somewhere else.
  • The third was about me being angry about being angry about the other two things.

I received the majority of response about the second one, so I wanted to go into greater depth. Let’s pretend we have a chance to discuss this over coffee. What’s really going on here?

Keep thinking! Continue reading.

Why am I so Angry?

~ Mike Schwiebert ~ 7 Comments

AngryDog

This may be a weird place to start a conversation about anger, but go with me for a second.
All of us have gifts. My wife has this great way of tuning into other people’s needs that is actually quite amazing. She is a fantastic care giver and will take care of others if she notices anything amiss. But that can be an incredible burden sometimes. Especially when it is seldom reciprocated. What is obvious to her is not obvious to others.

I have a different gift. It is called analytical, critical thinking. I can quickly assess systems for problems and weakness and sometimes analyze appropriate solutions. This is the strength that I lead with. I have applied my gift to all of the areas in my life I care about: my marriage, my family, my job, and my friends.

And the church.

It is my desire to see the church live up to Christ’s commission. It is what compelled me to attend Bible College and dedicate 25 years of service in the ministry. I have an innate passion for correctness in the church – my analysis of all we could be, yet are failing to be – that consumes most of my thinking life.

I have never found the perfect place or expression of all I think the church should be. Being a person with a natural gift for analytical, critical thinking has its advantages, but also comes with a burden. You see, my default view is to always see the systemic problem and want change. That is what makes me good at my job. What is obvious to me is not obvious to others and I get tired of waiting.

This is why I am angry. And anger may not be the right word for it. Maybe it’s a mixture of anger, frustration, and disappointment. Let me try to break it down into bite sized chunks.

Keep thinking! Continue reading.

Regaining Balance

~ Mike Schwiebert ~ Leave a comment
Scale
Ben Earwicker
Garrison Photography, Boise, ID
http://www.garrisonphoto.org

I have been working with my wife on achieving balance in my life. I owe her a huge debt of gratitude for everything she is and everything she does for me. Besides being the love of my life, she is my trusted sounding board for all of my crazy ideas. She gives me great feedback and has learned when to push and when to give space.

She is not shy about pointing out that I have a problem in finding work/life balance. The question I haven’t figured out is Why? I guess I’ll have to leave that to my betters (although without understanding why, I feel that I lack the appropriate tool to analyze what is really going on with me.).

In his material, Neil Anderson has expressed the basic human needs as identity, significance, acceptance and security. I’m sure that a key is in there somewhere. A job can can give the illusion of meeting these needs, especially in areas where we have worked hard to gain expertise and are valued and complimented on successes. Perhaps it is OK to say that a job does cover some of the ground in meeting these needs. If your work place makes you feel insignificant and anonymous, insecure and disconnected to yourself and your passion; it’s time to move on.

Part of the problem is this: I don’t usually feel as if my life is out of balance. I chalk it up to working in a demanding area. One can admit there is a problem – the evidence is there, your most trusted friend confirms it – but you don’t live in a constant awareness of it, so you easily fall back into your habitual patterns.

I know I’m not alone. What to do?

Keep thinking! Continue reading.

Lab or Factory or Church

~ Mike Schwiebert ~ 8 Comments

TestTubes

My mind has been spinning for the last week on a recent Seth Godin post, “The Lab or the Factory”. I have been contemplating what this distinction could reveal about the way we do church. It has also given me a new paradigm to freshly examine my own experiences.

The lab or the factory.

You work at one, or the other.

At the lab, the pressure is to keep searching for a breakthrough, a new way to do things. And it’s accepted that the cost of this insight is failure, finding out what doesn’t work on your way to figuring out what does. The lab doesn’t worry so much about exploiting all the value of what it produces–they’re too busy working on the next thing.

…

The factory, on the other hand, prizes reliability and productivity. The factory wants no surprises, it wants what it did yesterday, but faster and cheaper.

Seth Godin

Some personalities are more lab technician, others are more factory worker.
Churches are also either labs or factories: partly because of the personality of our leaders and partly because of the philosophy of ministry.

Some leaders prefer an assembly line approach where they are in control of the methods and results. They prize efficiency in the execution of their ideas. For some people, this approach works really well. My wife is one of them. She would say: tell me what to do, show me how you want me to do it, and I will work really hard to improve efficiency and maximize the return.

Other leaders prefer a lab approach where the organized chaos leads to innovation. They prize learning with each individual creating additional value. They are trendsetters in new ministry methods and experiences. Others often come later and improve on the things they’ve pioneered. This is where I come in. I like to question things. If it’s not broken, let’s break it and see if we can make it better. I would say: tell me what you want to accomplish, the problem you want to solve, and I’ll help you figure out how to do it. Then I’ll move to the next problem.

With these very different styles, it would be valuable to understand both the kind of ministry we serve in and our natural bias.

Keep thinking! Continue reading.

A Tale of Two Sacrifices

~ Mike Schwiebert ~ Leave a comment

Recently, I was listening to a podcast, and something the speaker, Dr. Chris Green, said captured me. The point involved Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac within a larger discussion of the sacraments and how we approach the Lord’s Table.*

The kind of work God wants to do in your life is deeper than you can imagine. Think about Isaac and Ishmael. J. H. King** … preached this sermon about Isaac and Ishmael. You remember the story from Abraham. Abraham cannot have a child. Finally, Sarah convinces him to have child with Hagar, the servant girl. This boy, Ishmael, is born. And then later God miraculously gives them Isaac. If you’ve been around Pentecostal churches at all, you’ve heard this sermon about Isaac and Ishmael.

J. H. King says this, ‘Ishmael is an example of what it looks like when God takes out of our life what should never have been there. The sin that you brought into your life or that others forced into your life, when God takes that out, that is God ridding you of Ishmael.
But when God calls you to sacrifice Isaac, that’s God calling you to give up something God gave you.’

Lately, I have been very interested in scrutinizing the way we do church. As a technical director, I am “in the flow” of how we communicate the Gospel and very often, the forms of our ministry. Let’s apply the difference between these two sacrifices to how we do the work of the ministry.

And I should add that I really think this is applicable to all Christians. All of us are on assignment even if we do not work at a church. There is a ministry that God has given you. That’s what I’m focusing on.
Keep thinking! Continue reading.