I’m re-reading Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry by Ruth Haley Barton for the third time in 2015. No book has brought such transformational change to my leadership and walk with Christ as this one. I’ll be doing a full review of the book later this week. Here’s a profound excerpt from page 118:
A recent survey of twenty thousand Christians around the world revealed that many identify busyness and constant overload as a major distraction from God. Michael Zigarelli, who conducted this survey from his post as associate professor of management at the Charleston University School of Business, describes “a vicious cycle” prompted by cultural conformity. He says, “It may be the case that 1) Christians are assimilating a culture of busyness, hurry and overload, which leads to 2) God becoming more marginalized in Christians’ lives, which leads to 3) a deteriorating relationship with God, which leads to 4) Christians becoming even more vulnerable to adopting secular assumption about how to live, which leads to 5) more conformity to a culture of busyness, hurry and overload. And then the cycle begins again.
What motivates your busyness and overload?
For me it’s a twisted irony:
“I love ministry so much I’m going to do so much of it that I become so busy and overloaded that I hate ministry and want to quit altogether!”
It’s pretty hard to enjoy God when you are hating ministry, yet as a minister my calling is to help others enjoy God. How can one help others enjoy something that they themselves are not enjoying?
What I’ve found so freeing about Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership is its ability to help me accurately identify what fuels my overdrive to overload and then to give practical (and essential!) ways to make sure God isn’t becoming marginalized in my life at the expense of all the pressing tasks around me. More to come on that later this week.
Are you too busy?
Are you enjoying God?
The answer to the first probably indicates the answer to the second.
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OK, so this isn’t directly related to your post but trust your opinion on things. Actually two things somewhat related. One is the news circulating today about the pastor in Midland, Michigan who resigned because a website outed him posting on a gay dating website. He was unfaithful to his wife and kids so question isn’t about sin; rather would Crossroads keep/welcome a staff member exposed in sin?
The other is closer to home. Have operated on the belief/hope that SSA/orientation is not sinful only acting on it. Someone sent me an article this week from David Platt’s Radical site arguing that both are sinful. What made my heart sink is that I found myself agreeing. Left a comment there so won’t say more here but here’s the link:
http://www.radical.net/blog/2015/04/is-same-sex-attraction-sinful/
The link between the two is the question of how the church can even minister to guys/pastors who struggle with SSA if being open about the struggle makes you less at the heart of who you are? Realize we all carry this body of death around, maybe SSA just puts that on display. Maybe it’s just pride thinking Rom 6 and the body of death being brought to nothing meant being celibate. Maybe it means being straight. I don’t know man.
Hey Noah, wishing previous comments could be edited out. I was asking the wrong questions, end of the day it’s not whether SSA or behavior is sinful, or whether orientation was from birth or development. No peace there no matter the answer. Question that matters is being in Christ in a living vital way, abiding in him. Got so blindsided by the article that I lost my bearings and started looking in myself for either an excuse or something worthwhile apart from Christ. So needed the courage that comes from faith to face being blindsided by things and look to Jesus and not doubt/crumble. Crazy journey sometimes, still learning Christ. So thankful for grace to get up and go on.
Hey man, feel free to delete these comments. Have a great holiday weekend.
Hi Alan, sorry for my long delay, got behind on emails/comments. I think your questions are great btw. I haven’t read Platt’s entry yet (I will), but I firmly disagree that same sex attraction is a sin. I think a lot of people confuse attraction and lust as the same. They aaaaarrrrreeeeennnnnn””’tttt the same thing. I will probably turn this into a separate blog post soon because someone else made a comment/accusation of me on a separate Facebook thread about this, that the attraction itself is a sin. There is no biblical evidence for this. All of the biblical accounts of homosexuality deal with the action/behavior, not the attraction. Christopher Yuan, prof at Moody Bible institute and gay/celibate/single, is a great resource for this: http://www.atacrossroads.net/helpful-words-from-gay-christian-homosexuality-bible-christopher-yuan/
As to your first question, I’d really have to take it on a case by case basis. In general, if a pastor was committing adultery, he’d need to resign and go through a long restoration process. The fact that it was a gay dating site rather than a straight one wouldn’t effect how I’d handle things. It would add an extra layer to work through as far as how to be married to a woman and also have same sex attraction, but that would be a second step to the first step of repentance of adultery and a long season of healing before being restored to ministry.
Hey man, you’re being kind, questions coming out of confusion usually are confused too. Realized after 1st post the question of the orientation being sinful in itself was one of those attacks at the heart of things, that God loved me. Somewhere on this journey realized/settled that in Christ nothing can separate me/us from the love of God, but in big & small things that gets tested.
That orientation and sexuality and rights have become such a prominent issue seems more like a product of the times from a culture that’s come up with the wrong answers. Now that gay marriage and sex has become the norm accepted by society and liberal churches, I’m expecting the reactions to being gay and celibate to range from pity and ridicule to hatred with hardly anyone seeing that it means faithful.
The answers to whether the orientation is sinful, and how it came about, end up not being very helpful to me. The question of how in this body and with what God’s given I can bring glory to God in Christ gives answers that help on this walk. That’s a question for straight as well as gay, and it goes beyond sexuality.
I’m not on Facebook but on your gay marriage post someone left a pretty brutal comment as well. I was tempted to leave a reply defending you but figured you’re doing fine without defending.