June 25th, 2009 by John Lynch

Well, the three amigos are back from the Land Down Under. One of our conferences was cancelled, Bill’s luggage handles were torn off in transit, I got food poisoning the evening before speaking four times in one day, and Bruce and I most assuredly made enemies throughout New Zealand as we drove on the wrong side of the road, inadvertently turning on our windshield wipers every time we wanted to indicate a lane change.

…But what we asked God for happened in spades. Everywhere we spoke, people would come up afterwards and speak a pretty consistent statement. They look into your eyes and stare, like they’re begging us to take their words seriously: “All my life I have hoped that this is what God was like and how we could live with Him and with others. I just never knew anyone else could see it. And I didn’t have language to help others find the Room of Grace. You three have given us hope and language. This Gospel of God’s grace is so incredibly freeing! We will never be the same. Thank you.”

Still now I don’t know how to respond, after God has met with another and they thank you for it. But it never ever is anything but the most fulfilling feeling in the world. I want to keep doing this for the rest of my life.

Bruce and Bill and I had great times together just as I asked God for in my last entry. We recommitted our hearts to each other, talking and dreaming late into the night and laughing, eating and walking our way through Australia and New Zealand.

This ministry gig doesn’t bring in much money but there are sure some nice perks. All of you who’ve given your heart to the same thing, either vocationally or as a volunteer-you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s that moment when someone looks deep into your eyes, begging you to take their words seriously. And they thank you for what God did in them through your life.

Nothing finer anywhere on this earth than that moment.

John-for Bruce and Bill

May 28th, 2009 by John Lynch

Hello everyone. So, today Bruce, Bill and I head off for Australia and New Zealand! It sounds romantic but most of the time we’ll actually be enjoying some of the continent’s finest conference halls and room partitions. We will have many incredible opportunities to teach these truths of grace environments to communities who have been asking us to come for years. We’re very excited!

But something about this trip feels different. The three of us almost never go on extended ministry trips together. I’m usually back home preaching in my local church, while they go out and train. Or I’m sent out to speak a conference while they stay back and do whatever important things it is that they do.

But this time we’ll be together for two weeks. Two weeks! In our entire marriage I’ve never been away from Stacey this long. Bees go through their entire lives faster than this trip will take. And so I have a feeling much of what God will be doing on this trip-will be about the three of us.

See, Bill, Bruce, myself and others have been given a stewardship of a ministry that is wonderfully about grace. But it is about something more. It is about grace and identity being lived out in community…with each other. With those who are hard to love. With we who are hard to love.  With those who keep letting us down. With those who are slow to grow. With those who disagree with us and get in our way. With those who prefer other presidential candidates. With those who snore…(I’m just saying)

There are many wonderful writers and speakers on grace. But there are very few who write and speak and train and teach and model what communities of grace look like, feel like and ultimately become. That is what we do. So, Bill, Bruce and John must love each other. Not just theoretically but actually. Otherwise we may teach and write profound truths and principles, but the power of our credibility and the trust it takes for others to believe us is radically diminished. An environment of grace cannot be a utopian concept that everyone applauds, but no one believes is possible to live.

So, Bill and Bruce and John must learn how to love and be loved by each other in real time, in real pressure, in real hurt, in real disagreement. And although I have matured significantly over the years, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but these two are a lot of work! So, on this trip, the three of us will inevitably have times on walks, or in a pub in Melbourne, or a hotel lobby in Auckland, or on flights, or in the middle of sessions that aren’t working. And God will set up times for us to have the hard and beautiful and affirming and challenging talks.  Because in September we will be releasing a book, “Bo’s Café”. And it could change our lives dramatically. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but very few books carry 3 authors. We do it because we believe we will write a better book and will model how life can be done in community. And from September on, pressure like never before will tempt us to disband and go our own ways, over some hurt or another. And the thousands of environments of grace that we dreamed of God using us to reach and nurture will have to wait for another team willing to risk loving and being loved by each other in tough seasons. So pray for us. We want to do this well. We want to pass this test…and the next one…and the next one. We want to believe that we can live this way of grace and love that the Scriptures teach. In real time. Thank you so much for standing with us all these years. It is a privilege to represent you and stand alongside of you.

God blessings upon all of you.

John-representing my precious friends and heroes, Bill and Bruce

April 28th, 2009 by toben

This weekend John was down at Woodmen Valley Chapel in Colorado Springs.  He had done their men’s retreat (with 300 guys) and was asked to speak at the weekend’s worship services.  So Joanne and the girls and I drove down Saturday night.  First off, it was great to see John.  He is such an amazing friend and our whole family loves him and his family.  So just seeing him was a lot of fun.

I have heard John speak and teach many times in many different settings.  One might think that I would sort of have it figured out at this point and that he would have a hard time keeping my attention.   But I tell you what: John brought it on Saturday night! He was as “on” as I have seen him and it was like the Holy Spirit just descended and moved through him. I spent a lot of my time moving between watching John on stage and watching my girls.  They had never heard John preach and I think it was a big deal to them to see someone they know up on stage.  I could tell from their faces that they were just eating it up.  After the service Audrey reported that John was “radical” and Emma said, “that was the fist preaching I ever understood.”  I love that!

The cool thing was that the whole congregation was totally with him too.  I am sure that from time to time he speaks and people just can’t get their head around the message.  But this group was responsive.  They laughed at the jokes, nodded enthusiastically at the right points and even clapped a few times right in the middle of the talk. And boy did they clap afterwards! And a ton of people came up to talk to him and seemed to be really impacted by what he had to say.  What a cool thing to witness.

Here’s the thing: it was so good for me to hear the message again.  Even thought I have heard it tons, it still effects me.  My heart is totally open to hearing and receiving this message of grace.  I hope I never get tired of hearing it.  I hope my ears never close as a result of familiarity.  I hope, like Audrey and Emma, that I will find the message both radical and understandable for all my life.

April 15th, 2009 by toben

Bill often says something like this: My primary motive cannot be to please God because only my trust in him pleases him. Wow!  This flips some of my theology on it’s head.  I have spent 33 of my 38 years on this earth trying to please God.  After all I want God to be happy.  I remember thinking as a kid that when I would go to church or go on a mission trip of something that God must really be pleased in me.  I also remember that when I would smoke or use foul language or skip school that I was pretty sure God was displeased with me.  I spent a lot of time trying to bank good stuff in the God account so that it would cover the bad stuff I did and I would have a net positive.

Last night I couldn’t sleep and I was thinking about my girls.  Audrey is 10 and Emma is 8.  They are the absolute light of my life.  So I was thinking about this principle and about my girls and things sort of clicked for me.  I realized that I would always rather have my girl’s trust than I would like to have them working hard to try and please me.  And here’s why: as little people they are always going to do knuckle-headed stuff, and they are going to drive me crazy sometimes.  Of course they will make me happy a lot of times too.  But their behavior isn’t a constant. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s not.  But their trust in me can be a constant!  Regardless of how they act, they can always trust me.  And in trusting me, I can come along side them and we can sort out their behavior together.  So their trust in me is actually the key to helping them live out who they really are–amazing kids!

Beyond that, their trust in me indicates a deeper, more substantial and healthier relationship than one that is typified by them striving to make me happy.  If that’s all their going for then they are quickly going to get to a place of resentment because as humans, they can’t do the good and right thing all the time.  So there will be this constant up and down in our relationship that will wear them down until the point that they just give up and decide not to try any more.

If this isn’t a parallel to what I experience with God I don’t know what is!  If I strive to please God I will never hit the mark. There may be a thing I do here and there that makes him happy, but on the whole, because I am human, I am going to blow it and will have to deal with my perception of God’s displeasure in me.  After a  while I’ll just give up.  I know tons of Christians that have given up on their faith for this very reason.  It’s not that they deny that God exists, it just that they are tired of trying so hard so they give up.  And it is a source of deep sadness for many of them.  Makes this principle one that I want to shout from the rooftops because if we as Christians could internalize this principle we could stick with it, and more than that, we could glorify in it for our entire lives!

I could go on and on about this–a guess a little sleeplessness from time to time is a good thing. So in both my earthly relationships and in my heavenly one I want trust to reign.  I want to be trustworthy with Joanne and with my kids–I want to nurture that trust at every turn.  And I want to constantly remind myself that God is perfectly worthy of my trust too.  I want to come alongside my family as we face life’s challenges just as I know God comes along side me.  And the thing that makes it all work is trust.  I love that!

April 14th, 2009 by toben

Someone posed this question to me the other day: is grace your worldview or is it your calling? I thought it was an interesting question and I have wrestled with it for the past couple of days.  To me, what it implies is that it’s one thing to have grace as a worldview–that’s an internal, personal thing.  It’s another thing to be called to proclaim that worldview to others–that’s an external manisfestation.  At least that how I interpreted the question.

There are lots of people whose worldview is also their calling.  I look at some of my green friends.  They have a worldview of ecology and conservation but they are so open about trying to get others to adopt this worldview too.  They proclaim it wherever they go and without hesitation.  I look at some of my friends that are really involved in social justice.  Same thing.  they are committed to these ideals, they have fully internalized them and made them a part of how they think and live and see the world.  And they will let you know it!  They don’t keep their views a secret and they actively  encourage others to see and think likewise.  I look at some of my fundamentalist friends and the same can be said.  They have a way of seeing and they want everyone to see the same, for better or worse.

So, is grace my worldview or is it more than that?  Would me friends and family know from our interactions that this is what is so important to me?  Would Joanne see it in the kind of husband I am?  Would my kids see it in the way I parent?  Would friends even know that  I see the world through this lens?  Or is it a “best kept secret?”

I guess my struggle is figuring gout how to bring it to bear in real life situations.   How should I go about bringing it up?  For example, I was on the phone with a good friend yesterday and he was talking about some challenges that he is facing.  I suppose it would have been a good time to talk to him about the fact that God is with him whether he sense it or not and that in his grace God will stand with him as he faces his challenges.  I would have liked to have said all that!  But in the moment it didn’t come out.  So how would he possibly know how important grace is to me and how important it could be to him.

So I don’t have an answer to this questions yet, but I do have a commitment.  I want people to know, to be transformed, by an sustained interaction with the God of grace.  In my mind, this is really the core of the gospel.   So I will start with prayer.  I will ask God to give me opportunity and words to say to convey the truth of his nature and its importance to me in the interactions that I have.  I want it to shine through, first in my closest relationships and then in the next circle out.   And maybe, over time, with God’s help my worldview of grace will be a calling as well.

April 6th, 2009 by toben

One of my favorite axioms is: In times of stress you go with what you know.  What does that mean?  It means that when pressure builds sometimes what we know to be true is overridden by what we have experienced in our past, or by what we used to believe.  We revert to a way of thinking or acting that is more influenced by what used to be than by what is. For me, this is certainly put to the test frequently in the area of grace and my relatively new grace-based worldview.  I say “new” because I have really only been walking this path for the past four or five years.  I am 38.  So that means that for 34 years of my life I was living out of a performance based worldview–that what I did was more important than who I really was.  In fact, that what I did was who I was.  I had no identity outside of my achievements, roles, titles and behaviors.  So today, when I am under stress, it is easy for me to revert to what I knew for so much of my life and forget the transformation that has occurred in the last few years.

Examples abound! This weekend is probably a good one.  In my new worldview I am looking at parenting very differently.  I am trying to avoid confusing my kid’s behavior with their identity.  They aren’t bad people becasue they are doing bad things.  They are amazing, wonderful, redeemed people who, at the time, may be making some poor choices.  How easy it is to yell, “You are so bad!”  Clearly that is an identity statement.  But it’s what I know from my past.  So when the girls are at each others throats I sometimes revert, wanting them to perform to be acceptable.  This weekend I did that at least once and Joanne caught me at it.  She reminded me that we are trying not to tangle up our kids true identities with what they are currently up to.  So I had to go back to them and affirm who I know them to be and talk to them more specifically about why they were making the choices they were.  But it’s so easy to just let them have it!

This struggle is evident in other areas.  For a long time I felt like I was essentially unloveable and that furthermore, I didn’t deserve to be loved.  Not sure where that started (I would need more therapy to get to the root of that one) but it has left me at times feeling like no one, if they really knew me, would care for me.  This was true of my human relationships as well as my relationship with Jesus.  So here’s how it plays out: Audrey, my 10 year old, might say something like, “You are the best dad!” and instead of believing her or thanking her for what she said, I correct her.  “I’m definitely not the best dad.  I try hard but I’m really not all that great.”  I’ll actually say those words!  How crazy is that? And it drives the kids nuts that I can’t take a compliment from them.  But it is so hard for me.  What I know to be true today is that I am loveable, first to Jesus but cetainly also to those closest to me.  I know it…but sometimes I don’t feel it.  When I get a compliment it is actually a stress inducing event so I go with what I know (or rather, knew).

And there are plenty of other examples–I could blog and blog and blog.  But I think you get the point.  So what am I doing about it?  I sort of have a couple of little mantras that I try to repeat to myself when the stress starts to build.  I might remind myself, “Jesus with his arm around me.”  Simple as that.  It fixes in my mind that I’m not on this journey alone but that Christ is with me.  Or I might say to myself, “Remember their new identity.”  This one for my kids obviously.  I want to trigger right thinking and from that right action.  My favorite is, “His grace is enough.”  I use this one for just the general stress of daily life–when I feel pushed and pulled and anxious this is the one I repeat over an over until I really internalize it, and believe it afresh.

Maybe in another 34 years this grace worldview will be ingrained to the point that when the pressure rises I’ll fall back on this stuff automatically.  But until then I might need a reminder or a mantra to bring me back to what I know is true: His grace really, truly is enough.

April 2nd, 2009 by toben

Our TrueFaced Worldview night on Monday was a great success!  We held the event at my in-laws and even though they have a good sized house, the place was still packed with nearly 40 folks who came to hear the message of grace.  Everything just went so well!  Dave and John did an amazing job with the presentation, Joanne’s mom made a ton of great desserts, the house was a perfect setting and the conversations that happened both before and after were so good.  It is amazing to see the way that the message that we teach plays across different cultures, ages, and stages. We had people from as far away as Korea and as near by as a few streets over.  We had young couples and seniors.  We had folks with very conservative Christian beliefs and those who aren’t believers quite yet and everything in between.  And still, in every conversation, people were encouraged by the message and it got them thinking about what God may be trying to tell them.  That’s so cool to see!

One comment especially jumped out at me.  After the presentation my great friend Jaime said, “If grace is so simple, why do we make it so difficult?”  I love that! And I don’t think there is a simple answer for it. For some of us it’s that we were raised to think that self-effort was the key to the Christin life.  Others of us may be in churches where grace simply isn’t taught.  It may be that some of us, even though we have heard something about grace simply can’t believe that what we’ve heard is true.  I think for me the biggest struggle has always been that I can’t conceive of a God that loves me so much that he wills stand with me and extend grace to me in all of life’s struggles and in all my junk and not turn his back on me when I blow it.  It seems too good to be true.  But for each of us, as we hear this message and as we study and reflect further, we have the opportunity to embrace it, to step into it and to have it change literally everything.

Because if I accept that God’s grace is the real deal, if I believe that he is with me and not against me, if I accept that there is nothing I can do to separate myself from the grace of God, then everything changes.  I will parent differently, I will be a different kind of husband, I will be a better friend to my friends, and I will view my faith and the gospel through a different lens.  As John says, this isn’t a worldview that I can just plug into my existing worldview, it’s not adaptive–but it changes a worldview forever; it is transformative.

Anyhow, I hope we get to do more of these events.  They are a blast!

March 30th, 2009 by toben

Tonight we are hosting a TrueFaced Worldview event here in Denver at my in-laws house.  At least I hope we are.  Wouldn’t you know that the day of the event the snow would start flying!  Yesterday it was a beautiful Colorado day; nice and warm without a cloud in the sky.  Today we have gotten a couple inches of snow just in the last hour.  We have a ton of people driving up from Colorado Springs tonight so hopefully this stuff will quit soon and we won’t have any problems.  And hopefully John, Dave and Bruce won’t have any problems flying in!  They cut it sort of close so if there are big delays, I might be doing the event all on my own. That would be very, very bad seeing as I have no up front skills whatsoever.  The irony here is that John told me last week he really wanted to see snow when he came to Colorado.  So he’ll be happy.

I am hoping the event comes off without a hitch tonight because it is a great opportunity for friends and family from around the Denver area to hear an incredible message.  The Worldview night is basically a modified presentation of the Two Roads talk.  Of course it is pretty modified seeing as it is intended for a a smaller room and not a big group like John is used to presenting to.  The cool part is that Dave Burchett ( a great friend of ours) has an opportunity to interject his thoughts from his own experience with this message.  It has totally transformed Dave’s life and it is really great to hear a real life story of grace making a difference.

Of course the real cool stuff will happen after the talk when everyone  has a chance to have some dessert and talk about what they just heard.  For some, this message is something that they are familiar with.  For others it is totally new and the concepts and teachings take a while to figure out and adjust to.  If you have come up in a graceless environment, the message seems almost too good to be true.  Fortunately there are enough of us from the team who will be there that we can answer questions and get feedback.

Now if it would just stop snowing!

March 25th, 2009 by toben

My internet went down this morning so I had some time to do something that I don’t get to do as much as I like: I got to read.  I know, I’m in publishing and I write and edit a lot so of course I should be an avid reader too.  There was a time when that was true.  I used to read dozens of books and hundreds of proposals every year.  I was constantly reading (and paid to do it). But these days I just don’t get around to it much.  I think it’s partly because I burned out on reading a while back–those stacks of manuscripts demanded attention. And it might be that between email and phone calls and writing and editing I just don’t have any room for more words in my life.  The one exception to all this is the Bible.  I figure if I am going to read at all I better make it count.  Currently I am half way through Jerimiah on a trip from cover to cover. But I digress…

So this morning while the internet guy was doing his thing I picked up a copy of Beyond Your Best and started thumbing through.  I love this book because its concepts were some of my first exposure to Leadership Catalyst.  Years ago, when I was at NavPress, I was part of a three year mentoring program with Bill.  A lot of the content we covered in our times together can be found in these pages.  So in some ways it all felt very familiar to me.  But it struck a chord in me today that I didn’t expect.

You see, I am pretty comfortable.  I have everything in place. I have had relative mental health for the last few years.  I love Jesus and depend on his presence and love and grace daily.  I have an amazing, healthy, happy family.  I have a great church.  I have friends close by that I enjoy.  I have a good job that pays the bills.  I get to work with incredible people.  And I have a ministry to couples who struggle with mental illness.  All good stuff.  And I think for the last while I have felt satisfied.  I think I have felt like, “This is enough.  Everything is right where it should be.” But what if there is more out there for me?

What if this current  “good” is really just “good enough?”  What if God wants more for me?  Due to the circumstances of the last few years I think that I couldn’t even conceive of anything like that–I was desperate to get to a place like I find myself in today and couldn’t imagine that it would even be possible to get here! I think that has lead to this current “good enough” state. And believe me I’m not complaining.  I think if I stay right here forever I’ll be OK with that.

But lately, just in the last few months, I have started to feel like more and better is possible, mostly as it relates to my family and the role I play there. I have been stable for a pretty long time but I think sometimes I parent out of this “sick dad” space (I’m bi-polar) that let’s me off the hook in certain areas. Then this morning I read these words:

What you are now doing in your life may be excellent. But to rise above your individual best , you need a special kind of environment in which to live and work–an environment that nurtures a community and integrates your heart and hands, that nourishes your relationship with God and others around you.  This kind of “best” will help you become more than you could ever become on your own.”

Wow! That felt like it hit the issue right on the head.  I admit, these concepts are not foreign to me–I have been around this ministry and this message for too long for this to catch me by total surprise. But it did remind me that  my own striving, to be a good dad, a good friend, a good husband, a good employee, and especially a good follower of Christ, will ultimately keep me from “the best.”  I am dependent first of God and then on my community to help me achieve all of this.

Practically, as I think about my life, I wonder what would happen if some night over dinner I said to Joanne and the girls, “I want you to help me be the best dad that I can be, to be fully and completely the dad God wants me to be. Can you help me with that?”  They might be a little confused at first but I bet they would say, “yes.”   Then, what if,  through their encouragement, support and protection, over time I fully became the dad that God desires me to be. What if I became a dad who stepped into his destiny with nothing holding me back! At least I know I will have a better shot at it than if I just keep “trying hard.”

What if the little community that gathers around our table every night got invited in to help me move from “good enough” to “everything God intended!”   And what if they gave me the same access, the same opportunity to support them in their quest to become everything God desires for them?  Don’t get me wrong, I am insanely in love with my family and I love our life together, but I get pretty excited thinking that as good as it is, it could be “beyond our best!”

March 23rd, 2009 by toben

Lately I have been thinking about what I do with this message of grace that I carry around inside me.  I mean, here is a thing that shapes my theology and it is part and parcel of my everyday faith journey.  But not everyone knows about it.  I mean people that I am friends with, close friends, may not even know that role that grace and trust play in my life.  I think they all know that I am a Christian (so are most of them).  But I have come to the realization that it is likely that I haven’t talked much about these aspects of my faith.  I wonder why that is?

I know that I want people to know about it because I think it will be transformative in some of their lives.  I think some of my friends are ready to hear about it and other may not be–grace isn’t appealing to everyone (which is hard for me to believe).   But I’m not sure how to bring it up.  I mean, if I am hanging out with my friends or talking on the phone and just normal life stuff is going on I am not likely to say soemthing like, “So, what are your views of grace?” Or, “Are you striving to please God or are you simply trusting him?”  I am positive that if something big was going on I would be right there to share these things that have been so helpful to me, but in the normal course of life I’m not sure how to do it.

And it bugs me that I would have to wait for a crisis to get to talk about this stuff.   I hope I am living it out in my life, that as I relate and parent and that sort of thing that it is clear that I am coming at things from a little bit different place. But I want to be able to put everyday language to it.

I am thinking about this because in a week John and Dave and Bruce are coming here to Denver to do a TrueFaced Worldview evening.  We are getting together about 20 friends and family to hear a talk about how what it means to live a TrueFaced life.  A lot of the people that will be there are my friends, my family.  And I am nervous that they’ll hear this talk an be like, “Why haven’t you ever said anything?”  I have to figure out a good answer for that.  “It just never came up” doesn’t seem like a very good one.

So that’s my task of the next couple of weeks: to think of how to work grace into the natural rythms and patterns and conversations of my everyday life with those I love.  If I can’t do that with them, what are the chances that I can share with soemone I hardly know?  After all, the message of God’s grace is the message of the gospel and I definitely want to share that.  So if you have any ideas or great stories of how you have shared the message of grace with others, I’d love to hear about it.