Leader's Insight: Construction Zone

From my journal: Earlier this week I was driving a strange road. The traffic was the rush-hour kind, and I was late, as the song says, for a very important date.

The reason for my lateness was poor planning. I’d not allowed ample time for travel in an unfamiliar area. But rather than admit this, I expressed my impatience by blaming the poorly timed red lights, the drivers ahead who insisted on making left turns, and the frequent construction projects. Especially the construction projects.

I actually fantasized that someone had foreseen my coming and had mischievously assigned road workers to “mine” the road with endeavors such as pothole filling, sewer repair, and lane painting. I tell you, the blue police lights, the orange cones, and the jersey barriers were ubiquitous.

And then as I drove I became immersed (blessed art thou!) in a vision. I saw the many construction projects as if they were people whom I encounter in my pastoral pursuits. The church is full of people who are “under construction.” Some are newly established in faith and lack knowledge of the Christian way. Some have sinned greatly and leave collateral damage all over the place. And some have failed to mature spiritually and spawn problems wherever they go. All, myself included: under construction.

And like my road experience, people-under-construction seem to force everyone else to slow down, even stop on occasion and lurch forward a car-length at a time.

In my “vision” I saw Jesus frequently delayed by Simon Peter and oft-foolish friends. I saw him stalled by religious professionals who didn’t get what he was saying. And I saw him having to detour around folks in various towns where there was no faith.

So in this rush-hour vision of mine, I suddenly understood a bit more of his challenges. And there arose a fresh understanding as to why real rubber-meets-the-road ministry where people are challenged to walk more intimately with God is such a start and stop affair.

Oh, by the way, I arrived on time.

Books I’ve not taken off my shelf for a while. Eugene Peterson’s Reversed Thunder, first published by Harper Collins in 1988. This wonderful, learned, godly man, whom so many of us admire, has attempted to unpack the Revelation of John. And he’s done very, very well. Just as my wife allows me a small piece of fudge each day, I permit myself about four pages of reading each day in this powerful book. To read more is to miss out on nurturing insights that feed the soul. Two quotes which I’ve put in my journal:

“We live in a noisy world. We are yelled at, promoted, called. Everyone has an urgent message for us. We are surrounded with noise: telephone, radio, television, stereo. Messages are amplified deafeningly. The world is a mob in which everyone is talking at once and no one is willing or able to listen. But God listens. He not only speaks to us, he listens to us. His listening to us is an even greater marvel than his speaking to us. It is rare to find anyone who listens carefully and thoroughly. It is rare to find our stammering understood, our clumsy speech deciphered, our garbled syntax unraveled, sorted out and heard—every syllable attended to, every nuance comprehended. Our minds are taken seriously. Our feelings are taking seriously. When it happens we know that what we say and feel are immensely important. We acquire dignity. We never know how well we think or speak until we find someone who listens to us.”

“The chief difficulty in maintaining Christian witness is timidity. The life of the world is gaudy, noisy, and assertive. The life of faith is modest, quiet, and unassuming. What can an ordinary Christians say that will stand a chance in the brash shouting of money and pleasure and ambition? Or in the wailing laments of boredom and depression and self-pity? In a society in which the thesaurus of metaphor and symbol has been ransacked by cynical advertisers, faithless artists, and indulgent entertainers to condition us to a maniacal but brainless devotion to me and now, how can the imagination be renewed so that we can say, honestly and personally, without necessarily raising our voices, who God is and what eternity means?”

I wonder what A.B. Simpson was dealing with when he said, “I would rather play with forked lightning, or take in my hand living wires with their fiery current, than to speak a reckless word again any servant of Christ, or idly repeat the slanderous darts which thousands of Christians are hurling on others, to the hurt of their own souls and bodies.”

It made me think: I’m having lunch with this company executive. Not a large company, mind you, maybe 65 employees. And he says, “There’s a bunch of Catholics working here and a bunch of us Protestants. We really have a great spirit of fellowship in our mutual love for the Lord. There’s a lot of camaraderie.” Suddenly I realize the implication of his words: he’s described people finding a kind of refreshing union which buttresses their daily faith in Jesus while in the workplace. But on the weekend there are these strange walls that go up as every person heads to his or her church—churches that hardly recognize each other’s existence. There is something wrong with this picture.

Pastor and author Gordon MacDonald is chair of World Relief and editor at large of Leadership.

To respond to this newsletter, write to Newsletter@LeadershipJournal.net.