Reverse Engineering Your Life: Avoiding Adolescence

My pastor, Mark Driscoll, delivered an excellent sermon recently about the life of John the Baptizer (NOT the Baptist–he didn’t have a denomination).    One of the main points he made is that John avoided adolescence.  This greatly contributed to his accomplishment of his mission (his ministry lasted a maximum of 6 months before he was murdered).  How does someone accomplish a following of thousands and the anointing of the Lord in so short a time?  One of the keys was his complete avoidance of adolescence.

Driscoll calls adolescence “boys who can shave.”  These are guys who are obsessed with entertainment and leisure and avoid growing up, living in that Peter Pan kind of mentality, sometimes for decades.

I’m sorry to say that I have met many adolescents in the military.  It sometimes troubles me that you guys can’t balance a checkbook, but you can shoot to kill…as your chaplain let me say this, in all Christian love: grow up.

Now you say, “hey, Chap, that’s kinda harsh.  I thought you’re supposed to bless us and tell us how awesome we are to be Soldiers.  You’re supposed to tell us how much God appreciates us, right?”

Look, friends, I do love you.  And I think you guys rock.  But if you’re the guy who goes to work and then goes to the Lazy-Boy, someone needs to plant a combat boot on your lazy butt.  There’s nothing manly about that, and I think it’s about time that you Soldiers who claim to be Christians demonstrate what it means to be a man.

If you’re serious about getting your life-plan in order and going somewhere, I’m telling you now, the majority of your life cannot be spent on the couch with a remote.

But let me have Pastor Mark tell you.  He’s much better at yelling at guys than I am.  Check out the sermon: http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/luke/the-birth-of-john-the-baptizer

Grace for the Sin of Suicide

I’m in training this week to become an ASIST trainer.  ASIST is a program which prepares people to be able to provide suicide intervention to people at risk of killing themselves.

One of the main issues our class has been grappling with is the matter of the wrongness or rightness of suicide.  Is suicide wrong?  Does a person have a right to commit suicide?  Is a person who commits suicide responsible for his or her actions?

To answer this from a biblical perspective, I’ll recommend you listen to Bryan Chapell preach the funeral of his good friend who was also a Jesus-following pastor.  You should know that, according to what Chapell has said in other contexts, he was preaching to a church and family who had repeatedly reached out to their pastor when they knew he was in a deep depression.  Many of them are confused, angry, and depressed at the funeral.  Listen to Chapell deliver beautiful compassion with biblical accuracy.

Let me know what you think.

Chaplain dre

Reverse Engineering your Life: Jesus Provides a Comprehensive Worldview

So perhaps you’re standing at this point in your life where you feel like you’re at a turning point.  You don’t know what the turning point is exactly, but you know that something should change.  Maybe you’re wondering about a new job, a new hobby, a new interest, a romantic relationship, or religion.

Let me suggest that the change you need is not a hobby, a new love life, or religion.  You need a comprehensive meta-narrative–that is, a story that is able to encompass your story and make sense of life.  You need a worldview that is able to explain everything you encounter, and bring you through it successfully.  You need a person, a perfect, wise, all-powerful, all-knowing person who will go with you through life day by day, moment by moment.  There’s only one person who can do that: Jesus.

The reason you may have a barrier between yourself and Jesus is simple: Sin.  Sin keeps all of us from Jesus, whether we call ourselves Christians or not.  Jesus once told us to “be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.”  God is a just God who demands perfection.  In other words, if you aren’t perfect, you aren’t good enough to be a son or daughter of God.  That’s his standard.  Are you perfect?  No, I didn’t think so.  So what do you do?

There’s not much you can do on your own.  You can’t get to being perfect on your own.  So God wants to adopt you as a son or daughter, but he can’t do that unless you’re perfect.  Enter Jesus.  Jesus is already God’s son.  He’s perfect.  He’s God himself.  The solution: get punished on your behalf.  Die on your behalf.  Suffer the consequences of sin on your behalf.  And when he does that, you are forgiven of all your sins and receive from Jesus his perfect righteousness.  So God sees you as perfect.  As a result, the Holy Spirit becomes your bestest, closest, most intimate buddy.  He moves in and fills you with the thinking and feeling of Jesus for the rest of your life.  You enjoy the close, father-child relationship with God that Jesus enjoys.  You get the wisdom of an all-knowing God at your disposal.  God guides you through the mine-field of life and through your simply daily concerns.

All you have to do is believe what I’ve told you.  Believe and tell Jesus that you believe he died for your sins and rose again….oh yeah, I better not leave that part out.  He rose again.  The point is, he beat death.  He destroyed it.  He isn’t dead anymore, and he never will be dead again.  That means those of us who follow Jesus will never be dead.  Sure, we’ll die on earth and get buried, but immediately following that is the experience of being perfect, sinless, and with God forever in heaven.  That’s a guarantee.

What’s this have to do with Reverse Engineering your life?  Honestly, you can only plan so much.  You need the help of the chief architect.  You need a God who will tell you things like: here’s what I made you to do.  Here’s your special gifts, stuff I’ve designed you for.  You’ll really like doing this job.  You’ll love having this many kids….

You can’t tell the future.  But God is already there.

So maybe you read this and you’re thinking, “Chaplain Dre, you’re just giving me religion again!”  Nah.  Not a religion.  I define religion as a system of philosophy that tells you what to do and what not to do, and as long as you do those things and don’t do the other things, God will like you.  This is a relationship.  This is a father relating to his sons and daughters.  You can’t do anything to lose his love.  Once you believe and follow Jesus, and become adopted by God, you will always have his acceptance and love.  No way you can do anything to lose his favor.

So why do we even follow the Bible or do good things?  Because that’s what God’s kids do!  We follow Jesus and do the good things and avoid the bad things because the Christian life changes our hearts.  We begin to want to do good deeds and avoid evil deeds.  It’s what we want to do.  It’s how we get enjoyment and fulfilment and pleasure in life.

It’s that simple.

Get this piece in place first.  What is your worldview?  Is it a politic, a religion, a philosophy?  Or is it a person who can really make a difference in life.  Before you begin reverse engineering your life, put this piece in place.  It’s the cornerstone for everything else.

Feel free to write or call me.

Chaplain Dre

Reverse Engineering Your Life: The Importance of Worldview

I have been doing Yellow Ribbon reintegration briefings for the 81st Infantry this month. One of the main themes I have been emphasizing is the concept of reverse engineering your life. The idea is that we should set a long- range goal for our personal lives and families 30-50 years down the road from now.  We then work backward, laying out the necessary stages in life to accomplish the goals.  In this way, deployment and the stress of reintegration become an opportunity to re-evaluate life and start creating a “new normal” for daily living.

This is the first post in a series I plan to do on reverse engineering your life.

Worldview

Before one can determine goals, plans, or even dreams, I believe one needs to resolve the question of worldview. Your worldview is your perspective and understanding of the world around you. It encompasses your understanding of life, the universe, and everything (yes, that’s a Hitchiker’s Guide reference for you sci-fi fans).  Your worldview affects your understanding of politics, your neighbors, and the news. It determines your major and minor decisions.  Your worldview determines your morality and explains who you are in relation to God, family, and others.  Where you choose to work, who you marry, and how you raise your kids are all affected by your worldview.

I do not mean religion.  A religion, as I understand it, is a list of do’s and don’ts that promise to earn you favor with God.  A worldview moves beyond that sort of living.  It is a perspective, a complete system of understanding for life.  Now, most people do not operate under a comprehensive worldview.  It is common to have a religion to explain God and morality that has no say in how one chooses a mate.  You may follow your desires when it comes to selecting a movie to rent, with no regard to how it fits into you larger worldview.  For the most part, we live fragmented lives which display little coherence.  Before you can really begin putting together a reverse-engineered life, it is necessary to have a coherent, comprehensive worldview.  You can’t determine a general path into the future if you don’t have guidance in what that future should look like.  It’s one thing to have dreams, but if you realize your dreams someday, will you be fulfilled?  Will you be satisfied?  Or will you find the accomplishment empty?

The problem is that there is way too much in life to take into account through any single system.  Even Christianity as a system is unable to encompass all of life. Christianity has little in and of itself to say about choosing a doctor, designing a skyscraper, determining an MOS, fixing your car, or going to the game.  It simply doesn’t cover all that.  And when you consider all the world systems and religions, you find that no one has created a system which can be this comprehensive.  Truly, such a system must be so large that it would have to be the result of knowing everything and being everywhere at the same time.  On top of that, in order for a reverse-engineered life to work, it would have to be put together by an architect who knows the future.

Does such a worldview exist?  Yes.  But not as a system.  It is a person: Jesus.  Jesus is himself God.  This means he is present in the past and the future.  This means also that he knows everything and is everywhere at the same time.  The only way to have a comprehensive worldview is not to find a workable religious system, but to instead have a relationship with Jesus Christ.  I’m not telling you that the answer is in Christianity.  It’s not in any system.  The only way to follow a comprehensive worldview is to follow a coherent, comprehensive leader.  That leader is Jesus.

One of the reasons I am not denominationally affiliated as a chaplain is because I want to emphasize in my ministry the centrality of Jesus.  Other chaplains are denominational, and that’s fine.  Many of them are Jesus followers within their denominations.  For me, though, as a chaplain I want to emphasize to you that Jesus is sufficient to handle all of life–marriage, parenting, war, PTSD, anger, worry, anxiety, distress, joy, happiness, excitement, hatred, democrats, republicans, infanticide, IED’s, sex, movies, music, deformities, jobs, lay-off’s, promotions, insurance, death…you name it.

To get a handle on all of life and to have the wisdom to lay out a reverse-engineered life, you will need to have a personal relationship with Jesus.  I don’t mean a cordial, informational understanding of the bible’s description and words of Jesus, but a true personal one-on-one relationship with him.  That sort of relationship provides for you a leader who is already in the future.  Jesus then becomes your guide in planning your life and working through your plan.  He’s there to show you where you got it wrong and where it needs to be adjusted.  He provides support and grace and strength during the tough parts.  He reassures you that everything really is under control when life seems to spiral out of control because of a diagnosis.  And in the end, regardless of how life went, he brings you home to heaven.  Guaranteed.

The perfect worldview is not a system, a philosophy, or an ideology.  It is Jesus.

Next in this series: Sin, Jesus, and the Perfect Plan.

Preparing Your Family for Deployment

I recently did a briefing for the 204th Engineers in the Washington National Guard deploying in the next couple months.  My goal was to help prepare the families to not only survive deployment, but hopefully thrive through the experience.  I have had a good response to the briefing, and requests for copies of my notes.  I did the talk for the most part extemporaneously, using my slides as my reference.  Yesterday I went back through my slides and wrote out my thoughts and talking points.

My slides and notes are available for download in two locations:
–a MediaFire download
–my online Evernote Notebook

Comments and thoughts are welcome!

Chaplain dre

3 Free Sins!

The following was included in the devotional distributed to the Soldiers of the 1-168 AVN, 66th TAC during my first drill weekend:

As I moved around the Flight Facility yesterday and met some of you guys, one dude let a four-letter-expletive escape his lips before he realized he was meeting me, the new Chaplain for 1-168. The boy cussed, then blushed. Me? I laughed. Then I told him, “That’s alright, man, your first three sins are free.”
Actually, though, if you follow Jesus, they’re all free. They’re all paid for.

But if anyone does sin,
we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
—1 John 2:1b (ESV)

An “advocate” is like a lawyer, a defense attorney. This passage says that Jesus is the defense attorney for all those that follow him. So when you sin, when I sin, when we all sin—we’re supposed to receive punishment and judgment for it. God is a just and fair God. He has to punish evil.

BUT, Jesus stands before God and says something like—”Oh, yeah, Chap sinned. Yep. But you know what, Father, you already punished me for it. I took his punishment on the cross. So he’s good. He’s paid for.” And just like that, the charges are dropped.

This is where most people say, “so…why would I bother to do anything good?”

My answer is simply this: Love. I am constantly reminded of how sinful I am. The fact that God forgives me is absolutely amazing. I want to love him the way a son loves a good father. That means I want to do the things I know honor and please him.

What about you?

My Survival Guide for the Army Chaplaincy Basic Officer Leadership Course

Brothers and Sisters of the US Army Chaplain Candidate Program, here are a few things I learned at CH-BOLC this past winter that are not part of the training schedule. I pass them on to you as a heads-up. By the way, I write from a Reformed Protestant perspective, Independent of denomination, contemporary in worship but adoring of tradition. Take that with a grain of salt…

1. Invest yourself in your squad, platoon, and class. You will have plenty to keep you busy in terms of school and training. But the greatest blessing and benefit of CH-BOLC is the friends, comrades, and partners in ministry that you make during the time you are there. Make this priority one for your future ministry.

2. Preach to your platoon. You will be given assignments to do “Sacred Communication” in different scenarios, as if you are deployed. Consider the scenario, but preach to your platoon. We all needed each other’s insight and care. But be careful! I understand that it used to be expected that we would preach to each other. But students began letting their own pride, prejudice, and dogma direct them so much that they became an offense to each other. We should not be the offense. Be sure that the word you bring to your platoon is truly God’s Word, and not just your own pet theology. Preaching should be loving, even if it is sometimes a rebuke. I had to do a rebuke while there. It was very well received by my platoon. However, I had already 9 weeks of relationship and trust built up before I delivered this message. You may watch it if you like.

3. Don’t do seminary. I did 12 credit hours of seminary while at CH-BOLC. Yes, you can get it done. You may need extensions from your professors, but you can do it. However, the cost is too great. I was not able to focus on my first guideline above, investing myself in my classmates, because I had to take every possible moment I had to study and write papers for seminary. On the upside, much of my seminary studies supplemented CH-BOLC, but I’ll put those insights later and save you the trouble. CH VanLaan told us that we are not expected to be in seminary during CH-BOLC in order to continue being a candidate. PLEASE avoid doing seminary if at all possible.

4. Support those doing seminary. Some people, for whatever reason, will choose to or have to do seminary while at CH-BOLC. Support them. Help them. The best help to me were my platoon fellows who reminded me a couple days in advance of assignments due in CH-BOLC. Discussing with them what you are learning as you work on your assignments is also very helpful (don’t do their papers, though. That’s plain WRONG!)

5. Keep a habit of Spiritual Disciplines. Oh please don’t let your devotions go. Your schedule will be packed (5am to 9pm some days because of homework. If you do seminary, forget sleep!). It is very easy to become spiritually bereft while at CH-BOLC. Keep your devotional time sacred. Let nothing interrupt it.

6. Get your chapel visits over QUICKLY. You will be required to visit a series of different chapel services on-post and then submit a reflection on them. The visits are very good training. But they are not church. Now, I’m of the conviction that church involves certain aspects of fellowship and discipleship that are absent in chapel. The short of it is that I quickly found myself craving church and not finding it in chapel. I do not believe that chapel can or should supplant church. It is critical to our ministry, but not an alternative to being part of a church. I’ll leave it at that. So get your chapel visits done as quickly as possible–even doing two or three in a row on a Sunday–so that you can become part of a local church in Columbia. Here’s a list of churches in the Columbia area.

7. DO PT NOW. I know you’ve been told this a few times by now. You’ll hear it a few more times before you go. It’s good, sound, reasonable advice. Work toward passing that APFT if you can’t already. Having to do PT twice a day because you failed the first PT test sucks. I know because I was one of those guys.

8. Be a Blessing. I wanted to title this one, “Don’t complain.” For some reason, chaplaincy school students are champion whiners. Don’t be one. Bless, don’t curse. Bless others abundantly and generously. Make this your motto.

Can’t Stop

In response to a question for my Pastoral Theology class.

Question: Based on the accumulated reading in the course, discuss the following question: “Are you called to vocational pastoral ministry? How do you know?”

Answer: I know for sure, without a doubt, that God has called me to pastoral ministry.

And sometimes I wish it were not so.

As part of a pastoral team, I have primarily taken on the duties of counselor.  A Jesus-centered pastor has an affection, love, and passion for the sheep within the flock.  And then a nuclear bomb goes off in a home, and everyone is shocked and damaged and hurt and the pastor is torn apart.  A couple we were counseling through the aftermath of adultery, and who had promised to each other and to us to struggle for their marriage, just decided to separate.  The husband called me and told me.  I’ve been told this before by others, and every time my response is the same, “Nooooooo!”

On the phone I’m at a loss for words.  It’s personal.  It hurts.  The kids will be hurt and haunted by this for the rest of their lives.  The parents think things will be better and they’ll only be worse.  And the image of Christ and the church is marred again, from within the church.  Hearts are being destroyed.  And the ripple effect throughout the church and community….oh, it’s a nightmare.  It breaks my heart and tears me apart.  For this couple there is still a chance.  Divorce isn’t that easy to accomplish, thirty days at least.  But only thirty days!  So frantic prayer, counsel, encourage, warn, admonish, beg, plead…cry.  And have a stomping fit and ask God “why?!”

And I wouldn’t do anything else.  Anything else is probably easier.   I know I’m doing what God made me to do, and I’m most fulfilled when I’m fighting for marriages and dragging people away from drugs and helping men turn off the video games and internet.  I know that I’m supposed to be in prayer and in the Word for my small groups’ souls.  I don’t ever want to hear about a divorce and take it lightly.  I want to be broken-hearted every time.  I never want to lose compassion and empathy.  I want to be sacrificed on my church’s behalf.  I want to feed, I want to protect, I want to battle for people’s souls more than they want to battle for their own.

I remember reading Catcher in the Rye in high school The main character talks about wanting to save kids.  I understand that feeling, wanting to save people from their sin, from Satan, from themselves.  But I have something over that guy in the book: Jesus.  I’m not the savior, and I fully welcome that.  But I can be used by the Savior.  And oh the glory of being the tool to save souls and marriages and relationships and lives.  I can’t get enough.  I can’t stop.  I want to see God’s kingdom come and I want to be a part of it on the nitty-gritty, get-dirt-kicked-in-my-face level of ministry.  God made me a pastor.

I can’t imagine doing anything else.