Change

How My Neighbourhood Saved Me: Becoming More Human!

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Jun 122015

I love my hood of Bowness, and there is no other place I would rather live in our city of Calgary. It is a quircky and eclectic place where the rich and the poor live in close proximity to each other. It is a place of beauty, generosity, and diversity. No two houses look alike, and we have verdant green spaces with tall mature spruce and pine trees!

Truth be told my love for my neighbourhood was not a ‘love at first sight’ kind of deal. To be honest when we first felt the nudge to move here, I fought the idea. Bowness was known in our city as one of the rougher hoods, and a place that you would want to move out of as quick as possible to a safer part of the city. When we moved in there was a biker gang called the Grim Reapers based in the hood with a fortified club house to boot. A few years later the notorious Hell’s Angel’s crew swallowed up the Grim Reapers, and set up shop. There were youth gangs including the Indian Posse, grow ops, drug deals, frequent B & E’s, and folks living on the margins because of urban poverty.

Jesus loves to show up in what we think are some of the most dodgy, dangerous, and dark places!

Bowness in many people’s minds was an undesirable place to live compared to the new burbs popping up around the city that had the outward appearance of looking squeaky clean and safe. I wanted to live close to the university and start a church with young college age kids who were cool and trendy, or plant in the suburbs where there were young middle class families with money, and where I was under the illusion we would be safer.

Somewhat begrudgingly, I moved into the hood with a wheel barrel full of hubris mixed with a smidgen of good intentions. We would swoop in and save this poor and needy place. I had, though I would never vocalize it, some kind of slightly twisted, grandiose Superman complex. I thought God needed me on His dream team to parachute into Bowness like the elite Navy Seals, and rescue it. Instead, my story has been mostly about how my neighbourhood has saved and changed me.

That is not to say that we haven’t had a few things to contribute and offer during our years here, but I can truly say I have received far more from my hood than what I have given back in return. Over the years what we have tripped into is an incredible place to live with hidden beauty, outlandish generosity sometimes from people who have very little, and an ongoing story of redemption where out of the ashes, pain, poverty, and brokenness my neighbourhood is being transformed. God has been at work here long before we ever showed up! I’ve simply been invited to go along for the ride, and in so doing I’m being changed and saved.

Here is how I’m being saved by my neigbourhood. Through my time in the hood I’m becoming more human, more humble, and more hopeful! I will share on this journey in a 3 part series of blogs.

Becoming More Human

Many of us so called Christians, including yours truly, can tend to be so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good! We often come across as weird and abnormal for all the wrong reasons. We get caught up with talking about religious stuff in a lingo that not many understand or relate to. We can be so uptight about ‘evangelizing’ people causing folks to be suspicious about our motives for friendship. Many of us are not comfortable being outside the comfort zone of our church turf and circle of friends. We become anxious or withdrawn in settings where we are not in control.

The amazing thing about Jesus was that He was both God and human. This collision of the divine intersecting with our messy humanity is true spirituality, and what makes Jesus so appealing to me. An example of this from the life of Jesus is that his first miracle was not done in a church meeting, but at the normal, human, everyday event of a wedding where they ran out of wine. He took water and changed it into wine, and I dare say that it was alcoholic, though some may disagree with me. I wonder if some of the folks by this time in the wedding party were not already a bit tipsy! How much more human can you get! When was the last time you were at a wedding, and they ran out of wine or beer and a follower of Jesus turned some water into beer or wine…just sayin!

In my early days of being a pastor, and running the church, I was so busy trying to be Superman saving the world, and running the church that I had no time to do some of things that I love.

My interests and hobbies that people can relate to, and that would connect me to folk inside and outside the church were squeezed out of my life by what I thought were higher priorities. I thought that these normal activities of life were not quite as important, or spiritual as prayer meetings, church services, and organizing programs to keep people coming to church. I had become abnormal.

In the last 10 years, I have gotten back to coaching my son’s hockey and soccer teams, back to hunting and fishing, and back to being normal. Re-connecting with these very earthy and human activities has brought me such joy, fulfillment, new friendships, and a better understanding of who Jesus is, and where He would show up.

Where my thinking and action has changed is that Jesus is present at hockey or soccer game as He is in a church meeting.

Another aspect of becoming more human is to be rooted in a place. As a missionary kid who gets wander lust every 3 months, to stay put in one place for so long is really foreign. Living out the daily, and at times overwhelming, mundane routines of driving kids to school, owning a house, paying a mortgage, mowing a lawn, and shuttling kids to sporting events on week nights and weekends is where most people are living. Walking out the reality of Jesus showing up in these daily experiences makes me more relatable, and gives me more credibility than all the grand stories of my international travels.

If I don’t live and experience hospitality, vulnerability, sharing, conflict resolution, pain through loss, hope, forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption in my hood on a regular basis in the rhythms of normal life, then my message has no meaning for life in the now. I end up telling 10 year old stories of my encounter with Jesus and His Kingdom breaking in, but have no fresh stories of how Jesus has shown up in my life and neighbourhood in the last week.

I have the privilege of traveling and speaking a little bit in different places about neighbouring, community, and mission. The temptation is to get on the circuit and not be present and involved at home. Thus I have to say no to some really good things and opportunities so that I stay grounded and real. It’s a juggle sometimes. I don’t want to be a disconnected itinerant speaker with an intergalactic vision traveling the world, yet to busy zooming in and out to walk out these ideas in my own backyard! I don’t want to wait till after I die to experience life to the full in the here and now!

Today I’m a more rooted, healthy, and real person for all the hours of simply being present with these friends in the hood doing the things that I love!

Stayed tuned for part 2 as I share on how my neighbourhood as helped me become more humble.

By Tim Schultz

How Do We Change Part 3: Developing Healthy Habits Through Forming New Grooves in Our Brains

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Mar 142012

Let me start by reviewing a couple seminal ideas about how we bring about lasting change in our lives. They are simple ideas that are foreign to our natural inclinations. First of all, we are only responsible to change ourselves, not other people. Let me tell you, after 25 years of trying to change my kids and my wife, I’m finally starting to get it through my thick skull that I can’t change anyone but myself.

Second of all, true change starts from the inside out. To change, we must be motivated to change or have a revelation of our need to change. This connection to our heart is what we typically call vision or passion. Then we need the information of how to change which requires a shift in our thinking or in our head.

Finally, we need to develop new habits, practices, disciplines, virtues, or behaviors, which I call the work of our hands. This cycle of change starts from the heart, then moves to the head, and then translates to our hands. This inside out way of changing is what we need to pass on to those we parent, mentor, pastor, and lead.

The changing of habits or the developing of new behaviors is where most of us give up when it comes to change. We get inspired to change and we get the information on how to change, and even start out with good intentions to change our habits, and then lose steam. Why?

One of the belief systems entrenched in some of us from religious backgrounds is the idea that we are powerless to change ourselves, and that only God can change us. Sounds so true, right? Anything that smacks of us partnering with God in the change process sounds too much like a ‘works doctrine’ that undermines the concept of grace, so we avoid doing our part. Grace has two sides of the coin in its definition. First, the doctrine that restored relationship with God, often called salvation, is a free gift and cannot be earned by our effort. Second, grace is defined as God’s power and resources to be who God has called us to be, and to do what He has called us to do.

The consequence of twisting this doctrine of grace is that we wait around for God to zap us with His power, so that ‘presto’, all our bad behaviors cease. Through this download we expect to become instantly transformed into super nice, perfect people who act like Jesus all the time. We sit around as ‘spiritual couch potatoes’ putting all the blame on God for not changing us. We rationalize our lack of character by claiming that God’s grace means that we can do what we like and get away with it. This is what Deitrich Bonhoeffer referred to as ‘cheap grace’ in his book The Cost of Discipleship. The truth of the matter is that we cannot change our hearts, only God can do that. Yes, we need God’s help to act more like Jesus from the inside out. Yet, as the Catholic tradition so wonderfully teaches us, the developing of virtues requires intentional c0-operation and practice on our behalf. Change of habits doesn’t just happen! We must activate God’s power through some training and practice. (Read Titus 2:11-12)

How Are Good Habits Formed?

The opposite extreme in religious circles is working hard to change our external behaviors, so that we look good on the outside, yet our hearts remain unchanged, full of pride, bitterness, and greed. We think we can earn God’s love or a free pass into heaven by all our good works. This is what Jesus called religion. (Read Matt. 15:8-9; Matt. 23: 25-28) Religion is doing all the right things from the wrong heart. We have our religious act down pat, saying all the right words and keeping all the rules, but lack the joy, life, and freedom that flows from a heart that has been transformed by God.

So what is our part in the change journey?

I want to share with you some natural, yet supernatural ideas from the fields of leadership, the brain, and change, that I have found helpful in this journey of developing healthy habits. What is being explored is the connection between the limbic system which governs our emotional responses, and the neocortex part of our brain that governs our rational responses. Most of us initially respond to situations emotionally, not rationally. Emotions are what make us human. How we govern our emotions is the key. This is called emotional intelligence, and is the key to habit formation.

There is a small part of our brains called the amygdala, which is our emotional command center that reacts to emergency situations with the fight, flight or flee responses. A person who responds to a ‘not life threatening’ situation with anxiety and anger has developed deep grooves in the brain from the amygdala to the right side of the prefrontal neocortex part of the brain. The amygdala flight or fight response is hijacking a healthy response to the situation. This is why a person who has suffered from brain damage to the prefrontal cortex part of the brain will struggle with outbursts of anger, mood swings, or depression, triggered by seemingly small things.

Creating New Grooves in the Brain

Those who have developed deep grooves over time between the amygdala and the left side of the prefrontal area of the brain are able to override the negative emotional responses triggered by the amygdala. This allows a person to remain calm and positive even in a tense or pressure packed situation. The good news is that if we have developed negative habits, whereby we respond to situations with anxiety, anger, or panic, it is possible over time and with practice to rewire our circuitry in our brain so that we respond in a more positive way.

Let me give you an illustration from my life. There is many a day when it comes time for me to go do my workout, that the amygdala part of my brain says to me, “Flee! I don’t feel like working out today.” or “Working out is so painful, give yourself a break.” Yet after years of working out, I have developed a deeper groove between my amygdala and the left prefrontal side of my brain, which overrides the emotional messages from the amygdala by reminding me how wonderful and energized I feel after a workout. Thus I have been able to develop a healthy habit of working out. Learning to govern our emotions, which in the Bible is called self-control, is one of the keys to developing healthy habits.

Are We Self-Aware?

An example of where I still need to keep developing new grooves in my brain is my epidermal or emotional responses of impatience when an reckless driver is tailgating me. Another growth area is my proclivity to launch into a lecture with a frustrated edge when my kids are spending too much time playing video games instead of getting outside and being active. “It’s not what we say, but how we say it that matters!”

“Self-awareness that leads to self-mastery is the first step to changing oneself.”

Questions, Recommended Reading, and Excercises:

What virtues do you admire in others?
What are some healthy habits that you want to develop in your life?
Get Honest Feedback!
What are some unhealthy behaviors you want to stop? A good book to read on this is What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, by Marshall Goldsmith.
Ask those who love you most and know you the best what would be one thing you need to change to become a better parent, spouse, leader, pastor, or friend.
Start with forming one new habit, like exercising 2 to 3 times a week, giving your kids a hug once a day, or a date night once a week with your spouse.
Set tangible, measurable, and attainable goals.
Tell a friend, a coach and your family what new habit you want to start, and give them permission to give you feedback and follow up with them.
Reward yourself for any steps forward.
Keep practicing even when you blow it.
Pick up and read Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman and/or Virtues Re-born by N.T. Wright.

How Do We Change Part 2: Learning to Think Differently

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Feb 052012

Is Change Possible?

It is my firm conviction that lasting change is a process that begins from the inside out. As I expressed in the last blog, learning to live from the heart is a discovery of who we are and what we are passionate about. This clear sense of our identity is what gives us the mojo to change. Desire and hunger are the rocket fuel that propel us towards change

Another assumption I have about change is that we need outside help to change. As part of the 12 steps towards recovery, Alcoholics Anonymous has discovered that the journey of change requires a person to recognize their need of God or a Higher Power to change.

I agree with this premise: Transformation of the heart is a God initiated transaction. Alongside God’s help to change from the inside out, the chorus from old Beatle’s song that says ‘I get by with a little help from my friends’ so aptly states our need for external help to change. This is where coaching comes in. All change requires the humility and willingness to ask for help.

Inside Out Change

With these two assumptions as the initial building blocks in the process of change, I want to discuss how change moves from the heart to our head. Once we have the motivation to change, we will need to have a change in some of our thinking.

Faulty or corrosive thinking comes from two sources: Worldviews that are formed over time as we believe and then buy into the powerful spoken or unspoken voices in our cultures of origin that tell us what is right and what is real, and Wounds that have been inflicted on our core identity. Wounds empower lies that we believe about ourselves, and are the breeding ground for crippling behaviours in our lives. These narrow and negative thought patterns are like shackles that hold us captive, keep us stuck, and keep us from the freedom of change.

The following story illustrates how faulty worldviews and wounds must be confronted to overcome negative thinking and old ways of doing things. Esther and I just watched the movie Moneyball. This is the true story of Billy Beane, a highly touted baseball prospect of the New York Mets who failed to live up to expectations, and quit playing baseball. He also experienced a broken marriage in which he had a daughter. The wounding from a baseball career that went sideways, as well as a failed marriage, fed a lie that Billy Beane was a loser and would never make anything of himself. He became the GM of the lowly small market team, the Oakland A’s (41 million payroll), a team that nearly beat out the New York Yankees (125 million payroll) in the 2002 playoffs.

Challenging Pre-Existing Worldviews

At the end of the season, the Yankees gutted the A’s by offering players such as Johnny Damon lucrative contracts that the A’s couldn’t match. Beane decide to change the paradigm of how to build a successful baseball team by hiring a Yale graduate of economics who had developed a computer generated analysis program for evaluating and drafting players. Instead of trying to compete with teams such as the Yankees in pursuing and paying huge salaries to super star players or highly touted prospects, Beane and his nerdy assistant GM started looking for players undervalued by the market. They employed the use of sabermetrics, the specialized analysis of baseball through objective, empirical evidence, specifically baseball statistics.

This strategy went against all the conventional wisdom of the baseball culture and scouting in how to form a winning team. Beane set out to challenge the then existing worldviews in baseball and face the wounds from his past failures by thinking outside the box, asking a different set of questions, and challenging the power structures in baseball. Throughout the movie Beane is constantly battling the negative thinking and fear of failure due to his past wounds. He faces those lies and overcomes. After a successful season, the Boston Red Sox organization offers him a contract of $12,500.000 to leave the A’s and apply his method in Boston. He chooses to turn the contract down in order to be closer to his daughter in California and pursue a World Series in Oakland. Two years later, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series through Bill James implementing Beane’s strategy.

Though Beane hasn’t won a World Series title yet, he has changed the worldview and culture of baseball with his courage to think differently. A line (as I remember it) from Moneyball, “The guy who breaks through the wall first gets all bloody.”

Here are some reflection questions and exercises to help you learn to think differently:

Reflections Questions:

Where are you doing the same old thing expending more energy and resources, yet getting the same old result? Where are you stuck?
Where do you need to ask a different set of questions to resolve an apparent problem or obstacle you are facing?
Where are you swimming against the current of established ways of doing something, and getting some flack for it because it is threatening the ‘sacred cows’ or power structures?
What new information is challenging your old way of doing things?
Do you see an old lady or a beautiful woman?
What are the emotional barriers or cultural blinders such as fear of failure or pride that keep you from seeing a new reality?
What are the negative beliefs that you believe about yourself because of some wounding to your core identity? For example: “I don’t have what it takes to….” or “I’m a loser and everything I try ends up failing, so I won’t try again.”
What are the wounds you have experienced in your past that empower these lies?

Practical Exercises to help you think differently:

Ask God for His power to change you from the inside out.
Ask some trusted friends to pray with you for healing from past wounds that empower lies in your life.
Practice risking by doing something that you fear or is outside your comfort zone, i.e. public speaking, learning to swim, eating a new type of food, or developing a friendship with someone from another culture.
Try making your next decision through a process of filtering it through two or three different worldviews at the same time. For example, an Eastern Worldview makes decisions through the lens of what the community thinks, while a Western Worldview makes decisions through the lens of what is most important for the individual. A gatekeeper is able to think in two or three different worldviews at the same time. These folks are very effective in global business, or as cross cultural communicators.
Make sure that in your posse of friends you have some positive people who believe in you.
For every negative comment you make, practice saying 3 positive comments.

How Do We Change Part 1: Living From the Heart

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Jan 132012

With the dawning of a new year, many of us are in the throes of taking stock of our lives by reflecting on the highs and lows of the last year, and trying to implement grand plans, or as we like to call them, resolutions, to try and change things we don’t like in our lives. For example, I have noticed the same trend year after year at the gym I go to. Folks sign up in droves for a gym membership at the beginning of the year, determined to lose weight and get in shape. Yet after a month or so the crowds thin out, and I see mostly the familiar faces of the “regulars”. People desperately want to change bad habits, but after trying for awhile, they often give up.

Another trend I have noticed in myself and others is what I call “destiny malaise”. Destiny malaise is a condition that can creep up on us even when we have a safe and secure job that pays the bills, offers opportunity for promotion, and a pension at retirement. Yet, instead of being fulfilled, free, and joyful, we have this underlying feeling that we are going through the motions and not living out the purpose for which we have been placed on planet earth. When we slow down and listen to our hearts, there is this nagging sense that there must be more to life, and we long to make a difference in the world. For others, destiny malaise comes from feeling stuck in a job that they hate or that is not what they are passionate about. (This is not to say that we can’t find joy or purpose in the mundane tasks of life.) It occurs when we settle for less than we should; when we buy into a false bill of goods about what it means to be successful.

Living with a sense of significance, the awareness that what we are doing is making a difference, and being true to ourselves – these are much better indicators of success. The two questions that I keep coming back to at the beginning of every year are: Do people actually change? If so, how do people change? With these seminal questions in mind, I would like to do a three part blog on: How we might actually bring about lasting change in our lives.

Passion Flows From Listening to Your Heart

The first step to change is learning to live from the heart. Unless we get in touch with who we really are, and what we really want, we will lack the passion, gumption, and motivation to change. Many of us are living life trying to satisfy the inner voices of the “ought self”. The ought self is what we feel obligated to be, or what other people think or have told us we should be. I have talked to people who really wanted to be artists, and yet are living under obligation to their parents, who told them that they had to pursue a career as a doctor or engineer, so that they could make a good living. Now there is nothing wrong with being a doctor or engineer if that is what you are passionate about, and if you feel like you are making a difference in the world. The issue is not what vocation you choose, but whether you are being true to who you are and living with a sense of significance. I admire accountants, but if I tried to be an accountant I would be miserable!

Don’t let the opinion or agendas of others define who you should be. I believe that some of our struggle to change unhealthy habits is connected to living life without purpose or passion. We then anesthetize our pain or relieve our boredom/malaise with addictions to food, sex, other drugs, and activities that provide an escape or ramp up the adrenaline! These habits dull our ability to hear the inner voice in our heart calling us to more. If we don’t live from the heart we die a little each day. The book of Proverbs puts it this way, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is the tree of life.”

Os Guiness says it this way, “Our passion is to know we are fulfilling the purpose for which we are on earth. All the standards of success – wealth, power, knowledge, position, fame – grow tiny and hollow if we do not satisfy this deeper inner longing!”

Here are some questions and a reflection excercise to help you listen to your heart:

1. What would you keep on doing even if you weren’t paid for it?

2. When have you felt the most alive?

3. What kind of job would make you want to get out of bed each day with energy and desire?

4. What is your purpose for being on earth and how would you like to make a difference in the world?

5. Where are you in bondage to the “ought self” – trying to be what someone else thinks you should be, or, where are you held back by the fear of what other people think of you?

6. Try this reflection exercise each day as a tool to learn to listen to your heart. Ask and be attentive to these two questions: What made me happy today or what gave me life? What made me sad today or was a life drainer? The life giving experiences are clues to living from the heart, and the life draining experiences may be clues to what you need to avoid or where you are not living from the heart.

7. Ask those who know you well what you are good at and then do more of that!

I close with this quote from Steve Jobs, which sums up what it means to follow your heart: “When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like, ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ Since then…I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Your time is limited…Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”