Kobayashi Maru

The Expert Mind

So here’s a new thought that might break some old paradigms. Scientists have now proven that practice does in fact, not make perfect. Go figure, it takes PhD’s many years to figure out what my old Texas football coach preached at us 20 years ago - “Practice don’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. You practice it wrong over and over again and you just get proficient at screwing up!” Ok, so maybe I embellished a bit. I love my old coach, but I am fairly certain that he has never used the term proficient. And there might have been some profanity in the original. But you get the point. If you are an ex-athlete, a little overweight (ok, the girls called him Michelin Man) with a college degree in Kinesiology (or PE for the laymen) coaching at a Texas high school, then that’s how one says it.

If you are a PhD, who probably never played a contact sport in your life, and before the advent of computer dating imagined a life living with mom, then you say it like this: Ericsson argues that what matters is not experience per se but “effortful study,” which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one’s competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time.

Who knew that universal truths could be so simply espoused by a football coach. (Even one that got out coached in the state championship game in 1986 - not that I am bitter…) But my coach had no idea how profound that statement was and still is. Simply practicing (but doing it wrong) hours and hours a day will not make you better.  Heck, he was unwittingly quoting Einstein who explained insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Jeez, maybe my coach was actually a genius who couldn’t handle the stress of the competitive world of academia and so fled to a more simpler life of high school football….naw.

OK, so this being my blog, here’s the interesting thing for me. How come we as Christians and as organized churches for that matter can’t figure this out? Why are we always (oops, there’s that word again, sorry Sparky) looking for something “new” and yet continuing to do the same things.  I cannot tell you how many people I talk to who are waiting for something to happen – some big God moment that will change everything.  They are all geared up for a supernatural intervention that will make everything clear and good and well, easy.  BUT, they do not know how to get to that, so they do nothing.  Or more correctly, they do the same things they have always done.  They come to church on Sundays, tithe (maybe), sit through a service (with or without their arms crossed) and expectantly wait for this thing to happen.  Then when it doesn’t, they become a little more calloused and a little less engaged.  I was talking last week with a friend who has stopped attending church because he’s pissed at God.  The reason he’s pissed at God is because church didn’t “work for him”.  In his own words, he “did all the stuff I was supposed to do, but life never got easier and church didn’t make it any better.”  As we talked he admitted that he never really got into church, but he did come semi-regularly and tithed “when he could”.  He did not volunteer anywhere, but that was because “in fairness to others, I never knew when I would or wouldn’t decide to come and I didn’t want to leave anybody hanging.”  Very thoughtful indeed.  But the point is that he simply came to church occasionally and sat through a service and left immediately afterwards to get to whatever pressing issue was at hand and co church did not fulfill it’s assumed end of the bargain – which evidently was to solve all of his problems (financial, relational and directional) without requiring anything of him.  I had to sadly agree that under those auspices, church has pretty much failed everybody.  Luckily, those are not the auspices that God set up for us.  In fact, God asks quite a lot from us.  He wants our lives – our entire lives.  He wants everything you have, and he does not promise that this life will be easy.  He tells us to pick up our cross daily and follow him (though there are those who have interpreted this passage to mean, “get up with arms crossed and follow me”.

I think the world of competitive activities mirrors the Christian walk today fairly accurately.  When we first come to know Christ, we tend to follow after Him with an intense hunger, one that can almost not be quenched.  Then as we get into church and activities, we start to lose our first love, the passion we had for His Kingdom.  What replaces it is a slow growing complacency. We learn to be ok with how far we have come in the Christian walk – that we obey the big stuff and try our best to do the little stuff and keep up with the expectations of the world with regards to material goods, occupation, etc.  We are as good as most folks, and better than a lot of them – and that has to count for something.  But we stop seeking after God with an insatiable thirst.  Here’s where I see the parallel in competition:

The PhD’s admit that in a competitive environment, “the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But having reached an acceptable performance–for instance, keeping up with one’s golf buddies or passing a driver’s exam–most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement.”

Having done the salvation thing, having done some kind of small group thing, heck even having done some form of leadership time, we reach an acceptable level of faith and we relax.  We have done our part and so now it’s Gods turn to show up and do something incredible and worthy of the time, money and effort that we have given.  And Sunday after Sunday He “fails to deliver”.  We get angry and decide that the leadership sucks.  We conclude that people are not doing things right (other people of course).  And eventually we end up like my buddy – angry at God and abandoning church (cause that’s really the only way to physically show Him that we’re pissed, and you can sleep easier thinking that you’re mad at church rather than being angry at an all powerful being that you owe your very existence to, not to mention the whole died for your sins thing).

The experts in this article conclude quite well that, “motivation appears to be a more important factor than innate ability in the development of expertise.”  How true is that for our Christian lives.  Motivation appears to be much more important in the development of our walk with God.  How motivated are we?  Do we find time every day for alone time with God?  Do we want intimacy with Him so badly that we are willing to actually “be still and know that I am God.”  Are we so passionate for Him that we love His church as much as He does?  The Church is His Bride after all.  Are we caring for that which He dearly loves in order to please Him?

What are we practicing on a daily basis in order to perfect?  Have you ever gone back and studied your own “game film” to see what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong?  The interesting thing about watching game film – if you have never done it – is that you have someone else critique your play objectively from the film.  Not in the moment.  Not while surrounded by supporters and fans.  Not even while you are there.  They take the film and go look at every play over and over – looking for mistakes.  You don’t study film to find where you are good – you’re already good in that area.  You study film to see where you’re training broke down in the heat of the moment so that next time you do better.

Do you do that in your walk with God?  Do you have accountability partners who actually hold you accountable?  Ones that you are brutally honest with about your actions, thoughts and feelings?  Ones that will call you to task when they think you are wrong and ones that you will submit to their judgment of your “performance”?  That’s what the Bible means when it says “confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”  How often do we actually do that.  Confess to one another.  Show our game film with brutal honesty.

I believe that God wants to do miraculous things in our lives.  I believe that He wants revival in our hearts, in our communities and in our churches.  I also believe that He wants us to want it.  To REALLY want it.  To seek after it.  He promises that if we seek Him we will find Him, when we seek Him will all our heart.  So lets get to seeking.  Lets get motivated.  Just remember that motivation comes from within.  You have to want it.  You have to want it so badly that you do something about it, that you quit looking to others to dig your well for you.  You have to get off your proverbial donkey.

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It’s interesting to me how we always look back on things and see them as “better” than today.  When usually it’s more like we remember them better than they actually were.  How many times do we “miss the good old days”?  We remember back in college when “life was so easy, and we had so few things to worry about.”  We remember being single when “there was no one depending on us but our self” and we could do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted however we wanted.  We remember when we lived in (insert geographical place of current preference) and how perfect it was with no problems whatsoever.

We remember back when we first started going to our church.  Back when there was excitement and everyone was involved and nobody burned out.  Back when the Spirit of God moved every week and lives were irrevocably changed…ahh the good old days.

I was talking with a friend the other day about this very thing.  They were waxing nostalgic about the Glory Days (yes they used that exact term) of their church.  Back when it was first starting.  Back before it became this huge mega (and I use that term loosely and only in a small town Canadian context) church.  Before the moderator and two pastors got indicted by BC Securities.  Before the founding (oh wait, co-founding) pastor decided that he was an apostle and his wife was a prophet and that they did not need to be accountable to anyone but themselves (and maybe God, but not that often)  and got unceremoniously fired one Sunday and kicked out without so much as a going away party or thank you for 15+ years of “service”.  Ahh, the good old days.   Hell, I’d miss those too if that were my church.

But speaking of “my church” - and I want to be clear that I do not mean that in an ownership way like it’s my inheritance or anything like that (local joke).  I mean my church as in the one I attend - like the opposite of “that’s NOT my church!”  Anyway, someone there started waxing on about the golden days of yore.  I listened, since I was not an attender at the time and thus have no memories of this golden period of God’s direct indwelling of this building like an old testament tabernacle.  BUT, afterward, I did run into a former pastor/staff member of this church and I asked about said glory days.  And why in the name of all that’s holy he would leave such a paradise on earth.

Turns out, his memories are a little foggy on the whole “excitement and everyone was involved and nobody burned out.  Back when the Spirit of God moved every week.”  He vaguely remembers everything being staff driven and the good people enjoying the fruits of some seriously hard labor on the part of the staff.  As we talked he began to remember 60+ hour weeks of work.  He remembered God being there and lives being changed sure, but the “irrevocably change” he remembers most is that of him wanting to be a full time pastor for the rest of his life.  That most definitely changed in an irrevocable way.

Now, I am not saying that to imply that churches are bad or that organized religion is (insert derogatory adjective of the day here).  I’m one of those crazy folks who thinks organized religion is a good thing - when done right.  I enjoy church on Sunday (though during football season I am not as adamant about that).  What I am saying is that church is like everything else in the world.  In retrospect it’s always WAY better than it is in current form.  Shoot, no matter how much you dislike it now, it will seem GREAT when you look back on it in a decade or so.  Seriously, we do that in every area of life.  If we didn’t, no family would be larger than one child.  Cause if my wife Ferf actually remembered her last pregnancy and the 52 hours of labor, I am fairly certain that we would not be trying to add to our current offspring collection.

Maybe that’s a good thing then.  Our collective ability to block out the bad stuff.  I think that is a great thing.  If I remembered everything about high school I am sure there is no way in hell I would even think about going to a reunion.  (come to think of it, I never have gone to a reunion…but at least that’s not the reason why!)  If my wife had remembered everything about our dating (the first time) I am again fairly certain that I would still be single - or married to someone with a shorter memory.  Heck, talk to her now and she thinks I was a great boyfriend.

But, why is it that we can usually forget the bad things that have happened to us, but we have a friggin photographic memory for bad things that have happened to others?  Oh yeah, when it comes to a second offence, we get downright scary on recollection.  I can remember every person who has ever offended my mother or my wife.  And I can picture the exact setting of when and where it took place…and I’ll get those buggers one day…oops, sorry, I’ll edit that out later.

Anyway, to me the important thing is not whether we remember…but that we don’t lose the learnings from any experience.  The details of what happened are less important than what you took away from the experience that you can apply to next time or teach others. 

SO…what did you learn from those 80’s tv shows?  “I pity the fool” who didn’t learn nuthin’.

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So by now I am guessing that you think this site will be nothing more than long, possibly less than stellar, mini-sermons aimed at: well, so far anyway, me.

However, today I just gotta do something different. Today I am extrememly disappointed and just need to say that. I am rapidly coming to realize that something everyone knows is still very much true. Politics suck. Oh yeah. I know. You’re thinking “No shite sherlock.” Don’t get me wrong. I’ve known it for a long time. It’s just that each time you re-realize it, you want to pound some bureaucrat’s head in.

Today is that day all over again for me. Here’s the thing. There’s a men’s addicition recovery program that is currently located in the heart of beautiful downtown. The City Council is desperate to get them out of downtown (because they are ignorant) but in this instance, while their intelligence is flawed, their desire is correct. The program needs to be out of the downtown core of drugs and prostitution. The program wants to move. The guys in the program want to move. Everyone is on the same page.

Enter a publically traded development company who has purchased a large section of land (160 acres) on the lake, that they want to develop. This parcel is inside city limits, but so far out that the city doesn’t want it developed for somewhere between 3-5 or 7-10 years (depending on whose opinion you ask). On said parcel sits an 11 bedroom home that is conservatively 14,000 sqft. This house is empty. The company is paying taxes on it because it is an improvment on the land. So the company plans on bulldozing it. Yeah, you heard me. They are going to tear it down to save the money on taxes. Now it is a sizable chunk of change. Somewhere near $45,000/year. So it is financially “wise” to demolish it.

BUT, this company is willing to allow the recovery program to move into the house and use it until they are able to develop the land - at basically no cost. The Program gets to move into a huge space, the city gets the program out of the downtown core, and the company gets to save the $45K while providing a community service. It’s an actual win-win-win.

Except the city doesn’t want to lose the taxes, so they said no to the tax exemption. They said, the bylaws won’t allow it. It might bother the neighbors. IT SITS ON 160 ACRES BY ITSELF. IT HAS NO FRICKIN’ NEIGHBORS!! None the less, that was the first round of responses from the city. So, feelers were put out to try and re-establish discussions from a relational perspective with city staff. (Gently reminding them that this is actually what everyone wants.) There was some initial softening on the city’s part even. Until the program received an email from the city stating - and yes this is a direct quote: “In order for the property to receive a permissive exemption, the would have to own it. Period.”

Yeah, they actually typed the word “period”. Which, while it gets across the emphatic nature of his statement - if he were doing it in audible conversation, it also comes across in the written word as dogmatic and unilateral. Which are both big words that he would struggle with if faced with them in public conversation…but I digress.

What is worse than his infantile understanding of the nature of communication in the written word (given the nature of his job and the fact that it requires strong verbal and written interaction skills) is the fact that the statement is wrong. The bylaws and policies surrounding the Permissive Tax Exemption do not require the land or the building to be owned by the organization applying for the expemtion. In fact the application form itself asks if the property is owned or leased. If leased it specifically asks “Is the organization a lessee under a lease that requires direct payment of property taxes to the City?”

WHY does it ask this? Because IF IT IS NOT, then it states that they are not eligible for the Permissive Tax Exemption. ERGO…IF IT IS, then it can apply.

I really don’t ask for a lot from folks. I’ve been around long enough that my expectations for people are pretty reasonable. And my expectations for municipal employees are downright paltry. Yet, I must admit that I still harbor this naive, idealistic expectation that peopple whose job it is to know something - would at least know that one thing they are supposed to know. And yet, I am continually disappointed by folks.

All of this is what has led me to my day of extreme disappointment. To be fair, there is still a chance that the city will pull its collective head out of its collective rear and make this right. But we stand precipitously close to having a huge house torn down while a group of men desperatly trying to get thier lives cleaned up stand by helplessly and watch a golden opportunity lost because some low level bureaucrat either:

a) doesn’t know his stuff

b) does know, but has a personal issue with homelessness, addictions and organizations that help those struggling with these issues

The long term ramifications of this level of incompetence, ignorance or simple discriminatory bigotry (pick your personal judgment of their intentions) is terrifying. I’m not sure how you quantify the “what could have beens” of people’s lives, but IF this doesn’t happen, then I hope these city employees don’t believe in karma - cause wow, do they have it coming. Almost makes me wish I believed in reincarnation so I could step on these guys when they come back as dung beetles.

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So I heard a story this week about a pastor in Arlington, TX. He had a church that was doing fairly well, and decided to do something really BIG. He and his church decided that one Christmas they would hang a copy of the Jesus Film on EVERY DOOR in a large part of the DFW area. 1 millon copies hung on 1 millon doors.

So they bought a millon copies of the film and literally went out and hung a copy on a million front doors with a note about their church and an invitation to come fellowship with them. That idea cost the church some $700,000. Big idea…big implementation. That took a huge amount of buy in and effort from the whole church.

The result? 15 responses. Yep. 15 total responses out of a possible one million. This pastor seriously sought God after this and asked, “what the heck?” God said, the story is simply the words, you are the music. You sent them words with no music. Who’s going to respond to words with no music?

I thought that was an amazing concept. Scripture is the words. We are the music. Nothing touches us like music. Music reaches our soul much more than words do. There was a time when Ferf and I went to church, stayed for the worship set and left before the sermon. We got very little out of the words being spoken, but the music touched our hearts and spoke to our souls. Music takes us directly to the throne room of God like nothing else can. Lots of times (especially when we are on roadtrips) we can put in a secular CD and still worship through it. The words to a love song can just be directed to God and sung to Him. It’s the music.

It makes me stop and think…what would radio be like if all the musicians decided that they didn’t want to play. Sure, they could play, but they didn’t want to play? Pretty sucky I’d say. Who wants nothing but talk radio all the time? Can you enjoy talk radio? Sure. Can you learn something from talk radio? Of course. But can you enjoy it and only it all the time? NO WAY. How many kids ever say to their folks, “MOM…can we listen to an interview again?” or “Dad…turn it up, I wanna hear about non-flowering deciduous perennials and the best ratios of fertilizer.”

None. That’s because children love music. Any wonder why Jesus said, “unless you become like a child you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” Maybe becase they get it. We get older and think we have to split theological hairs and have an MDiv or PhD in theology to understand God. Me? I think God just wants us to reach up to Him. Like a child. But I digress…

Back to my original train of thought, which is…maybe the reason people aren’t responding to Jesus these days is because we keep giving them words with no music. WE, the music, aren’t there. We have decided that we just don’t want to do that. Sure, we COULD, but we don’t WANT to. We’re too busy. We don’t have that gift. That’s not what we’re called to…whatever. Add your own personal lame ass excuse here. All we are offering are words with no music.

You know what’s going to lead people to the throne room of God? The music - YOU. Your life. That is the music.

Hanging the words on a million people’s doors just ain’t gonna get the job done. Go talk to a million households - that gets the music playing. THAT draws people in. The simple act of taking the time to interact with someone. That’s the music.

But here’s the thing. Each of us in a note in the symphony. If one of us goes out it’s like hearing a crystal clear middle C. Sure it’s pretty, but unless you put it in contect with many other notes…well, it just gets boring. We are not called to go alone. We are told to be together in this. Because that is how the whole song gets played.

So I guess the thing is this. Are you going to keep giving people words with no music? Or are you getting the band back together? (It’s especially spiritual to quote the Blue’s Brothers)

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