Leadership and Spirituality

What Is My SHAPE: H—Heart and A—Abilities

2 Comments / Leadership and Spirituality, Personal, SHAPE for Ministry, The Pastoral Call / By /

As a way of discerning God’s call upon my life after sitting on the bench through a bout of lung cancer, I am continuing an assessment of my SHAPE for ministry. In my last post I listed my S—spiritual gifts. Many assessments stop there, but God provides pointers to his call in other aspects of our lives, too. Two people with the same spiritual gift(s) can express their Christian discipleship in very different ways, because of how they are wired emotionally, in their personality, or through the experiences that have shaped them and developed their abilities. The Saddleback SHAPE model […]

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Getting in SHAPE

1 Comment / Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, Teaching, The Pastoral Call / By /

This morning I will be meeting my personal trainer at the gym for the first time in over six months. Not with a little fear and trepidation, I will submit to thirty minutes of exercises, addressing each muscle group and testing my capabilities. What I know is this: I am out of shape. Cancer-drug-related weight gain has plagued me since the first of the year, my overall strength has diminished, and stamina is completely redefined by pulmonary limitations at the moment. Yes, it sounds pretty pitiful for one who used to be able to run the paces and maintain a

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Choices, Choices, Choices

Leave a Comment / Leadership and Spirituality, Personal, The Pastoral Call / By /

A week has gone by without a blog-post . . . I know that causes some of my readers to worry; but no need to be concerned! I have been feeling so good this week that I have concentrated on getting errands and chores done, probably overdoing it once or twice. Life is truly getting back to normal and I can see real, measurable progress in my abilities. It is a wonderful thing to wake up every single morning, happy to be alive and grateful to God for energy and purpose. I am circulating among friends again, some of whom

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The Dynamic of Reassigned Duty

2 Comments / Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, PCUSA, Personal, The Pastoral Call / By /

In lieu of baseball this winter, my TV pastime while navigating the cancer waters has been Netflix episodes of The West Wing. This exploration of life in the White House’s administrative center is, most of the time, nothing short of riveting for me. I am in the middle of Season 6, which is well into the second term for President Bartlet. His Chief of Staff Leo McGarry has had a massive heart-attack and is out for the count. White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg has replaced him as Chief. The current plot line has CJ making the transition from one

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Retrospective on Normal vs. Transformed Life

Leave a Comment / Kenya & Uganda, Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, People, Personal, Theological Reflection, Uncategorized / By /

Alene was my senior year roommate at Stanford, and our friendship has been renewed by visits in the last few years, most recently last summer in Bomet, Kenya, where she and Steve are missionaries. Thankful for the blessing of Internet contact, Facebook, and my Caring Bridge site chronicling medical adventures since my diagnosis, Alene and Steve have been keeping up with Naegeli news from afar. Yesterday I received in the mail a hand-made card from Alene. It touched me very deeply and suggested the entry point for my next series of blogs. On the cover is a rather fanciful elephant—known,

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The Third Mansion: Following Jesus

1 Comment / Leadership and Spirituality, Lent, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Progress through the Interior Castle, The Pastoral Call / By /

We continue our study of the stages of spiritual growth, as first pondered by sixteenth century Christian mystic Teresa of Avila (The Interior Castle) and more recently unpacked by Thomas Ashbrook (Mansions of the Heart). So far, we have appreciated the fresh new life that comes with conversion and the inner struggle this life introduces as we feel the tension of forsaking the old life. In the Christian life, moving successfully through the tug-of-war stage of the Second Mansion means the question of whether I will fully commit myself to this life with this Savior is settled. Or mostly. The

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Come in Weakness

3 Comments / Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, Personal, The Pastoral Call / By /

One last blog on the subject of fatigue: The present circumstances have caused me to experience fatigue in a much different way than I have the past sixty years. In decades past, tiredness of the usual kind was remedied by sleep, because the cause was hard work, long days, or stress. When a pastor, for instance, is denied sleep because of ministry’s demands, a sleep deficit is created. The only way to pay it back is to get the sleep one lost. [On this subject, I highly recommend William C. Dement’s book The Promise of Sleep, in which he identifies

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The “Come to Jesus” Moment

6 Comments / It All Started in the Garden, Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, The Pastoral Call / By /

I wonder sometimes if the slow-motion Christian discipleship I am undergoing as a cancer patient is giving me the opportunity to revisit issues, temptations, and misdirections of my past life as a pastor. Today the theme is fatigue, felt persistently now for weeks. It seems the effects of chemo and radiation sneak up on a person well after the treatment period is over. For me, what I had imagined would be almost six weeks of steady strengthening has turned out instead to be a disappointing holding pattern. Last week I had a short-term set back in the form of “the

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Fading Glory

9 Comments / It All Started in the Garden, Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, PCUSA, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

Two weeks ago today I had my last chemotherapy infusion for Round 3. By all accounts, my recovery from its negative effects has been unusually quick and thorough, much more so than Round 2. I am hiking at least two miles a day now to build up my strength and to regain cardio-pulmonary endurance for surgery March 3. God has been very good to squash any queasiness or sleepiness I had in previous rounds, and it is nice to say life is getting back to normal. The drugs continue to create an extremely inhospitable environment for the Beast in my

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Waiting to Die, or Living to Death?

9 Comments / Death & Dying, Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, Personal, Sermon Illustrations, Uncategorized / By /

Several years ago, on the occasion of her 80th birthday, a parishioner intimated that she was the longest living member of her family at that age. Her vision of her life had not extended past that point, as every single one of her forebears had died early and suddenly or, in one case after a long illness at age 72. Since she did not know what to do with life after 80, and had no inclination to reinvent herself, it appeared to me that she was simply marking time and waiting to die. At the time, she was in perfect

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