Discerning where you're really at in your spiritual journey and helping others do the same.
Have you ever wondered where you are in your spiritual journey, or why you went through a difficult time and wondered when it would end? I think that guests who have found their way to our churches are wrestling internally with those same questions as well.
In this podcast I got an unusual opportunity, one I have never had before.
6 years ago, one of our guests who came into our Next Step Experience was Sharon Hughes. She got connected to our church at a pivotal time in her journey. As she found her home at Eastside, she reached out to me as one of the pastors to process where she was at and where she sensed she was heading.
She subsequently entered into a new season in her life that has resulted in many things, one of which is becoming a life coach and starting a podcast called Leading a Limitless Life. It is a a new thing for me to be hosted by someone who I once hosted as a guest at our church, but someone who also now serves as a host in our assimilation ministry!
In this episode of her podcast, we had a candid conversation about how my life changed in 1995 when I lost his marriage and realized I had to come to terms with my own brokenness.{spoiler alert, it works out in the end}. Through that part of my journey, I acquired a first hand understanding of how to discern which part of the spiritual journey a guest is in and have used this understanding to help myself and anyone else in my life have hope and move forward.
This was not the typical podcast I do. In it, I got to address questions I rarely get to share about:
Is there a simple vocabulary that will describe where people are at in their spiritual journeys and identify their primary task in this leg of it?
Does ignoring pain shorten a time of struggle?
How can we use the idea of preparing, planting, tending and harvesting in our businesses, ministry and leadership?
What can the notion of being a Sherpa be a useful model for leadership and customer service?
I have made some new friends by listening to some of the other guests she has hosted. Give it a listen and subscribe to it if you find it motivates you like it does me.
The whole first session of my video course is based on the concept of spiritual formation that I talked about with Sharon in this podcast. I share more in depth about it in the course itself and how my strategy of helping people find community is grounded in this understanding.
Preview: On June 4th, I will be launching a 10-part series on how the Enneagram can help us all reach different kinds of guests at our church, people we may not be reaching through our current methods. I have been working on this one for several months and I could not be more excited to share how these understandings will help us connect more people to our spiritual families and in many cases to God himself.
