Q2 PASTORAL LETTER

A couple of weeks ago I turned 40-years-old. That feels like an important milestone, different from other birthdays for me. If I’m expected to live to 80, this is exactly middle age. This is the fulcrum year that tips my life from the first half to the second half. 

Ronald Rolheiser, a Catholic priest, theologian, and prolific author describes life in two halves. The first is about building and discovering and getting things in order. Concerning the second half, Rolheiser says, "The foremost spiritual task of the second half of life is to forgive—others, ourselves, life, God." It’s all about giving yourself away to those around you. It’s about fading into the background and letting others, still in their first half, live in the limelight. 

I know that the switch from the first to the second half isn’t immediate upon my 40th birthday. I know that it will be gradual and probably happen over the course of a decade at least. But I do think that the best way to maximize this time in my life is to at least acknowledge the shift and maybe even to intentionally modify my mindset to align with it. So, here’s to the second half of life!

When I look back on the first half of my life, one thing stands out as a throughline: I’ve changed a lot. Mainly, I’ve changed the way I think about things. This is a big surprise to me if I’m honest. I was under the impression that I would decide what I thought about most things, big and important things, when I was a young adult and then I’d more-or-less maintain that thinking throughout the rest of my life. No one explicitly taught me to assume this would be the case, I just observed it (or at least the facade of it) modeled by people I watched and respected throughout childhood and young adulthood.

But whenever I thought I came across a perspective or opinion that I might maintain for a long time, I would soon after learn something new or discover new information. Upon learning new things, I would feel my opinions and priorities start to shift. At first, I felt uncomfortable about this, even a little embarrassed. What did that say about my constitution, my resolve, my beliefs? Did I have a fragile mind that was too easily influenced by what I learned and experienced? 

Sometime in my twenties, I started asking mentors in my life a simple question that really helped me navigate what I was experiencing. Whenever they would share a belief or conviction, I would ask, “When did you start thinking about it that way?” The question would often initiate a moment of self-discovery for them and relief for me because the age at which they started thinking that way was almost never preceded by a 2 or a 3 or even a 4. Most of the people I was learning from and following made some big changes in the way they thought in their 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. Imagine the liberation I felt to learn that you are allowed and maybe even encouraged to change your mind that late in life! What a gift. 

My two-fold follow up question is usually, “What did you believe before that change and what changed your mind?” You can learn a lot about the way your own mind works by discovering how the minds of others work. It’s a fascinating and liberating process and I encourage you to talk to mentors, parents, and leaders in your life about when and why they changed their mind on a topic. Conversely, I’ve found it hard to trust or learn from leaders who seem to have never changed their minds. In many cases, pride or narrowmindedness or certitude have led to an inflexibility in their thinking and that’s not the kind of leader I want to follow or to become. So, I don’t feel I have as much to learn from them. There’s always something to learn so I don’t mean to imply that they are of no use by any means; but, someone who never changes their mind and never absorbs and puts to work new information isn’t the sort of person I prefer to follow. 

More important than my personal experience, a change in thinking or a shift in course is a common theme throughout the Bible and Judeo-Christian history. In over a dozen instances in the Old Testament, God “relents” or changes the course of action to spare the people of God. This is a change of mind, a shifting of lanes. Throughout his teaching, Jesus is constantly challenging the religious leaders to change their thinking. One could say that’s the simplified thrust of the entire Sermon on the Mount. Forgiveness and repentance, both quintessential Christian values, are themselves a shift in thinking and a change in course. Changing our minds and changing how we engage the world as we grow and develop and mature is part of being followers of the way of Jesus. 

Of course, like anything else, this philosophy comes with liabilities if taken to an extreme length. For instance, if you assume you’ll constantly change your mind throughout your life, you might never allow yourself to have any conviction about anything. It could make it hard for you to advise others, it may be challenging for you to make decisions, it might be difficult to have a north star and clear vision with regard to your family or job or neighborhood. This is where two things become very important: HUMILY & VALUES

If you’re going to have conviction in life and also change your mind, you’ll have to employ humility when you make the change. You might not even be admitting to being “wrong”, just seeing things differently. No need to feel embarrassed that you thought differently at one time. One can simply include where they’ve been and transcend to a new mindset. But humility will be a key ingredient for this move to take place healthily. 

By the same token, values are the filter through which we run experiences, information, relationships, resources, and more. Our beliefs and ideologies can change quite a lot throughout life and our values are the guardrails that keep us out of the ditch on either side of the highway. Values help us maintain integrity as we question, deconstruct, and reconstruct our faith.

This narrow, singular thinking reminds me of a narrow country road with an irrigation ditch on each side. On the one hand, driving on a road like this is simple: there’s really nowhere else to go but straight ahead. But things get more complicated when another car is coming the other direction or when there’s some kind of obstruction in the road. We would find ourselves wishing for another lane and maybe some guardrails to help keep us out of a ditch in a worst case scenario. 

Values matter and a good set of values (stated, memorized, written down, displayed) make for a great safety feature to keep us from having zero footing in shaky times. What are the values you live by? This is an important question to which we would all do well to formulate an answer.

I’ve reached an age where I can sit around with friends I’ve known for a long time and we can tell story after story about things we’ve experienced together while our kids just sit there and listen, unsure how much is embellished and how much is accurate. I had this experience with one of my best friends, Tim, just recently. 

We spent a day in Salida with Tim and his family. Julie and Tim’s wife, Brittany, were best friends before Julie and I started dating. We were married around the same time, had kids around the same time, and the only thing that’s separated us has been geography (CO/TX). When we get together, there’s about 20 years of stories we can recall. 

We sat around a fire the other night and told some of these stories. The looks on our kids' faces were hilarious. They could hardly believe they knew the characters in these stories, much less that these characters could be their parents. 

Tim told a story about a time we were rock climbing and he took a big lead fall. He started with “have I ever told you kids about the time Nathan and I were climbing and I nearly broke my back?” They all leaned in, hardly able to wait for the details. 

Tim and I were climbing in Eldorado Canyon, just outside of Boulder. We had just climbed a relatively easy route called the Bastille Crack and we had moved over to something a little more challenging. A route called Blind Faith is one of my favorites and Tim wanted a challenging lead to practice his gear placement. 

When lead climbing, the leader places gear in a crack and it won’t come out unless maneuvered in a very specific way, a way that the rope would almost never cause. The leader clips the rope that is attached to their harness into the piece of gear and keeps climbing. Ideally, the leader would place gear and clip into it about every body length. Sometimes, depending on the crack, the gear the leader has available, or their confidence level, they might run out this distance a little longer, or sew up a harder section with closer gear placements.

If the leader falls from above their last piece of gear, they’ll fall double the distance they are above the gear, plus a little rope stretch, plus more if the belayer weighs less than the climber. If a leader is six feet above their gear, they will fall 12 feet plus a few more feet with rope stretch and belayer lift. 

Tim was nearing the top of the pitch and was about 10 feet above his last gear placement. He was looking confident so I didn’t say anything. Turns out, he had me fooled. He was struggling with the final moves to the anchor and eventually fell off. Tim weighs a little more than me and the force of his 20 foot fall sent me about 5 feet into the air. I estimate he fell about 25 feet that day, which is quite a distance to fall for a lead climber. The scariest part is, he missed a ledge by about six inches. The ledge, had he fell on it, would have broken his back. 

Most of the time, when I’m climbing, my rope is unnecessary. It’s only there as a backup safety measure. I don’t fall every time I get on a wall. Some climbers are always pushing grades and they fall everytime. That’s not my experience. For me, the rope is there in case something doesn’t go to plan. The rope is there to keep me off the ground in case conditions change quickly. 

Values are like a rope, they keep us from hitting bottom, they keep us safe when things change abruptly.

If the experiences of my mentors over the years are any indication of health, I will change what I think, believe, and pursue as I mature. Change is good. It’s a sign of growth, receptivity, and wisdom. 

Let me give you an example of a change I’ve gone through from the first part of my life to now, my mid-life. I’ll explain how my values have kept me from flying into a ditch and kept me on the highway, how my values acted like a rope protecting me from peril. 

I started seminary in 2008, right after finishing my undergrad. Just months before my undergrad graduation I had decided that I wanted to do church work and discovered that meant seminary and pursuing a pastoral vocation. I got into Denver Seminary and didn’t really look anywhere else because Denver is where I wanted to put down roots and start a family and career. 

In my third year at Denver Seminary, Julie told me she was pregnant. I was elated. I could not wait to be a dad and I knew I wanted to be a dad sooner than later. I was nearing graduation, which also felt like good timing. When she made this announcement to me, I happened to be taking a class about Christianity and ethics. It was an interesting mix of theology, philosophy, bible, and sociology. I really enjoyed it. 

One of the main projects we had was to draw a position about a controversial topic out of a hat and defend the position biblically and theologically, whether we actually agreed with it or not. This was a good exercise in critical thinking and helpful for validating the beliefs of those with whom we disagreed because some of us were defending positions with which we were personally misaligned. I was to defend the position that medically assisted reproductive methods were not biblically or theologically permitted. Someone else in the class drew the opposite position and on the same day we were to defend our perspective before the class and professor. 

I knew we were pregnant at the time and I wrote a robust defense of the position I drew in part because I couldn’t imagine the topic or issue ever being of any importance to me. I found the assignment easy and didn’t have any trouble with it. Ironically, not long after my defense, we lost that pregnancy along with a couple others over the next few years and we discovered we were unable to have biological children without significant medical intervention. 

At one time I believed that it was unbiblical and unchristian to allow doctors to intervene with pregnancy. I believed that God was the author of life and that anything other than intercourse between a married man and woman to produce a pregnancy was wrong. I happened to agree with the position I drew out of the hat and I defended it easily. That is, until my circumstances changed. I learned new information about my body and my wife’s body. My lens for the Bible was changing along with my understanding of who God is and how God utilizes people to carry out the will of God.

I changed lanes, changed my mind, took a different path and approach in order to make a decision about what to do next. The result? Our daughter Lucy. Needless to say, I have no regrets. 

For some, however, infertility leads to the end of their relationship or a divorce in their marriage. They seek out others for the fulfillment of their desire to be parents. Infertility becomes a barrier that they just can’t get over and the relationship atrophies. The thing that kept that from happening for us was the guardrails we had put in place, the values, the rope to catch us when we fell due to a rapidly and unexpectedly changing environment. We were able to safely change lanes without ending up in a ditch.

Our commitment to each other, the covenant we formed when we married each other, meant we were going to find a way to pursue what we felt called to together. That value system, that commitment, was like a rope that kept us out of rock bottom, out of the ditch on the side of the highway. Having a different lane to swerve into without throwing away all our convictions in life provided the flexibility we needed to remain faithful and also change our mind at the same time. 

I don’t mean to imply that people who get divorced or end relationships lack strong values. That’s not what I mean at all. What I mean is, I can point to a specific value system that kept our marriage out of a ditch on the side of a one-lane country road when our circumstances changed unexpectedly and we needed to swerve. I can also point to flexibility in our thinking that allowed us to change lanes and pursue something we wanted very badly. 

Here are a series of questions/considerations that might help you change your mind on a few things. 

  1. List 1-3 strong beliefs you have held for a long time without change. Why haven’t you changed your thinking on these things? Is it because you haven’t learned anything new about them or what you have learned isn’t compelling enough? Is it fear that you’ll backslide into an entirely different belief system? Is it because you haven’t thought critically about these beliefs in a while? Is it because these are core beliefs that don’t need to change in order for you to be flexible? 

  2. Is there someone you trust and respect who holds a different perspective than you on a belief or ideology? What could you ask them about their point of view that would help you understand it better? 

  3. Is there something you’d like to change your mind about but don’t have the resources or information to support the change? What can you do to prioritize research, dialog, and information gathering on this specific topic? How can you diversify the research so you don’t end up in an echo chamber?

  4. Commit to regular prayer for flexibility. 

Here are a few questions/considerations that might help you identify a value system that will keep you from falling too far when you do make changes in how you think.

  1. What commitments have you made that can help steer your thinking? This could be a job, a neighborhood, a volunteer rhythm, your faith/religion, a relationship, a project, etc. How might these commitments act as a safety net as you explore new ways of thinking?

  2. When you look back on your life, what values did you naturally gravitate toward and how can you codify those values in your life now?

  3. If you’re feeling stumped on what your values can/should be, borrow someone else’s! Ask someone you trust and respect what theirs are and try them on for size. Make changes as you self-discover. 

  4. Sometimes it is easier to simplify things when we think about teaching them to kids. Whether or not you have kids, how would you whittle down your values to something a child could grasp and remember? 

  5. What’s the best way to display or record your value system so you can use it as a paradigm for life and faith?

  6. Everything is better in community. Can you share your value system with others and maybe even combine yours with someone else’s?

  7. Commit to regular prayer for clear, solid values to guide you.

This isn’t a perfect science and I know that it can be scary and frustrating to hold convictions these days. It can feel like you’re always offending someone by holding a conviction about anything. But I think part of maturing, growing, developing is learning to hold conviction in one hand and flexibility in the other. 

As a pastor, this is a freedom I badly want for our church. I pray for your flexibility often. I pray that you would hold to convictions and that you’d have the wisdom to listen, learn, and change your mind when the opportunity arises.

I love you, I love this church. I was telling a neighbor yesterday how honored I feel to steward this community. What a gift you all are to me and to my family. Thank you. I pray for you all the time and I’m here for you through thick and thin.

–Nathan

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