Chris Howlett

How to Make Happiness Work for You

In my last post I wrote that happiness is hard work. It is. So, today I’m going to share with you how to work hard to make happiness work for you and in you and even, dare I say, through you!

First, I want to start out with this amazing quote from Dr. Martin Seligman. He carried out tons of groundbreaking work on a newish field of Psychology that studies human flourishing, called Positive Psychology. Seligman wrote

“The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to happiness, joy, rapture, comfort, and ecstasy, rather than be entitled to these feelings by the exercise of personal strengths and virtues, leads to legions of people who in the middle of great wealth are starving spiritually.” 

That’s powerful. Many people believe happiness is just something that’s owed to them, it’s in the Declaration of Indepence after all??!? Isn’t it one of those unalienable rights God gives us? No, but according to Jefferson and others, the “pursuit of happiness” is. You’re free to pursue happiness. You’re not guaranteed happiness. To make happiness work for you, you’re going to have to work for it. It’s not automatic. There are no shortcuts.

Here are three ways to pursue happiness:

1. Simply Your Life

Madison Avenue is paid billons each year to convince you that your life is lacking, your life is missing something, your life can never be complete unless and until you purchase their clients’ products or services. They used to be limited to newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and billboards. Those were the primary conduits of the consumer culture. But now we carry these marketing machines around in our pockets.  We have tablets, we use computers every day for hours on end, and Madison Avenue, and now Silicon Valley ingeniously tracks you in order to sell you. So many distractions, so many messages about what you must have in order to be happy. It’s mind bogglingly complex. When life gets cluttered with things and messages about more things it grows increasingly challenging to just be. Just be happy. Just be content. Just be human, not the consumer robot the world wants to convert you into being.

The first strategy to make happiness work for you is to simplify your life and focus more on what’s going on on the inside. Turn off the phone. Put away the tablet. Close the computer. Shut down the streaming service. Relax. Pray. Get in touch with God. Invest in relationships. Chill. Actually, these can all be strategies in and of themselves, but as long as your brain is inundated with messages telling you you can’t be happy without that next widget, then it’s going to be difficult to work on happiness. So, simplify.

 2. Pursue Your Strengths

Self-awareness is generally a good thing. Learning about your talents and “potential strengths” is a good way to understand what makes you tick and what strengths to pursue. Strengths are associated with virtues. To develop strengths, you develop virtue. I posted video and blog post not too long ago on the subject of virtues, check it out. A happy life is a virtuous life, a life in pursuit of the good. A good life is a GOOD life, a life that makes the world a better place, a life that grows in goodness and godliness. Learning about how God wired you is one of the ways you can work with happiness to produce more happiness in and through your life. 

There are two main places to go to discover your strengths. One is the popular Clifton StrengthsFinder which you can purchase through the Gallup organization. This assessment is great for thinking about how your talents and strengths manifest in the workplace. The other, is the VIA Character Strengths Test through the Authentic Happiness website of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center. This test is free. There are a ton of other questionnaires on the UPenn site that can help you understand where you are and even track your progress toward subjective well-being, as the psychologists like to call it.  By the way, I’m not selling anything. These are resources I’ve personally used in my life and in coaching others to grow their sense of happiness and well-being.

3. Invest in Others

Invest in others. That’s the third way to pursue happiness. When you invest in the lives and happiness of others, it helps you cultivate your personal happiness. You anticipate your own happiness by putting it to work in the lives of others. One of the major detractors from happiness is an unhealthy focus on your self. Sometimes we call it naval-gazing or self-absorption, or even narcissism. In our consumer culture, we’re taught this way of being. “Have it your way. It’s all about you. You deserve the best. You, you, you.” A me-focussed life is counter-productive. It’s a way to pursue happiness that never works. Actually, the me-focussed life is always guaranteed to produce the opposite of happiness. It’s one of the great challenges of modern life. When you’re taught from childhood the world revolves around you, and then you experience real life, reality teaches some hard lessons. The sooner you learn the lesson, the better off you’ll be, that you’re not the center of the universe. One of the key tenets of the Christian faith is that of self-sacrifice. The path to happiness and wholeness, the way to the blessed life is to be a blessing to others. 

So, do it. Volunteer. Get involved. Serve through your church. Find an organization that’s making a difference for the least, the last, and the lost, and join them in that work.

President John F. Kennedy got it so right! “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” Yes! Get the focus off you and start making other people’s lives better. You’ll be amazed as to how that transformation of perspective helps form and maintain happiness.

Okay, that’s three. When I started working on this post, I was going to share five ways, so I think I need another to fill out the rest. Check back soon for more ways to put happiness to work in your life.

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Check out the Video Version of this post.

Sacrifice

What do you think when you read the word “sacrifice”? Where do we sacrifice, or for what do we sacrifice? I think of parents who sacrifice for their children. They delay or do away with completely something good for themselves toward the service of a greater good, their child’s good. It might be sacrificing time to make it to the kid’s ball game, sacrificing money so their kid can get braces, or a computer for school. Parents are constantly sacrificing for children, and they are happy to do so, because of love. Then there’s sports. Athletes sacrifice time, energy, hard work, certain foods, and many other things to work hard so that they will be in top condition and compete to the best of their abilities. People sacrifice all the time. We sacrifice for our education, for the greater good of pursuing our dreams. We sacrifice time at work, to further our career. We sacrifice energy, effort, and good food to lose weight in order to live healthier lives. Sacrifice is all around us.

To sacrifice is to offer something valuable to us on the altar of some greater good. Once we lay something on the altar of sacrifice, we are giving it up, we are releasing it so that it might serve a higher purpose, so that it will ultimately be used to bring something else that is better for us in our lives and the lives of others.

Paul writes in Romans 12:1-2 that there is a specific sacrifice we are called to make as followers of Christ:

“Therefore, I appeal to you, brothers [and sisters], by the compassions of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice, living, holy and acceptable to God, your reasonable worship. And do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you may test what the will of God is, the good, acceptable, and perfect.” Romans 12:1-2 (CMH)

He is appealing to our better nature, that we are to sacrifice our bodies to God. Now, in the space of this devotional, I don’t have time to go into all that it means to sacrifice one’s “body” to God, but let’s just say that Paul is talking about a whole-hearted sacrifice of all that I know about myself. This sacrifice is on a specific altar, God’s.

Usually, in the ancient world, when you heard sacrificial language, it implied a death, the shedding of blood. But Paul calls for something different. This is a living, holy, and acceptable sacrifice. It is living because we are still breathing. It is holy because we are setting ourselves apart for God. It is acceptable because we are going to make this sacrifice according to God’s design, not our own.

There is much more here that I will unpack next week. For now, think of how my life really is not my own, but is a living, breathing, expression of my love for and devotion to God. We are called to lay down something valuable to us, precious even, our very selves, on the altar of the greater good, really the absolutely highest good, service to, love for, and devotion to God and his purpose. There can be no recipe for a better life than this sacrifice.

[We are in week 2 of the Beeson Pastor Program this fall and I am taking a preaching class. This devotional was born out of work I am doing for a sermon for class. Last week was crazy! Worked on my dissertation and assignments for the Anthropology class that we will have the last week of August. This week we're in class every day until about five, and we have two sermons to write and deliver.]

Beeson IV Begins

    Beginning in 2008, nine pastors from around the United States began a journey of education, spiritual growth, leadership development, and community building. Coming from Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah, we started the Beeson Pastor Program Doctor of Ministry in Biblical Preaching and Leadership at Asbury Theological Seminary.

     Every August we have come to the Wilmore campus for classes and writing. We have traveled to Chicago, Houston, South Korea, and Cincinnati to visit innovative ministries and learn from creative and effective leaders. We’ve visited everything from a 20-something postmodern church, to a house church, to the largest church in the U.S., Joel Osteen’s Lakewood, to the largest Methodist Church in the world, Kwanglim in Seoul, to the largest church in the world, Yoido Full Gospel, also in Seoul. Early next year we will travel to Costa Rica.

    It’s been fun so far! This year our classes are the “Advanced Biblical Preaching Seminar” and “Anthropology for the Global Church.” We are all moving forward in writing our dissertations. My working title is “Equipping the Saints Using a Strengths-based Ministry Process.”

    It has been a real honor to receive the Beeson Pastor Fellowship, which is a full-ride scholarship including room and board, books, tuition, travel, and even a laptop computer. It’s been an even bigger honor to get to know my colleagues in this cohort and the other cohorts that have travelled with us and shared campus time with us. In the next few weeks I will share some brief bios of some of them so you can get to know with whom I am spending all my time during these Augusts that I have been away from Christ Church.

    So, I will be here in Wilmore, getting ready for my dissertation proposal, finishing up some work for the upcoming classes. On the weekends we’ll be making church visits. We will be on campus until August 26th. I am so appreciative of this time away from the responsibilities of pastoring the church to hone my skills, grow deeper in my relationship with Christ, and be shaped by some incredible colleagues and leaders. I know that Brenda, Andy, Mark, and Randy and our slate of small group leaders are filling in the gaps with grace and skill in my absence. Thank you for your endorsement and support!!

A Great Sermon on Hell

I received a lot of feedback on my last post concerning Rob Bell's video promoting his new book in which it seems he might be lurching toward universalism and away from the traditional Christian understanding of the existence of hell.

This morning I read an excellent sermon on the subject of hell by my good friend and fellow Beeson Pastor, Bob Kaylor of Tri-Lakes United Methodist Church in Monument, Colorado. Bob is a great preacher whose sermons and articles are featured in Homiletics, a journal for preachers.

So, check this out, he posted it on his blog, you might learn something. You might even be inspired.

Missio Dei

I am currently working on a project that is due Saturday for my second Leadership Class in the Beeson Pastor Program. Our prof had me serve as consultant to a local church in the area. While, initially, I wasn't very excited about the assignment (to say the least... I thought our time would be better spent focussed on our own churches), it's growing on me.

One very positive outcome, as I get to know some of the ins and outs of a neighboring church, is the ability to look afresh at the minsitry of Christ Church. It's real easy to miss the forest for the trees in ministry. There are immediate needs staring you in the face every day... legitimate needs that, as a pastor, you need to spend time and energy addressing. However, those seemingly more urgent tasks can sometimes draw your attention away from God's big picture plan.

Why is the church here? What purpose is it serving? If it were to disappear overnight would anyone but our members notice? Who is God calling us to reach? Who lives in our neighborhood who doesn't know Christ? How can we "do church" in such a way that our members see themselves as missionaries right here in Lexington, Kentucky? If all the churches in Fayette County were filled on Sunday (or Saturday), there would be a couple of hundred thousand people still outside the churches.

God is on a mission, the Missio Dei, "Mission of God." That mission was and is expressed by the sending of Jesus Christ into the world. It is also expressed by sending the Church, the Body of Christ, into the world. Too many churches are in institutional survival mode. God wants churches, including Christ Church, to be about his mission. I'm feeling some fresh energy and a fresh breeze of the Spirit of God moving in and through my life and the people at Christ Church. It's an exciting time to be their pastor.

News From Colorado Springs

Greetings from Glen Eyrie, near Colorado Springs, Colorado! It has been a very busy three weeks. The first week of the Beeson experience this year was a preaching class, led by Dr. Ellsworth Kalas. That was great. The next two weeks we worked on our dissertations and took the second half of the "how-to-write-a-dissertation" class, led by Dr. Verna Lowe of Asbury University. That was interesting. Most of us are not used to dealing with statistics, so Dr. Lowe had to treat us with kid gloves and walk us through very gently.

We arrived in Colorado last night (Saturday, Aug. 14) and made our way to Glen Eyrie, which is the home of the Navigators. This is a beautiful place. Today has been cloudy all day, but it is still amazing. God does some pretty cool stuff, and the Rocky Mountains are close to the top of the list, in my opinion.

This morning several of us attended First UMC Colorado Springs. We went to their 9:30 a.m. Crossroads Service, which was started by Rev. Bob Kaylor, a Beeson Pastor in my cohort, several years ago when he served as Associate Pastor there. It was a good service with some solid preaching. It was good to be in the house of the Lord.

The picture in this post is of a rock formation here on the Glen Eyrie property. This property belonged to William Jackson Palmer, a successful railroad owner in the 19th century. In the 1950s the Navigators bought it, making it their headquarters and a retreat center. We are staying at the Oaks Lodge.

The reason we are in Colorado Springs is for our Advanced Church Leadership Class, led by Dr. Russell West. Dr. West is quite the creative guy and we are definitely in a non-traditional class experience. It has not all unfolded to us, yet. He put us into two teams to compete to see who can best discern the spiritual and cultural story of this area to best develop a missional approach to reaching this particular community. We will then be equipped to analyze our own ministry settings with our leaders order to equip our churches to do Kingdom ministry in our unique cultural settings.

We're only at the beginning of the process, but so far, I think this has great potential, not only for my learning, but for what we can do with this at Christ Church in Lexington, Kentucky!

News From Wilmore

Well, this year I haven't been writing as much from here. This will change. I procrastinated on some work for a class later this month, and I'm under the gun. So, I was doing that AND working on Preaching Class stuff, AND working on my dissertation.

Yesterday, we traveled to Cincinnati where we attended two worship services. The first was at Crossroads Community Church, a seeker-driven independent church. Then we attended the Cincinnati Vineyard Church. This is a charismatic denomination and the specialty of this local church is servant evangelism. Their slogan is: "Small things done with great love will change the world." Their worship was more engaging and it just happened that their associate pastor was speaking about commitment, as in commitment in membership. They have around 1,400 members with around 6,000 in attendance. Lots of folks hanging around and involved, but not making the commitment of membership.

At this point in the process, I have been to enough megachurches to know what the deal is. They all have several things in common: 1. A desire to reach the lost that drives most decisions, from worship style to what types of services they carry out in the community; 2. A commitment to excellence; 3. Strong leadership from both the pastor and key lay leaders.

My big critique of Crossroads is that, while they did do a really cool version of "Be Thou My Vision," there just was not much in the service that said, this is a Christian worship experience. It was more like what you might find at a good youth rally. (Not that you can't worship at a youth rally, you can, but this was more like a motivational fun time with a little Kingdom language thrown in for good measure). They are obviously reaching people, but I can't help but walk away from these experiences asking, what kind of Christianity is going to exist in the U.S. fifty years from now as these churches are the ones that are actually reaching the community with the Gospel (or at least a watered down version of the Gospel).

Regardless of the critique, we can learn a lot from these churches. There are a few megachurches that I think really have a balanced, Biblical approach, Ginghamsburg UMC being the best example I have seen.

I'll be writing about my classes and experiences, so come back often and see what I've been up to in the Beeson Pastor Program at Asbury Seminary. I really appreciate this time for learning, reflection, and renewal. I think I am a better pastor because of it. Next time I'll share about Dr. Ellsworth Kalas' preaching class.

Wonderful Good Friday Song

Good friend and fellow Beeson Pastor, Rev. Steve Dunmire, recorded this song on his computer Friday morning in preparation for his church's Good Friday service. He sent it out to our cohort of Beeson Pastors as a blessing to us, and it certainly was and is. I have to admit, I hadn't heard the song before, "You Did That For Me," by Pierce Pettis and Jonell Mosser. It is a beautiful song and Steve does a great job with it. Give it a listen, and you will be blessed. Steve is the pastor of The Wesleyan Church of North Collins, in New York. You can check out their website here.

SteveDunmire-YouDidThatForMe-20100402

"You Did That For Me "
(Pierce Pettis, Jonell Mosser)

Don’t have to cry anymore
Don’t have to worry ‘bout what’s in store
Walk that road exhausted and poor
Don’t have to cry anymore

Don’t have to know it all
Don’t have to be so proud, stand so tall
Climb that mountain only to fall
Don’t have to know it all

You did that for me
You did that for me
You wore the chains so I could be free
You did that for me

Don’t have to be ashamed
Don’t have to hang my head,
Shoulder the blame
Wondering if my life’s been in vain
Don’t have to be ashamed

Man of sorrow
Well-acquainted with grief
Dragged to the city dump
Spread-eagle on a cross beam
Propped up like a scarecrow,
Nailed like a thief
There for all the world to see

More Korea Videos

I was talking to someone in my small group who mentioned that from reading my blog he thought I must still be in Korea because of my lack of blogging! So, here are some catch-ups.

I did return from Korea, and what an amazing trip it was. I feel so blessed to be a part of the Beeson Program! Not only do I get to continue my education and strengthen my skills as a pastor, but I also am blessed to participate in beyond-the-classroom learning like this trip to Korea.

So, here are some more videos, basically following the order in which they were shot.

This video was taken in the chapel at the Girls School. These girls are high school age and were at school early to get ready for the upcoming school session. They sang a couple of songs in Korean, which were beautiful, then broke out in this song. It was a truly moving experience to think of the time spent rehearsing so that for this brief moment they could be a blessing to us.

I believe I speak for everyone in our group, that we were all kind of blown away by this. First, the music is loud... loud. The girls are dressed up in traditional clothes playing traditional Korean instruments. It was a pretty cool way for them to say good-bye. We experienced so many amazing expressions of hospitality! The visit to the school was one of the highlights of our journey.

This reminds me, not sure if I wrote about it in an earlier blog or not, but this school is the most technologically advanced school I have ever visited. It is a type of vocational school, though privately run. Girls graduating from this school command jobs right out of high school that pay as well or better than jobs offered to college graduates. We saw pictures of students receiving their Microsoft Certifications. I don't know much about this, but I do know it is a very demanding program and that it is very marketable. Anyway, really neat Christian school!

On Sunday morning we attended Kwanglim Methodist Church. After being split up into groups of two, we were escorted to the children's ministry. Bob Kaylor and I ended up in the third and fourth grade children's church. These children's parents were in the main worship service in the sanctuary. This was one of those places where shoes come off, which is kind of funny to do when one is wearing a suit. But Bob and I had a great time. Following the worship service, which the above video is of, we attended a brief Sunday School type session with a teacher and four kids out of this service. I have no idea what the lesson was about, but the kids were engaged and happy. It was fun. They definitely got a kick out of having Bob and me there.

The above video is of music that was being played after the main worship service at 11 am. I don't know if they do this every week or after every service, but it was amazing. An orchestra with a professional-level vocalist belting out a beautiful song. We were encouraged not to take pictures during the worship service, so I was an obedient guest, and didn't. We sat in reserved seats on the main floor in the front right side of the sanctuary and were introduced by Dr. Kim during the service. It was obvious that the people were happy to welcome us and we were thankful for their warm greeting. They gave us little ear pieces so we could listen to an interpreter over the radio. That was cool. How many churches do anything like that? I found out later that Yoido Full Gospel Church does. Left my camera on the bus accidentally and so I don't have any footage of that church, but it was amazing.

The video above was taken at the lunch immediately following the 11 am worship service at Kwanglim. What a meal! I think they had it catered, or it might have been prepared by a group of people who work for the church. Whichever, it was the best meal we had in Korea. The quality of the food was excellent. The video is of Dr. Kim (the Sr. Pastor of Kwanglim) welcoming Dr. Tumblin (the Beeson Center Dean) and Dr. Russell West (the soon to be named Associate Dean of the Beeson Center [that announcement has now been made, but we didn't know at the time]). Dr. Kim is introducing them to someone, and I'm not sure who that is (can't remember). Anyway, short video, but another example of the hospitality we were shown. Koreans know their hospitality!!

Christian Television in Korea

CTS is the premier Christian television broadcaster in Korea. We were treated to a tour of their facilities, including inside this studio. This place is in a large building in Seoul and is high tech to the max! I was impressed not only with their technical capabilities, but with the Christian atmosphere in the whole place. Our tour guide was one of their fundraisers. The station, which is actually four stations produced by one network, is completely listener supported. Really inspiring place.