Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit - HIRD

By the Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

Who in their right mind would want to be sent to a toxic island where everyone was a pirate, including the grandmothers, grandsons, and everyone in between?  Who would want to be sent to an island where all islanders were liars, evil brutes and lazy gluttons?  The Island of Crete which my wife and I visited had been a pirate stronghold for over 800 years.  While in Crete, we learned about Titus who was just the man for the job.  He did not flinch.  Titus taught toxic Cretan pirates how to become radically healthy: how to love, how to lay down their lives for another, how to be the faithful husband of but one wife, how to be gentle and patient.  He taught the female pirates how to be best friends with their husbands and their children.  This is true health.  If the wisdom in the 45-sentence book of Titus can revolutionize a pirate island, it can even transform a pirate continent like North America.  Signs of our North American toxicity include gun violence and the insanity of the shooters, obesity when there is no shortage of food, and a wealth of communication tools while many are no longer talking any more.

 

Is it a mere coincidence that the late Steve Jobs defined Apple employees as pirates, even raising a pirate flag with the Apple logo as the pirate eyepatch?  It is better, said Jobs, to be a pirate than join the navy.[1]     In the 1999 movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, Jobs accused Bill Gates of ripping him off by producing the Microsoft Windows mouse-based graphical user interface.  Gates, the wealthiest person on earth, memorably said to his outraged fellow pirate Steve Jobs: “we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."[2]  Ironically Jobs loved to quote Picasso’s comment: “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”  So do great pirates. 

Titus was a first-century go-getter.  He reminds me of my father, Ted Hird, who always gets the job done.  At one of my father’s retirements, his company, Microtel, gave him a statue of a horse in memory of my father’s billing the company for a dead horse.  Working in Newfoundland for three months with the snowy roads sometimes impassible, my father hired a farmer’s horse to drag the telecommunications equipment up the hill. The microwave tower was finally finished, but the horse died.  Titus-like leaders make things happen against impossible odds.

If the toxic Cretan pirates can become healthy, anyone can become healthy, even North Americans.  Dr. Brene Brown, whose TED talk has been seen by over sixteen million people, said that we in North America “are the most we are the most in-debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in (our) history.”[3]   In an age of many regrets, Titus is a symbol of hope for healthy leadership in the twenty-first century.  With the huge global changes happening, the need for healthy leaders like Titus has never been greater.  A key solution to our North American toxicity is rediscovering Titus, the epitome of integrated healthy leadership.  Titus planted significantly healthy communities by identifying and training indigenous leaders in every one of the over hundred Cretan cities.  The book of Titus gives you the keys to healthy communities, healthy families and healthy lives.

The book of Titus calls us to become whole people – in mind, body, and spirit.  That is the theme of my brand new book ‘Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit.’  So often we North Americans are toxically fragmented in areas of our lives.  We need the Great Physician to give us a full check-up to determine whether our lives, our marriages and families, our churches and communities are sound and healthy.  Many of us are out of balance in our health emphasis, neglecting either the body, the mind or the spirit.  Too many good people have bought the lie that they can eat anything they want and not bother to exercise.  The Bible says that our health choices have consequences.  We reap as we sow.  People who neglect their bodies lose the ability to travel cross-culturally as they get older.  People who neglect their minds go stale and have nothing worth saying.  People who neglect their spirits go shallow and self-absorbed. Healthy leaders embrace their bodies, minds and spirits for Christ’s sake.

My prayer for those reading this article is that we will choose the way of holistic health in every area of our lives.

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission Canada

http://stsimonschurch.ca

-an article for the November 2014 Deep Cove Crier

-Ed’s brand-new sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form. In Canada, Amazon.ca has the book available inpaperback and ebook. It is also posted on Amazon UK (paperback and ebook ), Amazon France (paperback andebook), and Amazon Germany (paperback and ebook).

Restoring Health is also available online on Barnes and Noble in both paperback and Nook/ebook form.  Nook gives a sample of the book to read online.  Indigo also offers the Kobo ebook version.

-In order to obtain a copy of the prequel book

‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘ED HIRD’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPALusing the e-mailed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada

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[1] Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (Simon & Schuster, New York, NY, 2011), p. 145.

[2] Andy Hertzfeld, “A Rich Neighbor Named Xerox”, November 1983; Martin Burke, Pirates of the Silicon Valley movie, 1999. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=A_Rich_Neighbor_Named_Xerox.txt

(Accessed Feb 1^st 2014)

[3] Dr. Brene Brown, The Power of Vulnerability, TED Talk, June 2010, https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability/transcript  (accessed June 22^nd 2014).

Preface to my soon-to-be-published sequel "Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit' -HIRD

Preface

We have all been painfully stuck.  Being at a key transition-point in our lives, we do not know how to move forward, finding ourselves immobilized.[i] I have been there many times.  My perfectionism makes it worse.   A key turning point for me was when as I attended a Leadership Conference at the University of Kent in England.[ii]  Walking into a seminar, God ‘whispered’ to me that I would be receiving a message. The Rev Freda Meadows suddenly called me out of the crowd and gave me a specific prophetic message, saying:

You don’t need to run in keeping up with others.  Enter into God’s rest.  Keep your eye on the finishing line which is Him.  You will be moving into new things, having words of knowledge. You will be gifted in this area.  You are in an apprenticeship time at present.  You will disciple others.  You are a man of God’s Word, things of the Kingdom. You are a person of vision, a long-range visionary.  God is going to put you in a key place and you will find yourself training and discipling others.[iii]

I had no idea how powerfully God was going to use the 1998 Pre-Lambeth Leadership Conference.  Most of us as North American Anglicans were still stuck in the ‘inside strategy’ mindset.  Being conflict-avoiders, we were going to ‘fix’ the North American Anglican churches while still inside the old institution.  This virus of institutionalism can slip inside the mind of even the most sincere believer, turning us toxic.  It is so easy to become the hollow, stuffed men of TS Eliot’s poem: “We are the hollow men. We are the stuffed men Leaning together...”[iv]  We Canadians were still quite ‘gung-ho’ at the Canterbury Leadership Conference, but the Americans were unusually quiet. They lacked their usual American ‘get-up-and-go’ attitude.  When Americans go quiet, you can tell that something is up.

At the official Canadian night, Bishop Eddie Marsh of Central   Newfoundland invited the Americans to come up and share.  I will never forget how our American colleagues Bishop Alex Dickson and Dr. (now Bishop) John Rodgers stood up and repented to our African colleagues for the shame that the USA had brought on the Anglican Church, and for Bishop John Spong’s castigating African Anglicans as just one step out of animism and witchcraft.[v] 

“(Bishop Spong) has insulted you.  We are ashamed for him; we are ashamed for ourselves.  We ask your forgiveness and we assure you that he does not speak for us.”[vi] 

Hundreds of African bishops and clergy spontaneously flocked forward and hugged the Americans, weeping and declaring God’s forgiveness.  Todd Wetzel of Anglicans United said that ‘this was one of the American Church’s finest moments in decades.’  This prophetic action of repentance and forgiveness was a new beginning for Anglican Christians around the world.

I am convinced that we are not to despise prophecy, and that the prophetic gift is still in operation today.  Prophecy does not just address the global picture.  It can also address our personal situations, even regarding writing a book.  Through prayer, I have received very clear direction about the topic of this current book.[vii]   Pushing through our toxic stuckness is key to restoring health, and key to strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders.

The purpose of prophecy is to encourage, build, and strengthen.[viii]  Yes, all prophecies have to be tested.  As children of the New Covenant, we only prophesy in part.[ix]  Prophecies help me push through my ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’.  In the 21^st century, a sensitive use of the gifts of prophecy and exhortation will be essential to getting unstuck, to becoming a healthier and more Christlike leader.  As Paul said to Timothy, by following prophecies made about us, we leaders more effectively ‘fight the good fight’ and live out our daily lives.[x]  Out of these prophetic encounters, I have become convinced that North America desperately needs to recover from its toxicity, and that the key to restoring its health is found in strengthening  a new generation of holistically healthy leaders, as illustrated in the person of Titus. 

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector
BSW, MDiv, DMin
St. Simon's Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in Canada

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘ED HIRD’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPALusing the e-mailed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada

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[i] Terry B Walling, Stuck!, (ChurchSmart Resources, 2008),  p. XIII “Without transitions, and the paradigm shifts that occur, Christ followers would stay stuck!”,

[ii] This Pre-Lambeth Leadership Conference was jointly sponsored by Anglican Renewal Ministries/ARM and SOMA/Sharing of Ministries Abroad.  I was serving as the Chair of ARM Canada.

[iii] Freda Meadows ministers with the International New Wine Director Rev Bruce Collins  http://www.new-wine.org; Ten years later, the Rev Freda gave further insight into the 1998 Canterbury prophecy, saying:

“...the underlying thrust was to trust God for the outcome of the plans He had in using you.  While you were to do all that was necessary, it was not for you to try and make anything happen.  But you were to follow the Lord's leading using the gifts and skills He gave in the best way you knew and through what you had learned as your experience grew.”

[iv] http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/

[v]  “African Christians? They're just a step up from witchcraft: What Bishop Spong had to say about his fellow Christians, John Spong interviewed by Andrew Carey, Church of England Newspaper, July 10^th 1998.  Newspaper & Andrew Carey. "They've moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity. They've yet to face the intellectual revolution of Copernicus and Einstein that we've had to face in the developing world. That's just not on their radar screen."

[vi] Doug LeBlanc, Lambeth, 1998, “Episcopal Dissidenta, African Allies”, Dr Miranda Hassett, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,  http://anglicanhistory.org/academic/hassett2004.pdf

[vii] On October 17th Wednesday 2008 while at the Anglican Coalition Clergy Retreat at Cedar Springs, I received a distinct impression from the Lord while in deep quiet group prayer: “Yes, it is Titus.”  While attending the Henry Wright ‘Be in Health’ conference, I heard a still small voice saying: “Write 3rd book on Titus for North American Audience.”

[viii] 1 Corinthians 14:3

[ix]  1st Thessalonians 5: 19-21: Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.; 1 Corinthians 13:9.

[x] 1 Timothy 1:18, 4:14

In Communications: from Military to Ministry (Peter Black)

The Berlin Wall hadn’t yet fallen and the Cold War was still in effect, and his military role wasn’t something he could talk about. However, I know he was in communications and learned to speak Russian and that he spent some time each year at the Canadian Forces Station at Alert, in the Arctic. This is the world’s northernmost permanently inhabited place – although the population is mostly comprised of rotating military and scientific personnel.

My wife and I came to know Levi Samson Beardy, an Aboriginal Canadian, in the early 1980s during our time in Kingston, Ontario. He was newly posted at the Canadian Forces Base there.  He and his family fitted right in, from the first service they attended at our church.

Eager to learn and willing to participate, it soon became evident that Levi was the ‘real deal.’  His commitment to his family, to Jesus Christ and our church fellowship proved solid, and he took on significant roles, such as teaching an adult Bible class, leading segments in worship services, serving on the church board and occasionally filling in for me in preaching.

What brought Levi and his family to mind today was that May recently came across an old photo featuring him with me and two other men from the congregation. She posted it on Facebook; Levi saw it on a mutual friend’s Facebook wall and connected with May.

Perhaps you have certain internet social networking connections that you’d rather be without, while others you appreciate and enjoy. Levi’s one we are glad to have. He has updated us on what he’s doing nowadays. Since his retirement from the armed forces he studied at Bible college and seminary.

For several years he taught at an aboriginal college, and then in 2008 he became co-founder and President of North American Aboriginal Bible College (NAABC) – a role he still fulfils. He is also a co-pastor at an Aboriginal church in Toronto.

NAABC is “an interdenominational Bible College with the mission of preparing Aboriginal (First Nations, Metis, Inuit) people and non-Aboriginal people for ministry.” Levi is an equipper – training others and helping them succeed. He understands authority, for his military training taught him how authority structures operate. He knows that in order to develop strong and equitable, honest and balanced leadership, one must be given responsibilities incrementally, with accountability.

I’m grateful to God for the small role our lay leaders and I were privileged to play in allowing this fine man’s natural and spiritual gifts for Christian leadership and teaching to grow and flourish. These abilities are still being used to elevate lives and bless North American Aboriginal communities with faith and hope and love, through the grace of our Lord Jesus.

My thanks is due those leaders who, in my youth, allowed me to share talents and spiritual gifts with others, and entrusted me with levels of responsibility, even when I felt inadequate to bear them. They took risks, and I made mistakes, but they were patient and helped me grow through them.

Levi expressed that his time in our Kingston congregation was a period of growth personally and for the church. With his military career far behind him, he continues “in communications,” teaching and investing in the lives of young leaders who will help others come to know the love and peace of God.

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Peter A. Black is a freelance writer in Southwestern Ontario, and is author of “Parables from the Pond” – a children's / family book (mildly educational, inspirational in orientation, character reinforcing).

(Finalist -- Word Alive Press ISBN 1897373-21-X)

His inspirational column, P-Pep! appears weekly in The Guide-Advocate. His articles have appeared in 50 Plus Contact and testimony, and several newspapers in Ontario. Peter’s current book project comprises a collection of 52 column articles.  The post above has been slightly modified from a P-Pep! column article, published Sep. 19, 2013.

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Geese Lessons - Hovsepian

Preface: I'm in the middle of whirlwind preparations for Mission Fest Montreal this weekend (I'm in charge of the children's program on Saturday, for which we anticipate about 100 kids!), so please allow me to simply pull out the latest editorial I wrote for my church newsletter (slightly edited).

On Sunday, October 21, after the morning worship service at a women’s retreat I attended, a few of us stepped outside to enjoy the unusually warm sunshine (for October in Montreal!) and gorgeous fall foliage. While we were chatting, we heard unmistakable honking overhead and looked up to see an amazing site!

About 50 Canadian geese were flying in perfect V formation — one big V in front and a smaller V off to the side — clearly ready to migrate south for the winter. They were flying so low that we could see their white bellies and hear their enthusiastic honks.

Those of us watching all reacted in similar ways: marvelling at the excellent example of leadership, teamwork, encouragement, and even humility, as each goose knew its place and didn’t try to take over the situation. What an apt illustration for topics such as mentoring and discipleship, though you might not think so at first.

A few months ago, the Men’s and Women’s Fellowship groups at my church both had meetings that focussed on role models and how we, as maturing Christians, can be good role models to those around us, especially younger people.

While this is a very important issue, I believe we can’t assume this type of responsibility unless we, too, are teachable students, humble followers and willing disciples. How many of us have a mentor to teach us, challenge us, keep us accountable, and encourage us?

It’s natural for each one of us, especially after a time of spiritual growth, to feel eager to share with others our faith and the things we’ve learned… and this is definitely important! However, we put ourselves in danger if we do not make sure that we are first being properly fed and discipled.

We all need Christian friends who are genuinely concerned about our walk with God and who can honestly but lovingly check up on us… people who go beyond small talk and meaningless conversations, who are passionate about God and His Word, about prayer, worship, and fellowship… so much so that they cannot help but talk about these things when they are with other believers.

Just like geese, surround yourself with others who are growing in their faith and are actively serving God. Humble yourself enough to learn from a more mature believer, whether that’s your pastor, a teacher, a parent or even a friend. And be more eager to serve than to lead. God will place you at the front of the flock in His own time.

And by all means, “honk” loudly about your joy in Christ: God loves to hear our praise!

http://www.annhovsepian.com/ http://www.designergenesdevo.wordpress.com/