Background Readings
Click on any of the following readings to discover answers to some of your foundational questions about lifestyle change. If possible, talk with someone else about what you’ve read and what you’ve been thinking. That way you get to be both a teacher and a learner.
Simplicity [ DOC | PDF ]
In THE RACE: A Simplicity Musical, “simplicity” and “simple living” dance with each other like an old married couple: Comfortably close to each other, moving slowly, content just to be together. (Perhaps like Dave and Lily thirty years from now?) “Simplicity” encompasses just about any human enterprise that’s engaged upon with relative ease, or that’s relatively easy to understand. “Simple living” is any part of daily living that can be made more understandable, more manageable, and more joyful. Here are some other ways to think about this wonderful couple:
Simple living is as much addition as subtraction.
You may already understand the “stop doing this” part of simple living. But when you’re living simple, you also add to your life what got pushed aside in the hustle-bustle of accumulation. Some simple-living adherents would even invoke “multiplication” – of joy and satisfaction – the repeated addition of things like serenity, calm, spare time, quiet, ease, possibility, hope, friendship or savings. In the musical, what gets added to whose life?
Simple living isn’t usually flashy.
Most of the joys of simple living aren’t super-charged. When you declutter and slow down, you don’t get trapped into a razzle-dazzle identity or mindless frolicking. Deep joy hangs around like the scent of lilacs on a summer night. Extraordinary pops out of ordinary like the seeds in a sunflower. What attracts you to simplicity?
There’s more to simple living than meets the eye.
If you keep at it long enough, simple living ends up as an insightful way of thinking and being. When you engage in purposeful simplicity, you’re not blinded by the mind-numbing stresses of the kind of “good life” that drains money or energy. What do you see clearly?
Anyone can do this.
Great intellect, wealth, power or spirituality are not requirements for living simply. If you’re not forced to live this way, simplicity is a choice you can make when you know that you want to stop being foolish about the way you’re living now. What are you ready to do?
Simplicity and simple living, married and still dancing after all these years!
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How people change [ DOC | PDF ]
Right now you’re probably asking, “So, how do people change?” Consider these possibilities, each with some trappings of brain science attached:
Fear: Fear not only motivates, but alters brain chemicals and structures, sometimes in addictive ways. Once it becomes habitual, fear changes behaviors long after the reason for fearfulness is gone. (See any fear in the musical?
Example: One of our at-birth skills is face recognition, followed closely by mimicry. We change in response to what we see in the faces and lives of others. In a sense, we read minds.
Identity: The bonding and bridging mechanisms of our social brain equip us to respond consistently to our perception of ourselves inside of groups. We change when the group changes; we resist change when the group doesn’t change. (Who determines Dave’s identity in the musical?)
Imagination: “What you can imagine, you can do” describes the function of “mirror neurons” and the capacity of the brain to combine present observation with short-term memory so that a neuronal construct gets translated into corresponding actions.
Actions: Our brains are also superbly equipped for “acting our way into thinking.” Thus our attitudes change because we engage in activities that we later process, integrate and improve.
Mindfulness: Lasting change comes when more parts of the brain are engaged. Emotions, intellect, practiced actions and attention are focused on a way of being or doing, and thus the change is cemented into the brain’s interwoven workings.
Love: You’ll read about it anywhere you read about simple living: When love is received and shared, its power in our lives may be stronger than any of the other processes listed here. In some ways, love is overwhelming. Especially the love of God in Christ Jesus.
So now do you know enough to be a leader in lifestyle change?
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Being a lifestyle leader [ DOC | PDF ]
Have you faced this demon yet? Here’s what it says: “And just what kind of a lifestyle leader do you think you are, anyhow?” This fiendish imp knows that you may live in a comfortable home, drive a well-maintained car, eat three square meals a day and don’t always keep your calendar from overflowing with ink. This confidence crusher has a point: Not many of us are completely exemplary when it comes to being a leader for lifestyle change.
Demons aside, what might it mean for you to be a “lifestyle leader”? These starter thoughts come to mind:
Lifestyle leadership is more about moving in a direction than reaching the perfect destination. If we’re honest, we know that few of us are completely free from materialism, fear of death or the temptation to rush around. But lifestyle leaders can name the general direction in which their lives are heading: Less stuff, quieter days, less hectic daily schedules, or more attention given to people around them. A lifestyle leader is heading in the opposite direction from the rest of the crowd.
A lifestyle leader has a “lifestyle conscience.” Something inside lifestyle leaders acts like a brain-brake when it comes to any notion that more is better. It’s the kind of conscience that says things like “What if everyone lived like this?” or “I’m satisfied” or even “Eventually this behavior destroys something or someone.” It works well because it gets used a lot.
Simple questions characterize a lifestyle leader more than complex answers. The matter of simple living is not all that complicated. Someone who can help others live simply keeps asking good questions, the ones that probe, insist, draw out, build up or expose. Questions like, “So, how long do you think things can keep going on like this?” or “What’s important to you, really?”
The faces of lifestyle leaders show smile wrinkles instead of worry-furrows. There’s joy in living simply, and lifestyle leaders understand that well. They’re glad to be free of their stuff, happy to sidestep frenetic Saturday soccer schedules, relieved that their credit cards are tamed, cheerful about the future and delighted to have grown up.
Did any of this help you shoo your demons back into their moldy caves?
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Encouraging each other [ DOC | PDF ]
Before you start working on a plan, it might be good for you to think and talk about how well you find, gather and spread courage. That’s right, “courage.” Guts, nerve, valor, daring, bravery, audacity–you get the picture. The rest of the picture: No courage, no action. No action, no change.
Here’s how encouragement works:
- Any good idea can stay catalogued in the comfort of your long-term memory, but that’s not good enough when it comes to changing your behavior.
- Courage is one of the fundamental requirements for motivation.
- You get courage from other people-from their example, their words and their suggestions.
- Because you read, understand and mimic the faces of people you admire, moments of encouragement are usually face-to-face.
- “Encouraging” sometimes means that the encourager and the encouragee walk together, probably prayerfully.
So, how encouraging are you and your congregation? Or to say it another way, who are the encouragers? If you’d like to know, try some of these actions:
- Revisit courageous moments in your congregation’s history. Who were the leaders during those times? How did they behave?
- Read the announcements, invitations or reports you include in worship bulletins, newsletters, letters or annual meetings. Where do you find courage, and where do you find its opposites?
- Name the “Lily’s” in your congregation –don’t forget youth and children here!–who seem to be able to inspire other members to take action, to volunteer, to sense their calling.
Once you’ve found the encouragers, talk with them about their ways of thinking, their skill at cheering others along, heartening people, giving confidence or supporting people who otherwise might be hiding behind fear, inferiority or false humility. Collect what you’ve heard into a set of descriptive stories, and save them for use when you’re looking for leaders who might have the nerve to work with you in lifestyle change.
Can you see Jesus’ face? He’s saying: You can do this!
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Some motivators [ DOC | PDF ]
Consider some proven motivators that might work in your congregation as you prepare for a lifestyle education emphasis.
Crisis and its cousins
Crises occur throughout life, and they might be compelling reasons for members of your congregation to work together towards lifestyle change. People who are stressed almost to the breaking point, who have come to the end of their ropes, whose addictions are ruining them, whose guilt is overwhelming, who are discontented and empty, and who are restless for reasons they can’t name–these people are experiencing the kind of quiet or loud calamities that might tip them towards lifestyle changes. In the musical, what was the real crisis in Dave’s life? How do you know?
The example of Christ
For members whose piety is strong but whose lifestyles are disconnected from their faith, the daily life and teachings of Jesus can be a convincing reason to consider amending their lives.
The presence and example of others
People motivate people, and so a congregational lifestyle emphasis can start with the assurance that all around you are mentors, spouses with vision, living legacies, grateful others and inviting relationships–each a means by which lifestyle education might begin. Besides the musical’s Lily, who provides Dave with an example for living?
Known capabilities waiting to be realized
Down deep, a lot of your members know that they have the capacity to downshift their lives. Helping them recall those capabilities can sometimes be enough reason for them to begin new behaviors or to cast off old habits.
Moments of change
Sudden 'aha's, spiritual mountaintops, career change, check-in points or even cataclysmic events - all can grip a person in the notion, “Now’s the time to stop doing all that, and start doing this.” Sometimes these moments are as quiet as a sudden catch of breath or turned head. In the musical, what moments of change come upon Dave? His daughter? His son?
However you name them, motivating factors are available all around you, ready for your use to good affect. A good place to start: Ask yourself and a few others your reasons for moving towards simpler living.
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Avoiding common errors [ DOC | PDF ]
Somewhere in your distant past you may have met a Prophetic Warning that wagged its gnarly finger in your direction and said, “Sonny, beware the Frumptious Bagwog!” Or something like it, perhaps? Warnings are helpful when it comes to helping others seek lifestyle change.
Here are some common errors that the Prophetic Warner might have been telling you to avoid; they flow from what you may already know or what others know as well.
- Don’t count on information-sharing or rhetoric. They don’t change forebrains all that much, nor do they get at the emotional decision-making functions of the rest of the brain.
- Avoid the presumption that the whole congregation will get involved in the effort to change lifestyles. Most folks will have deep difficulty in admitting that lifestyle change might be one way in which God’s grace shows up tangibly in their lives. Find a few folks who understand Dave (or Lily) in the musical. Share your vision and begin there.
- Don’t make lifestyle education merely into a kind of post-Yoga self-help class. These matters are deeply spiritual! Materialistic and hurried lifestyles suck out of God’s people the time and attention that they need to stay connected to the Savior they claim to follow.
- Resist the temptation to start or plan big. Start small, then trust this emphasis to develop like the early church spread. Good news travels quickly among people who yearn for manageable, purposeful lives.
- Don’t start with the problems you want to solve. Think instead of all the capabilities that exist in your congregation in order for this emphasis to begin and grow. Build your planning on the assets–the useful gifts--around you.
- Stay away from anger, arrogance or animosity. You’re inviting people into something good, not using lifestyle education as a way to secretly punish imagined miscreants for their shortcomings.
When you make your own blunders, trust God’s forgiveness and the abundant gifts of the Holy Spirit to help you move forward.
And of course, always learn from your mistakes.