Please DON'T 'Press On'

More lessons from the Camino. But first I must digress.

Vacations for our family were all about the destination.  Definitely not the journey.  Dad was the driver, and I don't just mean the noun.  He DROVE to the destination.  Breaks were few and far between.  If you didn't pee at the scheduled stops, there was a glass jar with a sealed top in the back seat you could use.  Good thing we were 5 boys.  Never was sure how it worked out for my mom!

No joy in the journey.  It was all about the destination.

I grew to be attracted to phrases and sentiments like "press on".  I even signed my emails with this phrase.  Not anymore.

·        This penchant for pushing and pressing on was one reason I ended up needing a sabbatical. (see my first blog in this Camino series).  One of the greatest ironies and insights I found in the first few days of walking the Camino was how my walking habits were a metaphor for my life, and they weren't working well for me.  What follows is lifted directly from my journal.  Its a bit raw and I apologize for the language, but it reflects the level of frustration I felt at my condition.

      Day 11.  Liendo, Spain.  Yet another blister dammit.  Enough of this.  Enough of walking in pain and toughing it out.  I have done enough of that in my life. This is such a metaphor for my life.  Time for shorter stints and talking care of my body.  The point of this sabbatical was to take care of myself.  Now I see that I have basically walked this Camino like I have lived my life: Is my soul or heart injured?  Tough it out. Keep walking. It’s admirable on the surface.  Its great leadership optics.  But it’s an UNACCEPTABLE WISDOM.  The cost is enduring pain, a limp and an inability to fully engage the journey in joy.  Shit.  I’ve done it again.  I walk wounded far too often.  Sometimes we cannot avoid walking with some pain but most times, I can and should slow the pace and even stop in order to recoup and then proceed.  What’s the rush anyway? My importance?  My significance to the project or the issue?  Oh how I over-inflate my importance, which then makes me plow through because “if not me, then who, and if not now, then when?”  God is the power.  I am the servant. He asks me to participate, as I am able.  I am not an indentured servant with a whip at my back.  So why do I live that way???

My 'walking metaphor' taught me some things applicable to the vocation of leadership:

I tolerated rocks in my shoes for too long. Instead of taking ONE minute out of a 6 hour walking day to deal with the inevitable rocks in my shoes, I'd usually set a goal and say: "Once I get there, then I'll stop". Then I'd get there and foolishly set another goal, without dealing with the rock. (What motivated me to do this is too deeply pathological to explain!) Bottom line: I'd plow ahead in pain to reach a goal, instead of stopping to deal with the irritant.

• Leadership Reflection: We all have the strength to press forward and ignore small irritants. But little irritants, left long enough, develop into significant obstacles. STOP and deal with the irritant, whether its physical, spiritual, or relational. Life just works better this way. It's not worth walking the rest of your journey with a limp, or worse not being able to walk it at all.

You don't have to walk so fast. I set out to walk at my own pace, but got caught up in the Camino Pilgrim Scramble to get to the next location quickly in order to ensure a place to stay for the night. (Hostels were first come first served). This race for the destination took over the pace I desired in order to walk freely and with joy. The race mentality meant I was losing out on the beauty of the surroundings, the pauses to enjoy Spanish culture and food, the views (o those views!) and the rest opportunities at beaches, cafe's or mountaintops.

• Leadership Reflection: How you walk the path set out before you is what, in the end, distinguishes you and creates your quality of life (more on this in a future blog). Is it that important that you leave the legacy of: "They got there first"? In this short life you have, it's just not worth losing out on the beauty and joy of living. A famously rich philosopher-king named Solomon wrote about this in Ecclesiastes. Read this Biblical book.

Do not tough it out. This is more than a 'rock in your shoes' moment, or about the times when the situation demands some personal grit and determination. It's about when you are exhausted and spent in your leadership but decide to press on anyway. Some days I chose to keep walking despite horrible blisters. I remember one day after a few days of toughing it out, another ailment emerged: a shin splint. But as you have probably gathered about me - I plowed on that whole day anyway and limped into a forced day of rest.

• Leadership Reflection: Too many leaders press on so hard that they are then forced to rest because of complete exhaustion. That's costly to them personally, to their organizations and to the purpose/objective for which they have committed their lives. Build a regular 'sabbath' into your life, a time to step away from everything. Not only will it afford a time for healing where you may be hurting, but it affords your mind body & soul space for renewal and strengthening.

Get a grip on your pace of life and get yourself out of the race of life.

Harv Matchullis 

The Way of Wilderness

A few km east of Santander, Spain

Authors note:  After a period of sporadic engagement with this blog, I'm back.  I begin with a series of thoughts and reflections stemming from my sabbatical experience in 2017.  For part of the sabbatical I took a (very) long walk to rest, rejuvenate and relax after a period of burnout.  That walk was on the Camino del Norte in Northern Spain.  281 Km in 15 days along the mountainous coast along the Bay of Biscay.  Though I was still in the dry and cracked personal and leadership wilderness, I encountered the incredible beauty of this natural wilderness...and found Jesus waiting for me there.

If you have not yet walked into a personal wilderness, you will.

My story:

I WAS DONE.

For 34+ years I  have been a Christian ministry leader in Canada and around the world.  I thought I was resilient and indefatigable, but I had reached a breaking point.  For many reasons I found myself in a new landscape - a dry, barren wilderness of mind, soul and body.  I told my ministry board in Feb of 2017 : "I am done.  I'm exhausted physically & emotionally. While I can still 'see' into the future of this ministry, I am completely disconnected.  Professionally I can still perform, but its like I am having an out of body experience each time I speak or serve.  I can do it, but I am an autobot.  I can't go on and I don't know what to do".

With that I declared my leadership bankruptcy.  I had no plan of what to do. The first and only act I knew to do at that point was finally admit it.  Yet it took a long time.  I am fiercely independent and a 'press on' kind of guy, so this was a monumental admission.  There was no plan on my part for what was next, but I knew if I didn't take the first step of personal acknowledgement, I truly was 'done'.  Time to exit ministry and maybe even faith. It was that bad.

My board graciously granted me (and worked hard to provide) a 3 month sabbatical.  I owe them a great deal.  To my board - if you are reading this - I am humbled and indebted to your faith and courage to make this happen.  I know it wasn't easy organizationally. You did the right thing.


On my flight from Canada to start the El Camino in Spain I started reading Eugene Petersen's "The Jesus Way".  How serendipitous.  "El Camino" in Spanish means "The Way".  One quote pierced into my personal situation:

"Wilderness time.  Desert time.  Time to see the way of Jesus tested against the devils' way.  Time to  feel the terrible pull of temptation away from Jesus' way and realize it is a temptation to embrace illusion and to believe a lie.  Time to become aware of the immense and hidden abyss between the way of Jesus and the way of Satan." (pg 30).

Jesus was deliberately tested in a wilderness to determine if He would choose to act according to the ways of His Father or the way offered by Satan (Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 4). Jesus, the Son of God was led into a wilderness experience.  Did you read that correctly?  He was led into it.  A wilderness.  Deliberately.  By God. I emphasize these things because while at times I beat myself up for ever getting to the point of burnout and 'wilderness', my experience was not beyond the purposeful intentions of God for my testing and maturing.

On the road of leadership are tests.  Often wilderness is the context where God administers those tests.  In the wilderness you are stripped down to the essentials.  Survival becomes paramount.  What's most important comes into a focus you likely have never before experienced, because your very survival depends on that level of clarity.

My wilderness experience was a time to feel at a core level just how much I had embraced the illusion and lie that personal leadership skill and effort was the means to accomplish the mission of God in this world. I had plunged into the abyss between the way of Jesus and the way of Satan.

Jesus is our 'Camino'. He is our Way.  Jesus as the Way also means that the ways of Jesus are a part of the Way.  Once you have abandoned doing things according to His ways, you have succumbed to an illusion and believed the lie of Satan.  Over time, I had developed my own 'way' - driving to the ends according to my own means.  My ways were respectable and frankly, a reflection of  Western Christian leadership culture and expectations. Optically it all looked good.  The industry of Christian leadership training & seminars would affirm my approaches.  People went along with my tactics.  However, behind this illusion was a self-determined striving that lead to cynicism, emotional distance and a soul-sucking emptiness as a Christian leader.  When you live in contradiction to the Jesus way, even while trying to serve His purposes, those are the results.

Are you headed for a wilderness?  Are you already in one?  At the risk of over simplification, I offer  4 starting thoughts for your wilderness journey.

1. Don't beat yourself up over it.  Jesus is there and He is intending to test you.  Surrender to the lessons that will confront you.
2. Be courageous and admit where you are. Stop 'sucking it up' and plowing forward. You can do it for a while but at some point you will implode.  Your mind, body and soul were not built for that level of stress.  Something is gonna give.
3. Confront your fears around vulnerability and tell someone. I told my wife before anyone else, but she saw it long before I admitted it.  It was also hard, but necessary to eventually tell those who shared leadership with me.
4. Surrender any sense of control over what's next.  You are likely in this place because of control issues.  Jesus' full intent is to shift control from you to Him. (That truth easily rolls off our preacher-tongues.  It does not so easily show up in our daily service to the Master).

Much more to come...I'd love to interact with you if this is useful to you. Sign up for this blog to get regular updates, leave a comment or contact me personally at hbmatch@gmail.com

Harv Matchullis
...still leading, but from a different posture...