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    Overcoming Your Shadow Mission
    Overcoming Your Shadow Mission
    Overcoming Your Shadow Mission
    Ebook70 pages1 hour

    Overcoming Your Shadow Mission

    By John Ortberg

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    The challenges, isolation, and relentless demands of leadership can inspire a variety of fears in the heart of a leader; among them fear of failure, fear of mutiny, fear of criticism, fear of disappointing people. However, the greatest fear leaders face is not something that might happen to them, but something that can happen in them—a degeneration of the heart that robs them of their calling and leaves a deep soul dissatisfaction in its place.John Ortberg describes this menacing fear in terms of mission and shadow mission. A mission is the highest purpose to which God calls us; a shadow mission is an authentic mission that has been derailed, often in imperceptible ways. Ortberg writes, “Part of what makes the shadow mission so tempting is that it’s usually so closely related to our gifts and passions. It’s not 180 degrees off track; it is just 10 degrees off track, but that 10 degrees is in the direction of hell.”Every leader has a mission—and a shadow mission. Even Jesus had to battle a shadow mission; it was to be a leader without suffering—to be the Messiah without the cross. Ortberg writes, “If we fail to embrace our true mission, we will live out our shadow mission. We will let our lives center around things that are unworthy, selfish and dark.” Using characters from the remarkable Old Testament story of Esther, Ortberg demonstrates the disastrous consequences of succumbing to shadow mission, and the stunning rewards of whole-hearted commitment to mission. With characteristic humor and insight, the author invites us to follow Esther’s example and courageously choose to embrace the mission God gives. Like Esther, we can lead without fear—even in threatening circumstances—because we know God is always at work in unseen, unknown and unlikely ways.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZondervan
    Release dateSep 2, 2008
    ISBN9780310308997
    Author

    John Ortberg

    John Ortberg is teaching pastor of Menlo Church and author of many books, including God Is Closer Than You Think.

    Read more from John Ortberg

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      Book preview

      Overcoming Your Shadow Mission - John Ortberg

      Also by John Ortberg

      Love Beyond Reason

      The Life You've Always Wanted

      Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them

      If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat

      Living the God Life

      God Is Closer Than You Think

      When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box

      Faith and Doubt

      Overcoming Your Shadow Mission

      ePub Format

      Copyright © 2008 by John Ortberg

      Requests for information should be addressed to:

      Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

      ISBN 0-310-30899-2

      Portions of this book first appeared in When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box, © John Ortberg, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2007.

      All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, Today's New International Version®. TNIV®. Copyright 2002, 2004 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

      Interior design by CHANGE Design Group

      Contents

      Title Page

      Copyright Page

      Overcoming Your Shadow Mission

      LEADERSHIP LIBRARY

      The purpose of the Leadership Library is to provide leaders in all arenas—churches, businesses, schools, or nonprofits—with the cutting-edge thinking and the practical advice they need to take their leadership skills to the next level.

      Books in the Leadership Library reflect the wisdom and experience of proven leaders who offer big insights in a pocket-size package. Whether you read these books on your own or with a group of colleagues, the Leadership Library presents critical insight into today's leadership challenges.

      This little book is most gratefully dedicated to

      Jimmy Protein Bar Mellado

      Dick Rockford East Anderson

      Doug Mr. Hand Veenstra

      Freddy Three Napkins Vojtsek

      Nancy No More Tears Beach

      Overcoming Your Shadow Mission

      Everybody—every human being on earth—has a mission. We were all put here for a purpose. Organizations like businesses, churches, and schools have them too. Leaders love to think about mission, love to cast vision for the mission, love to strategize about mission, love to achieve mission, love to celebrate mission.

      And everybody has a shadow mission. Our lives, and the lives of the groups we're part of, can drift into the pursuit of something unworthy and dark. To give in to our shadow mission is—or should be—our greatest fear. To overcome our shadow mission is what this book is about. But I'm getting ahead of the story.

      A few years ago a friend talked me into going on one of those discover-the-wild-inner-hairy-warrior-within-you men's weekends. It was held at a remote and primitive quasi-military campground. I could tell you where it was, but then I'd have to kill you. We arrived in darkness. Silent men with flashlights who had watched Apocalypse Now once too often led us wordlessly to a processing room. Our duffel bags were searched, and all prohibited items (snacks, reading materials, signal flares) were confiscated. We were assigned numbers that were to be used instead of our names to identify us through most of the weekend.

      We chanted. We marched unclad through the snow. For two days we ate bark and berries. We were sleep deprived. We howled at the moon. We sat on our haunches in a Chippewa warrior teepee/sauna purifying our souls in the glandular fellowship of sweat, thirty men evaporating in a space no more than six sane Chippewa warriors would have tried to crowd into.

      But strangely enough, in the middle of all the psychobabble and melodrama came moments of unforgettable insight. One of the topics we covered at this retreat was how we were created for a mission. This was familiar territory. Then one speaker said something that stuck with me. He said if we don't embrace our true mission, we will by default pursue what he called a shadow mission—patterns of thought and action based on temptations and our own selfishness that lead us to betray our deepest values. The result: regret and guilt.

      He told us what his particular shadow mission consists of: My shadow mission is to watch TV and masturbate while the world goes to hell.

      His language was more raw than this, and a round of nervous laughter swept across the circle of men.

      I'm going to say it one more time, the man said, only this time I want you to listen and not laugh And he said it again: My shadow mission is to watch TV and masturbate while the world goes to hell.

      Silence.

      Each of us was thinking the same thing: how easily any of our lives can slide into such a self-centered, trivial pursuit. This guy wasn't tempted to be Adolf Hitler or Saddam

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