“Seasons of Transition” with Jorge Acevedo
Shownotes:
Transitions are often hard, especially when the transition comes after 27 years of following one career path. For Jorge Acevedo, following the ancient paths while creating new ones is making his transition into retirement a little easier.
Jorge retired in August 2023 from Grace Church in Cape Coral, Florida, after serving as pastor there for 27 years. Jorge has degrees from Asbury College and Asbury Theological Seminary, as well as a Doctor of Ministry degree from United Theological Seminary. He is a writer, a speaker, and a leadership coach who uses his years as a pastor and a leader to coach new leaders into building sustainable leadership practices.
Resources:
Learn more about Jorge at his website, jorgeacevedo.com
Follow Jorge on Facebook and Twitter
Find out more information about and buy his books here
Mentioned in this episode:
John Ortberg, Become New
John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way
Astonished by the Word by Dr. Brian Russell
Transcript:
Eddie Rester 00:00 I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly 00:01
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight.
Eddie Rester 00:04
Today our guest is Jorge Acevedo. He is a retired pastor. He pastored Grace Church in Coral Gables, Florida for 27 years. And as now, when we talked to him, he was on day 42. He is on day 42 of retirement. And he just has a lot to share with us about the life of ministry, what he's doing now in terms of mentoring younger pastors, pouring out his life for others, and how do we make transitions in life well.
Chris McAlilly 00:34
The conversation, I think, is helpful for folks in a position of leadership, or who are thinking about moving into building an organization, you know, being a part of building a church, or a ministry. We talk about, you know, kind of the beginning of the journey, folks that are in their 20s may be exploring vocational ministry or exploring what it would mean to be a Christian leader in various contexts. And then also what happens over the course of your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, and your 50s. And we kind of take each chunk and talk about some of the wisdom that he's learned along the way. Eddie, as someone in their 50s, what did you learn from Jorge?
Eddie Rester 01:19
It's just good to hear that there are some ways that you can be proactive in thinking about your stage of life and what you need, what you can be doing, how you can open yourself up to the work of God in that stage of life that's different maybe, from what you were experiencing, where you were headed in your 20s and 30s or 40s. And so, just a lot of wisdom. I've always appreciated Jorge, his kind of approach to ministry and his understanding of things. He talks a lot about the ancient paths. And I think a lot of people are rediscovering those. And he's going to give some resources, where if you're interested in maybe some more ancient ways of exploring your faith, and as he calls it, apprenticing to Jesus, he's gonna give you some resources to help you with that.
Chris McAlilly 02:10
I think the thing that I'll take away is, regardless of what it is that you're building, it's important to kind of assess is the thing that's being built, really, where's that coming from? What's the motivation?
Eddie Rester 02:23 Or place.
Chris McAlilly 02:24
And yeah, what's the place. And if it's, you know, just a spirit of competitiveness or power or influence or whatever, I'm doing this just to achieve or just to win, that's one thing. But there's a way of kind of tapping into the Spirit of Christ that, you know, has been carved out through ancient paths of spiritual practice, and spiritual friendship. He talks a lot about the different ways in which his ministry has been supported through the years. It was just a great conversation. He is a sage. You know, he's one of those wise leaders who has been hard at it for many years. He has a lot, a lot to share with us today. So we're glad that you're with us today on The Weight. If you enjoy the podcast in general, or this particular conversation, we'd love for you to like it.
Eddie Rester 03:12 Share it.
Chris McAlilly 03:12
Share it, you know, leave us a review on the platform that you're listening on. It'll help other people find the podcast, and we look forward to having you back next week.
Eddie Rester 03:23 Next week.
Chris McAlilly 03:24
[INTRO] Life can be heavy, so heavy, in fact that the weight we carry can sometimes cause us to lose hope.
Eddie Rester 03:32
But we've all come across those people in life who seem to be experiencing the same world we live in, except they maintain a great depth of joy and hope.
Chris McAlilly 03:41
A former generation called this gravitas. It was their description of a soul that had gained enough weightiness to be attractive, like all things with a gravitational pull.
Eddie Rester 03:52
Those are the people we want to talk to him. On this podcast, we talk to pastors, entrepreneurs, artists, mental health experts, and many others.
Chris McAlilly 04:02
We'll create space for heavy topics. But we'll be listening for a quality of soul that could be called gravitas.
Eddie Rester 04:09
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Chris McAlilly 04:11
We're here today with Jorge Acevedo. Jorge, thanks for taking a little time on your 42nd day after you've set down being a lead pastor to talk with us about your transition into retirement and a new phase of life. Thanks for being here.
Jorge Acevedo 04:28
It's good to be with you guys.
Eddie Rester 04:30
We, Jorge, you don't remember, but there was a junior high retreat at Camp Lake Stephens, when--it's been a bit--but you were the speaker. That's when I met you for the very first time. So you're just a little bit ahead of me. That's all I'm gonna say. You're a little ahead of me.
Jorge Acevedo 04:47
Just a little ahead, just a little bit. Yeah.
Eddie Rester 04:49
But I remember, you all these years. I don't remember what you talked about. Who knows? But I remember this great guy from Florida showing up, so.
Jorge Acevedo 04:57 Oh my goodness.
Chris McAlilly 04:58
Eddie's a little bit ahead of me. So, you know, I think one of the things that I'm excited about with this conversation is... It's been, Eddie and I've known one another for about a decade, George. And I've learned a lot just from watching him, just 10 to 12 years ahead of me in ministry. And then you're, you know, a little bit ahead of Eddie. And so I think this will be an interesting conversation for thinking about how to do, you know, I'm about 15 years into ministry, maybe 15 to 17 years into ministry. And so I'm excited to hear from you kind of some of the things that you're learning, kind of, as you look back retrospectively. But before we get to where you are, now, it might be helpful just to go back. And for folks who don't know your story, maybe just talk about how you came to lead Grace Church.
Jorge Acevedo 05:51
Sure. So yeah, I graduated from seminary and during seminary, I was a full-time children's and youth pastor. And like a lot of folks coming out of seminary, at least in those days, I don't know if it's true today, a lot of us thought we'd be career youthers, you know, hanging out with kids until we were 60 or 70. And I thought I was going to break the trend, and I was going to be the guy. And then you know, somewhere in my early 30s, as my own children were getting a little bit older, I thought, "I don't want to be my kids' youth pastor," and I got tired of chasing kids. I loved student ministry. But I'm an adult child of an alcoholic and still in recovery from a lot of the stuff that comes along with that. And I wasn't confident enough to step into a lead role. So I kind of begged our judicatory leaders to send me to some place where I could serve, where I wasn't a youth pastor, and I wasn't a lead pastor, and he said, okay, no small request. I ended up going to Christ Church in Fort Lauderdale, where I was an executive pastor with Dick Wills, and served there during the heyday of Christ Church, when he wrote that book, "Waking to God's Dream," I was there during a lot of that.
Eddie Rester 07:02 Incredible book.
Jorge Acevedo 07:03
Up in there. And then served there for four years, and then finally, you know, was healed enough and well enough that I said, you know, I am called to be a lead pastor. And so 27 years ago this summer, I was appointed to Grace United Methodist Church in Cape Coral, Florida. We had bought 300 folks in a church that just five years before it was running up close to 600. And so it was on a pretty steep decline. Had $29.16 in the checking account my first day there. And we owed $1.2 million on a half-empty sanctuary on most Sundays, very few kids, really teeny youth group. And so, you know, that wasn't on the little white sheet that the superintendent gave me, you know, when they sent me there. Never is. But by the grace of God, there were some folks there, about 30 folks who had been on the walk to Emmaus, and to quote the words of Wesley, their eyes were lit, they ready to do something. And so together those 30 and I, kind of just naively, with a bucket load of faith, just said, God, would you just do something here? And 27 years later, it's really vital congregation, real community based, has a global ministry, in terms of our partnerships with global partners around the globe. And just a really exciting place that's done some great work, particularly in pockets that sometimes the church forgets about. People in recovery has been kind one of our bailiwicks that we've kind of stepped into. And then the other one would be in the last 10 years, special needs young adults, or special needs aged-out young adults with disabilities. And so doing some really, really wonderful ministry work there. But yeah, so I stepped away from that this summer. Finished up this summer.
Eddie Rester 09:13
If you would be willing, Jorge, you said "adult child of an alcoholic" and the work you had to do to kind of do some healing from that. I think some of our listeners would probably be very interested in that. What that means, what that drove you towards, and kind of steps beyond that. I think, and now that you've said that, I see in a lot of who you are, how that really allowed you become something more useful. Not more useful. That's the wrong word.
Jorge Acevedo 09:42
Yeah. Yeah, set kind of a backdrop against which the ministry might be painted on.
Eddie Rester 09:43 But yeah. Exactly.
Jorge Acevedo 09:50
So yeah, my home was not dangerous in the sense of, you know, physical danger or anything like that. My dad was a functional alcoholic and in the United States military, and then he retired and was a very successful businessman and went back into working with the military as a civilian. But it wasn't a safe place in the sense that it wasn't safe, emotionally safe, relationally safe. It wasn't that kind of space. And so I grew up very insecure and driven to perform. It was really, that was my response to my father's addictions, my mother's codependency. My response was just to be--you know, it's probably overused, but I'm an Enneagram 3, achiever/performer. But as my spiritual director said to me, she says, you know, we have to be careful with Enneagram, because it comes out of a place of brokenness in us. And so, you know, my performer/achiever, I think, got a bit sanctified. But where I bumped into it, ironically, was going through the Board of Ordained Ministry for ordination. And, you know, I'm one of those that would say that it wasn't a bad experience for me, to, for the first time in my life, take a battery of psychological tests and sit down with a conference counselor, and that counselor saying, "You got daddy issues that you need to work on." They get played out with anger. They get played out with overwork. They get played out with, you know, performance kinds of things. And so, from my mid 20s to this very afternoon, I have been in recovery from that, and that's been a part of my journey of sanctification is to grow in that. I would say that part of the way God has used that and harnessed that in my life, is that our ministry has focused a lot on broken people. And it's given me a passion for that, to help people experience wholeness and healing in the midst of some pretty trying circumstances.
Chris McAlilly 12:11
There are people across, you know, I guess the generations, that listen to the podcast. We're, I'm in a college town, and I interact with a lot of college students that are on a path of faith or exploring faith, stepped away from faith, or maybe experiencing a call to ministry. For somebody that's right at the very beginning of a journey with Christ and perhaps with the church or into ministry, what advice, looking back kind of on your life, would you offer to somebody at that stage?
Jorge Acevedo 12:45
Yeah, yeah. You know, the interesting piece is, the older I've gotten, the more the ancient paths have become the path that I want to travel now. So what I would say to a young apprentice of Jesus, who may or may not be doing the vocational ministry thing, but just wants to be a faithful apprentice of Jesus, I would say travel the well-worn paths. Which, you know, it's amazing to me. I think, particularly in America, I mean, that is our context. So I can't speak about what's happening in Europe or in other places. It's interesting that there are some voices in the landscape of American Christianity that are really kind of waving their hands and saying "pay attention to this," and not to them but to this. So you've got these folks way up in the North East, Bridgetown church, John Mark Comer, Tyler... I can never get his last name. Staton? Stanton? Stanton. Staton? You know, that are saying, hey, let's practice the way of Jesus. Let's rediscover rule of life. And you got you know, you got Pete Scazzero and Rich Villodas, you know, kind of waving their hand saying, hey, let's be emotionally healthy. And part of the way we do that is practicing Sabbath, then having a rule of life and silence and solitude and stillness and these ancient paths. You've got people like Ruth Haley Barton, who for a while has been kind of a mother to many of us, saying pay attention to the more contemplative, reflective side of life. And I wish when I was in my early 20s, beginning my journey into ministry, that the focus was more on that and less on what I would probably call is a leadership culture on steroids. It was all about leadership. And it came out of a good place. I mean, you know, it's easy to villainize it from two decades away or three decades away. I think it came out of a good place. You know, the mega church was emerging, and then multisite after that, and it did require a huge amount of leadership capital. Where I think it missed the mark is, you can't give what you ain't got. And if the work that you're doing for God is destroying the work of God in you, then it's going to be hard to lead well. So I believe in leadership. I mean, it's one of my spiritual gifts. I believe in leadership, and I think we need good leaders in the church. But I think we need good leaders that are also deep leaders, and that have a depth of character, and a robustness of life and relationships and into the community and those kinds of things. I think my generation--I'm 63, almost 64. And I think my generation, you know, we, it's an oversimplification to call it the attractional church, but we kind of bought into that. You know, good band, great youth group and kids ministry, good lights, yeah. And you grow a church. I think as I began to think theologically about that, decades later, because I bought into it wholesale, and frankly, grew a big church. I mean, we grew from 300, to several thousand, close to three thousand, folks, and many campuses. But at the end, you know, I was 10 years into that, and I was empty. I was tired. I was, you know, contemplating leaving, or worse yet becoming a bishop. And that would have been bad for the church and bad for me. And, you know, all of those kinds of things. I didn't want to leave where I was at, but I kind of reached the lid in my leadership capacity. And it was because I wasn't as deep as I thought I was. The roots weren't as deep as I thought they were. So I'd say to a young leader, a young apprentice of Jesus, you know, find a community of folks and grow deep. Practice the ancient paths. Walk the ancient paths. I think Jeremiah says, it's good for your soul, refreshes your soul. And ironically, the journey I'm on now from 60 on is about that, is a little more around that and walking with leaders and helping them do that.
Chris McAlilly 17:14
Thanks for sharing, Jorge. All that's really helpful. Eddie's got something was to jump in on. I just want to highlight, I do think that there's something about you can't give what you don't got, you know. And one of the things I've been thinking about, as you know, as we reflect back on 50 years of Protestant decline in America, and then kind of what the sources of that are, and we're all aware of the way in which, you know, that kind of gets drawn up into the culture wars, and there's some theological analysis and diagnoses. But I also think that leadership became one of the things that people pointed to that, you know, if we have the right leader, and the leader... You know, it's like the great leader model. And a lot of the resources that were given to leaders, I'm thinking about your generation, Eddie, yours Jorge, and then my father, just a few years older than you, Jorge, who is also a pastor. And it's very much like, if you could just get the mission statement right, and you can get the vision statement right.
Eddie Rester 18:23
Core values. Get those core values right.
Chris McAlilly 18:25
You get all that stuff going. But then, you know, I guess what I hear you saying, Jorge, is that you look up after a decade or more, and you are a good leader, and you've got all that stuff running, and you grow a church from 300 to 3,000. It's almost like a slave driver. It's like, and running, and you grow a church from 300 to 3,000. It's almost like a slave driver. It's like, and then ultimately, you look up and you wonder, you know, is the thing that I've built of Christ, or just was I just running in the way, in the direction of achievement for the sake of achievement? I can see how that, you know...
Jorge Acevedo 18:55
Yeah. And connect it to the adult child of an alcoholic and all that sort of stuff. And, and please hear me, I mean, I still believe in mission, vision, values, strategies, and structures and all those kinds of things. But they're not done in a vacuum. You know what I mean? There has to be an operating system behind all of that that's rich and deep and connected, I think I would call them the ancient paths.
Chris McAlilly 19:22
There's... Eddie, you want to jump in. I'm sorry.
Eddie Rester 19:25 No, no, no, keep going.
Chris McAlilly 19:25
It's all good. I recently came across this guy, Andy Root, Andrew Root. He came out of youth ministry. I think, I don't know where he... I'm not exactly sure where he is in the country. But he was talking about how behind a mission or a vision is something that used to be called, in German Protestantism, a watch word, this idea that God will reveal God's self in a particular place and time. And you can see it. You can hear it, and it can be named. And ultimately it becomes, you know, it's not that a mission and a vision and values, all those things, all the structure... I mean, there's a reason why corporate structures, you know, grow, because there is a kind of efficiency to them. And there's something that the church can learn from them. But it's important for the church to be animated not by the spirit of competitiveness, or power, or influence, but by the Spirit of Christ. And the only way you get to that, I think, is kind of what you're talking about Jorge. There's some ancient paths that are carved out for you to experience and cultivate the Spirit. And that needs to be kind of behind. I guess that's what I'm hearing from you is that...
Jorge Acevedo 20:42
Yeah, in the last 17 years of my 27 years at Grace, we stepped more and more into that. So let me just give you an example. First 10 years, I never even thought about a sabbatical because the idea of leaving, because if I left, who's going to spin the plates and the plates are going to come? You know, it was an ugly, ugly scene. I'm not suggesting in any way, shape or form that it was a good thing. But ironically, one of the, the guy who is now the lead pastor of Grace Church came to be on our staff 17 years ago, Wes Olds, his father was Howard Olds who... Y'all know him? So Wes is now the new lead pastor at Grace, and Wes came, and he invited me into a different way of living around the idea that we would build generative teams, teams that knew how to do really good work together and that lived in community together. And 17 years later, I'm grateful to say that all of our pastors have been on sabbaticals. And now all of our long-term staff members are going on sabbatical. So it's become a part of the kind of the culture of the church to say, I mean, it's not... Among our leaders, not just staff, but even our kind of core leaders in the life of the ministry, it's not unusual to hear, how is it with your soul? Did you practice Sabbath this week?
Eddie Rester 21:16 Yeah, yeah.
Jorge Acevedo 22:05
And we're not done yet. That's not Wes's assignment. We're not done yet. But what I'm saying is we've made movement to not just simply be wide but deep. And because I do think, you know, if 10 people knowing Jesus is good, 12 is better. You know, but let's make sure that it's framed right and it's done right, so that we're growing people deep as well as wide.
Eddie Rester 22:32
So you're replicating the right thing.
Jorge Acevedo 22:34
I pray so. I pray so, yeah. I mean, it really is, ironically, it's just claiming the apprenticeship model of Jesus.
Eddie Rester 22:40
And I think it's important right now, that seems to be welling up in the life of the church, maybe to fill a void or an emptiness that we've created at times by moving a little too far with some of our leadership model. I think that's going to be... Before... Again, I want to talk, I want to compare you to my grandfather in a minute, which you're not going to like, but any resources that you would say for folks, if they're hearing this and go, "I don't even know who to, where to turn, what to pull off a shelf, what to order from Amazon, or an ancient path or a resource." What would you suggest? What's been helpful for you or some of your staff members? Yeah. Well, and that all really ties to one of the things I was going to point to is, as you talk about the ancient paths, and the contemplative, just yesterday, we were doing this thing in a meeting, one of our worship team meetings, and one of the members said, "Look, I want to go off script here, and what's everybody doing for their soul? What are you feeding your soul with right now?" And, you know, I got introduced to "Every Moment Holy," by Doug McKelvey, and that's been really helpful for me. But there's another guy on our staff a little bit older than me, who said, "Well, I was raised Baptist, but I've been reading the Book of Common Prayer lately. That's been my thing." And so I mean, it's real cool. And the people, as we went around the room, it wasn't some strange new thing, book. It was so many of them were attached to, whether it was musically or in print, some piece of ancient practice.
Jorge Acevedo 24:24
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, to your question that you had the staff ask or the staff person raised, you know, what is helping you with your soul? You know, right now, what's really helping me is, when I go to, after my morning time--and I do want to talk about some practice I have in the morning that I've at least found very helpful. I've been at the gym, I listen to John Ortberg's becomingnew.com video. Right now he's on the journey of forgiveness, and it's just a powerful. John was kind of mentored by Dallas Willard. And so there's a richness of depth there. I love the "Practicing the Way" materials from John Mark Comer, the videos. They have some classes that they're the kind of online classes, self-paced kind of thing that you can do with groups of people. I love the writings of Dallas Willard and Ruth Haley Barton. You know, those are some of the things that I'm using. There's a practice that I picked up from a professor, Dr. Brian Russell, who's written a new book called "Astonished by the Word." It's a really, really helpful book about just how we need to make ourselves the first audience of scripture reading and become astonished again. "Thunderstruck" is a translation for the word "astonished" by scriptures again. But he taught me about five or eight years ago, I just saw a little YouTube video on Twitter, and watched it and it was just a video that said, Hey, you might think about this new habit as the new year begins. And he said, write out five things for which you're grateful for. We know that, you know, the study of neuroplasticity in the brain, you know, that gratitude, actually changes the paths in our brain. And we move from lack and scarcity to abundance. And so I write out five robust things every day. One thing that's bothering me is a way, early in the morning, to name--whether it's a physical thing or relational thing. I call it defanging the snake, so it doesn't catch me later in the day, you know, so to kind of name it, and that's really the hardest one almost every day, because I do live a fairly charmed first world life. I mean, I don't have the problems that our mission partners in Africa have. And then two things that'll make the day great. So it's called a 5-1-2. And that little practice, along within a daily Bible reading, where I use Wayne Cordero's SOAP method--the Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer, kind of template--where I read a scripture and ask the Holy Spirit to kind of highlight something. And I would say, in a seven day week, I probably journal pretty in depth, four to five of those days a week. On the days that I don't get a word, I say, Jesus, you still love me. And I go read a book, instead of journaling that morning, if I read the Scripture and nothing kind of jumps up off the page for me that day. And I found that rhythm, for me at least, has been a rhythm that's sustainable, that resists a kind of Phariseeism. It's very personal. And I think any apprentice of Jesus can grow in that capacity. So.
Chris McAlilly 28:04
I like thinking about the daily rhythms and the daily structure. I wonder, you know, you talked about kind of the first 10 years of ministry and the last 17. Are there any other ways that you've kind of, when you reflect back on... You know, do you break it up in chunks? Or is it there's 10 and 17? Or when you think about your ministry through time, or have you had, I guess, quarterly or yearly kind of check in points with yourself? I guess kind of how have you structured your time through the years?
Jorge Acevedo 28:36
Yeah, well, one way of looking at it, and again, it is the 10, 17 is the first--this is what I just finished my doctoral dissertation on. So the first 10 years, as I would call it, was my journey. I was a heroic solo leader. And the last 17 has been the journey into, and I'm still in that journey, of being a generative team leader. And I, again, I think American Christianity, it doesn't matter where on the theological pendulum you are, is profoundly heroic and solo in its approach. I mean, when the surgeon general is telling us that we have an epidemic of loneliness in our country. When the UK now has a ministry of loneliness, I think it's called, to address the epidemic of loneliness in the United Kingdom. I think that says something about how our economic models, our governmental models, and all those kinds of things do have consequences in how they get lived out for normal and ordinary people. As well as people of faith. We don't escape that simply because we named the name of Jesus. I would say that one of the gifts God gave me, and it may have been because I wasn't raised in the church, is I have never been afraid of going "I need help." And then so from the very beginning of my walk with Christ, I wanted to be mentored, I wanted somebody to apprentice me. I wanted somebody to walk with me. And I was a Timothy kind of waving my hand timidly, and saying, "Would somebodu?" You know, "I think I might have something to offer the Kingdom. Would somebody help me?" So when the Board of Ordained Ministry told me to go to therapy, I went to therapy. And it was a good thing. And I've been in therapy off and on since my early 20s, mid 20s. I bumped into a spiritual director right before COVID. And I never thought I, you know, spiritual direction would be something that would be a part of my life. Now, it's a regular rhythm in my life. Seventeen years ago, I got a leadership coach, a leadership coach who was very committed to being a spiritual leader, with the emphasis on spiritual leader, and so I have a leadership coach that I meet with regularly. I've been a part of a covenant group for over 30 years. I'm in a ministry covenant group for the last four years before COVID. Now, with all the challenges of our denominational life and all the rest, and it's become life giving for me. Tod Bolsinger uses the metaphor in his book, "Tempered Resilience," he uses the metaphor of that relationally every spiritual leader needs onstage, backstage, and off stage friends. And he has descriptors for each of those. You know, kind of onstage is the colleagues we work with, backstage are the support people in our life. And then the off stage you might think of us, you know, who are our mentors, who are our spiritual directors, or therapists. And he has a great line. It's become one of my favorite lines to use in my coaching of newer and younger leaders is, and I'll, I'll really mess up the quote, but he says, you know, if at every moment of your leadership life, you are not engaged in either--he's doesn't say all of this--but in either therapy, spiritual direction, coaching, mentoring, he calls it leadership malpractice. And so what I would say to answer your question, Chris, is that, for me, the journey has been, who am I going to add into the constellation of my life that is going to... So over the decades of almost 40 years now, it's just been adding new people into my life. And I just tell people, I'm that broken that I need these many different varieties of relationships. And they're not all... You know, I see my spiritual director once every five or six weeks. I visit with my leadership coach for an hour every two weeks. I see my therapist whenever things are arising in me, and I don't like what it's doing inside of me, then we might meet for every week for six weeks, and then we might not meet for two years. My covenant groups are pretty consistent thing, daily, kind of through text or email or phone calls or Zoom meetings, a regular thing. But for me, the relational grid, it's been the reason I've stayed in ministry, over the long haul.
Chris McAlilly 33:24
There's a friend of mine who talks about having a board of directors for their life. It reminds me of kind of what you're saying there that there's a constellation, basically a constellation of relationship, friendship, and support. That's a big part of staying healthy, you know, making sure that you're in contact with yourself. And then you have a lot of touch points in terms of when things arise.
Eddie Rester 33:52
I'll see Tod Bolsinger this evening on a Zoom call. I'll tell him he I quoted today. But that whole idea of creating groups around you, I think, for me, about 10 years ago, I looked around and I was like, huh. I'm kind of out here in the desert alone. I thought I was bringing people along, or I thought I was going with folks. And there has to be real intentionality about that. I think particularly in today's world as we've broken apart and as people are being conditioned to work from home, or to school or courses online. I think it's a hard habit to break, the habit of isolation. One of my friends during COVID they closed their offices and sent everybody home. He says, "Sometimes I just go," there's a restaurant in Jackson, "sometimes I just go sit in this restaurant, so I can hear people again," during his work day.
Jorge Acevedo 34:54 Yeah.
Eddie Rester 34:54
He said, "because I just, I've realized now as a man," which we typically are even worse than our female companions at it. There's just an intentionality, I think that humans right now... Your friend on Facebook is not a real friend. That's my I tell people all the time. Your follower on Instagram is not a real follower.
Jorge Acevedo 35:20
So I'm 42 days into this new space.
Eddie Rester 35:22
I was about to talk to you about your 42 days, yeah.
Jorge Acevedo 35:25
I'm 42 days in this new space. And we're on a Zoom call, while this is being recorded, and this has become my new office, and I'm at my house right now. And so, the one thing I miss is not... I mean, I like preaching. I think I'm pretty good at it. But I'm okay to not preach, you know, like I was doing regularly or teach Bible studies. What I miss is the interaction with my colleagues in the office, drinking coffee, catching up in the hallway. You know, it's one of the dangers, I think of the post COVID return, with everybody kind of selling their offices in corporate America and everybody going home, is you don't get the chance for the coffee machine conversations where really the magic often happens in our life together. And so I don't miss the work. As a matter of fact, I'm grateful that it's less than responsibility now. But what I do miss is the relationships. I miss--we do a teaching team there, where we, about a dozen of us, gather in a room and it's like seminary. And for those of us that are kind of learning junkies, we love to sit around and fight about Bible texts and wrestle with it and wrestle it to the ground and get a kind of a word for our people. I miss that. I miss the worship meeting that just finished a few minutes ago, where every Thursday, right before everybody kind of runs off for their Sabbath day. You know, every Thursday, we're going in there for kind of the last button up of Sunday morning, so we can get ready for the weekend services. I miss the camaraderieship. I don't miss the work. I mean, the work is the work. But I do miss the relationships.
Eddie Rester 37:12
My comparison to my grandfather, before we miss this, because I'm sure some listener out there is like, "I can't..." So when my grandfather after 50 years, little longer than you, sold his gas station, Buras, Louisiana. It was a Gulf station. He would get up and go to work every morning at four. And after he sold the station and retired Gulf gave him a real nice watch. He would get up at four and go sit in front of the station until the newspaper came. And then--the Times Picayune--and he would sit there in front of the gas station and read. He could... It was hard for him to break away from just the rhythm. And in this new season, how are you handling that transition?,How are you handling that?
Jorge Acevedo 37:59
You know, I was here 27 years, and so I got this call from God. It was kind of a supernatural thing. It happened at Holy Trinity Brompton, the alpha church in London. God got me 4,000 miles away, you know, from everything, the creature comforts of home, and really spoke to me through a pastor there. And it opened the door for me to begin a journey of joyful obedience to step away from where I had been for, at that point, 23 years or so. Yeah, 23 years. From 2019 until just the end of August 2023, we spent two years in kind of a private, where Wes and I and some of the leaders knew about the transition. We went public in '21. And then I saw my work as a leader to get--and this is a phrase has become important to me--to get self-differentiated from the church that I have served. And again, I think it's... I do think it's a little bit different for a longer term pastorate.
Eddie Rester 39:08 Right. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Jorge Acevedo 39:08
When you've been there that long. And I think it's even harder for founders. I have a dear friend that just passed over 40 years, remarkable leader. And he's now talking about succession plan. I'm kind of helping him on that. And he's got a huge self differentiation. I mean, he's got blood, sweat, and tears in the ground of that. And all of us have been in ministry, and it's hard when you've been there three or four years and you leave. It just gets magnified, the longer you've been there. So one of the things that I did, I'm privileged to be friends with Rich Vellodas, who's the pastor at New Life Fellowship in Brooklyn. He's an author and speaker, fairly famous in our day, if you will. And I spent a day with him, the executive pastor and the new pastor and I spent a day with Rich and we said well It was the heavy lifting for Pete Scazzero, who Rich followed. And I never forget what Rich said. He said, "Pete's heavy lifting was the inner work." And so for four years, I had to double down on my inner work. And this is, I'm convinced of these ancient paths, because as I've engaged in them--and not all of them, like, you know, fasting and I just don't go together, just look at my waistline. They just don't go together. And I know fasting is not about weight loss. But, you know, fasting is just not mine. But practicing many of the ancient disciplines, traveling down those paths, has really created capacity, where I've been able to self differentiate. I know where I end, and the church begins. And they're not like this.
Eddie Rester 40:47 Right.
Jorge Acevedo 40:47
And I do think, for those who love the church, and yet are called into new ways of serving the church and stepping away from the day-to-dayness of being a local church pastor, it was a journey. I still get hooked every once in a while. Sunday mornings are still a little tough, you know. But again, it's not the preaching thing. It's not the lights and the microphone. It's more of the relationships and the relationships with people. You know, I enjoy being in the fray of all of that, so.
Chris McAlilly 41:24
You mentioned retiring well, and some of the things that you're doing to get there. Part of it's the inner work, and part of it you use a frame before we got on the air, before we hit the, before we got on the air, before we hit the record button.
Eddie Rester 41:38
Hit the record button. Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 41:39
On something that you had learned. I think it was from Richard Rohr. I think we were talking about kind of the first half of the journey was building a cup and filling it. Could you maybe come back to that?
Jorge Acevedo 41:52
Yeah, my spiritual director, she's been just a tremendous gift for me and a guide, as I've walked this journey, and the greatest gift she's given me, she's given me language to talk about the journey. And she helped me recognize that I was on and continue to be on a journey of diminishment. You know, being a local church pastor in the same spot for a long time where you've had a fair amount of what the world might consider success, you know, brings with it a lot of kind of capacity to get emotionally hooked, and spiritually hooked on those kinds of things. And so she said, we're going to journey together, a journey of diminishing, of stepping away. So she helped me with language of moving from being a spiritual leader to spiritual sage. And she said to me, she said, "the spiritual leader goes and sits on the mountain. People come and find them." And so one of the gifts she gave to me was this metaphor from Richard Rohr, who says, if we listen to our soul, we spend the first portion of our life building the cup and filling it. I wouldn't say half, but a portion of our life, building the cup and filling it is what we might call the achievement in our life, performance in our lives. And we all want that. Men, women, young, old, we want a sense of purpose and meaning and destiny. But what Richard Rohr said that I think is really, really helpful, he says, If we listen to our soul, our soul tells us at some point, you have to begin to empty the cup. And my observation has been that pastors really, really struggle with getting to the end of their ministry, not being able to be self differentiated from their work and the church and all that it brings--good, bad and ugly. And they never see that part of the journey, the emptying of the cup, as an invitation. And what I'm experiencing is that it's invitational. I spend most of my days on Zoom calls, probably three to five Zoom calls a day, for an hour and a half to two hours, with younger and emerging leaders, younger and newer leaders. And I'm getting to be a sage and be a sounding board and be a colleague that walks with them. One of those offstage friends, because I'm not on the platform with them. I, you know, I don't know the chair of their Staff-Parish committee. I'm just an off stage friend who can be a person of accountability. Yesterday, I met with a guy, and we had to have a tough conversation about fruitfulness in ministry, and what that means and what that looks like. And how do you talk about that in his ministry context? So it's not always pixie dust and unicorns sometimes. Sometimes it's, you know, Eric the Bonebreaker has to come out. The Viking has to come out in these relationships, because we need those people in our life. We need people that will both speak grace and truth, John 1:14 to us. So, yeah, the journey has been a journey of self emptying and engaging in being able to be a conduit of grace in a different way than I've known before. The image that might be--I'm a metaphor guy. So the image that might be helpful is that I've moved from the worship platform to the Zoom platform, from the multitude to the one. And I'm finding different meaning. It's different. My memory muscle is for the worship platform. But I'm getting more and more comfortable with this platform, the Zoom platform
Eddie Rester 45:40
Well, and your influence now is rippling outward. How do the people in the ripples now learn enough, learn from you, to create their own ripples? Jorge, I just want to thank you for your wisdom, your time today. I hope day 43 is even better than day 42 for you. I just appreciate what you've shared with us today about your journey and thank you for that.
Jorge Acevedo 46:09
You betcha, Eddie. Thank you.
Eddie Rester 46:10
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.
Chris McAlilly 46:18
If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]