Overcoming Your Shadow Mission

by John Ortberg

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780310308997
Publisher:	Zondervan
Publication date:	09/02/2008
Series:	Leadership Library
Sold by:	HarperCollins Publishing
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	978,926
File size:	533 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Ortberg is the senior pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church (MPPC) in the San Francisco Bay Area. His bestselling books include Soul Keeping, Who Is This Man?, and If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat. John teaches around the world at conferences and churches, writes articles for Christianity Today and Leadership Journal, and is on the board of the Dallas Willard Center and Fuller Seminary. He has preached sermons on Abraham Lincoln, The LEGO Movie, and The Gospel According to Les Miserables. John and his wife Nancy enjoy spending time with their three adult children, dog Baxter, and surfing the Pacific. You can follow John on twitter @johnortberg or check out the latest news/blogs on his website at www.johnortberg.com.

Read an Excerpt

Overcoming Your Shadow Mission
By John Ortberg
Zondervan
Copyright © 2008 John Ortberg
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-28760-5



Chapter One 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 onour 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 Hussein. He would have fought against that kind of outright evil. It was the banality of his shadow mission that made it so possible.

I had never heard the phrase before. I had never named what my shadow mission might be. But I understood. I knew.

You and I were created to have a mission in life. We were made to make a difference. But if we do not pursue the mission for which God designed and gifted us, we will find a substitute. We cannot live in the absence of purpose. Without an authentic mission, we will be tempted to drift on autopilot, to let our lives center around something that is unworthy, something selfish, something dark-a shadow mission.

Later on we will learn how to identify and battle both our own shadow missions and the shadow missions of the organizations or teams we lead. But for now I want to underscore just how serious this topic is. When our lives deteriorate into the pursuit of a shadow mission, the world loses. Shadow missions are what we foolishly pursue "while the world goes to hell."

You may scoff at the idea that your shadow mission has any bearing on the larger world. Our eyes remain veiled to the ultimate consequences of our choices. But the Bible tells many stories in which God reveals what the bitter end can be of a shadow mission: death. And the joyous reward of fighting that shadow mission: life. We now turn to one of the classic stories.

(Continues...)

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