Helsinki and Henri

It’s been a whirlwind week. Gretchen and I had the full Ryanair experience last Friday, flying from Eindhoven to Nykoping, Sweden. Ryanair is like nothing else in the world. You use it because it is ridiculously cheap, but cheapness costs something. In Ryanair’s case it costs a bit of your dignity. Everyone lines up because there are no assigned seats and I inevitably moo and baa in line. I can’t help it. Treat me like a farm animal and I feel compelled to respond in kind. And it costs time. Ryanair defines Nykoping as Stockholm, but grab a map and look - it is an hour and a half away from Stockholm. Skavsta airport in Nykoping is a classic Ryanair facility – some World War II relic that they have more or less resuscitated because they can fly in and out without paying big fees. As near as I could tell, the only other planes flying out from there were on an airline called “Wizz,” which was flying to Gdansk, and left me imagining conversations. “Sorry, Bob, I can’t join you for the meeting this afternoon, I’ve got the 4:15 Wizz to Gdansk.”

So we took a train to Eindhoven, a bus from Eindhoven Central Station to the airport, a plane to Sweden, and a car to Vallentuna, where we were staying. All of this so we could ride on a boat. Of course to get on the boat we took another bus, a train, and a subway. If only we’d managed to ride our bikes or found a rickshaw we would have covered about every form of transportation.

After a full day of meetings last Saturday (you can see my Swedish friend Daniel showed up for the first meeting wearing a tee shirt with my picture on it!), we got on a boat in Stockholm Sunday afternoon to sail across the Baltic Sea to Helsinki. The boat is sort of a cruise ship and sort of a ferry. The cabins are small, but at least you have beds, a shower and a toilet. The ship is filled with restaurants, bars, a huge store, video poker and there was even a “fun center” that featured five Swedes in long dresses and white leisure suits singing and dancing. ABBA lives on, my friends! No, it wasn’t the real ABBA, just a cheap Swedish imitation, but I did see that in a few weeks Gerry and the Pacemakers are playing on this boat. You have to be a real trivia freak like me to know Gerry and the Pacemakers. They didn’t quite make it as big as another band from Liverpool. These days Gerry and the rest of the band probably have pacemakers.

We took two young couples who serve on our staff in Sweden with us, along with their new babies. Gretchen got a bit of a “baby fix” and we all enjoyed our time together. We had seven hours in Helsinki, enough time to see some wonderful architecture and be able to say, “We’ve been to Finland!” Look again at the map you got out and you’ll see that if the captain made a wrong turn we easily could have wound up in Russia. I’ve put a couple of Helsinki photos above – I’m always interested in churches and a unique thing in Finland is they have both strong Lutheran and Russian Orthodox influences. What you see is the oldest wooden church in Helsinki, which is Lutheran, and also an impressive Russian Orthodox church, close to where our boat docked. And you can see we were very, very fortunate to be there on a beautiful fall day. We also visited a church literally blasted out of stone called Temppeliaukio, but I would have needed a helicopter to really capture that well on film.

We went on the trip to scout this out as a potential regional staff retreat location – my vision is to do a floating retreat someday. There are similar ships that sail from Stockholm to Riga and Tallinn, and who doesn’t want to go to Latvia or Estonia? I do.

We headed back home on Wednesday, with our Ryanair experience this time highlighted by two drunks in the row in front of us. Drunkenness is obnoxious and pitiful in any culture. At least these guys didn’t appear to be on the verge of vomiting, like the drunk sitting next to Ken Knipp and me on the Ryanair flight we took together last April. Well, technically the drunk guy wasn’t sitting next to me. I made sure Ken was next to him and I sat coiled, prepared to leap out into the aisle regardless of the seat belt sign. Ken was ready to take one for the team if necessary. I was ready to save myself. Ken and I have had some great adventures together over the years, like the now legendary day he invited me to go check out a resort in Southwest Michigan with him for a possible family retreat. The place turned out to be “men only” and we were mistaken for a couple looking to go on vacation. That was a bit awkward.

Anyway, Gretchen and I arrived home Wednesday evening and within a couple of hours welcomed two Norwegians who were coming to town for our training group meeting this weekend. In addition to the Norwegians, we had three folks from Spain, one from France and one from Portugal join us. These folks are our first and second year staff, the hope of our future, and I loved our time together. I thought it was time well spent, but I don’t exactly have the most objective point of view about the whole thing. There is a certain ego boost involved in having people fly in from all over the continent to listen to you drone on for a few days.

We spent time with a great Henri Nouwen book called, “In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership,” and I think I’ve probably read this short gem ten or fifteen times. Let me try to sum up the three things that I tried to teach our new staff from the Nouwen book this weekend.

1. That even though we feel the temptation and expectation from the world around us to be relevant and successful, to accomplish or do something; the simple question Jesus asks us is not “what are you doing for me?” but “do you love me?” Nouwen says it like this: The question is not: How many people take you seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show some results? But: Are you in love with Jesus? Perhaps another way of asking the question would be: Do you know the incarnate God? In our world of loneliness and despair, there is an enormous need for men and women who know the heart of God, a heart that forgives, that reaches out and wants to heal.

2. That even though our world and Western culture especially values individualism and the self-made hero, ministry is a communal and mutual experience. There are great dangers when we allow ourselves to be isolated and alone. Another way to say this is “you are as sick as your secrets,” and only by finding safe places for confession in community can the dark forces that would undo us be brought to light and seen for what they really are.

3. That the greatest mystery of Christian leadership is found in following the example of Jesus Christ, who did not cling to his divine power but, as the book of Philippians says, “made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant.” The model we follow for Christian leadership is Servant Leadership. The temptation we face is the temptation to power. Nouwen says: What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life…I am not speaking about a psychologically weak leadership in which the Christian leader is simply the passive victim of the manipulations of his milieu. No, I am speaking of a leadership in which power is constantly abandoned in favor of love. It is a true spiritual leadership.

Our Norwegians and Spaniards and all the rest have headed home now, and Gretchen and I are enjoying a relaxed Sunday afternoon. It’s been a good week.