Recently, my wife Carolyn suggested a book she discovered during her personal reading, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer ($12.99 for the Kindle edition on Amazon). Comer is a pastor and member of the millennial generation who has a very interesting back story. He was the pastor of a suburban multi-site megachurch that grew by over one thousand people each year for seven years in a row. However, when an exhausted and burned-out Comer found himself speaking at six services every weekend, it dawned on him, “ . . . in America you can be a success as a pastor and a failure as an apprentice of Jesus; you can gain a church and lose your soul.” What was Comer’s response to this sobering personal revelation? He resigned as lead pastor of the megachurch, made the decision to slow down, and became the pastor of a much smaller church in downtown Portland.
What Is The Secret To Becoming The “Me I Want To Be?”
In this new season of life and ministry, Comer regularly meets with Pastor John Ortberg for counsel and advice. Ortberg, in turn, was mentored by legendary author, Dallas Willard. During John’s tenure as the teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago, Willard advised, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” When Ortberg asked, “What else?” Willard insisted, “There is nothing else. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”
Could You Be Suffering From “Hurry Sickness”?
Comer suggests a self-inventory. Do you display some or several of the following symptoms of “Hurry Sickness”?
- Irritability— “You get mad, frustrated, or just annoyed way too easily. Little, normal things irk you. People have to tiptoe around your ongoing low-grade negativity, if not anger . . . look at how you treat those closest to you: your spouse, children, roommate, etc.”
- Hypersensitivity— “All it takes is a minor comment to hurt your feelings, a grumpy email to set you off, or a little turn of events to throw you into an emotional funk and ruin your day.”
- Restlessness— “When you actually do try to slow down and rest, you can’t relax. You give Sabbath a try, and you hate it. You read Scripture but find it boring. You have quiet time with God but can’t focus your mind . . . Your mind and body are hyped up on the drug of speed, and when they don’t get the next dopamine fix, they shiver.”
- Workaholism (or just nonstop activity)— “You just don’t know when to stop. Or worse, you can’t stop . . . Your drugs of choice are accomplishment and accumulation.”
- Emotional numbness— “You just don’t have the capacity to feel another’s pain. Or your own pain for that matter. Empathy is a rare feeling for you. You just don’t have the time for it.”
- Out-of-order priorities—“You feel disconnected from your identity and calling. You’re always getting sucked into the tyranny of the urgent . . . Your life is reactive, not proactive. You’re busier than ever before yet still feel like you don’t have time for what really matters to you.”
- Lack of care for your body—“You don’t have time for the basics: eight hours of sleep a night; daily exercise; healthy, home-cooked food; minimal stimulants; margin.”
- Escapist behaviors—“When we’re too tired to do what’s actually life giving for our souls, we each turn to our distraction of choice: overeating, overdrinking, binge-watching Netflix, browsing social media, surfing the web, looking at porn—name your preferred cultural narcotic.”
- Slippage of spiritual disciplines— “When you get overbusy, the things that are truly life giving for your soul are the first to go rather than your first go to—such as a quiet time in the morning, Scripture, prayer, Sabbath, . . . and so on.”
- Isolation— “You feel disconnected from God, others, and your own soul. On those rare times when you actually stop to pray . . . you’re so stressed and distracted that your mind can’t settle down long enough to enjoy the Father’s company.”
Slow Down and Simplify Your Life Around What Really Matters
Comer insists, “The solution is not more time.” If every day simply had more hours, “ . . . (I would) fill them up with even more things, and then I would be even more tired and burned out and emotionally frayed and spiritually at risk than I am now . . . The solution to an overbusy life is not more time. It’s to slow down and simplify our lives around what really matters.” Therefore, if we want to experience the “easy” yoke and “light” burden that Jesus promised, we must actually become “apprentices” of Jesus (Comer’s term for a disciple). In Comer’s words, “If you want to experience the life of Jesus, you have to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus.”
How Would Jesus Live If He Were Me?
What is a Christ follower or “apprentice” of Jesus? Comer writes, “It’s very simple. It means you live the way Jesus lived. You take his life and teachings as your template, your model, your pattern . . . the central question of our apprenticeship to Jesus is pretty straightforward: How would Jesus live if he were me?” Comer suggests the answer involves developing a “rule of life” that includes the following four core practices:
- Silence and solitude. Comer believes “ . . . the quiet place was top priority for Jesus.” “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:16 NIV). Comer writes, “Think about this: Jesus needed time in the quiet place. I repeat, Jesus needed time. And a fair bit of it. You think you don’t?” Comer explains, “ . . . solitude is pretty straightforward. It’s when you’re alone with God and with your own soul . . . I don’t mean isolation. The two are worlds apart. Solitude is engagement; isolation is escape. Solitude is safety; isolation is danger. Solitude is how you open yourself up to God; isolation is painting a target on your back for the tempter.”
- Sabbath. “The word Sabbath comes to us from the Hebrew Shabbat. The word literally means ‘to stop.’ The Sabbath is simply a day to stop: stop working, stop wanting, stop worrying, just stop . . . Shabbat . . . can also be translated ‘to delight’. . . The important thing is to set aside a day for nothing but rest and worship.”
- Simplicity. Comer suggests that “more stuff equals more happiness is bad math.” Therefore, he wonders, “What if more stuff often just equals more stress? More hours at the office, more debt, more years working in a job I don’t feel called to, more time wasted cleaning and maintaining and fixing and playing with and organizing and reorganizing and updating all that junk I don’t even need.”
- Slowing. John Ortberg defines the spiritual discipline of “slowing” as “cultivating patience by deliberately choosing to place ourselves in positions where we simply have to wait.”
Comer’s New Normal
In the book’s epilogue Comer reports a typical Sunday now involves teaching just three times at the small downtown church followed by a short bike ride home. He has organized his life around three very simple goals:
- Slow down
- Simplify life around the practices of Jesus
- Live from a center of abiding
He concludes, “These four practices—silence and solitude, Sabbath, simplicity, and slowing—have helped me tremendously to move toward abiding as my baseline. But to say it yet again, all four of them are a means to an end . . . to come back to God and our true selves.”