Cultivating A Culture Of Honor

In 2001 I faced one of the biggest challenges of my working career in YMCA camping.  I had been asked, against my better judgment to lead one of the largest and most successful YMCA camp in New England.  I would follow in the footsteps of arguably the best camp leader in the country, inheriting his staff, his facilities, his program and the camps overall reputation.  It was indeed the most difficult six years of my life.  It was during this time that Lynn (my wife) lost both of her parents, I lost my father, two good friends who had come to help lead this camp, left after three years.  It was a real day-to-day grind.   So, of course, it was a great learning experience as well.

Camps are notorious for a couple of very intense cultural characteristics.  People are very passionate about their camps, especially the staff alumni.  One of the strongest cultural norms for a camp is a deep seeded resistance to change. Everyone who really cares about the camp they call their own wants it to not change.  They imagine that somehow, 10 – 20-30 years later they can come back and it will look and feel just like it did when they spent the greatest summer of their lives working or attending the camp.

My new responsibility, Camp Jewell, was no different.  But God had clearly sent us there and had given wisdom and strategy on how to approach this unique place and the culture it had developed.  I knew that my key to survive and thrive was to practice the principle of honoring.  Over those six years, I experienced many difficulties, break throughs and, ultimately, a measure of victory in my own life and in the advancement of God’s Kingdom at Camp Jewell.  I think the key in all five camps that I contributed leadership was this principle called honor.

God wants to grace us with the power of expressing honor and, being in our hearts, a people of honor and cultivating around us, a culture of honor.

By the way, I see a culture of honor manifested here at Way of the Lord, but I am certain that there is more revelation to come regarding a culture of honor that will lift us up to greater heights of Kingdom living.  I also firmly believe that we can experience greater Kingdom success as we make this one of our intentional areas of focus in the work place.  Make no mistake, this is a miraculous work of God’s grace in our lives.  It does not come naturally.

The trinity is the greatest example.  The Father, Son and Holy Spirit give honor to one another.  Three in one – this great mystery is the ultimate expression of perfect unity and of showing honor.

Honor is key to the answer of Jesus prayer in John 17:21  “that all of them(them being all of his disciples, then and now) may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.  May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

This is the prayer of the Son of God, part of the Godhead, the Son part of the trinity praying to another part of the Godhead, the Father.  They are in perfect unity.  There was no prayer ever more perfect than this prayer, there was no prayer with more faith than this prayer, there was never a prayer more destined to be answered than this prayer.  It is a prayer that honors the Father’s will and honors the disciples as worthy participants in the Father’s plan.  God actually believes that you and I; His disciples have in us, by God’s grace, the ability to be the answer to that prayer.

This concept of honor is visible in the relationship between the members of the trinity and it is the key to world evangelism, it is key to our unity in the church, it is key to a successful business or ministry, for the purpose of advancing His kingdom.  So what does honor look like, where do we see it in scripture and how do we walk in it.

There is this thing Moses brought down from the mountain on a couple of tablets called the Ten Commandments. All of these commandments are wonderful, powerful and very good.  Though they all have great benefits when followed, one in particular was pointed out, singled out as a commandment that comes with a promise.  As parents, we love this command.  It is one we first memorize to share with our young disobedient child.  But as with all of the commandments it is much deeper, broader and powerful than what first meets the eye.

Deuteronomy 5:16 “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”

At the end of Ephesians five and the beginning of Ephesians 6 Paul is exhorting believers in regard to their relationship with one another as family members and in the work place. As you read those passages it becomes clear that Paul is promoting an overall culture of honor.  Ephesians 6:1, once again repeats this wonderful commandment regarding children honoring their parents.

There are a lot of books out there on how to be successful.  I am not sure how many of them would make their core point to be honoring your mother and father.  So, I can save you a lot of time in reading self-help books on how to be successful with this single passage of scripture.

I know this passage to be true because it is in the word of God but I know it even more from my own experience.  Because it is my experience, I can tell you, it is an amazing powerful truth.  No one could ever convince me that there is not a direct correlation between success in life and honoring your mother and father. Now there is much to be learned in the detail of how this is worked out in our lives and how the gift of an honoring heart can be manifested in the church and in the workplace, but I am telling you, it is worth understanding and putting it into practice.

So back to Camp Jewell. I can tell you that most, it not all of the staff were standing around waiting for me to fail.  They did not directly tell me this, but they communicated it in a variety of ways.  You see, not only had they been under the leadership of the “smartest” camp director in the world who I was replacing, but they had all unanimously expressed support for one of their fellow staff members to become the new camp director. The camp board and the lead staff of the Hartford Connecticut YMCA disagreed with them and decided I was the right choice to lead Camp Jewell.  So, conventional wisdom would be to come in, fire all of the staff and hire a new team.  This would actually be very foolish, destructive and dishonoring of individuals who had sacrificed a great deal to make Camp Jewell the great camp that it had become.  So, clearly, I was not in a place of honor in the eyes of the staff team (accept for the gentlemen on the staff team, who did not get the job and had the humility to show honor in a meaningful way).

It was my responsibility to show honor to the staff team.  So, over the course of the next several years, I was given many opportunities to honor those on the team, win their trust and develop relationships that would result in a successful camp.  It was not easy, it was often messy and required speaking the truth in love, holding people accountable, listening, listening, listening and working hard at intentionally showing people their worth in our camp community. It was not just about being “nice” to everybody – far from it, but it was about showing respect for the gifts, callings and personalities of others, allowing team members to contribute their ideas, understanding my own failures and being honest about those failures.  A culture of honoring is also a culture of humility.  It would be difficult to give myself a grade on how successful I was at doing this, but it was the strategy I intentionally pursued.

As with most good things, the greatest hindrance to a culture of honor is pride.  We want to be honored, we want to sit at the important place at the table, we want to be served.  Jesus showed us the better way.   He did not just say it, He showed it.

There are a lot of leadership styles and each style can be very effective.  There is more than one way to skin a cat, (though I have never skinned a cat and do not know how to do it, neither would I care to learn.)  But no matter what style of leadership there are over riding principles that must be adhered to in order to be an effective leader.  One of those is honoring those you work with.  So what does a person who honors others say and do?  I am a practical kind of a guy, also, not the sharpest knife in the drawer so I need some clear examples.

What showing honor sounds like in the work place:

“I see Christ working in your life.  Your calmness in the midst of a stressful situation helped all of us better hear wisdom on how to deal with the situation.”

“Your willingness to back away from your idea and your opinion showed humility that helped all of us see a better way forward.”

Showing honor to a child, “when you picked up the spoon that your brother dropped on the floor, that was a Christ like expression of love and service that was a great encouragement to me.”

To an employee –“when you came in early and left late to make sure the project was completed, it was a gift of your time to everyone on the team and a tremendous expression of your commitment to our success.”

It is not easy to do, but an excellent exercise is to sit down and write out these kinds of statements that we can share with those around us.  Most of us (especially me) are not too quick on our feet when it comes to saying the right thing in the right moment.

Not wanting to get to deep into this topic let me just throw out a bit of a radical idea as this concept of honoring that I think is hindering the church, in general and our businesses in general from fulfilling the great commission.

God established a design in the church – 1 Corinthians 12:27 “Now you are the body of Christ, and each on of you is a part of it. (does that not sound like an honoring statement?). And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues.”

There appears to be an order, and my suggestion is that when we are out of order, no one ends up being honored, as they should.  I think, in the church today, we see the teacher/pastor role as the first.  Their role is critical but is not really properly honored if it is placed first.  The Apostle then Prophet are the order Paul said should take place.  This is simply one example.  Another might be the place that we put people who work with children – do we effectively honor our schoolteachers and youth workers.  Why do people say, “I would like to be a youth worker but I can’t make a living doing this, so I guess I’ll be a lawyer instead.”

Another arena of dishonoring where I might get into trouble is in the area of doctrinal differences. In our hearts, sometimes we find it difficult to honor a person because of a difference of opinion regarding a doctrine we deem to be very important.  I hesitate to give examples but let me just say this.  If you lose respect for someone over a doctrine and it causes a loss of relationship, this could be a sign that you are afraid of their doctrine and therefore unable to honor this person and maintain a higher value of love and unity.  I am not saying that there is not clear false doctrine that destroys lives and people need to be held accountable, but there are a lot of different opinions that do not warrant a loss of fellowship.

Many times I was asking the Lord if I could leave YMCA work.  As I studied it’s history, I grieved over how it had lost it’s way spiritually.  God always made it clear that I was to stay and one way that He often spoke to me was through the original mission statement from the 1850’s that is still a part of the international YMCA mission.

YMCA Paris Basis

The Young Men’s Christian Associations seek to unite those young men who, regarding Jesus Christ as their God and Saviour, according to the Holy Scriptures, desire to be his disciples in their faith and in their life, and to associate their efforts for the extension of his Kingdom amongst young men.

Any differences of opinion on other subjects, however important in themselves, shall not interfere with the harmonious relations of the constituent members and associates of the World Alliance.

I find the second part of this statement to be extraordinary.  How often do we allow differences of opinions to interfere with harmonious relationships?  Differences of opinions are just that, nothing else.  We cannot allow them to damage our honoring of one another.

Matthew 24 speaks a great deal about the end times – a subject with a great deal of different opinions, no doubt.  Verse 36 reads, “ But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”  I am sure there are a lot of well meaning theologians that can explain this bazaar verse to us so that it won’t bother us.  But, sorry, it says even Jesus does not know when He is coming back.  My point being that some things are left to be mysteries.  It is ok to not know something.  It is also ok if I have some doctrine sorted out and someone else either disagrees or has decided it doesn’t matter.  This only proves that we live in this foggy world and that we see dimly as through a smudged up glass.

Many gifted teachers do not like not having it all figured out.  Seems like it is easy to find a teacher we like and it is comfortable to just stick with them (“whatever they said – I agree”).  What happens than is we forget to honor the Apostle and Prophet. We forget to give honor to other teachers who do not agree.  We do not feel safe because we want everything in a nice neat package – why can’t everyone just get along.  That is not what unity looks like.  Unity is nested in a bed of honor.  In sports, a good coach wants assistant coaches who agree with the overall philosophy but are willing to disagree with the process of how to work it out.  Good coaches listen to their assistant coaches and to their players.  They have to make the final decision but they are honoring others – and this honoring manifests in their willingness to listen.

I was 19 years old, just finished my first year at a respectable Christian College.  Oddly enough, my major was Christian Religion and Philosophy.  The acronym for that is CRAP.  This acronym was a prophetic message regarding direction in my life. I was standing in the lunch line when my friend, David asked if I was considering attending the Institute of Basic Youth Conflicts.  I said, I heard it was good but I did not have the 25 dollars it would cost.  He gave me his last $25 right there in line and I attended a few weeks later.  Of the many things I learned at the institute, and it was a great deal, I was very convicted that I did not honor my mother and father.  As I prayed about this, I sensed God’s pleasure in my repentant heart and a specific act of obedience that He was gracing me to walk in.  I needed to ask my parents forgiveness and than ask their opinion regarding my future, listen to what they said and obey.  This was a real step of faith but I was very excited because I knew something special was going to happen.  They hesitated to share with me but after some persuasion they opened up.  They did not give me specifics but a general idea of direction.  It resulted in me transferring to Purdue and a whole long list of blessings that I do not have time to share – but it was in the realm of one amazing miracle after another.  It was like the blessings were so intense that my container could not hold them all.  Many days I was on the verge of laughing and crying with joy at the same time.

This is the heart of God for our lives, for our church, for our businesses and work place. Cultivating a culture of honor is the garden of God’s fruitfulness.  Imagine the power of the presentation of the gospel that comes forth from a people who honor one another.  Imagine the anointing of the supernatural that could happen as we dwell together in unity.