The Weight
The Weight
"Hope Rises" with Bill Simmons
Show Notes:
Bill Simmons is the President and CEO of Hope Rises International, formerly American Leprosy Missions. Founded in 1906, Hope Rises is a parachurch organization that seeks to bring healing and hope to people suffering from neglected diseases like leprosy. The organization’s mission is to live and proclaim the gospel while bringing healing to those in need.
Bill has been a leader on many boards and organizations, and has worked in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. He believes in the importance of spiritual practices in organizational life, and uses "pause, psalm, and prayer" before meetings to focus and center his employees. His book, The Way of Interruption is the result of his experiences during his three-month sabbatical, and it offers some practical steps and simple liturgies for Christ-centered leaders.
Resources:
Learn more about Hope Rises International
Hi, I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly:I'm Chris mcalilly. Welcome to The Weight.
Eddie Rester:Today we get to have a conversation with the CEO of a nonprofit that's been in existence for almost 125 years, but a man who found, through a time of sabbatical, a gift, I think, that he can give to organizations, nonprofits, and even churches.
Chris McAlilly:Bill Simmons is the CEO of Hope Rises International, and he offers, in a book that he is releasing this spring, "The Way of Interruption," some spiritual practices for organizational life. He talks about his own journey as a Christ-centered leader of a nonprofit. He talks about some of the difficulties and the challenges and obstacles that he's faced and some of the things he learned over the course of time that ultimately are trying to set up his organization and others for spiritual health and vitality.
Eddie Rester:What I loved is that when I read through the book, it's not a difficult book to read, but it offers some pretty profound thoughts in it for how we can take seriously our need to stop, to reflect and be shaped on God's word and how to pray out of a set liturgy, instead of just having to create. I love the distinction. He's like we, you know, CEOs of nonprofits and organizations, we're not preachers. That's not our role. And so what this allows folks in those roles to do is kind of pull back and yet set a pattern for the work of the organization.
Chris McAlilly:So many bits of wisdom within this. One of the things he said that I'll remember is God wants us, but God doesn't need us. He talks about the benefit of doing nothing within the context of organizational leadership in order to allow God to work the soil. He talks about growing up as a missionary kid in the Congo, and he talks about his current work in setting organizational culture. And so if you find yourself in a leadership role, really, not just in the church or the nonprofit sector, but kind of across the board, I think there's a lot of wisdom here for you. We're always grateful that you're with us on The Weight as we seek to try to create spaces and conversations for God to be at work in our world today.[INTRO] Leadership today demands more than technical expertise. It requires deep wisdom to navigate the complexity of a turbulent world, courage to reimagine broken systems, and unwarranted hope to inspire durable change.
Eddie Rester:As Christ-centered leaders in churches, nonprofits, the academy, and the marketplace, we all carry the weight of cultivating communities that reflect God's kingdom in a fragmented world.
Chris McAlilly:But this weight wasn't meant to be carried alone. The Christian tradition offers us centuries of wisdom if we have the humility to listen and learn from diverse voices.
Eddie Rester:That's why The Weight exists: to create space for the conversations that challenge our assumptions, deepen our thinking, and renew our spiritual imagination.
Chris McAlilly:Faithful leadership in our time requires both conviction and curiosity, rootedness in tradition, and responsiveness to a changing world.
Eddie Rester:So whether you're leading a congregation, raising a family, teaching students, running a nonprofit, or bringing faith into your business, join us as we explore the depth and richness of Christ-centered leadership today. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO] We're here today with Bill Simmons, who is the CEO of Hope Rises and has a book that we're going to talk about in just a little bit. Bill, thanks for being with us today.
Bill Simmons:Wow. It's great to be here. Thanks, guys. It's a privilege to join you
Eddie Rester:We were talking before we started recording. You've got some Mississippi roots, but have you ever spent much time in Mississippi?
Bill Simmons:Well, that's a funny story, I guess. I guess I have twice. I could say I did twice. Once, I lived in Alabama, for about five or six years back. Part of my life, I was the CEO of Christian retail chains, and we were based in North Alabama, and I was a big cyclist at the time. So one of the things we did was ride the Natchez Trace from Nashville all the way down and ended in Tupelo. And so I spent several nights along the Natchez Trace doing that. And then we had a few stores, had a store in in Gulfport and Biloxi. And so, yeah, I had, I've traveled there. So yeah, I've finished a few nights in Mississippi along the way. And yeah, love it there.
Chris McAlilly:Where are you from? Originally?
Bill Simmons:Originally, I was born in Shelbyville, Tennessee, the home of the Tennessee Walking Horse. And, yeah, that's where my roots are. And I lived there until I was about 12 years old. My mom and dad, who grew up in the Methodist Church, felt a call to international mission work, or maybe even to the ministry and God provided some great ways for them to get connected. Strangely enough, though, they did not find a place in the Methodist mission. They said, "No, we don't really need any business people," and so the Presbyterian Church said,"No, we do." And so they, sort of, they swapped teams and became Presbyterian missionaries. And so when I was 12, we moved eventually to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was Zaire at the time. And I spent, sort of, I tell people to sort of, you know, all the years that you're awake, middle school and high school, you start to realize you're alive. So all of my waking years were in the Congo. I graduated high school there, and it was a time that really changed my life.
Chris McAlilly:Tell us something about how that formed you. What is it... That's a unique way to come of age and to, I guess, awaken to the world. What are two or three things that you would lift up?
Bill Simmons:Yeah, you know, I think, you know, my mom would, and still says, one of the things that, when you grow up in a place like that, especially a place like the Congo, was just still at the bottom of the human development index, and you know, there's, there's still war in the Congo, even this week, you can read in the news. And so it was a place where to be a teenager, it meant that you you had all of this challenge that you were confronted with all the time. You had multiple languages. You had cultural challenge. You had the radical difference in your own lifestyle and the lifestyle, even as poor missionaries, you were still the wealthiest people you would run And then you had this insulated sort of school environment that into. I found myself in, the American School of Kinshasa, where missionaries and embassy kids and others attended. And you have this little campus that's sort of in a bubble, and then you exit the bubble and you're in a whole different world, and then right outside your home gate. So I think all of that being surrounded in that turbulent, challenging environment, it really shapes sort of how you then interact with the rest of the world for the rest of your life. You, in some ways, you need some challenge. You need that sort of change, because that's what you're used to. You also become very adaptive. You know, I can go anywhere in the world, and have, and you immediately sort of learn the skills needed to fit in. And that could be unhealthy, or it can be healthy and a gift in knowing how to acculturate. And I think I found that to be the case. And then it did certainly plant this seed, I think that God ultimately would use, and would be the reason that I felt both that God was drawing me to this role as the CEO of American Leprosy Missions, which is now Hope Rises International, and probably one of the few people in the world who would see the fact that an organization working in the Congo was a fringe benefit. I got to return home to my roots. In fact, when I came here as CEO in 2010, I returned in 2011 and it had been over 20 years since I had been there, and it was a joy to go back and see the change and run into people I knew. But then to continue to work there, one of our most important works as an organization, with the Church and Christian hospital partners, happens in the Congo, and it's been a long story, I guess, that continues to unfold in how that plays a role in my life. So, yeah.
Eddie Rester:So, thinking, you actually started in, I think Christian retail, and then moved into the nonprofit world. What was that leading? I would think, from your experiences in the Congo, that kind of your life trajectory might have always been that direction, but you may not feel that way. What was it like, kind of shifting into the retail and then into the nonprofit world?
Bill Simmons:Yeah, you know, I think I'm going to take the leap of faith here and say that I think my story is similar to a lot of people's story in that I didn't have a map pre-planned,"This is what I'm going to do, where I'm going to end up." And yet, I have found, as many of us do, looking back, how providential and how all of those things were things that were exactly what they needed to be. I tell people all the time that the job I have now is my dream job. I just didn't know to dream it.
Eddie Rester:Yeah.
Bill Simmons:And I felt that way. So, you know, when I was in And so in the '08, '09, sort of time period, that 20-year career college, I just needed a job, and so I started working part time in a Christian bookstore, opening up boxes and putting labels on books and doing that sort of thing in Knoxville, Tennessee. And I didn't intend to go to work full time in a bookstore, but that's what happened. I ended up, you know, being a store manager. And then that was in the sort of the lightning growth days of Christian music, when Michael W Smith and and Frank Peretti were sort of the big names. And I got to be a part of that, and then left and ran a couple of different chains, as I tell people, until Amazon made it so very few people could sell books anymore. in Christian ministry, but in Christian retail, came to an end. And this sort of thread that goes back to the Congo, God pulled on again as someone said, you know, "We're doing a search for the CEO of American Leprosy Missions." And of course, the first question I asked was,"What?"
Eddie Rester:Yeah, yeah.
Bill Simmons:And, and then as I learned more about leprosy around the world and the work of the organization that's been around so long, it was very clear that this was where I needed to be.
Chris McAlilly:So what's the history of American Leprosy Mission? You said it goes back to 1906 and is a large and old organization within the United States. Tell folks a little bit more about its origin.
Bill Simmons:Yes, I mean, before there was a treatment or a medicine for leprosy, which now there's multi drug antibiotic therapy that you take if you get the bacteria. But before that, the church was the was the institution that came to people who had this condition and really just could only receive comfort and palliative sort of care. And the real origin, I mean, as far as what's happening in the world that relates to the church, is the Church, of course, this is the real moment of global missions, and the Church really sending people all over the world in a new way, as we think about it, in a modern mission movement lives on. But I think that what was happening was missionaries were encountering people who had leprosy and they had no way to address that need and no expertise to do so. And so in Europe and in the US and other places, missions emerged that were helping to fill that gap for missionaries who didn't know how to address this need. And so that meant some people in New York decided, hey, you know, God's calling us to support this work. And so they formed the organization in 1906. The founding principle, which is still the truth for our organization today was that we exist to proclaim the Gospel in word and deed, to people affected by leprosy, and that's primarily a role of supporting the Church as it is called, in its location and place, and connecting the Church to Christian hospital institutions that can provide the health solution for people. And so it's yeah, it's been a long journey, but it's been rewarding to be a part of something that has roots that are so old. One of
Chris McAlilly:One of the things that is unique, I think, for folks who may be new to Christianity or its story, is that, from the very beginning, followers of Jesus were interested in... They had this kind of incredibly powerful vision of what it meant to be human in light of Christ, and this real trust in the power of God at work through the Holy Spirit, and that empowered people to act, to speak and act to bring healing in word and deed, to bring healing. And so if you go back and look at the history of the first hospitals in the world aimed to care for the widows, the orphans, the poor, those who are most vulnerable and on the edges of society, they were started by the Church. And that kind of vision of Christian social innovation is one that extended through, you know, especially the early part of the 20th century and around the world. It sounds like the organization you're involved in is very much a part of that, I think. What or how do you think about kind of the theological underpinnings of the vision, as you continue to sustain the work?
Bill Simmons:Yeah, well, I think we have a clear example in Luke 17, and certainly other places where Jesus demonstrates, by his own actions, that he's seeking out people who are excluded by the law and the way the law treats people who have a certain physical condition. And in that passage, and in a couple of others, it's the only place where we see Jesus do something beyond just heal the person. He sends them to the priest, too, which is an interesting thing. Why would Jesus send somebody to a priest? Because that's the one thing, at least, sort of in this world, in the context, he couldn't do. He could not be the one who gave them the sort of the clean bill of health. He could remove the scarlet letter of exclusion. And so we love that idea. At least, I mean, from our organization, we have a straight line to the idea that what we're doing is both doing the physical healing, which, in Luke 17 says they were healed as they went. They were made clean as they went. The sermons tend to be preached on the guy who came back and was the one who was thankful. I'm not sure I'm... I tend to also think, well, what if those guys, who are just so excited they could go home, that like that was really what Jesus was after. Although there's a different lesson there about the Samaritans and anyways, there's a lot in that passage that people would want to exegete. But for us, it's the simple, those two simple ideas that we're working toward, the physical restoration of someone, but also the social, spiritual reconciliation part, which Jesus demonstrated in the in that work, in Luke 17. So we love to talk about that, because that's what we try to do in the world. We're connecting Christian health partners with local churches. And so it's actually the church then that is, you know, it's the pastor who's going to be there when people return to their communities, and can be the source of reducing stigma and help ensure people are cared for and psychologically and emotionally and spiritually. And I think that the other question that, for me, that's important, and I alluded to this in the book that I've written, is I think that, you know, you talked about the church and the first hospitals, and the first nonprofits were Christian, is exactly right, but it's also sort of a post-reformation invention that we now have all these parachurch ministries. And I think that it's important, and that has grown more important for me, to recognize the difference between church and parachurch. And what I mean by that is that, you know, parachurch ministries, in my view, support the church and are modeled after what we see in Acts 6, when the apostles said, you know, we don't... They didn't say it this way, but they sort of, "We don't have time to care for the widow and the orphan. It's really important. We need people who do that, and we're going to call them, and they're the deacons." But the church still needs that. The church is still out there meeting people and meeting people with the gospel, and so we still need deacons. And parachurch ministries are deacons. I have experienced stress in my own life in being confused about whether or not I'm being a deacon or a pastor, an apostle. And so, you know, you guys are in the church. And it took me a long time to realize that I'm not the pastor of my staff, and wearing those two hats has created some both stress and also made me wonder if this is an issue that's leading to Christian parachurch ministry leader burnout and a pastor burnout. Are we trying to wear two hats? And that's sort of a meta question I'm wondering about.
Eddie Rester:And you're really, you begin to pull that thread in your book. And I want to get there in just a second. But the thing that sets your book up was you got to a place where you took a three-month sabbatical. Where in... You started in 2010. It's 2025 now. Where in the story did you take that three-month sabbatical? What led you to that moment?
Bill Simmons:Yeah, so that was actually in 2024. Is that right? No, that's wrong. '23.
Eddie Rester:That's a fast writing of a book.
Bill Simmons:Yeah, '23. In 2023. But the journey to sabbatical was a journey of understanding that I was experiencing some things that I needed other people to help me see were a lot like this word that I was afraid of: burnout. I remember, I'm a part of a network called the Accord Network, which is Christian relief and development organizations, and we have a great model of bringing leaders together and then having sort of small group retreats. And in that group, I remember. A lady who's a professional psychologist and works for ministry and does relief in Bosnia of people who experienced trauma from war and that sort of thing. And I remember sharing sort of the big thing that was on my heart, and she said to me,"You know, that sounds a lot like burnout." And I thought,"Really? Is that? What I'm describing is burnout?" I didn't think that I was going to face burnout. And it wasn't but maybe two or three months later, I found myself in Ghana, and was on my way back. I was at the airport, arrived three hours early, and there's this problem with my seat on the airplane. You know, do I have a seat? Where is it? I did all these things, and I remember being on the phone with the airline and sort of having this experience where you're observing yourself. And myself that was observing myself was asking the question, "Am I getting ready to have a breakdown here over something as silly as an airline seat, and whether it's going to be the right thing?"And why is that? Why can't I have more peace in this moment. What is going on? And I think that was, that was the last moment for me that I said, yeah, I really must address this. And so at another one of these same events, about six months apart, I brought to my same group of leaders, Christian leaders. I said, "You know what? I've been thinking about a sabbatical. What do you guys and ladies think?" And they all, of course, made it very easy. And so about three months later, I came into my board. And it's a bigger story, but essentially, it was really trying to confront my own sense of fragility and burnout that put me in this place.
Chris McAlilly:How old were you at that moment?
Bill Simmons:That was at the age of 54.
Chris McAlilly:Yeah, so I'm 42. Eddie's older than that.
Eddie Rester:I'm 54. He and I are the same age. Thank you.
Chris McAlilly:I'm just kidding. I think that, I guess one of the things I've observed, and I've been colleagues and friends with Eddie, for you know, since 2014, and so I've watched this thing, and my father is also a ministry. And I, growing up, even as an adolescent and as a high school student, watched my father go through his 40s, from you know, take on more and more responsibility as a Christian leader, get to a place of being overwhelmed. And I see that in colleagues. I see it in peers. There are moments where I, where I sense it in myself. And I think there's either, either you get to a point where you are forced into something like arrest, or you intentionally see that opportunity and you take take it upon yourself. And I guess one of the things I hear you saying is that you had a good network that you were a part of, and that was one of the essential pieces of the story for you. You had some friends and some resources around you. So it's a support system in place.
Bill Simmons:Yeah, no, that's yeah, that has and is true. And I think, you know my own... Well, let me just say that the gift, it was not only for me, and the gift of confronting burnout for myself--which, you know, I think it was one of those things that it was certainly much more internal. I don't think many people might have thought, oh, you know,"He's more stressed out," or"He's more on edge," or, you know, I don't think that was probably how it was exhibiting. It was that internal sort of wearing down. And the gift was not just that I was able to enter a season of of sabbatical rest. It's that I realized in that process that how important it was and how it needed to be a practice. And so, you know, in our... We... Ruth Haley Barton's got a great book, you know, on, I think... I don't remember the exact title, but it's something about "From Savage to Sabbatical and Back Again."It's the idea that we take the Leviticus 25 model, and after someone's been here six years in our organization, the seventh year, they get three months off, paid time off, because the person and the principle is more important than the work. I think that's the thing that I find a lot of leaders think that God really needs them to do the work. And I always say, "He wants us, but he doesn't need us." And the organization that I run, it's been around since 1906, and it doesn't need me. I just, I get to be here, but as soon as I think, "oh, it all depends on me." Well, I mean, that's the old sermon, you know. So it's...
Chris McAlilly:It's not part of the culture.
Eddie Rester:Pride. It's pride that we carry around that everything will fall apart. I took a sabbatical in 2011, because in the Methodist church that our Book of Discipline tells us every seven years, we should do that, but almost nobody does. It's not part of the culture, but...
Chris McAlilly:That's in part because we're workaholics.
Eddie Rester:We're workaholics. But...
Chris McAlilly:of the problems with Methodist theology, in part, is that in some ways, you give too much of a... Yeah... Certain...
Eddie Rester:We need to blame Francis Asbury on that. It's his fault.
Chris McAlilly:No, it's Wesley's fault. He was a workaholic, you know, in part because he thought that God couldn't get the work done without him. And so what that leads to, and I think you see this in a lot of parachurch organizations, you see an entrepreneurial spirit, an opportunity to really kind of drive and push Christ-centered work in with kind of business discipline and acumen. But that could be, it can be a it can be a powerful cocktail for difficult things as well. It can also be the gift if you can develop habits and patterns and healthy rhythms within it. It can be a driver of a lot of good and flourishing.
Eddie Rester:I was just going to say when I got back after my sabbatical, Bill, I don't know if this was your experience, nothing had collapsed. They actually took in more money in the weeks I was gone in offerings and then they had in the weeks before I left worship. Attendance was just fine. It was a real wake up call to maybe you're not the center of this after all, Eddie. Which was one of the big learnings. And, you know, in my position now, I get to talk to a lot of pastors, and they're tired. They're tired just like you experienced. When you came back, that experience birthed this book that I don't want to butcher..."The Way of Interruption." I didn't want to butcher the title. "The Way of Interruption." So tell us a little bit about that journey. Then I want us to really dig in, because I think what you are after is helping organizations develop those patterns, so that the centering of the entire organization stays true.
Bill Simmons:Yeah, no, that's yes. I, you know, I would just say that everyone's, we are all different. I think people are worn down by different things, right? There's no one formula for rest, which is why I don't really love... I prefer that we remember what Shabbat means, which is cease, not rest. It doesn't mean rest. It means cease. So I had to do that in my sabbatical. It was to me, it was the journey of ceasing. I was, I have been, traditionally in my life and career, able to actually step away from email and shut it all down. I don't really find my identity in my work. That wasn't my issue. My issue was that I was at risk of being the CEO of the world's greatest sabbatical, that I would just exchange one job and, like, you know... You could just ask my wife how much she needs the CEO at home. Zero. She does not who I needed to show up as. So my work was, there's this story about this environmental biologist who studies the snow leopard, and he's in Nepal and trying to find this snow leopard among these blue sheep. And he's so focused on seeing the snow leopard, which is the hardest animal in the world to see, that he overlooks his job, and he ends up leaving. And his partner stays behind, and then his partner, who's actually just doing the work, is the one who gets to see the snow leopard. And you know, sort of that CS Lewis idea, that we don't get to determine when Aslan shows up. We can make it our life's effort to go run him down. But that's not how it works. And so I had to learn how not to work. It wasn't my job. It was how did I cease from working? And I love. That's, to me, is the beautiful picture of Leviticus 25, is letting the land of your life lie fallow, which means you cease from all of those things. And that is a really hard thing to do. Well, now I'm going to take my off time, my time off from my job, and the next three months here's all the things I'm going to do so that I can be rested.
Eddie Rester:Right.
Bill Simmons:And what I had to discover was that I needed to cease from all of those things. Cease from an agenda. Just sit in a swing with my grandchild, or just be out in a desert place, and God say to me, "You can read those books anytime, but you can't spend time out here with me and just be with me." And I had to keep laying down these things. And when I came back, I discovered that God, the great agriculturalist, he had been working the soil, and he had planted something inside of me during my sabbatical that was only his doing. And so I think that was... I was shocked. I mean, it's the closest that in recent memory I've experienced something very mystical and miraculous. I spent and was intentional in spending no time, like praying about a vision for the organization, or, you know, asking God to do something. I just really tried to just do nothing. I don't remember, the Dutch have a word for this. I think it's called[niksen] or something. The art of doing nothing, and that's what I tried to do. Let the land lie follow. Let God do whatever he needed to do. And he did. And within a week of my return, I knew exactly what we needed to There's the great book by Peter Greer called "Mission Drift." do. And it was very clear to me we needed to just make sure that we are mission true, that we were returning and making sure that we were true to that first mission. We took steps to do that as an organization. And then it was also clear to me that in order not to be burned out again, I needed to be a part of developing organizational practices that help the organization be conformed to the image and pattern of Christ in its work, without taking on the responsibility of spiritual formation of the individuals who are in my organization. That lies in their churches and their own church practice and fellowship and communities, how to bridge those gaps and how to do that well. And so the book was a process of sort of documenting for ourselves and now for everyone else, those practices that we ended up implementing, that try to strike this balance that I found after sabbatical.
Chris McAlilly:So there's a lot of wisdom in that, but I want to make sure that I'm not mishearing it, because I think you're offering a very subtle distinction between... I guess they're both cultural. It's like getting into the DNA of the organization, certain administrative structures and practices that would lead to spiritual health and vitality in individuals, but you said, without taking on the responsibility of their spiritual health and development, is that right? Did... I'm paraphrasing.Exactly what, tell me what's at stake in that distinction for you.
Bill Simmons:Yeah, well, I think it's easy for me to think about it in Old Testament terms in that I don't think anyone would ever mistake if there were parasynagogue ministries. You know that the guy who ran the parasynagogue ministry was not the priest, I think. And I think pre-Reformation, there probably was for better, for worse, there was no probably distinction and no lack of clarity. I think we, in this post-Reformation world, which I'm proudly a part of, it does introduce new things, right? And so I think that now, that as the Church has changed, especially over the last 100 years, and missions have changed, and a lot of parachurch ministries came up in that time period, just like ours, to support the church as it encountered challenges, as it was out doing the work of spreading the Gospel. And now, a part of a global church, and in a global reality, some of that has changed. And I think it has meant that we now can confuse which role that we're in. And so for me, what I've discovered, and I've talked to a lot of other CEOs in the same role, and this is... I say, you know, "Do you feel this pressure to be both a pastor and also the executive?" And people time and time again are, "Yeah, that's incredible pressure. I just thought I was coming to be the executive, but now I'm supposed to be a pastor and preach sermons to my people." That's a... It's this implicit thing. And so to answer your question, I think that the spiritual formation is the work of the Church. I do think that. Not that we as the global body of Christ, the global Church catholic, that we aren't all sort of carrying each other's burdens together. So there's a soft role, but that's more individual, how we work out being the Church and individual members among one another. But what's my role as the CEO of an organization? And the reciprocity issues that can happen. Because if I say we need to read a book, well, guess what? Everybody's going to read it.
Eddie Rester:Or at least buy it.
Bill Simmons:Right. Exactly, at least buy it. Yeah, so I think what's the job? And where people aren't coming to me for that, they can come to either one of you and say, "Hey, I need advice and counsel in this part of my life," and you can provide it, and you work for somebody in a Christian organization, and I think people aren't aware of how many times you're given sort of unrequested counsel that may be not in line with what your own personal practices are.
Chris McAlilly:So what I hear you saying is that maybe one of the mechanisms that, or one of the traps or the temptations or the pitfalls of the particular role that you're in is role confusion, or a way in which you can collapse multiple roles into one thing, and that might be to the extent that one kind of falls into that trap, one of the things that can lead to a particular kind of burnout.
Bill Simmons:I think so.
Chris McAlilly:And so then so on the back, you know... So one of the lessons, or part of the wisdom that you take from the sabbatical time as you come back in is to try to be clear about the role that you are being asked to play and the role that you're not and not to drift away from that mission, personally and individually, and to try to keep the organization focused on its mission, while also resourcing folks with a support system of institutional structures, including a church, that might offer them things that the organization that you're leading is not meant to do, but that can be a kind of supplementary part of their life. Am I, I guess, am I summarizing or hearing you correctly? In the invert, maybe you guys, you know, feel this pressure in
Bill Simmons:We care. I care deeply about our staff's spiritual health, and I want to provide resources and benefits that help them ensure that they can be spiritually healthy the other way, right? I mean, pastors are in spiritual without also taking on the role of what the shape of their spiritual formation looks like, and let their church and their church communities help really dictate what doctrinal perspectives they're taking, and how they're being shaped in that way. So trying to distinguish the two. formation, but then you're the ones who are trying to figure out how to also be an executive and run a big organization, and that sounds a lot like what a deacon is supposed to do. These are the challenges I think churches and parachurch ministries both face.
Chris McAlilly:Agreed. Eugene Peterson has the memoir, I don't know if you've ever come across it, called "Pastor." And in the book, he talks about gathering with a group of pastors in his area, and basically there's a gripe session about this very thing, this pressure that they all felt to lead, to proclaim the gospel, to administer the sacraments and order the life of the church, which they called"running the damn church." They, you know, and Eugene in the book, he says, you know, "I loved to preach. I loved to teach. I love to immerse the congregation in the biblical world and develop a spiritual imagination in my people. And I hated running the damn church." You know? And I think that there are a lot of people that find themselves in that kind of a place. I do think that that role distinction, confusion, it can be in parachurches. It can also be in local churches. How have you experienced that, Eddie?
Eddie Rester:Yeah, I think, you know, I work for an organization now where I think that what you're talking about is just kind of that same thing. How are we? How do we care, but not cross into something that's not my role to play? And what I loved about your book, "The Way of Interruption," is that you give some practices for folks who are leading organizations. And this is what... I think this is one of the missing pieces. People talk about individual practices, personal disciplines, but Bill, what you're offering is kind of a path for, and I was even thinking in churches to utilize this, in those business meeting moments that are being led. So you came up with three practices that are pretty simple: pause, psalm and prayer. Tell us about why those things are helpful in kind of helping an organization stay centered.
Bill Simmons:Yeah. Well, I'll read this Chesterton quote. He captures. You know, he, when he was wrestling with his own faith, and he was, I think, in his book "Orthodox," he talks about how, you know, he's like the guy who went around the world and planted a flag in New South Wales and discovered, oh, wait a minute, this is already a place that someone's already been. And in that vein, he says,"When I fancied that I stood alone, I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all of Christendom. It may be, heaven forgive me, that I did try to be original, but only succeeded in inventing, all by myself, an inferior copy of the existing traditions of civilized religion." And what stands out to me is that idea that, you know, most of what we do becomes inferior copies of what the Church has been doing since the first century. And I'm all for change and innovation, and I think God can be a part of that, but I think, you know, Charles Taylor also would remind us that, you know, we've lost something along the way. And so I think what I found was, so, how can I do this? How can I help our organization to embody the kingdom of God in our work as we support the Church in its work? And what would those practices look like that were not about ego or personality? And so the sort of, the simple answer is just to lean into the ancient things like Chesterton's talking abou, not trying to create an inferior copy, but instead say, what has the church been doing, and even, what have been the practices that Jesus was doing, or that was a part of our heritage? And so, you know, we talk first about pausing, and I think that's really, it's an overlooked part of of our lives and reality today, in the Zoom, post-COVID world where, you know, you used to have a break between meetings. Now, a Zoom meeting ends and you have another one that's immediately starting. There's no, "oh, I can see the person coming down the hall. We got a while. We can wait." It's just back to back. How do you show up and be present? And I call us to that, to pause, because I think Jesus demonstrated so well how to make sure you're always present to people around you. How else do you feel the hem of your garment and power going out of it? And the crowd and the disciples are like, "What do you mean? What are you talking about? There's always crowd." And he's like,"No, no, I understand what happened here." And I like to lean into the human part of that, right? That he was just really present. He was always present. And he paused. So, how do we do that? That's the first practice. Just pausing. The second. The second is about the ancient practice of just leaning into Psalms. And I think I mentioned in the book that I
Eddie Rester:I love that line. think I have never heard of anybody argue over Psalm 23 you know.
Bill Simmons:Denominations, you know, so it's also sort of a safe place, regardless of what each staff member's personal practice and church affiliation is, is we can come together around the Psalms, and we can live into this idea, this Greek idea of theopneustos, that, you know, God breathes out and the Word of God is inspired. This is that theopneustos in Timothy, it's the only place I think that words used in the New Testament. And so I think we want to do that. So every meeting around the world, wherever my staff is, when we start a meeting, we have a pause. We collect ourselves. We read the psalm for the morning or the afternoon, because we developed a psalter, a pattern Monday to Friday. And so everyone in the organization gets that in their inbox, and we all then are praying those psalms together, and then we have a brief prayer, and that's their consistent practice. And what I've told people, internally and other that leaders I talk to, is this practice is not aimed at whether or not my organization can be more effective, whether or not it's going to increase employee or staff retention. It is only aimed at one thing, and that is to make sure that throughout our day, we reorient ourselves to the divine, and we incline ourselves, bow ourselves internally, if you will, back to God and just recognize that this is the only thing that we're here for. And then may God shape us in so doing. And then we do take sort of... We do move a little beyond that. And through the invitation of other leaders around the world, we've included a set of prayers and liturgies for all sorts of things that happen in organizational life. Some people may be familiar with Rabbit Room Press, Andrew Peterson's book, "Every Moment Holy" in this series. I have them, and I love them, yeah.
Eddie Rester:We interviewed Doug McKelvey about those books, yeah.
Bill Simmons:Yeah. And so, but there aren't a lot that really relate to organizational life. And so we included a bunch of those to hit on some topics that enable us to create together, share together in prayers, which I guess where I would end sort of in that line, is to say, I think one of the beautiful things is, then we get to be together as the Church praying together. And I thought, well, what if there were ten, fifty, a hundred, a thousand other organizations who were all praying the Psalms in the similar pattern, and whose organizations were shaped, and whose leaders then were also, maybe in the process, to the degree they want it to be, were released from trying to come up with the next great internal sermon series.
Eddie Rester:Three point devotional.
Bill Simmons:In their organization, and let you guys wrestle with that, with the next sermon series, instead of at their organization. So.
Chris McAlilly:Yeah, it's so brilliant. I had a college student that came in the other day and just said, "I cannot take on responsibility having enough faith to ask God to forgive my sins. I need to kneel and eat communion." And I was blown away by that, because he was saying, "I don't have enough inside of me. I don't have enough subjective faith, but I can submit myself to these ancient practices, and that could make a difference." I hear in what you're offering, a reminder that God is the subject of active verbs. You know, God is the shaper of worlds and organizations, and there's some ancient practices. The practice of sabbatical and Sabbath. The practice of pausing within the context of the day to pray the Psalms. Doing that communally, that can open up space for God to shape who we will be together in our work, not just in our personal faith or in our churches. I think that's an incredible gift. I'm so grateful to you for sharing it with you and offering some of the wisdom that you're discovering along the way. It's just amazing.
Eddie Rester:I love, my favorite prayer was "Prayer for an Audit" in the back. So it's a very... That you know, as I worked through it, I was surprised. You don't spend a lot of time to... I mean, you do, plenty of time, but you don't go overboard trying to describe pause, psalm, and prayer. But then you give the gift of liturgy, and you give the gift of a pattern of psalm. And you know, liturgy is a great gift. And you referenced that you didn't maybe grow up with a lot of liturgy, but you found yourself there these days. What is it that that you love so much about liturgy?
Bill Simmons:Yeah, you know, this is a puzzle that only God knows the answer to, and I know that in my community, my wife and I joined an anchoring church about a year and a half ago. And the common thread... Our church is growing. I mean, it's, I can't, it's crazy. It's gone from nothing 10 years ago to, I don't know, I don't know how many people now. I don't count the people, but I know they're adding, you know, like 100 people every six months. And it's... The common thing is people keep saying is that there's something, they have found, something healing in the liturgy, the practice. And that's been, that was our experience, is that it's done that. And I think my time at Christ in the Desert in New Mexico, you know what you were saying before about what are the practices and how they, how they shape us. Or just the idea of all I need is to have my sins forgiven and to eat communion. What I observed in those monks who go about praying the hours, is, it's not about them. It's about the one who we all worship. It's about the one who did create the universe, and he's the one that deserves us to incline again. And I tell people that I lost the the gospel. I've lost my fear of the Gospel by hearing monks in the desert read the gospels. And that's true. It is absolutely true.
Chris McAlilly:The book is called "The Way of "nterruption: Spiritual Practice for Organizational Life." Bill Simmons is the CEO of Hope Rises International. You've given us the gift of your time today and your wisdom, and we are incredibly grateful. Thank you.
Eddie Rester:Thank you.
Chris McAlilly:For what you're doing and your work.
Bill Simmons:Yeah.
Chris McAlilly:We're so grateful that you were with us today on The Weight.
Bill Simmons:Well, thank thanks again. Yeah, March 18, the book will be out on all the places you can find it in the world. So.
Chris McAlilly:It's the number one new release.
Eddie Rester:You can pre order it now.
Chris McAlilly:Go ahead and...
Bill Simmons:That's right. That's right. You can pre order it.
Chris McAlilly:Drive it to the top, baby. Let's drive it to the top. Let's do it.
Eddie Rester:Thanks, Bill.
Bill Simmons:All right, thank you guys.
Chris McAlilly:All right. See you.
Eddie Rester:[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscrib, or leave a review.
Chris McAlilly: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]