Drs. Mark Dunwoody and Winfield Bevins: Missional Formation Coaching

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Overview

Dr. Winfield Bevins and Dr. Mark Dunwoody, co-founders of Missional Formation Coaching, joined the podcast today. Together, they have more than four decades of experience training and coaching leaders from around the world. They’ve crafted online courses, personal coaching and innovative resources that connect spiritual practices with missional practices to promote healthy rhythms that can be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the world.

In today’s conversation, we talk about how Mark and Winfield met, ways we can find new beginnings in an ever-changing world, their new book Healthy Rhythms for Leaders: Cultivating Soul Care in Uncertain Times, and ways we can begin incorporating lifegiving rhythms into our daily lives.

Let’s listen!

*The views expressed in this podcast don’t necessarily reflect the views of Asbury Seminary.

Dr. Winfield Bevins, Director of Church Planting

Winfield Bevins is an author, teacher, artist, and coach. He is director of Church Planting at Asbury Seminary and co-founder of Missional Formation Coaching. He describes himself as a “liturgical missiologist”, writing and teaching about the intersection of worship and mission in today’s world. He has trained and coached leaders from around the world and frequently speaks at conferences, churches, and schools on a variety of topics. He has a Doctor of Ministry from Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest and is pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

He is the author of numerous books including Ever Ancient Ever New: The Allure of Liturgy for a New Generation and Marks of a Movement. Winfield’s work has been featured in outlets such as Christianity Today, Publishers Weekly, Outreach Magazine, and Religious News Service.

As an artist, Winfield is dedicated to connecting the church and the arts community. He is a visual artist who enjoys painting iconography, landscapes, and portraits. Over the past decade, he has helped start numerous arts initiatives, including a non-profit art gallery and studio, and an arts program in North Carolina.

He and his wife Kay have three beautiful girls Elizabeth, Anna Belle, and Caroline and live in the Bluegrass state of Kentucky.

Mark Dunwoody
Co-founder of Missional Formation Coaching

Mark Dunwoody has over three decades of experience as an entrepreneur and consultant to non-profits and faith communities. Mark is involved internationally in the missional conversation as a speaker, strategist, and coach. He is the co-founder of Missional Formation Coaching, and co-author of Healthy Rhythms for Leaders: Cultivating Soul Care in Uncertain Times.

Heidi Wilcox, host of the Thrive Podcast

Writer, podcaster, and social media manager, Heidi Wilcox shares stories of truth, justice, healing and hope. She is best known as the host of Spotlight, (especially her blooper reel) highlighting news, events, culturally relevant topics and stories of the ways alumni, current students and faculty are attempting something big for God. If you can’t find her, she’s probably cheering on her Kentucky Wildcats, enjoying a cup of coffee, reading or spending time with her husband, Wes.

Transcript

Heidi Wilcox:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of The Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast. I’m your host, Heidi E. Wilcox, bringing you conversations with authors, thought leaders and people just like you who are looking to connect where your passion meets the world’s deep need. Today on the podcast, I talk to Dr. Winfield Bevins and Dr. Mark Dunwoody, co-founders of Missional Formation Coaching. Together they have more than four decades of experience training and coaching leaders from around the world. They’ve crafted online courses, personal coaching, and innovative resources that connect spiritual practices with missional practices to promote healthy rhythms that can be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the world. In today’s conversation we talk about how Mark and Winfield met, ways we can find new beginnings in an ever-changing world, their new book, Healthy Rhythms for Leaders and ways we can begin incorporating life giving practices into our daily lives. Let’s listen.

Heidi Wilcox:
Winfield, Mark, it is so great to have you on The Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast today. I’ve really been looking forward to it, and I’m just so grateful that you guys could be here today.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Thank you. It’s great to be here with you, Heidi. Excited about it.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
It’s great to be here. Thank you so much for your invitation.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. So I’m real curious. I don’t know if this has gotten recorded in previous podcast sessions, because Winfield, you’ve recommended some people to be on the podcast before, and they’ve been great conversation. But I asked them either before we start recording or while we’re recording, how did you meet Winfield and their answer has been through social media. I have never met him in person. So I find it really funny. So I’m curious, how did you two meet? Because you to actually are friends, you FaceTime daily. Isn’t that what you told me?

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Yeah. We talk daily. I’ll let Mark tell that story, but we’ve traveled together. We’ve been in a couple other countries together. We’ve trained leaders together. So we actually have been in person. Mark, I’ll let you speak to that.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
My wife thanks God every day for one thing, that she doesn’t really have to talk to me that much. And we’ve talked even more during the pandemic. It’s been crazy.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
Yeah. I used to work in Montreal, in Canada for a long time, and there was a church planting conference there and someone just introduced myself to Winfield and we just kept talking to each other. And then it was a case of do we go back into the conference hall or do we go for a cup of tea? And we’re like, “Let’s go for a cup of tea.” So our first time we met, we went to Tim Horton’s, it’s an institution in Canada and we had tea and I remember as well, went for the tea and we just a great chat and we just had it all from the start, because we were always talking about stuff and connecting the past to the future and actually how exciting Christianity is at the minute. And that was been our common interest over the last few years.

Heidi Wilcox:
Definitely. I love that. Skipping out on the conference to go make friends. So in your book, Healthy Rhythms for Leaders, that we’re going to talk about in just a minute, you mention that you guys did a pilgrimage in Northern England. You traveled to the ruins of what the Whitby Abbey, Durham Cathedral and the Island of Lindisfarne. First of all, I want to explain to people what is a pilgrimage, because we might not all be familiar with that. Winfield, you can take that one if you want.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Yeah, a pilgrimage, essentially you have in the early church you have in the Old Testament even, believers would go on a journey and it’d be a faith adventure if you will. And you’ve got a destination, but really the point of a pilgrimage is what happens along the way. It’s not necessarily getting there. And so historically people have traveled to cathedrals or abbeys or holy places, but really the real stuff is what happens along the way. And Mark and I were in a conference, gosh, probably five, six years ago now in the North of England. And we were like, “Let’s just go up into the North and just have an adventure afterwards.” And the Lord just really spoke to us and just did a real deep work.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
And we just visited the sites where Christianity came to England. And I think what attracted us and what really for me was really powerful about that journey was just the realization of the spiritual formation for mission. A lot of times we focus, we look at these great historic leaders and we look at the amazing stuff they did, like Patrick of Ireland and Aidan of Iona who established Lindisfarne. We look at the stuff they did, but not the formation that formed them for mission. And I think that’s what really spoke most to me and resonated with our hearts together and our friendship and our passion to help others is just the discovery of this deep spiritual formation that forms us for healthy mission into the world. So anyway, that’s my take on it. Mark.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
Yeah. That’s brilliant. And there’s a physical aspect to a pilgrimage. We go from one place to another and it’s sparked by a sense of wanderlust, it’s sparked by a sense of adventure and that innate creative ability we all have within us to create something new and bring something new to the world. So in Celtic Christianity, that wanderlust was lived out by the fact that the sun set in the West. So for the early Celts, there was nothing beyond that. So they always wondered what it would be like to go beyond that sense of that new world as they called it [foreign language 00:06:28]. And then with the spiritual sense of pilgrimage, the monks of Lindisfarne, they really lived out their lives in a rhythm of prayer, chore, meals and activities that were carried out in a prayerful state.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
And they believed that they were called towards a pilgrimage that was motivated for mostly by a spiritual quest and consequently their pilgrimage was experienced as a core spiritual practice. And now you have these times of this spiritual practice of going deeper in their faith with God flowed with spiritual fruits that create then a new missional creativity that transformed the Dark Ages at that time.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
So the missionary impulse of the Celtic Christians was really like a cultivation of a personal devotion to the Christian tradition of [foreign language 00:07:24], which means to exile one self for, to and in Christ. So you can see how the physical pilgrimage and then the spiritual pilgrimage is really a sense of trying to exile oneself to somewhere different for, to and in Christ.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. That’s beautiful. What did each of you learn about yourselves or about God that you didn’t know before you took that pilgrimage? Because it sounds like it was a pivotal moment in each of your lives.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Well, so again, Mark and I had met and had done some training together up in Montreal, it’s one of the most multicultural global cities in the West and maybe the world, and one of the most difficult, hardest places. Mark lived there. So he can speak to that. But we had this shared passion for helping leaders. We’ve worked over the last several decades just training pastors, church planners, Fresh Expressions leaders around the world, and on this trip, I think, again, it was a deep spiritual journey. It was a pilgrimage and we just really felt inspired to…

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
One of the biggest challenges in ministry and with leaders right now is burnout. And you have leaders that are constantly doing without being. They’re constantly giving out without allowing time for the Lord to pour back in. And I think that’s what really struck us the most, or me in particular was there’s something deep in this on Lindisfarne Island, Saint Aidan, who came from Iona, came with just a handful of monks to this tiny little Island in the North of England. What’s interesting is twice a day it’s surrounded by waters. The tide comes in, it becomes separated from the rest of the world. And then when the tide rolls back out, it connects back to the main land and that’s how their mission, it formed their mission. We call it rhythms of ebb and flow, where they would retreat to be with God in prayer and worship. And then when the tides came back out, they would go back out into the world in mission.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
And I think that’s what we really left that island with a sense of inspiration that this is what the world needs. This is how we can come alongside and help leaders to say, “Hey, here’s an ancient way to forge the future of the church. Isn’t just always inventing everything new, but in a way that’s rooted in the past.” And so in a way that’s rooted in deep spiritual formation. So that’s what emerged for me out of that, I think we just had this deep shared sense of one, our own spiritual formation of what the Lord was doing. But two, having worked with so many leaders ,seeing one of the greatest need is formation for mission for leaders. And that really sparked something in our imagination that we needed to share with the world.

Heidi Wilcox:
Mark, would you add anything to that? What you learned from your time there or what changed for you?

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
Yeah, I honestly remember us just sitting on the shore and we were probably tireder than we wanted to admit as well, because as Win says, we talk in the book about spiritual breathing of and healing the spirit and exhaling mission. And we realized how empowering that concept can be to leaders, because the world has changed. And during the time of Lindisfarne, of its core mission and ministry was a time when the world had changed. The worldview had changed so much after the Roman Empire had collapsed. So all the known elements had started, they were unknown now. And we thought that this will be like today. And we have lots of amazing leaders who have spiritual practices that maybe aren’t joined up to missional practices. It’s as if the church hasn’t changed for a thousand years and the world hasn’t changed and they might be leading out a place of naivety and self-interest, and maybe doom and gloom and trying to hold onto the past.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
And then we also worked with a lot of leaders who are really cool missional leaders that maybe just don’t look after their spiritual practices as much, or don’t prioritize practices as much for their spirituality. And we just thought, what would it look like to have leaders thrive by joining these two things together? What if our mission practices were a consequence of our spiritual practices? Like the ebb and flow of the tide around Lindisfarne. We also write in the book as well about how Jesus modeled that and how maybe some of Jesus’ most important ministry was done in isolation, in his quiet times by himself. So those were the things that really struck us during that trip.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. One of the things that is standing out to me, both from reading your book and what you have said about the Island of Lindisfarne, being surrounded by water two times a day with the tide going in and out is that it’s a physical representation of what is actually happening spiritually or you hope is, but also reminds me of two times a day, you have a new beach around there. And it reminds me of a story you were talking about Mark, that you enjoy going out. You live on the water in Ireland. And so enjoy going out, finding a new beach when it comes in. And I guess I’m just curious, because sometimes a new beach, it doesn’t come in gently. It can come in chaotically.

Heidi Wilcox:
So especially thinking about 2020 and everything that has happened. The world has definitely changed and it’s starting to go back to normal. I’m putting that in quotes in some places, but there are some things that will never be the same. How do we find a new beach in this time, personally and as the church as a whole and the leaders that you’re working with?

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
Yeah, that’s a great question. We talk about it in the micro of the Christian story. We can see that the church often does not like disruption and change and chaos and maybe even prays against it. Yet we can see after major periods of destruction and the church has survived pandemics, wars and whatever during the centuries, that God is actually, there’s been an exponential growth of the church, both spiritually and numerically.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
So what we’re saying is, like the story of going out to look for a new beach. I love the storms. And after a storm, I’ll go down to the waterfront, not so much to look at the desolation, but the look at the new beach. And with that it’s just really a posture of awareness and how you’re living your life and how you’re receiving the word of God and the Spirit in your life and where that hope would come from.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
And we also talk in the book about a realistic hope where everything isn’t always great and everything isn’t always bad, but it’s just a realistic hope is found in Christ and found in the lessons from the Bible and from our history and from the saints and Christians of the past. So there’s so much there actually that we don’t have to reinvent, that we can look back. If there’s something in someone’s mind that God’s really calling them towards something new and they know that in their heart, we always say dive into the Bible, see who else cared about those things. What did they do? What was their response? Because again, we see that through the Christian story, all these people had the same feelings, emotions, pains, fears, hopes, dreams as we have. So nothing’s new today. The only thing that’s new is our awareness of the opportunity that God’s offering in front of us.

Heidi Wilcox:
I think that is a beautiful way to look at it, because it’s both/and I think. It’s acknowledging and accepting that on the beach that things are different now, but also after the tide, it’s when you find the most seashells too.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
And we are emerging. We love coaching because coaching can really disrupt and empower people in the way that we maybe haven’t been doing in the church for a long time. And we’re emerging out of a worldview of church that was quite ordered. We knew what would happen if we did A, what would equal B. However, we’re now in a world where if we do A, it could be equal B, C, D, E, F, G. However we empower folks and trust them and trust the work of the Spirit in their lives. So in leadership really, we’re going from a different style of leadership. We’re moving from leadership to coaching people to find a new beach in their life, the new change and then coming alongside them to help them discover those new insights.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, definitely. So you’re leading me right into my next question. Either of you can answer this, and what is missional formation coaching that you started and when did you start that?

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Yeah. Again, the seeds of this were really, I think the lovely thing is this really has emerged out of our friendship.

Heidi Wilcox:
Lovely.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
And just our shared passion to just help leaders with these healthy rhythms. This past year, honestly, we really felt the Lord say, “Hey, one of the greatest gifts that you can give to the world to change the world is to help leaders that are going to change the world.” And the Lord just gave us a bold vision to train 10,000 coaches in the next 10 years around the world with healthy rhythms to help leaders thrive. And so missional formation coaching is essentially, it’s unique in that it’s a reflective model of coaching that focuses and brings together healthy rhythms that connect spiritual formation with missional leadership and missional creativity.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
And we feel like one of the greatest ways that we can help leaders is to one, help them by tending to their own spiritual, emotional health, their inner life, to help them with leadership rhythms, which is kind of the outer life of a leader, but also to help them with missional creativity. So I’m an artist and Mark’s a creative thinker. And so one of the things we really tap into is paradigm shifts in thinking to help leaders think creatively to engage this new world. If there’s a new beach and if there’s a new world, you need a new church and you need new paradigms of leadership.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
And so that’s kind of a three-fold framework that’s unique to our coaching process is, again, we call it missional formation, missional leadership, and missional creativity. But the big bold vision is to train 10,000 leaders who then are going to coach others. And what’s amazing is what’s emerged through the pandemic is we have leaders in close to 20 different countries taking this training. They’re to be equipped in this new emerging model that we believe is going to change the world. Mark used the term realistic hope we talk about in the book. Realistic hope isn’t just blind optimism or sticking your head in the sand saying everything’s going to be all right. We have hope because of Jesus and we’re realistic. The challenges are very real. And I think it’s going to demand rooted, formed leaders. Those are the men and women who are going to change the world. And it’s an exciting moment. It’s a challenging moment, but I think it demands healthy leaders who are going to lead healthy organizations and churches into this new era.

Heidi Wilcox:
Definitely. Yeah. For sure. Now when you say leaders, because when I first picked up your book, looked at your website to prepare for our conversation, I was like, this does not mean me. But as I started reading your book, I was like, I’m taking things away from this. So when you say leader, who do you mean as far as, what type of people are you working with?

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
I think I’ll use my analogy of the Wizard of Oz. Love telling a story. Irish people always answer a question by a story. There’s a guy called from Frank Baum and he was telling his kids a story one night before they went to bed. And it was just a made-up fairy tale story. And then the kids said, “Where is the place? Where is this place?” And he looked at his filing cabinet and he seen the letters on it and he sees O-Z. So he said, “Oh, it’s the land of Oz.” And then he made up the story of The Wizard of Oz. And then we see in the Wizard of Oz in the story how it goes. And we get to the point where the wee dog pulls back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz and realize that the Wizard of Oz is just all smoke and mirrors. And really the scarecrow and the lion, they had the courage, they had their brains, they had the heart that they had already. They just needed to go on an adventure to find out.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
And I think that’s what’s happening now with leadership. People are being empowered in the way and christian leadership in the way that’s just so encouraging. So for missional formation coaching, we have people in the health care sector. People in the healthcare sector have literally stood between us and goodness knows what and the whole world, we are so thankful for these people.

Heidi Wilcox:
For sure.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
Lots of people in the healthcare sector are using this book. And it was our heart, entrepreneurs as well. One thing we’ve seen with the pandemic is that the figures are off the chart of people here becoming entrepreneurs. Because the world changed, they seen a new base and thought I’m doing something different. So there’s lots of great stuff. However, these people still need good spiritual and missional rhythms in their life. So it’s for anybody. It’s for pastors, for church planters, for anybody, anybody has got that impulse that thinks, do you know what? I’m created here to bring something new to the world. What would that look like and how can I thrive in these times?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. For sure. I love your wording of going on an adventure. Sometimes when we talk about different things like this, just different words get used, but I love, life is an adventure, so I love being equipped to go on the adventure of life and to do it well. How does the coaching process work? Because I’m thinking of the listener who may be interested in connecting with you guys and we’ll link to your website. So what does this look like?

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Yeah. I mean really the two things, I’ll just say something Mark, and you can jump in. We offer coaching. We have a group of coaches and again, it’s emerging, it’s translated into Spanish. The book, the training is in Spanish. We offer coaching, which is one-to-one. We do consulting to just help organizations create these healthy rhythms. And so essentially a coaching call is we spend an hour with a leader once a month, typically for six to 12 months at a time or longer in some cases, where we just come alongside them and listen to their dreams and just pull out what God’s put in their heart to do and to come alongside and support them.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
And then Mark, I think it’d be great for you to speak about the actual coach certification training that we’ve developed, because that was really… This is the fun thing, is Mark and I are so different, but our hearts are the same and we brought these different… I’m a writer, so I’ve done a lot of the writing elements and designing some of the coaching element. Mark’s really been the mastermind around creating the new, innovative learning platforms that we’ve used. So when we say we offer this training, it is accessible to anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world. And I think that’s a part of the bold vision is we’re using a global platform. So I’ll let Mark speak to that. So again, we do offer personalized coaching that’s very unique to each person. We’re coaching, again, you asked a question about what is a leader? Am I a leader? You are a leader. Leading this podcast. I think we need to think creatively about what does it mean to be a leader. And that’s where bringing that creative element into it.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
I think the new economy, the new world is redefining. We don’t think of leaders as traditional CEOs over big corporation. We’re thinking of new entrepreneurial thinkers that are starting innovative, new expressions, church, new businesses, nonprofits. And that’s the exciting thing is we’re helping people bring new things into the world. Mark, I’d love for you to just talk about the training because that’s the thing that really energizes I think us, is working with people one-on-one, but also coming alongside and equipping them to equip others. And that’s where the real magic happens there is releasing others to be able to take this stuff and just give it away and create a revolution, I think is our heart.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
Yeah. I love that. And I love just how what you said. I love the fact that the crux of the message of Jesus is that you are enough, you have enough and you’re doing enough. And I think that’s such a powerful message for us to live into in a world that keeps telling us you don’t have enough, you’re not enough and you’re not doing enough. So you can see that the shadow of that keeps us away from being who we are in Christ. And I think that’s at the core of who we are in mission formation culture. The question we ask, we talk about design thing. So we frame the problem of the coaching training is still quite exclusive because the old way of doing it, you needed to gather people in the place and that’s quite complex and everything else, and yet in change management, the more complex something is the more necessary as to actually democratize and delegate the tasks to the people that are close to what needs to be done.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
So we had those questions. How can we democratize and disrupt coaching training for missional formation? And that was our quest, that was our adventure. And so we developed a digital platform that can be used on your phone or your cell phone, on your laptop, your iPad, wherever. And it really is a self-directed training platform for the missional formation coaching process. It’s incredible, this technology did not exist five years ago. And everybody that we’ve had that has done the training, there’s a part of you, you’re always vulnerable, aren’t you bringing something new to the world? So there’s a part where we’re thinking, someone’s not going to like this. It’s been incredible the change that’s happened. So people can access the coaching training on the phone. Just think what that does. It helps them reflect in everything that’s went, the missional formation process to bring about change in their own personal transformation and their leadership transform, the way they lead and the way that they can create change in their organization.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
And it’s just as simple as on your phone at any time, at any place. We’ve took the element of any time and any place and we’ve democratized coaching training to people who maybe would not have been able to get it before. And again, our dream is global. Our dream is equip 10,000 missional formation coaches that can influence a hundred people each.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, wow.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
What I say, in culture change, if you want to do something very complex, you have to make it very simple. It’s actually quite a simplistic way of signing up for training, living into this learning experience, which is really multi- functional, because it’s podcasts, it’s reading, it’s writing, it’s tasks, it’s audio files, it’s everything. So it engages all your senses. It’s really cool. And then the outcome with that has been, as Winfield just said, we’ve just transcribed into Spanish. So we’re hoping to roll that out with a Spanish partner, which is so exciting. It’s so exciting.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
So people that are doing that are people who are entrepreneurs in the healthcare sector, bishops, those types of people in senior leadership, parishes, parish teams, everything else. Have I missed anything, Winfield?

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Obviously pastors, church planters, really a lot of our work has been with church planners and leaders that are starting something new. And I think that’s our thing is this is a moment for Christians. This is this idea of leaders to bring something new into the world. And so whether that’s starting a new community of faith, a new church, a new Fresh Expressions, a new entrepreneurial business endeavor that’s going to engage people in the marketplace. This is how Christians, we’ve got to get back out there. We’ve got to influence change in culture. And so I think that’s what really excites us, keeps us up at night. Again, it’s been amazing. We’ve got leaders in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Dubai, England, Ireland, Nepal, Singapore. Gosh, Portugal, Scotland, South Africa, Thailand. Oh, the United States. Can’t forget that.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
Where’s that?

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Yeah. That’s the exciting thing is God’s really using this as a platform to equip others. And I would say, if you’re listening to this and you’re like, how can I be equipped to help others in this, this is… The other thing I think with the vision, Heidi, is so much of coach training and certification is extremely expensive and inaccessible to the majority of people. And what we’ve done with this vision is we’ve created a streamlined, accessible training that can be offered to anyone, anywhere in the world in a way that’s affordable. And that’s really the dream is we want to make what has been inaccessible to a lot of people, we want to make it accessible. We want to give it away. And that’s where multiplication happens is, on our website, we’ve got free resources, we’ve got podcasts. We just want to give stuff away to be a blessing to the body of Christ and really help fan the flame to help create these healthy rhythms.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
As Mark said, 10,000 coaches that over their lifetime will coach a hundred people, that’s a million people that could be impacted potentially with this vision. I think that’s what just excites me and what I love about it. And the training piece, again, what’s neat is through the whole time that we’ve been creating, we’ve been beta testing, we’ve been getting feedback and it’s been an exciting journey.

Heidi Wilcox:
For sure. And I don’t know about for you all, but for me, the pandemic was very difficult in many ways, but one of the ways it did show me is the gift of technology that we had. And it was there previously, but doing the podcast remotely. We didn’t do a whole lot of those in 2019, it was coming into the studio. So it expanded the reach. Did you find that to be the same for you guys? Or were you always on a more global platform?

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
We’ve always the global presence. I’ve worked in different places, Winfield and Asbury has a global presence. We always had that. I agree with you, but the technology and the digital, the irony is that we could not be doing the missional formation coaching training, without the technology. And it’s only developed in the last few years. And there is a reality that the world has changed so much and there’s so much we don’t know, because for 200,000 years as human beings, we communicated via in-person really as much as we could and we made decisions and we took… Now we’ve had 20, 30 years of this. So it’s going to be interesting to see what happens and how that technology, and again, that realistic hope that we talk about is really prevalent to the digital and technology as well and how you use technology and digital.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
So it’s opened up all these. With the software we use, we are working with leaders in places that don’t have reliable wifi. It can be downloaded on their phone and then they can be in places where no wifi. And so they have a training program on their phone and so we’re able to use technology to help form missional leaders in parts of the world that we couldn’t have done five, 10 years ago. So technology is a funny thing, isn’t it? It’s a trade-off, and I don’t think we know how to use it properly yet in terms of our emotional and spiritual health, do we?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. No, for sure. One thing that you mentioned, you’re equipping leaders to go out and train other leaders to start new businesses, new things. And with that, it comes with a lot of work, both for the person starting, you can’t start something new without a lot of hustle. And one of the things that you mentioned is balancing the doing with the being. So how can we do that? Because it’s a constant dance, right?

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
I think, again, it’s back to that idea of ebb and flow and the new reality is there is no new reality. We’re never going back to where we were. I think the future will be an ongoing, changing, rapid changing future that leaders are going to have to have these healthy rhythms. And if you’re going to be a leader that lasts, you have to go deep if you want to go long. And I think that’s what happens to most entrepreneurs, church plant. I mean, just speaking from working with hundreds, I guess thousands of church planters over the last several decades with all the training, is if leaders don’t go deep in their faith and have these healthy rhythms, they are not going to make it for the long haul. And that’s the hard, harsh reality.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
And I think in all of the uncertainty and all of the challenges, unless you have those healthy patterns and rhythms, it’s absolutely essential. I think that’s our heartbeat is to do something new, you have to have the power of the pause. You have to stop and become a reflective leader. We get into a lot of these things as like, what are those essentials that are needed? Realistic hope, contemplative action, rather than just doing, doing, doing, we pause to reflect and contemplate, pray, and we respond out of a place of prayer and reflection. Emotional, spiritual health. We get into some of those. Leaders need a higher level of cultural intelligence. Again, we could just do a whole session on each of these points, but we touch on these. Missional creativity, the ability to… What do you do when you have a new beach? You have to have the creative imagination to see what that new future looks like.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Every one of us were born as artists. And what happens is, as we get into adolescence, we start doing the real stuff. As we become adults, we do adult things and we stop dreaming. We stop thinking. We stop being creative. And what if that’s exactly how God created us to be, was to be creative and to be imaginative? And so I think one of the things we bring to this is calling leaders and Christians back to rediscovering create… That’s how we create, that’s how we do the new beach. That’s how we are going to engage the modern world is with a fresh missional creativity. Now I’ve had a lot of coffee. So we’re touching on stuff that I’m obviously really excited about.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, I love it. But I guess I’m curious because both things take time, both the doing and the being. Taking time to be still, I’m terrible at being still. I’ll just be honest. How do we find time to engage our spiritual, emotional health to be contemplative, to start some of these practices?

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Well, two things, and then I’ll lob it back over to Mark. We offer you real practices in the book. We are saying we’ve got to engage the future, but we’ve got to do it in a way that’s rooted in, again, this idea of going to Lindisfarne. Christians have done this throughout the ages. And so there are time-tested practices. So there’s something that’s called the Daily Examine, which is a daily practice of pausing at the end of day, stopping, re-centering on God, inviting the Holy Spirit to come in, reflecting on your day, what was good, what was bad? And then how do you need to respond going into the next day? So we walk through that reflective practice. It can be a daily practice.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Then we go into establishing a rule of life. Most people are just, they’ve lost whatever rhythms they had before the pandemic, and we need to establish new rhythms. And so the rule of life is a time-honored way that Christians have crafted, with the help of the Holy Spirit and reflection, daily, weekly, monthly, annual practices that root them in healthy patterns. And so we equip you in the book and in the coaching with some of these real practical tools that are time-honored, but will also help you engage these new realities and the balance you’re hitting on. Mark, what do you have to add to that?

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
You’ve just said it all. I think one thing as well is to just, when you feel sometimes that you are failing in the being is to go macro, just go back picture and realize that you’re going to be here probably for a long time. And I think sometimes we love to beat ourselves up if we’re not like someone else or living at the practice somewhere else, but we are who we are, and the thing is as well, it’s not reflection of on yourself and realizing you are, you do have a sense of being and doing in your life. You already have these personal practices, leadership practices. But what would it look like if you just reframed them on what we’ve learned from the past of Christian leaders from the past and what we learned from the Bible?

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
One thing that always I find funny is that the desert mothers and fathers, at the time, the third and fourth, fifth century, they retreated to the desert because Christianity was driving them crazy the way the church was going. So they just wanted peace and they just wanted to really be and the reality of them being was that more and more people were attracted to them because they were being. So I always think that was funny. They wanted to get away from people. However, what happened was that people were attracted to them because they were living a contemplative life. And then we see from those women and men in history how that contemplative life spread across Europe and back into Ireland and back into Europe again. And that was the crux of a different way of living out.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
So consequence of just you being and getting in touch of who you are in Christ, I see leads to doing, and it becomes a doing that comes out of your being, which then is a gentler way in your emotional and spiritual health. Just like we said in the book, if there’s any focus that the Christian leader of the future will need, it’s the discipline of dwelling in the presence of the one who keeps saying, “Do you love me?” Again, there’s another scary question from Jesus. We don’t want to know that. Do you love me? That’s such a powerful question to ask ourselves.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. We touched on this at the beginning, but the danger of always doing without being is a the recipe for burnout. And so Winfield, you shared just a little bit about your personal story of burnout and you likened it to Bilbo Baggins, which I love saying, you were describing yourself as he did, thin, sort of stretched like butter scraped over too much bread, but you took time to be still and do some reading with the text. Henri Nouwen was one of them. How did reading about where he talked about spiritual, he describes spiritual burnout as a very dark place, a spiritual death. Hearing those words, how did that awaken your soul and cause you to create some change in your own life? Because that was not maintainable. Sorry. That was a long way around that question. So I hope it made sense.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
I think the short answer, we’re talking about long journeys. Life is a long winding journey, to paraphrase Tolkien, the, The Lord of the Rings, Hobbit story, for me, this actually started a number of years ago. I was in a church plant that grew, we were successful. I was a young leader and a pastor up the road who had gone multi-site, was very successful, about an hour away from me, same age, same family, committed suicide on a Sunday. I remember it just really shook me thinking what happened? What led to this as a Christian leader, who’s successful by all the world’s standards? And it led me down a path of just looking deep into my own life and say, am I healthy? And what do I need? This is more than a decade ago. I started studying leadership resilience and longevity for Christian leaders and pastors and church planters. In the church planting world, nobody’s talking about this.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
And that’s where my own personal story. So that’s where I started looking into connecting with writers like Henri Nouwen and others. Eugene Peterson, we can just name so many different writers from different Christian traditions that are all saying, “Hey, you need to slow down and think about the long road, have this long view,” as Mark said. Again, this idea of reflective leadership is so essential. I think in a world that where everybody’s responding, everything’s on social media, instant everything, God actually, the remedy is to slow down to catch up. There’s a quote that I love and the thing that N.T. Wright said, we have to slow down to catch up with God. And so many of us were moving at such a fast pace, where Jesus has actually, when we look at the gospels, he walked on foot to each one of these miracle sites. We’re traveling at the speed of sound and where God’s saying, “Hey, slow down, get rooted, get grounded.” If we have that long-term perspective, I think it’s absolutely essential.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. I think coaching, slowing down, engaging in a more being lifestyle has always been needed, but never more so as we live through 2020, and then come out on the other side of that, for sure. So, like I said, we’ll link to your podcast, your website, your book, all the things in the show notes. One of the things that I am curious about, as we move forward, I finished your book, and as people listen to this conversation and think, wow, this is really great. I know for me, there were some things that I was like, oh, I really need to do this, like taking a moment to be still. But then, at least I’ve found in my life, it’s easy to put the book on the shelf, swipe and delete the podcast conversation when you’re done to clear out your feed, and never get it put into action. So what is one step? What is one simple step that people listening can take to start engaging in a healthy rhythm?

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Yeah, I think again, we talk about some of these practices in the book and in the coaching. I think the daily practice of the Daily Examine might be just a one wonderful thing that every person listening can do at the end of each day. And actually, I just call it the power of pause is, throughout the day, take moments to just pause a little, it doesn’t have to be long, but just stop, breathe, get mindfulness, recenter back on Christ and say, “Lord,” just pause, say, “God, come into my life. What’s going on in the world around me? Recenter me.” And that’s the Lindisfarne spirituality when the tide rolls in, we steal away to be with the Lord.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
And then when the tide rolls back out, then we go back out into the world. We’re not talking about going and joining a monastery and leaving the world. We’re saying we’re in the world. We’ve got to work. This is real time stuff. But through prayer and reflection, we’re creating pauses for these holy moments of re-centering ourselves in Christ. The problem is, if we really want to be honest, we’re doing life in our own strength, in our own power. It’s kind of like a car. When I was a kid, I would just run the tires off of my cars and my car would be driving sideways, the wheels would be so jacked up and I’d forget to get oil changes on the car. What we’re talking about is you need routine maintenances. The older I get, you keep a log, okay, oil change to the car. You need fresh oil for the car to run smooth. We need the oil of the Holy Spirit. You got to change. You got to rotate those tires regularly. Essentially that’s re-centering the automobile, so it can run properly.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
And the same thing in our life. That’s what we’re saying is, you got to have regular, you got to recenter. You got to realign and refocus and recenter in Christ.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. For sure. Well, we have talked about a lot of things and we have one question we like to ask everybody before we wrap up the show, but before we do that, is there anything else you would like to mention that we haven’t already talked about?

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
When Winfield was talking, I think as well, this is a huge systemic change in our world. Let’s not underestimate it and it’s tough for so many people. And there’s something just really powerful of, one of the practice I’ve used my whole life because I’ve traveled so much as an Irish guy, and it’s just to listen to understand, not to reply. Because when things comes at us, when messages come at us and different people’s worldviews, it’s very easy just to respond quickly. To listen to answer. Whether it’s social media, whether it’s our family, whether it’s our workplace, wherever it is, our school, just listen to understand. So it’s really great tool that I’ve used just to keep quiet.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
And there’s a great book by Thomas Merton of The Wisdom of the Desert, where this young novice goes to this older monk and says, “Hey, how do I learn the greatest wisdom of the world?” And the monk says to him, “Put that stone in your mouth for two years and come back and tell me what you’ve learned.” And I love that. Now it’s like, that could be 1,500 years ago. So it’s nothing’s changed. There’s a bit of us where we just need to listen to understand, listen to God, listen to the Spirit, listen to the people in our lives. And you can listen to people that we don’t agree with.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. So that’s beautiful. So here’s the question that we ask everybody. So I’ll ask the question and Mark, you can go first and then Winfield. But because the show is called The Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast, what is one practice that is helping you thrive in your life right now?

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
One practice? Well, I’m going to drive Winfield crazy, because I sent him photographs for badness. We just moved back to Ireland from London, UK last fall. One of the reasons I moved here is because Winfield and I, as you’ve gathered, are history geeks. And so I live in the place where the ancient saints would have made their pilgrimages from Ireland to Scotland. So I say live in that place, they would have sailed past where I live. I spend a lot of time down at the beach, at the water from walking around cliffs. A couple of weeks ago, I visited one of the oldest manmade structures in Ireland from the Bronze Age. It was wee island built in the lake beside a huge cliff. And that’s where some of the earliest people in Ireland lived. So that’s what I do. I just love getting in touch with the past and history and doing things like that.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. You’re making me jealous, too.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
I’m sending Winfield photographs of it.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Yeah, thanks for that, Mark. I think to build on that, I think get out in nature, go for walks, wherever you are, parks, just experience God in nature is so… There’s nature disorder deficit that many of us have. I think for me, I’m an artist. And so one of the key practices that I have is just, and I’ve really tapped into this over the last few years. I felt like the Lord said, “You need to make space for creativity.” And when I do art, I can leave everything behind and create. It’s for me. I call myself an artist, but whether someone else likes it or not is not the point, it’s really for me. And so I paint. I create icons. I do all sorts of painting, but again, it may be journaling, maybe writing poetry, maybe reading poetry.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
I would encourage people to just find a space for creativity in their day to just pause and do nothing, and I think that’s the beauty of walking or creating art is there’s nothing pragmatic about it. There’s no pressure. Find something in your life that you can just do just for the joy of doing it. It might be playing an instrument or learning how to play an instrument, or maybe it’s learning to paint. I had a professor the other day that reached out to me. He’s like, “Winfield, how do I start painting? Where do I start?” So I’ve started coaching him through the basics of where to begin. I do writing workshops on how to write and publish. I think just start being creative, I think is what I’d encourage people in.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Just do something just for the fun of it.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
For the fun of it, yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
I love that because people talk about, and this is totally fine, but people talk about turning their hobbies into a way to make money and that’s totally fine, but there are certain things that I’ve started doing. I learned how to crochet this past year and you can sell it, but if I start selling it, then I have deadlines and I don’t want to do it. And it’s no fun anymore.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
The magic is creativity for the sake of creativity. Now what’s amazing is I post my art on Instagram and I actually sell, people will be like, “Can I buy that? That’s amazing.” Okay, I’ll think about it. Maybe, maybe not. I love this piece or maybe on your birthday. That’s the fun thing is I just do it sheerly for the sheer joy and love of it. And it’s something that I feel like, I think that’s a place, it’s an expression of the holiness that is within us. It’s God created us to create. And there’s just something beautiful and magical that happens through that and just doing it for the love of it and for no other reason. And if that turns into something that maybe makes money, but that’s not the goal, as you said, I think that’s really important.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, definitely. We’re doing that since we can’t be walking around the coast of Ireland.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
All right, wonderful.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
I take my wife with me and she’s like, “Whatever, can we just go?” I’m like, “Oh, look, there’s an ancient tomb. Look at the way those rocks are formed. That was a standing stone and there was a tomb under there maybe 2,000 years ago.” And she’s like, “Yeah, can we go and get our coffee now?”

Heidi Wilcox:
I love it. I love it. Well, you guys, this has been great. Thank you so very much for taking the time today. I’ve just so enjoyed our conversation.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
Brilliant.

Dr. Winfield Bevins:
Thanks so much, Heidi. It’s been great to be with you.

Dr. Mark Dunwoody:
Thanks, Heidi. Thanks so much.

Heidi Wilcox:
Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me for today’s conversation with Mark and Winfield. This conversation challenged me as I hope it did you, to take time to establish a healthy rhythm in my life. Just one step in the direction of more health. If you haven’t already be sure to pick up a copy of their book, Healthy Rhythms for Leaders. And if you like what you heard, be sure to thank Mark and Winfield for being on the podcast today. As always, you can follow us in all the places on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at @Asbury Seminary. Well, that’s it for me today, friends. Until next time I hope you’ll go do something that helps you thrive.