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The Platinum Rule for Christmas

by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Dec 21, 2021

Ah, Christmas. The most wonderful time of year… Until it’s not.

The rush to get gifts and mail them, to make travel plans, to cook, and clean, and decorate – it can be a very stressful time. And that’s not even mentioning the stress that being with people can bring.

If you’re stressing about being with friends and family that you may not have seen for months or years this holiday, read on to learn how to one-up the Golden Rule and have the most peaceful season ever.

Wait, you can one-up the Golden Rule?

Yes! And thankfully, it’s easier than it sounds. From a very young age we were all taught the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Treat others the way you want to be treated.

But sometimes the Golden Rule doesn’t go far enough.

The Golden Rule assumes that the way I want to be treated is how others want to be treated. That the way I prefer to communicate applies to all people. And that underneath, our motivations are the same. Experience shows that’s just not true.

Enter the Platinum Rule

The Platinum Rule asserts that we need to treat others the way they want to be treated. It acknowledges that we each have different motivators, stressors, goals, fears, and priorities.

For instance, just because you like direct communication and want to move at a fast pace, doesn’t mean that everyone around you is comfortable with that. Or just because you value time to reflect and ruminate on decisions and are an emotionally geared person doesn’t mean that others share this perspective.

This is a large part of what we teach our Creating a Culture of Renewal® cohorts. We’ve worked with church leaders over the past 15 years and have found that by understanding these concepts and being aware of differences in communication styles, our participants are able to move from frustrating relationships to fruitful conversations with those they once found problematic.

I thought you said this would be easy…

I stand by that. By practicing and employing empathy and emotional intelligence, you will quickly find that you can effectively communicate with even the most difficult people in your life.

Begin to notice how others are communicating with you and do likewise. When those around you communicate in a direct and fast-paced manner, try doing the same with them. Don’t worry about offending them, they will likely appreciate your efforts to operate in their preferred way. When those around you need time to process all of the details and facts before making a decision, give them that time. Being insistent doesn’t give them the space they need to clearly think through their options and feeling restrained in this way can easily lead to unnecessary arguments.

Do your best to ascribe good motives to each person. Understand that they may just have a different way of doing things. Set aside your personal communication preferences. Instead, focus on what they are actually saying. As you get more comfortable with the Platinum Rule, gently point out how your preferences and theirs vary, without making either of you wrong or right. Assume the Spirit is equally alive and well in each of you, and that you are each friends of Jesus. Understand the implications that having to be right has and decide if you would rather be right, or have a productive relationship with another.

Platinum Rule Christmas

The Polarization Trap

We now live in a world where polarizing beliefs and values have crept into every segment of our lives. Many people are content with maintaining the “us vs. them” mindset, as long as it means that their view is “right” and someone else gets to be “wrong.”

These polarizations are false dichotomies. The more you buy into us vs. them, the more you solidify a false construct. It’s not that we don’t have very different ways of looking at the world, embracing change, or understanding holiness. We do. However, these different ways are not necessarily sinful…they are simply different. All the polarizations that exist now are temporary. Did you know that churches once fought over whether indoor plumbing should be allowed? Or if women could wear pants? The act of choosing up sides takes us father and farther from Jesus’ command to love one another as I have loved you. Instead of insisting on your preferences practice finding, identifying, and focusing on common underlying values.

Ready to give it a try for yourself?

As you move into the holidays, focus your efforts on acknowledging and understanding the ways in which you’re different from those around you. Be aware that while your approaches may not be the same, you have the ability to offer love and understanding anyway. Work to find the middle ground and see what develops once you move into that space.

Still need some more guidance? I’m hosting a Platinum Rule Leadership for Changing Times workshop in January that explores these concepts in more depth. This fun and interactive 3-session workshop promotes self-awareness, forgiveness, compassion, and understanding.

Modern Day Magi

by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Dec 22, 2020

Astrologers have an unusual place in the Bible. Forbidden figures in the Old and New Testaments, these pagan priests or Magi occupy a place of honor in the bible.

“After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east, we observed his star at its rising, and have come to worship him, to pay homage to him.’”

The word “Magi” comes from the same Greek word that gives us magic and magician. These Magi, however, weren’t the kind of magicians that pulled a rabbit out of a hat, or sawed a woman in half. They weren’t interested in tricking people or entertaining them.

A Different Kind of Magician

Rather, these magicians interpreted dreams and read the stars. They sought wisdom from the world within them and the world around them. Back in those days, astrologers weren’t interested in one’s daily horoscope: “This is a good day to make new friends” or “Beware those who wish to take advantage of you in business dealings.” Instead, they were intensely interested in the connection between the movement of the heavens and the rise and fall of leaders.

To them, as to many in the ancient world, a new star signaled the rise of a new leader. “We observed his star at its rising,” they said of Jesus. And so the Magi set off to follow this new star. This week, many of us have seen that same star, or one like it: a brilliant planetary conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter.

Bethlehem Star and Other Celestial Bodies

It’s interesting that this year, of all years, recreated the Bethlehem star. It’s not just that we need a sign of hope from the heavens; we do. We’ve been through a lot. It’s that 2020 has been a year stuffed full of significant celestial movements. This year has given us not only a conjunction that recalls the star the Magi saw, but eclipses, planetary retrogrades, transits, and the end of certain planetary cycles.

Just like meteorologists predict the weather and climatologists predict long term changes in weather patterns, both astronomers and astrologers predict the movements of the heavens. The latter, who I am calling Modern Day Magi, also seek to tell us what those movements mean. In fact, astrologers have been predicting that 2020 would be a raucous year full of both upheavals and breakthroughs. They couldn’t say exactly what events would unfold. But they were not surprised by what has transpired.

Retrogrades, for instance, prompt you to review the past, reconsider your decisions, and slow your pace so that you can reevaluate your life. We’ve had five of those this year, each one lasting weeks at a time. Eclipses have their own unique impact: they hide and reveal at the same time and so they are thought to open your eyes to revelation. We’ve had five of those too this year.

Your Own Rising Star

I don’t know what the Modern Day Magi are seeing for 2021 as they map the movements of celestial bodies. But I do know this. Just as the Bethlehem star of long ago foretold the rising of Christ, so the heavens are calling you to embrace your own rising star.

Apparently, you not only responded to the Spirit of God this year, you made good use of the retrogrades and eclipses. Because even as you have grieved and mourned the loss of loved ones and the old ways of life, you tapped into an inner creativity you did not know you had. The pandemic freed your congregations, even if temporarily, from the confines of buildings, and of limiting beliefs. You discovered that you could use technology to connect in creative ways and offer worship in innovative ways. You built new networks and reached more people.

What Comes Next?

What comes next? In 2021, take a page from both the ancient Magi and the Modern Day Magi. Pay attention to the movement of the heavens, as well as the Spirit of God within you; and get ready for the journey of your life. Your congregation, your community, your people need your leadership more than ever.

As part of your rising-star-journey, I invite you to download your own copy of the DARE to Dream Like Jesus plan. It will give you a structured approach to maximize your leadership for the times we live in.

How to Have the Best Christmas Ever

by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Dec 15, 2020

There’s nothing quite as special as Christmas Eve services. A darkened sanctuary lit with candles and the singing of Silent Night. The sacred anticipation of “Lessons and Carols.” The joy of a live nativity. The fun of a Christmas pageant. Worship centers crowded with families you see once a year. A festive feeling everywhere you look. No matter how you have celebrated Christmas in the past, Christmas 2020 won’t be the same. Instead, a socially distanced, mask-wearing or livestreaming experience is likely on your docket. With the losses and stresses of the year, it may even be a blue Christmas for you and your people.

Even with all the changes 2020 has wrought, you can still enjoy Christmas. In fact, this Christmas Eve may be your most memorable one yet.

When it comes to tradition, it’s the exception that proves the rule. This year will be the year to launch new traditions. Just as families and communities are figuring out how to get into the Christmas spirit in brand new ways, churches will be doing the same.

As you approach the fourth Sunday of Advent, and Christmas Eve draws closer, I’d like to share with you what we teach in Creating a Culture of Renewal when it comes to charting a new course. We call it connecting the dots. That includes a Christmas Eve you’ll always remember.

Customs and Traditions

First, connect customs and traditions of the past with the present. For instance, if Christmas Eve has meant candlelight services in your setting, invite people to supply their own candlelight during Zoom or livestreamed services. If the singing of Silent Night has been a staple during your Christmas Eve services, but group singing is not currently allowed in your setting, teach a set of simple movements to accompany a soloist that will allow people to participate without opening their mouths. Maybe you’ve conducted an annual service of Lessons and Carols but won’t be meeting in person or virtually. If so, an order of worship distributed to homes can give families the opportunity to bring the tradition home, and sanctify their own living spaces with these sacred scriptures and songs.

Spiritual Values

Second, identify the spiritual values that have guided your traditions. Perhaps spending time as a community in worship, putting children first, or being in ministry with the community have been your guiding principles. How do you find new ways to lift up these time honored practices? Look for new ways to share your connection.

My home church, which is not meeting face to face these days, is delivering simple origami projects each week of Advent to each household. While the project is delivered in a brown paper bag, the fact that it’s accompanied by a spontaneous porch visit makes it truly special. In this season of social distancing, these kinds of visits are a welcome break from the forced isolation of the pandemic.

Get Others On Board

Third, get other people on board with the new traditions you are starting. No one likes unnecessary change when it means ditching time-honored traditions. But these days, change is a given. Make it more fun, and more doable by gathering a team who can work on this together. Then, with unified voice, remind your congregants of the traditions you have practiced in the past. Be clear how they will need to be adapted this year. Finally, talk about how you’d like to create new traditions that capture your congregation’s values, connecting the past and the present.

Christmas Through Jewish Eyes

To help you appreciate the times we are in, join me for a spiritual retreat this week: Christmas through Jewish Eyes. We’ll be looking at the themes of the season—light, family, and salvation—from a brand new angle. I developed this retreat to encourage your heart, deepen your spiritual grounding, and gently expand the ways you approach familiar topics. I hope you’ll join me for this brief retreat.

Best Christmas Ever

This year will be different than Christmases past, no doubt. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be the best Christmas ever. In fact, next year, when you look back on Christmas 2020, it will be with a new perspective, and a new appreciation for whatever passes as normal next year. Who knows, but the ways you celebrate the holidays this year may become your best traditions yet. In the end, opening your hearts to Jesus, and your lives to the Holy Spirit, is what it’s all about anyway.

In Praise of Christmas Lights

by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Dec 8, 2020

Almost overnight, enchantment stole through my neighborhood and city. Here and there, dotting homes and yards, Christmas lights appeared. A mismatched string of blue and white draped over the fence across the street. A twinkling porch two doors down. A riot of color in the park across from the hospital. Signs of irrepressible hope emerging from a dark night of the soul.

Christmas Lights and the Pandemic

The same thing is happening in cities and towns across the globe. In the midst of the pandemic, hope is showing up in the most mundane and innocent of ways: in Christmas lights. Whether in low wattage hope flung across a window or in a dazzling display that illuminates an entire yard, Christmas lights say it all: death, disorientation, denial will not have the last word.

I write in praise of Christmas lights: echo of the star of Bethlehem, reminder of the light of the world, symbol of childlike joy. If the world ever needed these simple reminders of light, of family, of salvation, we need them now.

In fact, the pandemic has caused us to long for the normal, unassuming things we once took for granted: a hug, a handshake, a smile. How we miss the unselfconscious gathering of people and sharing the same air as others. Not to mention worship and song, even sporting events. We miss visiting the sick in the hospital, and bedside goodbyes when death is near. Oh, to sit close to someone, to snuggle a grandchild, to pass the peace! The sheer normalcy of going to work. Yes, all of these things have changed dramatically in 2020. Christmas lights remind us of enduring hope.

We want normal, but it’s still a long way off. At least not until a vaccine becomes widespread, and maybe not even then. That means Christmas this year won’t be easy or normal for many people. Loved ones will be missing around the tables. Festive celebrations will take on a decidedly different tone. Christmas Eve services will likely be on Zoom. Probably Santa and the elves will even be wearing masks.

Spiritual Grounding

Maybe that’s why I found the Christmas lights in my neighborhood strangely grounding. Twinkling reminders that someday it would all be okay again. And that in the meantime, it was okay to let out my breath, and to relax a little.

We can all use some spiritual grounding at this time of year. To help you get through this season, I am offering an online spiritual retreat to prepare you: Christmas through Jewish Eyes. In this three-part experience, you’ll have the chance to explore the connection between Chanukah, Christmas and the light of Christ (session one), the connection between the Holy Family and your family (session two), and new and ancient meanings of salvation (session three). All shared through a Jewish reading of Christmas texts, carols, and stories. I hope you’ll join me for a soulful journey this Advent.

If ever we needed Christmas, 2020 is the year. So as Advent unfolds and gives way to Christmas proper, may your hearts be as bright and illumined as simple Christmas lights.

Machetes, Guns and the Hidden Message of Epiphany

by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Dec 31, 2019

When a machete-bearing assailant broke into a private Hasidic home to “get” the Jews who were celebrating Chanukah there, his move was both horrific and ironic. That the safety and merriment of a home could be violated by such hate is unthinkable. That it happened at Chanukah is incongruous. Chanukah is at its core a holiday of religious freedom whose eight nights of light commemorate Jews’ ability to worship God in their own way—free and unfettered. This terrorist served to heighten the awareness of our need for Chanukah.

In the Jewish pantheon of holidays, the Festival of Lights is relatively minor. Yet it has taken on even greater importance in a Christmas-centric culture. In light of this year’s increasing number of anti-Semitic incidents, it is sure to take on even greater significance.

When an armed assailant drew a gun at West Freeway Church and shot down two people on the Sunday after Christmas, his move was also horrific and ironic. That the safety of sacred worship might be interrupted by gunfire is reprehensible. That it took place directly after Communion is absurd. His violence reinforced our need of the Gospel, of the Kingdom.

Both acts of violence meant to snuff out something: a sense of belonging, safety, connection. Undoubtedly, lives are forever shattered. At the same time, something equally sacred, equally unshakable, is also taking hold.

Instead of highlighting the “otherness” of the victims, these horrific acts reinforced a further irony: the inhumanity of the perpetrators. Their destructive, life-denying actions do not mirror who we strive to be.

The forces of darkness these men harnessed are the very ones that Advent laments and which Epiphany fully addresses. Rise of Skywalker (the latest Star Wars movie—which I swore I wouldn’t see but am ever so glad I did) shows the value of focused and intentional resistance to the forces of darkness. Victory comes not from matching outrage with outrage, but by matching the calculated and cunning desire for power with a focused insistence on using The Force and its light. Rise of Skywalker showed that even the strongest proponents of light have seeds of darkness within them, and even the strongest proponents of evil can break free of its grip.

This Epiphany, we celebrate the Incarnation. This ancient holiday celebrates that even in the midst of machetes, guns, and hate–God breaks through into our human experience. All that is good and holy and divine are borne in the life, body, and witness of Jesus of Nazareth.

This year, Epiphany has a deeper, more surprising message for us. Just as God breaks through into human experience through Jesus, so too through us. Made in the image of God, called to be Christ-like in every way, we too are designed to bear both humanity and divinity. To have a body is to have a soul. To have a soul is to bear the incarnation of God, to be a hidden slice of the divine.

In the face of increasing public violence, and the inhumanity it reveals—it’s common to respond with either seething outrage or frozen immobilization. I get it. I have felt both. I’m just not sure either of those ways moves us sustainably toward the kingdom.

But there is a third way. It comes by tapping into the promise of Epiphany. Together with Jesus, following his lead and direction, we can tap into our inner divinity. We can dare to co-create miracles with God. We can transform seething outrage into focused action and let frozen immobilization melt into collaboration and community.

I invite you to bring your Epiphany dreams for a new decade to our January course: DARE to Dream Like Jesus. Let your dreams take hold as you explore your authority, your agency and your ability to bring the impossible to life. Click here for more information.

Christmas and the Last-Minute Leader

by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Dec 17, 2019

If you are a last-minute leader, you’re not alone. You’re not the only one putting finishing touches on a worship service, sermon, play, piece of music, bulletin or outreach effort. In fact, you can be forgiven for thinking your timing is right in line with the theme of the season. With no room at the inn, Mary and Joseph are ill-prepared for Mary to comfortably give birth to Jesus. Much of Jesus’ early life, too, is spent on the fly avoiding Herod.

As Biblical as being last-minute maybe, there’s a cost for today’s church leader. We are in danger of missing the very spiritual qualities we are preparing to share with others.

Last-minute activity, done under pressure, activates the release of adrenaline. Once adrenaline is released, it gives us a heart-pounding rush, energizing the system. There’s a feel-good component to that. At the same time, it shuts down the part of the brain that is tuned in to the mood. And it messes with the heart’s rhythms, creating discordance instead of coherence. The ragged heart beat that results disconnects us from the people we love, unable to relax or connect in meaningful ways.

I remember one Christmas Eve in particular, where I had been scurrying around like the proverbial chicken with my head cut off. I had successfully managed one urgent matter, calmed down two anxious people, and counseled three lonely people. I felt very useful, but strangely empty. When all was said and done, I had many things I could check off the to-do list, but I had no sense of peace in my soul.

Here’s the thing: there will always be last-minute things we cannot control. There’s something about Christmas that seems to bring the unexpected to the forefront. At the same time, there are many things we can control. For instance, there are no surprises about when Christmas comes. Christmas Eve comes like clockwork on December 24. Christmas Day falls reliably on December 25. Advent is always the four weeks leading up to Christmas. We can plan for these holidays, folks.

Here are some last-minute recommendations for the last-minute leader.

First, congratulations on managing all the things that need your attention at this time of year; good job! Give yourself some love; this is not an easy calling.

Second, consider all the people you will be serving this Christmas. It may well be the highlight of your year—a full sanctuary, new people coming in, beautiful music, people who know the stories and the words. Pray for these folks in joyful anticipation. Bless them. Open your heart to them.

Third, spend some time between Christmas and New Year relaxing. Getaway for at least a little bit. Give attention to your own spirit, your own family, and your own well-being. Play and rest. During this time, I like to reflect on the wins and losses of the previous year, to count my blessings, and write out my celebrations. Once Christmas is over, spend time on this most important of activities. It will help you set the stage for a powerful 2020.

Fourth, don’t wait til Fall 2020 to look up the dates of Thanksgiving, Advent, Christmas and New Year. Map them out now. Think through the timing of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Watch Night services, and surrounding Sundays. Make note of the lectionary readings. Begin to collect stories and let your imagination connect with the scriptures. Put your notes where you can easily find them next year. And then, breathe deep. After all, Lent is coming.

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