What is the true meaning of the Lenten season for today's church leaders? In this reflective episode, the Rev. Blair Pogue explores how traditional Lenten practices can help ministry leaders navigate extreme polarization, institutional suspicion, and personal burnout. Discover how remembering your baptismal identity and spending time in Jesus' loving presence can transform your leadership approach from anxious fixing to faithful discernment.

The Lenten season meaning goes beyond giving things up—it's about returning to the core of our faith. Through beautiful reflections on the R.S. Thomas poem "The Bright Field" and the story of Moses at the burning bush, this episode invites leaders to turn aside to discover the "pearl of great price" that awaits in God's presence. Learn practical spiritual practices that will help you become "a watered garden, a repair of the breach, a restorer of streets to live in" during this sacred season.

Dear ministry colleagues in Christ, We approach the season of Lent at a time of deep polarization in America and in countries all over the world. Our heads spin as we follow the daily news.

Getting up in the pulpit each week can feel challenging and vulnerable.

What is our calling in this time of extreme partisanship, conflict, socioeconomic segregation, and suspicion of institutions, including God's Church? What do we say and how do we prepare ourselves to, in St. Paul's words, run the race of faith to the finish line? In the early Church, Lent was a time of preparation for baptism at the Easter Vigil.

The candidates for baptism studied the lit scripture lessons to better understand the life they were entering. They reflected on the meaning of baptism as well as what life in Christ would ask of them. Self-denial, sacrifice, forgiveness, repentance, and daily participation in God's life.

As I sat with the Old Testament lessons for the third Sunday in Lent, the story of Moses and the burning bush, I thought about the R.S. Thomas poem, The Bright Field. R.S. Thomas was an Anglican priest in Wales.

As you listen to the poem, I encourage you to pay attention to the words and phrases that capture your imagination and any questions it raises for you. I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field for a while and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl of great price.

the one field that had treasure in it. I realize now that I must give all that I have to possess it. Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as our youth once.

but is the eternity that awaits you. I wonder what words or phrases in the bright field captured your imagination or raised questions for you. If you could ask the poet one question, what would it be? Baptism is our entry into the household of God, where we experience the pearl of great price in community.

This Lent, I encourage you to think about your baptism and the ways God has accompanied you during your faith journey, whether you were aware of God's presence or not.

In addition to making time for prayer, self-examination, repentance, and reconciliation this Lent, I encourage you to let God love you for at least 10 minutes each day.

sit in your favorite chair, ideally by a sun-filled window.

Close your eyes and picture Jesus gazing at you with a look of love on his face.

Keep your thoughts focused on Jesus and visualize Him if you can.

I don't know about you, but it's easy for my thoughts to drift or to have trouble sitting still and letting God love me.

When I let myself sit in Jesus' loving presence for 10 minutes, I carry that love with me throughout the day.

I feel God's presence and peace. And remember that God is running the universe, not me.

Christian leaders need to model the way. I don't say that to make you feel guilty. I know there are endless things to do, sermons to write, people to visit, church building issues to tend to.

But let me gently remind you that your core work isn't keeping the building going or full.

but helping people develop a relationship with Jesus and apprenticing them into the practices that are part of his way of life. Prayer, studying scripture, hospitality, silence, solitude, stewardship, forgiveness, generosity, and reconciliation, to name just a few.

These practices help us connect with our Creator and Redeemer and remind us that God is in control and inviting us to be part of the work the Holy Spirit is already doing in our life, neighborhood, and workplace.

We don't need to initiate everything and become programmatic machines.

We need the bandwidth to help people deepen their relationship with Jesus and notice what God is up to in their lives and the lives of their neighbors.

When you were baptized, you died to your former self and rose to new life in Christ.

Even if you were sprinkled with water or were a baby rather than a teenager or adult, that's what happened. So let us take time to remember our baptism, to revisit the promises we made or that were made on our behalf.

Let us remember that life is not about actualizing our true selves as Western culture encourages us to do, but to become Christians or little Christs.

This doesn't negate who God created us to be, but enables us to focus on the kind of life Jesus is continually inviting us into.

In Lent, the revised Common Lectionary Lessons focus on baptism, covenant, God hearing the cries of God's people, repentance, conversion, reconciliation, new creation, and running the race of faith with endurance.

if we let God love us each day. God's love will give us the strength to show up as Jesus' trustworthy followers in the world.

When we do that, we shall, as our Ash Wednesday lesson from Isaiah 58 reminds us, be a watered garden.

A repair of the breach. A restorer of streets to live in.

Our lives will reflect the glimmer of the God's light refracting off the beautiful pearl of great price.

our souls will be refreshed.

and we can continue to lead God's people through the wilderness as God leads us toward the promised land.

Amen.

Pivot Podcast is a production of Luther Seminary's Faith Lead. Faith Lead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at faithlead.org.