350K. That’s the amount of salary I’ve been without since Woodthorpe Petroleum Ltd. ran into concerns only courts can settle, as we’ve sat before the masters and judges who have perpetually agreed with us. But, over the last 3.5 years our reputations and bottom line have taken major hits, which is a long time on lock down for leaders, families, companies, and a global vision. It’s pushed the angry-o-meter off the charts a few times.

When we first launched, I put as much into the company as I am in debt now, which isn’t a lot by oil standards, but it’s what I had available to share at the time. My shares are still in the company, and the company has solid value, and we are still willing to rebuild it with the right partners, or it will be sold at a bargain basement price, or it will die. For those good people who invested with us, I’m sorry it’s taken so long.

If it was just business, hey these things happen all the time. This went down as the global economic crisis crippled Wall Street’s resolve. It’s a miracle we’re still alive really. In this climate, bankruptcies are understandable, they happen daily. We’ve asked ourselves repeatedly, “Is this the day we can’t carry this any longer?” Yet, for some reason our little oil co. is still here. While the future is unclear, I’m going to peel back a layer, and give you a glimpse between the lines.

The very week I started with Terry Woodthorpe, with the ink on my business card still wet, (having Terry begin to teach me an industry, where he’s worked for all the majors, put in charge of massive budgets and large teams, a solid 45 year career), I had a charismatic guru sit me down before a creepy secretive guy, a friend and compatriot of his, who told me that if I invested with him and his henchmen, there would be huge short term payback, oodles of cash coming out my ears, blah blah blah… I didn’t like the guy at all, and in my books, the guy who introduced me to him degraded in value (significantly) from that day onward. For this, and various other undisclosed reasons, that guru doesn’t like me very much; I’ve held him, and those he’s with, to account on the issues. None of them have spoken to me in years.

The trend continued, charismatic gurus toting themselves as world bankers and spiritual fathers kept showing up at my door. They all walked in the same circles and spoke the same coded ciphers. Their system was tight, yet as far as I was concerned they were immature and borderline. Their dogma was terrible, their agenda stark, the kind of stuff that threads the self-entitled alongside the self-enthroned. I just didn’t know at the time how pervasive their influence and scope was, but my radar was on full alert.

We were not just one oil company dealing with one work related litigation. For years, we, and many other legitimate leaders in various nations, have been dealing with a highly-organized, yet fraudulent, hydra. If one of them is wrong the whole house of cards might fall all the way up the hill, so they cut off that head and regrow another two. They are a self-serving pyramidical system, everyone else is unfortunately wrong while they remain, miraculously, at the top of their game, and somehow, on a righteous agenda. They keep their minions in the dark from platforms, while they work their magic in the back rooms… How to put this? Let me come at this from another angle.

When we launched the oil company, everyone listening to our story knew of our global vision, to build a bank and venture capital group around 10,000 young professionals and global change agents (discovered internationally, developed locally, deployed globally), bringing them into their own global working group (circles of quiet, abbeys of prayer and work, and cities of refuge), where they would eventually craft their own governmental, legal and financial constructs all-together; a hybrid international for-profit economic engine based on common values leading to common structures; ora et labora, prayer and work… headquartered in Canada, three international offices in the first global wave.

We were going to seed this vision ourselves as an oil company, put our money where our mouths were. Other high level leaders were joining our team because of all of this, doors were opening in many nations. It wasn’t just about energy, but the energy sector was the first of, eventually, 12 guilds. En route, we were not saying one thing and doing another. We were doing exactly what we set out to do, and we are still working it out now, with no funding, and despite the long-lasting corrosive attack on our character and credibility.

As we first came on the scene, a bit like The Commonwealth of Virginia blasting up from the deep fathoms below, we found ourselves in the flank of our enemies, they were spies on the inside as it were with their hands on the proverbial button, and they were right there in tandem with us, and we saw them as they saw us, and it wasn’t war games, it was real time scenario, where each second ticking feels like eternity. As they attempted to take control, every move, every word, every decision had to be measured. Who was better prepared to prevail? Sic Semper Tyrannis… Who was attempting to assassinate who? Who had the correct recon? Who was on message? Who was going to decode and expose the other? Who was a peaceful deterrent? Who was spewing nuclear waste?

Then, the propaganda machine went into overdrive. Throughout the bombardment and fallout, there was an insidious invader, a rats-in-the-grain pestilence raining down fire and brimstone. We didn’t go looking for it, but it was coming down on us all none-the-less.

Read your Old Testament, it’s how things go sometimes! And just because we have a few choice letters of Paul’s in the New Testament doesn’t mean we can leverage the grace out of every phrase and tactic of the Apostle to the Gentiles, who, by the way, was in this very same kind of firefight.

Wrecking balls have their place, as do swords and trowels. As for all the wunderkind peanut shells on the floor of the circus, I call your bluff and raise this standard. Your smoking guns have aggravated this hive of busy bees. We’re patient. It’s not our call. You’re just not getting access. But, once you run out of smoke, you may just want to take a few steps back…..

And I must be an acrobat
To talk like this and act like that.
And you can dream, so dream out loud
And you can find your own way out.
And you can build, and I can will
And you can call, I can’t wait until
You can stash and you can seize
In dreams begin responsibilities
And I can love, and I can love
And I know that the tide is turning ’round

U2, Acrobat

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Remember that Jesus spent only a few hours raised up there, jammed into the gateway of eternity, where they bled, suffocated, and killed him; God murdered on a tree, nailed into place. It wasn’t suicide, wasn’t about an absentee Father, or cowardly disciples, or even demonically empowered bloodlust. In obedience, He willingly passed through them all in silence and weakness, actually doing something about everything, the Godhead on assignment! He had nothing more to say. What was done would prove, yet again, that which was from the beginning.

Without a perpetual commitment to preaching the incarnation of Jesus and cross of Christ, the most lofty voices in the Church become the least practical. Pride will skew a year end report, it will flat out lie to donors and investors, it will preach your favor and profit at the expense of your interdependence and transparency. The Church does not exist within a non-profit model, that model is not the blueprint of heaven, neither is the free market.

Your own process blinds you. Go ahead, set up shop between heaven and earth, entitled and enthroned, make promises the people can’t keep, create margins the  people are called upon to fund, leverage what you call grace at the expense of what you call faith — I am not interested in your brand. I am just one sheep among many who catches the scent of burnt wool wafting around the pasture. Some of you have actually become pretty good at it, you shave them first, sell off their wool, then brand them, but nothing grows back the same way does it? Your searing them does not go unnoticed. Your deception and manipulation is well noted. And they will heal, eventually, if they are delivered from you, and they will be!

You want vindication and stability? Then preach Christ alone, using scripture alone, which can only be done by faith alone, to the glory of God alone, because of His grace alone. Return to what is written, do not go beyond it. Be committed to it, disciplined into it, harnessed by it… And do you know what will happen at first, you’ll be powerless, humiliated, you will fail miserably before you’ll be allowed back into the rhythm and flow of His authority.

All power is in Christ, who alone is responsible for His own Word. If you are in His house, before His throne, and have access to His armory, treasury and vineyards, then please tell me all about the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, the Bright Morning Star Himself, who is Faithful and True, the torrent of Justice!

Teach me what he loves! Teach me what He hates! Teach me, rebuke me, correct me, and train me in His righteousness! Speak to me from that edge of eternity, where His Spirit fills a body and empowers a human voice, where many voices are heard in chorus saying the same thing at the same time in that same place, around the throne of the One!

Yes, they who have ears do hear what the Spirit is saying… And along with believing His blessings come the warnings of His wisdom. He will speak on His own behalf over His own people. The tables are always turning. Long enough we have wanted to know, wanted to hear something fresh and for right now. Well, now, yet again, we are being shown what was already written, what has already been known, hearing what has already been heard, what has already been revealed to the entire Church and her manifold history… Oh, it’s downright humbling that it’s already written! It’s humbling not to go beyond what He said in His own blood!

There are more rooms in His interior castle, more steps up His ladder of faith, greater degrees of His school– higher, longer, wider, and deeper thresholds of His love; as He leads us back through all forms and substances, all spaces and times, which inevitably, is the end of all means.

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How does one become confident? Where does faith even start? Many over-qualify “hearing” the ῥῆμα found in Romans 10:17, at the expense of all the other Old Testament references in the rest of the chapter. Faith gets leveraged all over the map, becomes secretive, code-based, exclusive, branded, and insider– which is the antithesis of a shining beacon of light on a hill. Who bottles and sells sunlight? You might tinker with a small solar grid, but won’t harness a cosmic storm.

First off, faith in the self, or the system, is a bit of an oxymoron, its unfinished, not near enough. Fidelity is exercised in community, the foundation of confederations, where covenants, treaties and truces are signed. The word treaty is based on foedus, which leads to bread crumb building blocks like Foedus Cassianum, which is more than just a historical reference, it’s a cypher.

Confidence does not start with the “trust me, believe in me, follow me, sign up” kind of atmosphere that supposedly germinates faithfulness in others. It’s not “I have the power, the hammer, the forge, the fire”. We all have witnessed many fall on the sword of “just trust me, I know what I’m doing, my motivation is pure”. No, that is not where the flame is first lit, it’s not the coal bed, it’s not nearly elemental enough. It’s actually dangerous, erroneous, even porous, a hairsbreadth from a major breakdown, a posture already full of hairline fractures, mix all the metaphors you want. Put a number of  building blocks on top of those self-aggrandizing statements and eventually, but inevitably, as Shakespeare put it in Henry IV, “Prophetically do forethink thy fall.”

The threshing floor of confidence, is humility. The benchmark teaching on humility is the kenotic (see link) self-emptying of Jesus Christ in Philippians 2 (notice how the word κενός is translated in various New Testament contexts). Words like kenosis informed Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism, that anxiety and dread are nothing and the fear of nothing– again it’s all circular, sympathetic antipathies and antipathetic sympathies. Danish, Latin, Greek, English, even Hebrew all have their limits. Music is a sacramental liaison of words, but to get up on the stage to hit that note, one had better have confidence, but I digress, or do I?

This is why we have to open our lives to one another, we can’t hide… we actually do live on display whether we like it or not, it’s part of being embodied. There on display before others, can I be confidently wrong? Based on the pure definition of confidence, no I cannot. I can be brazenly stupid. I can put what I call self-confidence in the wrong people, places and things. But, I can’t be confident in the wrong, that is not confidence, it is nothing, it is nothing put into nothing! Those who prop up invisible scaffolding around the wrong things, the wrong postures, the wrong praxis, they may appear confident, they may look like they have faith, but in fact, I’ll tell you right now, what they have and are literally full of, is fear. They are deluded, deceived, and dense, which reminds me of P.T. Forsyth teaching about hell being ceaseless, passionate, unending prayer, addressed to nothing and obtaining nothing.

Every one of us has to be willing to identify with the deluded, deceived and dense within ourselves, which means we cannot strive toward being confident enough. Once we lay it all down, and get as low as it all, for however long it takes to be made worthy of whatever gift and calling, we actually learn to become confident in the glory of God alone, another pillar of the Reformation, the great transference of all allegiances.

Is my confidence in God? Does my confidence come from God? Have I truly heard God? It all comes down to humility… I humble myself, or I do not. What is the foundation of obedience?

Maybe someone disagrees, “No, without exercising faith I cannot discover humility!” Well, that’s your mountain to climb. And that action, that exercise, that momentum, isn’t faith… it’s something else. Your brain can wrestle with the process all it wants. I’m not going to convince you, that’s not my job. And then you say, “Why, why should I trust you anyway? What makes you so confident?” It’s not me in your face at all, pilgrim. Yes, I’ve become confident in God’s grace and mercy, and am presently here with you as a witness of his glory, majesty and power…. because of a process God began.

Trip over all kinds of teaching on faith… it’s abstract, an exercise, it’s personal, and then a lot of people come together with the same faith, and they listen for God in one another, and that’s corporate fun, and everyone is standing up and sitting down at the same time, and all of that… it can also be a very shallow hiding place.

And it’s not that faith isn’t the thing… it is, but at the expense of other things we cheapen it, and thus erode our confidence in God and one another. We proof text things like, without faith it’s impossible to please God… Fine, then qualify it this way, without humility, finding faith is impossible, because God stands over-against the proud. And if God opposes the proud, guess what, they are not the least bit confident, are not the least bit full of God’s power– His dunamis, His dynamic Spirit energy that cannot be controlled or manipulated, His Word. No matter how loud they are, or how big their unopened Bibles wave around, they are gatekeepers of nothing, and the fear of nothing!

We are welcome to be humble participators in spiritual environments like the acts of repentance and forgiveness, the eating and drinking of the bread and wine, the washing of feet, the waters of baptism, the receiving of the teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. We say these are corporate expressions and personal exercises of our faith, and yes they are… but we grow into such confidence because of a much deeper fundamental.

Jesus told them, commanded them to put their faith in him. And they did, and yet at the same time, didn’t do it– it was a wrestling, a mind-numbing difficulty… years of it, back and forth, and he was relentless, calling them slow, wondering how long he had to put up with them… he put it a lot of ways, put them in positions where all the ugly came out, all the childish, all the preconceived and misconstrued exposed right out in the open… He left them ideologically naked all the time… What was he after? What was he doing?

He was showing them the way, and it all started with him emptying himself, and if he had never done that very thing, the most faithful and confident one of all, if he hadn’t become nothing…. hadn’t clothed himself in our nothingness, then we could never see or hear any of God… He, God, humbled Himself. period. full stop.

He was and is the embodied Faithful Confidant, full of the Holy Spirit, who’s fruit is faithfulness. The Faithful One was born to be believed, and is trustworthy. And when he was conceived, why was Mary chosen, favored? As God breathed within her, then in her arms, then took his last breath upon the cross, and then his next one– Mary remained humble, and as her family grew, so did her confidence, the outworking of His Spirit’s power in what was to quickly become the Church.

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It’s not about what I feel. It’s not about what I know. It’s not about who I am. It’s not about what I can grasp. It’s not about needing or wanting. It’s not about leading or deferring. It is patience, which is learned from God’s Spirit. It is obedience and availability, the tests of faithfulness. It is the symphony, tapestry, and feast. The Word approaches. I am at rest. I am not alone. I am surrounded and filled. I want nothing. I lack nothing. The weight. The depth.

Just breathe. Don’t leave.

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Sometimes we take risks and hits, partly because loved, welcomed, educated, and skilled people invited into the core of our prayer and work have not been accountable, having walked away from responsibility for their words and actions, exposed at the character level when the pressure was on corporately — freely disqualifying themselves, not by their own rules of engagement, but by the deeper kingdom thresholds they have not yet been allowed to cross.

On the wrong side of such thresholds some say, “Basing everything on relationship for me means that you can’t expect anything at all from me, while I decide what you being in relationship with me means for me.” Relationship becomes a smooth word placed mid-sentence, people nodding agreement en route, willingly overlooking context and destination.

A slam poet might preach, “Anarchy minus justice is a purgatory pulverizing the heartbeat out of intimacy. Anarchy plus justice? Just ask the Great Revolutionary to reveal the holes and scars of his neo uno decorum; which leads to fumbling if it ain’t humbling.”

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Then there’s Annie looking off camera, focused, determined as the Scottish Enlightenment. Curiously enough she’s wearing a Star of David on her blouse; no idea what that means, it’s just there with her, spiritual cartography.

My dad has been researching as well, just yesterday discovering for the first time (from a ship manifest) that his dad first came over from Hungary when he was an infant. My dad always assumed his father first came over in 1925, as a young man.

A few years back, while helping my business partner Terry Woodthorpe prepare for a trip to the City of London, to research his own family tree in the UK, I sat at my desk in the office thinking to myself, “I know a bit about Terry’s back story, but what about my own?” Terry was raised an orphan in Western Canada. His father was an RAF pilot who trained in Western Canada with 130,000 other British airmen. Lost at sea near the end of the war, Terry’s father’s name is rightfully high on the wall of the Runnymede memorial. At one time, Terry’s grandfather was Chairman of the Trustee Savings Bank in the City of London.

As I walked with Terry through his own story, I began researching my own surname. When I did a search on Bartha, it came up that Justin Bartha was a Jewish actor, and I was like, okay so what is that about exactly. I did a search for Jewish surnames etc, and came across JewishGen website, put our surname in and watched a few hits come up in various places, curious enough a number of years ago; I put it aside.

For some reason, two weeks ago, I searched Yad Vashem website for the first time, and there are over 800 Barth’s and Bartha’s (Barth is German and Polish, Bartha is Hungarian) who are chronicled as having perished in the Holocaust one way or another.

My dad has recently been documenting his family names at an ancestry website, uncovering more documentation back through the generations. So, I’ve been putting all these surnames through JewishGen and Yad Vashem, and they are all in there, dozens of one, hundreds of another, etc. Then yesterday, I saw a document saying my grandmother’s brother-in-law was buried in a graveyard in Budapest where 300,000 Jews are buried, bit by bit, piecing together a silent narrative.

Someone with my grandfather’s full name survived one concentration camp, while someone with my father’s full name perished at another. Having prayed through so many names on so many lists, I’m not sure if there is any further connection to all of this other than the coincidence of a lot of people having the same names. Yet, from Lord Shaftesbury to Benjamin Netenyahu my ongoing studies raise many ancient and modern questions about names, peoples, and lands.

Last weekend, I spoke at a camp full of Indonesians. As we came together, we all had name tags pinned to us. When I got up to speak the first time, I asked them all to take off their name tags and put them in a big pile in the middle of the floor. Then, I invited them all to pick up a name that wasn’t their own. I asked them to pray for that person even if they didn’t know them. Then, after a few quiet minutes, I asked them to go find each other. It was a wonderful chaordic atmosphere, the tears were already flowing, and I hadn’t said anything profound, the Spirit of Adoption was already there between them.

Once they got their name tags back, I asked them if they knew what their names meant. One guy with a unique Indonesian name had no idea what his name meant. Someone did an online search discovering his name meant Sword. Then I asked my Indonesian friends, “What’s in a name? Well, my name is Kirk Bartha. Do you know what Kirk means?” (None of them knew, they’re not Scottish on their mother’s side).

In Scotland, one Kirk is a church. In Canmore, one Bartha waits.

“But look! A king will rule in the right way, and his leaders will carry out justice. Each one will stand as a shelter from high winds, provide safe cover in stormy weather. Each will be cool running water in parched land, a huge granite outcrop giving shade in the desert. Anyone who looks will see, anyone who listens will hear. The impulsive will make sound decisions, the tongue-tied will speak with eloquence. No more will fools become celebrities, nor crooks be rewarded with fame.” Isaiah 32 (The Message)

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There has got to come the inevitable moment when we disengage from having to know, from thinking we know, from believing we know. It’s humbling, but when it comes to eschatological ebb and flow, we don’t know. We know certain things about Jesus Christ, and yet must be willing not to know anything at all. Someone may tell me that they know his Word, they’ve cracked the code, and they’ve travelled through space and time; but they may not know anything at all. We must be infinitely resigned to not knowing the future plan of God.”

(quote from page 289, Clairvaux Manifesto)

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Yesterday, had a few minutes with James Houston, such a refreshing smile… Then, over the course of the afternoon, alongside my friends David and Julia Jones, sat with Mark Mayhew, Paul Stevens, and Paul Williams… discussing among many things, the Marketplace Institute.

The night before, it was David, Julia, Craig Harris, and Bentley Grigg at Sandbar restaurant on Granville Island, federal territory, a bit of Canada, in the heart of Vancouver.

It takes years to craft infrastructure, especially when the building blocks are people.

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There are more than 1600 bolted sport climbing routes here, each one named (let alone the hundreds of other routes crafted by various freelancers).

A tourist points up and wants to know the name of Rundle. A climber points beneath that peak into Sea of Vapours… and whoever asks what that is, realizes how little they know about that mountain (Sea of Vapours is an ice climbing route accessible in certain conditions).

Five years ago, when we first moved into this valley, I hiked up Ha Ling… When I finally reached the view, standing there with vertigo above the town of Canmore below, a climber popped up next to me. I was totally stunned… This guy just came up the north face of the mountain, to stand where I was standing. We both arrived at the same place taking different routes.

Sure, my approach might have been safer. A climber has to abide by much stricter guidelines, undergo training, be in peak physical condition, and travel with a skilled companion who has his life in his hands.

There are many ways up the same mountain; some paths seem counter-intuitive. It’s no different with spiritual leadership; a skilled climber teaches from personal experience and with authority.

If you’re ever in over your head with a proven mountaineer, do what you’re told!

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As I sit here translating the first sermon, I realize a deeper secret… In French, the first line of Bernard’s first sermon reads, “Celui qui s’appuie sur le secours du Tres-haut, demeurera dans la protection du Dieu du Ciel.” The English translation, “Whoever relies on the help of the Most High, will remain in the protection of the God of Heaven.”

These are Bernard of Clairvaux’s Lenten Sermons on Psalm 91, the Psalm of the King, the Chief Psalm, a Psalm so important that the Devil quoted part of it to Jesus, a Psalm so important that Jesus fulfilled every word of it, a Psalm so important that I quote it regularly in prayer ~ through the Cloud of Unknowing, the Palace of Nowhere, the Via Negativa, the Dark Night of the Soul, the Narrow Way ~ Shaddai’s Shadow!

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