You Don’t Graduate from Discernment

By Paul Gutacker

“What’s hard about vocation is not that we have to guess what it is.

What’s hard is obeying…”

          As graduation season is upon us, I’m so grateful for Paul Gutacker’s reminder of something that never leaves us, even though we experience key transitions in life. Graduation season harkens vivid memories of my own cosmic transition 25 years ago from high school into the adult abyss. Reflecting on my own high school and college graduations and the relief of finishing those chapters in my life, I agree with every well-thought-out detail Paul has made here and recommend them as prescriptive for navigating life in the south side of heaven. Discernment is one skillset that constantly must be utilized, matured, and regularly applied if I want to live well to the best of my ability for Christ’s glory and honor. The choices and decisions I made 25 years ago have greatly impacted on the way I live today!...let’s sit with this for 5 seconds. While the time in the institutions ended, taking up my cross and following Christ does not cease.

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I still remember what it was like, as a senior in college, to hear the dreaded question: “What’s next?” Plenty of my friends had good answers. I didn’t. I was sure I was going to marry my college sweetheart (she in fact said yes). I knew I wanted to study certain subjects. I knew I needed to earn enough money to live and make my student loan payments. When the question came from well-meaning professors, friends, and future in-laws, I fumbled for an answer, trying not to visibly panic.

Since then, I’ve learned my story isn’t unique: Many soon-to-be-graduates don’t know what’s next. Many feel something must have gone wrong. After four years of study and formation, we think, wasn’t I meant to have my whole life mapped out and immediately use my degree to provide financially and make a meaningful difference in the world? Why am I about to walk across the stage without my vocation figured out?

            That word vocation is at the heart of graduation-season anxiety. Many worry that if they don’t launch straightaway into a meaningful career, they’re missing their vocation. But this has very little to do with a biblical understanding of vocation.

If you want your post-college “bridge years” to be fruitful and not just anxiety-ridden, or if you’re walking alongside a recent graduate, we need to return to what Scripture teaches about vocation. Here are five things graduates can hold onto in this season:

 

1. Your vocation is not unique to you.

Vocation comes from the Greek vocare, “to be called.” The apostle Paul really liked this word, addressing believers in Rome and in Corinth as “called ones,” or “invited ones” (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2). In Paul’s letters, vocation is tied to being called by God: We’ve been called to participate in God’s kingdom plan of redemption through Christ. And crucially, in all of this, Paul is addressing churches, not individuals. The most important aspects of your vocation, your calling, are common to all Christians. Put another way, while God’s call is personal, it is never individual. It is a call to be part of a people.

2. Your vocation is not primarily (or even secondly) about your career.

We live, as philosopher Josef Pieper put it, in a world of “total work.” Writing in Europe as it sought to rebuild after World War II, Pieper argued that the modern world makes work our identity: Work spreads “to cover and include the whole of human activity and even of human life.” In other words, we are what we achieve and produce. If Pieper’s diagnosis is right, no wonder that when we speak about vocation, we’re usually talking about our career.

To be sure, work is part of being human. Working hard, earning a wage, and being productive are all good things. The problem is that vocation and occupation aren’t interchangeable. Instead, the Bible makes clear that our vocation, God’s call on our lives, is fundamental. Christ calls us, just as he called his disciples, saying, “Come, follow me” (Matt. 4:19).

Following Christ has implications for every aspect of life, and responding to God’s call should make a difference in why and how (and perhaps even in what field) one works. But a career is likely not even secondary to a person’s vocation. Likely, paid work is less central to following God’s call than things like loving your family, caring for your neighbor, serving others, and perhaps even pursuing hobbies or unpaid work. These may be more essential to your vocation.

 

3. Your vocation is not a secret plan for your life that God will only reveal if you crack the code.

When I listen to students talk about vocation, it sometimes sounds like they’re trying to solve a riddle or decode a secret message. It’s as if God designed them for one specific career path but refuses to give them the map. We’ve already challenged this notion by remembering that vocation is primarily corporate. But it’s also not a riddle or a secret. It’s something clearly laid out for you.

Listen to some things Paul makes quite clear: Your calling doesn’t have anything to do with your abilities (1 Cor. 1:18–31); your calling is something bestowed on you by God (Rom. 11); your calling is eschatologically oriented toward your final hope (Eph. 13–14); your calling is about holiness (2 Tim. 1:9); and God is making you worthy of your calling (2 Thess. 1:11). Notice how many of these come from the opening lines of Paul’s epistles. There’s nothing hidden here. Paul wants you to get it, so he says it right up front.

             What’s hard about vocation is not that we have to guess what it is. What’s hard is obeying. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Our vocation is to follow Christ to the Cross.

 

4. Your vocation is not something you figure out between the ages of 20 and 23 and then coast on for the rest of your life.

If the heart of your vocation is clear—it’s the way of the Cross—you still need to discern what to do with your days. This discernment isn’t something you’ll finish this year, or next. You won’t figure out your vocation at age 25 and be done with it.

            One reason is practical: Life won’t go the way you expect. If you’re graduating in 2026, you’ll change jobs on average every 3.2 years. Your generation moves around more, buys a first home later, and marries both less and older. Your life will be more fluid and less permanent than that of your predecessors. That might excite you or make you anxious or both. Regardless, it means you’ll never be done asking, How should I follow Christ?

You don’t graduate from vocational discernment, because the Christian life requires ongoing repentance. We need moments in our days and in the church year (like the season of Lent) when we pause to remember our mortality, to take a long, hard look at our sin and to ask, once again, “How can I turn back to you, Lord? From what do I need to turn away?”

Because life holds many twists and turns, and because we’re never done repenting, discernment isn’t something from which we move on.

 

5. Your vocation is as much about the present as it is about the future.

Finally, it’s tempting to think of vocational discernment as figuring out something that happens in the future, about making plans or large life choices. There’s nothing wrong with making a plan, but planning can easily distract us from the present. Worse still, our planning can be spiritually dangerous when it makes us feel like we’re in control of lives. To those of us addicted to planning, Christ asks: “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matt. 6:27).

Discernment is less about the future and more about what God is doing right now. As theologian Gordon Smith puts it, “To discern well we must pay attention: we need to observe and listen (3LO2237), noting what is happening around us and within us and attending to what others are saying.” In other words, discernment requires noticing what God is doing and seeking to participate in his work. We can only hear Christ’s call when he speaks to us—here and now. One way to avoid answering Christ is to obsess over the future, to fixate on our plans, dreams, and anxieties.

If you’re coming up on graduation, you’ve likely been in a season of life that’s all about discerning your vocation. Whether or not you have plans lined up or are still wondering what to do, it’s a weighty time.

Thankfully, your vocation doesn’t hinge on what comes right after graduation. The most important aspects of your calling (vocaré) have already been given to you. Your vocation is not defined by what you’ll go on to achieve. Instead, you’ve been invited to belong to God’s people, to hear and respond to Christ’s call to follow him to the Cross. And the work of discerning how to follow this call isn’t something you’ll wrap up by May. And for someone who keeps getting the “What’s next?” question, this is very good news.

 

Source: https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/04/you-dont-graduate-from-discernment/

How to Know If You’re Growing in Patience—or Just Giving Up

 by Russell Moore

      Photo: Victoria Pickering, Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.0

The right kind of waiting can save us. The wrong kind will destroy us.

     Whenever some terrible atrocity comes to light in the news cycle these days (in other words, about every 15 minutes), I hear the question “But what can we do?” I usually urge prayer and patience. The first part I have no doubts about, but I’m starting to realize the second one needs more context. That’s because, just like faith or hope or love or grace, the word patience often stands in for a cheap imitation. The right kind of patience can save us; the wrong kind will destroy us.
     Last year, Leon Wieseltier wrote in his journal Liberties a kind of jeremiad against patience. It is, he wrote, the virtue those of us who believe in democracy often commend against all kinds of revolutionaries and enthusiasts, and rightly so. Still, Wieseltier wrote, patience can also be paralyzing when we don’t know where the line is between wise acceptance and unwise resignation. As he put it, “Sometimes patience has the lamentable effect of turning a player into an umpire, and umpires have no sides.”
Those words made me wince because they called to mind Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to the “white moderate” pastors who told him they agreed with his goals but he should wait patiently for justice. Noting his own consistent commitment to nonviolence and persuasive witness, King wrote, “I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.”
     King wrote and spoke very differently when addressing a different audience than those who remained silent “behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.” Many, after all, concluded King’s movement was too patient, too slow. Some decided his patience just wasn’t working. We can see why someone would come to that conclusion a full decade after the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision with Jim Crow still in effect all across the South. To those, King counseled patience. This difference wasn’t inconsistency.
     If someone thinks he or she has sinned too much to be forgiven, I am not going to say “Obey God” and walk away—not because obedience is unimportant but because what that person will hear, with an already-faulty view of obedience, is “Work harder.” But if another friend tells me he’s been caught embezzling money but it really wasn’t that much, and if the company wanted him not to do it, they should have paid him more, I am not going to say simply, “Rest in God’s grace.” Again, that’s not because he shouldn’t rest in God’s grace but because he has a wrong definition of grace.
     Patience is indeed what’s called for in this time and in all times. Patience is worked in us by the Spirit. But the efficacy of this virtue requires that we know what it is and isn’t.
 
Let’s look at some common views of patience.
 
     First, think about cynical patience. This is what King called out in the Birmingham pastors. This kind of patience says, “You’ve got to be realistic” or “Idealism is for losers.” It acts as a moral sedative against doing what is right and accepts the Devil’s account of reality—that force is ultimate, that cruelty is power.
     Second is demoralized patience. Those with this kind of patience wait not because they trust but because they have given up. Demoralized patience is waiting without hope. Over time, it loses the ability even to imagine a different kind of future.
     In reality, the first kind of fake patience feeds on the second. Most people aren’t calculating and opportunistic. But for those who are—the cynics—nothing is more of an obstacle than people who actually hope—who aspire to something better. The cynics often tell people to be patient when what they really want is for the demoralized to shrug and say, “Well, it is what it is.” Sometimes what feels realistic or reasonable or mature is just a way of saying to oneself, “Nothing meaningful is coming. Adjust yourself accordingly.”
     In the days of the prophet Ezekiel, the problem was not just with exiles who feared God had forgotten them but also with those who were left behind in their homeland. They concluded that injustice and violence would continue: “The Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord does not see” (Ezek. 9:9, ESV throughout).
     This pattern of thinking ends with the cynics leading the demoralized to hopelessness—right where the cynics want it. And God denounced the cynics, who had “disheartened the righteous falsely, although I have not grieved him, and you have encouraged the wicked, that he should not turn from his evil way to save his life” (13:22).
     But neither of these false views is what the Bible means by patience. Paul wrote of endurance, a patient bearing-up under suffering, this way: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame” (Rom. 5:3–5). He then wrote that “if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (8:25). This is hopeful patience. It recognizes delayed outcomes but does not decay expectations.
     In fact, Paul wrote that waiting with hope is not passive but active, even when we don’t know what to do. The Spirit prompts us, after all, to “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved” (vv. 23–24). That’s full of lament but not despair.
     If what we define as patience makes us less able to determine what is wrong, it is not patience of the Spirit. Patience instead lets go of the need to control timetables or to have hopes that are immediately measurable.
     Hopeful patience does not refuse to bear witness. Often this kind of patience cannot see the next steps to take, but not because it no longer believes there’s a way forward. Sometimes hopeful patience doesn’t know how to achieve justice, but not because it has concluded that injustice is inevitable or that good and evil are the same.
     Impatience, on the other hand, leads first to frenzy and then compliance. When we expect everything to be immediately made right, we become frantic when it is not. For some people, that then means forcing change to happen—even if it mimics the ways and means of the unjust. If Martin Luther King Jr. had decided to fight Bull Connor with fire hoses and attack dogs of his own, he would have lost regardless of who won—it would just create a contest to find which Bull Connor was bigger.
     Even for those who retain moral integrity and authority, a waiting that isn’t energized by both hope and lament will lose heart—and give up. Eventually, the impatient look around for what does seem to work, and often they find the same thing the cynical propose and the demoralized accept.
     The patience of the Spirit is different because it conforms us to the patience of God himself. If we misunderstand that, we miss it all. In The Perilous Deep: A Supernatural History of the Atlantic, author Karl Bell explores how the chaos of the oceans led to the genre of “cosmic horror” by such writers as H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu and other monsters are terrifying because they are, in a sense, patient. They slumber in waiting because they do not care about human beings at all. They represent a meaningless, unfeeling universe. But that is not the patience of the God and Father of Jesus Christ.
     The impatient look at the injustice and suffering of the world, and they conclude, as do the cynical and demoralized patient, that everything will be this way forever (2 Pet. 3:4). They cannot see that the patience of God is active: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (v. 9). Patience with hope keeps checking in, even if that means asking, “How long, O Lord?” or sighing in utterance too deep for words.
     Patience is not Zen-like detachment. That’s why some of the most patient people I know feel as if they’re impatient. And some of the people who think they are patient are just procrastinating or scared or numb. If you are anguished and unsure of what to do, pray—stop and just say that in the presence of God. You will find that you are either appealing for God to intervene or praying for him to bring to mind what he is calling you to do.
     Patience endures suffering, but it doesn’t cause it. Patience endures evil, but it doesn’t endorse it. Let’s wait, but not as those who have no hope.
 
Source: https://www.christianitytoday.com/newsletter/archive/moore-to-the-point-1-21-2026/

From Panic Attacks to Physical Discipline

 

by Justin Earley

“Habits won’t change God’s love for you. But God’s love for you should change your habits.” The following article by fellow disciple and lawyer Justin Earley beautifully illustrates my own incredible healing journey which started 5 years ago. As my own counselor and therapist reminded me in my first two visits, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” This level of acute accountability is directly linked to our own acute sicknesses whether they be mental, spiritual, and physical; and something every church, pastor, and believer must engage in more regularly.

…

Ten years ago, I was at the unhealthiest moment of my life.

I was a former missionary who had become a corporate lawyer. I had a head filled with great theology, but my job in mergers and acquisitions at an international law firm—combined with parenting two young sons—had driven my body into the ground. I suffered from constant panic attacks and insomnia, the kind that left me with suicidal thoughts and no sleep unless I took sleeping pills or had a few drinks.

I am no longer that person. I now run a law firm; I have four young boys; I write books. My life is certainly not less complicated, but panic attacks are a distant memory and I’m arguably in the best shape of my life.

Lest that sound boastful, let me be clear—God saved me. When I was spiraling out of control, I didn’t know what to do. But God used the grace of spiritual and physical disciplines to change everything about my life.

It started with a new year’s conversation I still remember to this day. I sat down with two of my best friends and asked them to keep me accountable to a few daily and weekly rhythms in the new year.

A decade later, I’m still wrestling with why habits are so spiritual—including health-related ones. Here are four things that I’ve learned.

First, you are mostly your habits. From Aristotle to James Clear, most of humanity has been clear on what makes up a life: our habits. According to one study, about two-thirds of daily actions are not choices we consciously make; they are the product of habit.

This is particularly important when it comes to our bad habits. Take mine at that time: scrolling emails constantly at home, eating things that make me feel horrible, snapping at my kids. All of us know better.

But the part of our brain that knows better is not the part that is churning along in habit. So we become the way I was: a good head with bad routines.

The problem is, when your head goes one way and your habit goes another, your heart tends to follow the habit. Habits start to get really spiritual really quick.

Second, habits are worship drivers. We are living in a resurgence of liturgy. Liturgies are the things in a worship service we put on repeat because we want to be formed in the image of the God we worship. But notice the similarity of habits and liturgy: Both things we do over and over, both things form us.

The big difference is that liturgy admits that it’s about worship. In our day-to-day lives, our patterns often obscure what we worship. But that doesn’t mean we’re not worshiping. The only question is what we are worshiping.

Third, your body is spiritual. It’s impossible to talk about habit without talking about embodiment, because we’re talking about a lower brain function. The impact of habit is very different from the impact of head knowledge. One does not automatically transfer to the other. You have to take knowledge and put it into practice. And that’s when whole-life transformation begins to happen. Jesus illustrated this very colorfully for us (Matt. 7:24–27).

Modern Christians tend to get nervous here, because we think that when we talk about the body, we are leaving the realm of spirituality. But this is not how the Bible sees the world. God made our bodies. He called them good. He saved us by the body of his Son. He is going to raise our bodies to new life. As C. S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity, it’s no use trying to be more spiritual than God.

This is precisely why the spiritual disciplines are so physical, and why physical disciplines are so spiritual. It’s we who divide up the world into sacred and secular. Well, us and the Enemy. But it is not God. He’s very clear on this: Our bodies are sacred—and our habits are too.

Fourth, physical disciplines are spiritual disciplines. This means that the ways we eat and exercise are as spiritual as the ways we fast and pray. I am a living testimony to this. I will attest that spiritual disciplines like morning kneeling prayer and putting Scripture before phone absolutely changed my life ten years ago. But I am a lawyer, and I would not be telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth if I did not say that respecting sleep, embracing a healthy diet, and practicing regular exercise changed my mental health as much as the spiritual disciplines.

This is because anxiety is never just a head problem; it’s always a habit problem too. (The reverse is true as well, by the way.)

But I used to worry this fact somehow meant I was admitting that “the world’s” solutions to my mental health were better than God’s solutions. I don’t know when I forgot that all truth is God’s truth. I don’t know where I missed that everything biological is also theological. I don’t know why I didn’t take “honor God with your bodies” (1 Cor. 6:20) as seriously as “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19).

But I didn’t. I was a product of our modern, gnostic moment like we all are, and I had limited Christianity to a head project. But even people who love the head like Abraham Kuyper said that Christ calls out “Mine!” over every square inch of the universe. That means bodies too.

When you put all of the above together, you realize that your embodied habits have an enormous spiritual impact on what the Bible calls “the heart.” The way I like to put this is that the body teaches the soul. By that, I mean that God doesn’t just use our knowledge of him to shape our habits; he also uses our habits to shape our knowledge of him.

For example, moderate exercise is not only good for our health but also trains our heart to respect discipline of all kinds. For the sake of loving our families better and for the sake of self-control, Christians should see some form of exercise, however limited, as holy and useful to the Christian life.

Likewise, eating simply and healthily is not only good for our physical and mental health. It’s central to interrupting everyday idolatries such as gluttony and vanity. Christians should see a healthy diet as central to stewarding their body to love neighbor, and as central to rejecting loving anything more than God.

And a sleep rhythm is as spiritually formative as a sabbath rhythm is physically formative. Christians cannot be people who preach a gospel of peace while living in the unrest of incessant work. Calling it a night or taking a day off to sabbath are central ways we proclaim the truth of the gospel—and central ways we enjoy the truth of the gospel. On the cross, Jesus said “It is finished” partly so that you can calm down and take a nap.

If I could go back ten years and meet myself in the midst of my anxiety crisis, I would want to encourage that version of myself: “Embrace the new year health habits! God made your body. Caring for it does not have to be vanity. Stewarding your mental health is necessary to loving God and neighbor. So do it for love.”

This new year, I want to encourage you to do the same. Our bodies bear the image of God, and God is love! We shouldn’t idolize our bodies, but we shouldn’t ignore them either. We should image God through them by stewarding them for the sake of loving God and loving others.

Habits won’t change God’s love for you. But God’s love for you should change your habits.

Justin Whitmel Earley is a lawyer, speaker, and author from Richmond, Virginia. He is the CEO of Avodah Legal and the author of numerous bestselling books, including Habits of the Household and, most recently, The Body Teaches the Soul.

Source: https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/01/the-body-teaches-the-soul-earley/?mc_cid=c44a3f7c7d&mc_eid=850006aec4

Rejoice in The New Life and Years Ahead!

"...and put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness." 

~ Ephesians 4:24

"The God of Israel will be your reward." 

~ Isaiah 52:12

"Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!

Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." 

~ Philippians 4:4-7

"He who covers a transgression seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates friends." 

~ Proverbs 17:9

"And now abide faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." 

~ 1 Corinthians 13:13

     This is a great piggyback from the previous post and a cosmic reminder for the year and subsequent lifetime ahead. I love to think about, and yes sometimes fanaticize, how the early church did 'it.' I mean, how were the prophets and believers able to get through life back then? Truth be told things were about as chaotic, messy, joyful, political and everything in between. But there is no other thing like the Word of God to remind and recalibrate the mind, body, and soul (Isaiah 40:7; 2 Timothy 3:16-17). Speaking for myself, His word is the only shoreline I'm needing to refocus on navigating my life toward without ceasing. Compared with what I know now and have been through in just the last 365 days, what I knew then and who I was then is anemic compared to today.

     The Lord will grant growth and the process will involve a little "pressure." Let's be honest, it will require quite a bit of pain, but with just the right amount of rest and comfort. As those who partake in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, our Lord never patches up our natural virtues, He remakes the whole man on the inside. Paul's clarion reminder to put on the new man is a reality where the natural human life puts on the garb that is in keeping with the new life. The life which God plants at salvation develops its own virtues, not the virtues of Adam, but of Jesus Christ. Watch how God will wither your confidence in the natural virtues of this world after sanctification, and in any power you have. The Lord does so because He wants me to learn to draw life from the reservoir of the resurrection life of Jesus Christ. "Thank God if you ae going through a drying-up season and experience." God does not build up our corrupted natural vibes, virtues, and values and transfigure them, because our natural self can never come anywhere near what Christ Jesus wants. We have to be transfigured into wanting what Christ Jesus wants.

     So, about the past, present, and future. God requires that which is past. At the end of the year we learn to turn with eagerness to all that God has in store for His future. Even though anxiety is apt to arise from what happened yesterday, it is usually tied to yesterday's sins and blunders. Equally, our present enjoyment of God's grace is also apt to be checked by the memory of His faithfulness despite our weaknesses and some idiocies in between. God's cosmic love and protection held and guided my yesterdays, and He allows the memories of them sometimes in order to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual culture for the future. God reminds us of the past lest we get into a shallow security in the present. This era of political upheaval is only one such reminder. Let me not forget, Lord. There is a lot of repenting and recalibrating to do.

     About tomorrow. Let us learn to slow down and not go out in haste. We do need to slow down. I need to slow down like for real for real. As I go forth in the coming year let it no longer be in haste and impetuous, unremembering my delight in my Father and Lord, nor with the kind of rushing of impulsive thoughtlessness, but with the patient power of knowing the God of Israel and the Universe will go before us and make a way (Zechariah 4:6; Luke 14:28). Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; as a matter of fact we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future.

Let the past sleep, but let it sleep this time in the bosom of Christ. 

Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step into the Irresistible Future with Him.

(This article is adapted from "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers, 30 & 31 December)

     

How to Get Through the Next Four Years

 

by Russell Moore

November 13, 2024

“The nonstop news cycle will be crazy. You don’t have to be.”

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Bravo! to Russell Moore for some well-thought and convicting advice for all Christians in this country, and those affected by our country outside our country. We know how this song goes, but we also know how to better respond and behave in the years ahead. I anticipate a lot of change is coming, like in the 1960’s. History doesn’t always repeat, but it sure rhymes and that should bring peace to our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirit as we prepare to be better salt and light in this world which we are not to be of any longer.

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     “Someone walked up to me in an airport last week and said, “So, what do you think about the election?” I was in a less-than-ideal mood at the moment, for reasons that had nothing to do with the election, but I stopped myself from saying sarcastically, “What do you think I think about the election?”

     The last thing I wanted to talk about, after ten years of talking about him, was Donald Trump. Now the news cycle will be the Donald Trump Show all day, every day, for four more years.

The nonstop news cycle and drama won’t be some unforeseen circumstance. It’s what the American people voted for. The theory that people would want to “turn the page” on all that, offered by Vice President Kamala Harris, proved false. Turns out most people liked the drama just fine. So here we go.

      I have very little to say that I haven’t already said, very little to write that I haven’t already written, and there are very few people who think like I do. I can’t control that. But neither can you. As a matter of fact, there is very little any of us can do to control the next four years—with a news cycle that will be, like the last near-decade, all Trump, all the time.

     Just like during the last near-decade, those who support Trump and those who oppose him will continue to look at one another the way Adams and Jefferson did over the French Revolution: “How could you support (or not support) that?” You can control very little of that either.

 

And that’s surprisingly good news.

 

The passivity of Americans in their own civic order is always a problem. The word woke—before it became associated with identity politics—spoke to the sense of waking people from their slumber about injustice. The opposite of passivity, though, is often not responsibility or engagement. Sometimes it’s a kind of passivity that feels like “doing something.”

     Wherever someone falls on the political spectrum, that’s where “doomscrolling” comes into play. We feel we are informed by having a steady stream of drama in front of us, our emotions driven up or down by the news cycle.

    We’ve seen the end result of that. The constant flow of (real and fake) information spikes our adrenaline, activating our “lizard brains.” We throw our limbic systems into the sense of having to support or to oppose something—when, much of the time, there’s actually nothing we can do about it. And this works because many people like it.

     What we call “politics” these days offers people a sense of meaning and purpose, an interruption to the dead everydayness of life. A jolt of adrenaline can feel almost like life—for a little while.

This kind of political “drama” is related to actual political life the way that pornography is to intimacy. Porn gives the same physical sensation as sexual union. The nervous system responds the way it is meant to respond in the union of a husband and wife; it just does so by getting rid of the love, the connection, the other person. In other words, it gives the physical sense without what actually brings about the joy.

     Someone might think that porn use will kick-start their flagging passion, that it’s a temporary step toward intimacy. That person is left, though, feeling deader and lonelier than before. A news cycle can be like that too—ultimately leaving people not more informed and thoughtful but with worn-out attention spans and burned-out expectations.

     One of the things you owe your country is your attention. By that, I do not mean your constant focus. I mean, quite literally, your attention: your ability to think and to reflect apart from the roar of the mob.

     During the tumult of the 1960s—war, civil unrest, assassinations—Thomas Merton argued that his ability to speak to all of those things was not in spite of but because of his vocation as a Trappist monk, devoted to silence and solitude.

     “Someone has to try to keep his head clear of static and preserve the interior solitude and silence that are essential for independent thought,” Merton wrote. He continues, A monk loses his reason for existing if he simply submits to all the routines that govern the thinking of everybody else. He loses his reason for existing if he simply substitutes other routines of his own! He is obliged by his vocation to have his own mind if not to speak it. He has got to be a free man. Merton concludes by saying, “What did the radio say this evening? I don’t know.” 

     I believe in the priesthood of all believers and, in this way, I suppose, in the monkhood of all believers too. News and information are important in helping a free and attentive mind discern what’s happening and how to make sense of it. News and information as sources of a sense of personal “drama” or belonging, though, will fray your attention, scatter your thinking, and affix you to whatever mob it’s easiest to mimic. It’s hard to maintain sanity with a mind like that. It’s hard to love your country with a mind like that. It’s hard to love the Lord your God with a mind like that.

     The stakes are too high for us to see our country as a reality television show. You can’t opt out of the country, but you can opt out of the show. In some ways, you get there by subtraction. Don’t rely on social media for your news, for instance. Don’t fall into the trap of every-ten-minute hits of dopamine about how your side is losing something or winning something.

     But maybe an even more important factor is not subtraction but addition. You are meant to have a life of drama and adventure and excitement. Politics—of the left, right, or center—can’t deliver it. News cycles can’t replicate it.

     For those of us who are Christians, we already have it. We need no Jungian hero’s journey. We are joined to the life of Jesus of Nazareth. His story is our story. Our lives are hidden in him (Col. 3:3). We are crucified under Pontius Pilate. We are raised out of the grave. We are seated at the right hand of the Father.

     All of that is true, right now, for those who are joined by the Spirit to the life of Christ. And we are waiting a trump—not a Trump—to tell us when the action of our lives will really get interesting, in ways we cannot even imagine yet.

     Realize that this is true for you. You don’t need to be part of some make-believe drama. You don’t need to adopt some politician as a father figure. You have an actual Father who is making plans for you. And when you realize how temporary, how fleeting, and how pitiful much of what is counted as glory is in this moment, you can learn how to love it without placing on it the burden of making you happy or driving you crazy. We always come to hate our idols—whatever they are—because they never give us what we want.

     That means you will need the Bible—and more than just the devotional cherry-picking or doctrinal proof texts to which modern American Christianity is accustomed. You will need to immerse yourself in the stories there until you gradually start to sense they are your stories. You need to plunge into the poems and songs there until you find they are telling you the story of your own life too. 

     You need to spend enough time with the Jesus found in the pages of Scripture that he starts to surprise you again. You don’t have to understand what you’re reading all the time. Read it anyway. Let the Word do its work. Don’t immediately Google “How to understand Psalm 46” or “What does Colossians 2 mean?” Wrestle with it. Be baffled by it.

     And sooner or later you will start to hear, as though calling to you personally from those words: “Who do you say that I am?”

 

The news cycle will be crazy for the next four years. You don’t have to be.

 

https://www.christianitytoday.com/2024/11/next-four-years-donald-trump-russell-moore-election-2024/

 

 
 
 

Church Disappointment Is Multilayered

 

Church Disappointment Is Multilayered

October 11, 2024

Interview by Harvest Prude

Like many in America I’ve reached my own pivot point in my walk with Christ and membership with His body the Church. There are so many layers to the glacial disappointments I’ve experienced in the church, outside the church, and in myself so a serious in-depth examination is worth the time, as apologist Lisa Fields demonstrates for us. Here goes:

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"Why are people leaving the church or their faith behind? Some answers boil down to platitudes, like a supposed desire to pursue a sinful lifestyle. But apologist Lisa Fields has found the reasons to be much more complex.

Fields, founder of the Jude 3 Project, which equips Black Christians to know what they believe and why, has sat across from many people leaving the church. During these “exit interviews,” she’s discovered that somewhere in nearly every story lurks the specter of personal disappointment with God or Christianity. She addresses this thorny issue in a new book, When Faith Disappoints: The Gap Between What We Believe and What We Experience.

CT national political correspondent Harvest Prude spoke with Fields about walking with God in the midst of a broken world and our own disappointments.

Something from your book that really struck me is when you talk about unanswered prayers. How do we navigate times in our faith when we’ve sought out God for something and we feel overlooked because he doesn’t seem to answer?

For me, when God doesn’t answer my prayers, I have to have a real conversation with him about what he has not answered. My relationship with God is very open. There are times where I’m angry, and I have to get those feelings out of my mouth and out of my heart—because when I don’t voice my frustrations, I end up filled with bitterness and resentment.

There’s a quote from Tim Keller where he says—and I’m paraphrasing—that if we knew what God knows, we would want our prayers answered the way he answers them. I’ve had this experience in my own life. I remember a time when I wanted to connect with a particular person, a major donor who could help my ministry. But I didn’t have enough extra income to get to New York City, where he was based. I remember being frustrated, feeling like there were all these obstacles to networking and getting ahead. Only later did I learn that this person had just gotten arrested for embezzlement.

Sometimes, in your disappointment, you realize that God is letting you see things that you wouldn’t see otherwise or protecting you from dangers that you didn’t know about. In the book, I talk about a man I had been dating for almost four years. In the middle of our relationship, he got married to a woman he had been involved with behind the scenes for most of the time. This other woman had been married herself during most of the affair.

That whole time, I had been praying that God would make this man my husband. But I didn’t realize that he was actually protecting me from someone who had poor character, despite being a preacher. In the middle of my disappointment, I voiced my frustration. Then I gave myself time to ask what God might be trying to protect me from. What different direction was he trying to push me in?

In the book you talk about doing exit interviews with people who are leaving the church. As a reporter, I cover the intersection of faith and politics. How do you think political conversations have impacted people’s relationship with faith?

I think the political climate in America has really impacted how people there think about faith. Christians often go to rhetorical and ideological extremes in the name of faith. Recently, I noticed a group of faith leaders on social media saying that if you’re voting for Kamala Harris, you can’t be a Christian. Rhetoric like that, I think, creates this confusion gap for many in our culture, where they don’t understand what we’re talking about. Because the Bible doesn’t tell you which political candidates to vote for. In fact, it doesn’t even speak about voting in any conventional way, because the world of the biblical writers was a world ruled by kings and emperors.

When there’s a gap between what the Bible says and what some believers claim it says, for political reasons, it makes a lot of people want nothing to do with the church, especially when political leaders hijack the church for their own gain. And it makes believers look like hypocrites, which creates a problem for those who want to be part of something genuine.

In your conversations, how often do you find that people leaving the church are struggling with its failures and flaws? And how often, by contrast, do they seem motivated more by a desire to live without moral restrictions or guilt?

I think both answers can be correct, sometimes at the same time. Church disappointment can have so many layers. Perhaps we’re disappointed with God. Or we’re disappointed with God’s people, or people in general. And then there are certain things we just desire and want to do in our flesh.

There’s always a multiplicity of factors. When I’ve done exit interviews with people leaving the church, I’ve seen that it’s never just one thing. It’s layers of things that rock them.

If you could design a toolkit of practices for being a faithful witness to those who are struggling with the church or their faith, what would you include?

The first thing I’d encourage is to live out what you believe as best you can. And that doesn’t mean perfection, but it does mean progression. If I hold to the Bible being the Word of God, then I obey the Word to the best of my ability.

Because we all fall short, though, we have to be honest about when this happens. If I portray myself as living a sinless life, I’m actually undermining the authority of Scripture, because Scripture tells us we’re born and shaped in iniquity. Living out our faith means acknowledging our sins and committing to repent of them.

Another essential habit is loving people well. In The Message Bible paraphrase, there’s a passage in Philippians that I post every Valentine’s Day, where Paul is saying, don’t just “love much” but “[love] well” (1:9–11). That really struck me when I read it years ago, because there’s a difference between loving somebody much and loving somebody well. I want to be someone who tries to love people well. That means listening attentively and holding space for their doubts and frustrations.

Third, I think we need to practice being merciful. Like Jude says, “Be merciful to those who doubt” (v. 22). Remember what it’s like to have doubts of your own, and treat others who doubt accordingly.

And finally, remember to pray with people. With my own friends, I’ve been enjoying a beautiful season of us praying together. I can’t give any prescription on how to do it right. It’s not like we’re doing anything grand. We simply share our frustrations; I pray, they pray, and healing has taken place. And it’s not like my friends are well-known spiritual leaders. But that’s just a reminder that you don’t need somebody to be a spiritual leader for their prayers to make a difference in your life. 

You write about the importance of forgiveness to any process of healing from faith disappointment. How do we respond well when a fellow believer has hurt us or broken our trust?

In my own life, I was having trouble trusting someone who had sinned against me and claimed to have repented. My therapist said, “I’m not asking you to trust them. I’m asking you to trust God.” And that has helped me a lot.

I enter into relationships that have been broken, knowing that the person, being human, could break that trust again. But I’m aware that I’ve probably caused hurts myself and I could do it again. And because I want grace, I know I need to give it as well.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. I spoke earlier about the man who cheated on me during our relationship. It took me years to get to this point, but by now I’ve seen him many times since he got married. By the time he apologized, I was able to accept his apology. I was able to trust that it was sincere because I had done a work in my heart to forgive him.

Sometimes, you have to give yourself time. Years ago, I read a book on forgiveness. It said there are occasions when we tell people we’ve forgiven them too abruptly because we don’t know the full impact of their actions. If we announce forgiveness too soon, we’re only forgiving the initial impact when we don’t yet know all the layers. How will these actions affect me a year from now? I might have to forgive again, but at least I’m choosing forgiveness. I’m choosing not to treat you like you owe me because you hurt me.

When Christians face disappointment, you argue, a sort of syncretism can creep in. They might seek out New Age practices, for instance, if they feel that God has failed them. How should we approach apologetics in a culture marked by intense interest in alternative modes of spirituality?

Before criticizing the what in these alternative approaches, try to find out the why. Perhaps you know someone who uses crystals or consults horoscopes. Well, what’s behind that? Figuring out the why will help you get to the root of the issue.

Maybe this person was going through a difficult time and heard from a friend about something that could help manage the stress. And so, okay, so that’s how you got into that. Maybe this person had tried prayer and Christian faith but, for whatever reason, didn’t find them adequate. You can help someone walk through these deeper issues. For me, this is a far better approach than simply saying, “Don’t use crystals—they’re demonic.”

Love is a better draw than fear. As a pastor’s kid, I used to go to youth conferences around the country, and there was always an element of fear in the way we were encouraged to give our lives to Christ. And so everybody gave their life to Christ at every event—the same people every year. I “became” a Christian probably a million times as a teenager because I was scared.

But when life disappointed me, that fear wasn’t what was holding me. It was God’s love. I believe" in a real hell, and I believe that Jesus is the only way to eternal life, but we can communicate that with love, rather than fear, as the motivator. Because the fear will always wear off. Fear will never be your keeper.

Source: https://www.christianitytoday.com/2024/10/lisa-fields-when-faith-disappoints-church-hurt/

The Mature Way

I laugh now, but a few days ago I felt needlessly angry after reading a differing translation of 1 Corinthians 16:13, a passage that always encourages me. The Apostle Paul’s conclusion to his tremendous first letter to the early church in Corinth is inspirational. In the NASB (New American Standard Bible), the passage is rendered “…act like men…” In the NIV, the verse goes like this: “…be men of courage…”

In the age of scrutinized and deconstructed masculinity there is no better time to take a better look at this passage. But like always, context is king so remember to read the entire letter as it provides fabulous context to Paul’s conclusion.

With a little help from New Testament Greek scholar Dr. Bill Mounce, let’s pick this one apart and put it back together.

“ἀνδρίζομαι (andrizomai) occurs in the New Testament only here. Its etymology is clearly from the root ανδρ, from which we get ἀνήρ, “man,” predominantly (if not exclusively) used of males. Other cognates listed by BDAG include ἀνδρεῖος (“pert. to being manly”, ἀνδρείως (“in a manly i.e. brave way”), and ἀνδροφόνος (“murderer, lit. ‘man-slayer’”) do not occur in the New Testament. BDAG is quick to emphasize that words formed with the root ἀνδρ “show[s] erosion of emphasis on maleness.” And so, for example, in their definition of ἀνδρεῖος, they include “heroic deeds worthy of a brave person,” and “ do many heroic deeds, of famous women.” 

Of course, it is in these areas of interpretation that one must be careful of how you use BDAG. A quick perusal of BDAG’s entry on ἀνήρ meaning “equiv. to τὶς someone, a person” easily illustrates this. A quick perusal of the cited verses — Lk 9:38; 19:2; J 1:30; Ro 4:8 (Ps 32:2); Lk 5:18; Ac 6:11 — shows an interpretive position that I do not feel is appropriate for a dictionary. For example, Lk 9:38 is, “And behold, a man from the crowd cried out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child.” What in the text requires the “man” not to be the father, hence, male?

ἀνδρίζομαι occurs in the LXX 24 times, almost always in what must have been a common phrase, ἀνδρίζου καὶ ἴσχυε, translated by the ESV almost uniformly as “Be strong and courageous.” Unfortunately, I do not have the resources here to look into all the secular usage of the term.

But I want to get back to the point. Etymologically, it is clear that the word originally meant, “act manly” (TDNT), “be a man,” hence the ESV and other translations (“act like men,” NASB; “act like a man,” HCBS; “quit you like men,” KJV). Obviously, it doesn’t mean that the person should be a male — that is not something that can be exhorted. Rather, the person should strive to the qualities that historically have been connected with maleness, which in this context is courage and strength. And hence most modern translations: “be courageous” (NRSV, NIV, NLT); “show courage” (NET); “be brave” (NKJV, NJB).

In his commentary in the NIGTC, Thiselton comments that “the translation of ἀνδρίζομαι has probably become unnecessarily sensitive,” and points out that ἀνδρίζομαι has two semantic oppositions. In this context, it is not male vs female but rather “stands in contrast with childish ways, citing conceptual parallels such as 1 Cor 13:11 and translates, ”show mature courage” (page 1336). Garland, in his BECNT commentary, prefers the Old Testament background cited above, that Paul is calling all the Corinthians to be “strong and courageous” (page 766).

This is one of those situations where, from a translation standpoint, the question is whether the word still contains its etymological emphasis, or whether in this case BDAG is right and the word “show[s] erosion of emphasis on maleness”; in other words, the meaning of ἀνδρίζομαι has moved beyond it etymological beginnings.

It also is one of those translation issues where the committee’s policies come into play. Does your translation philosophy tend toward the words or toward the meaning?

Personally, I do not see anything in the biblical context or the usage of the word that requires a male orientation. Either Thiselton's or Garland's position is feasible; I tend toward Garlands because ἀνδρίζομαι was part of such a stock phrase in the LXX. But whatever it nuances may be, it is certainly a call for a mature courage, and that is always a good word.”

As I get older, it makes more sense that being a man of courage requires acute alertness, firmness, maturity, strength, and love. I have learned that anything done apart from love is the greatest way to lose influence and a bad reputation. I think part of the problem, personally and culturally, is possessing a skewed understanding of love (I’d dare admit childish even). The Apostle does close out the sentence with urging them to “do everything in love.” So brothers AND sisters, let us commit to growing up.

Source: https://www.billmounce.com/monday-with-mounce/“act-men”-1-cor-16-13

Is Sin an Active or Passive Agent in Our Body?

 About a month ago I got intensely curious about sin. There’s a lot of it going around, lol. Holy Spirit took me to Romans 7:7-25

With great help from the Holy Spirit and Greek scholar Bill Mounce, it has been brought to my attention that sin is an active agent in the body. Mounce talks about a time his nephew preached an excellent sermon on James 4:1 which says (according to the translation you have), “What accounts for the quarrels and disputes among you? Is it not this—your desires that are at war in your members?” The translation I prefer to go with says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” (NIV)

To me, this is a major revelation which deserves some technical attention with translation, so here’s Mounce:

“I know that the word “members” doesn't refer to members of the church, but the Greek is plural. ἐν τοῖς μέλεσιν ὑμῶν. These constructions are always interesting because they can refer to things among the group, and one of the uses of μέλος can refer to people who make up a group. “We who are many are one body in Christ, and individually members (μέλη) who belong to one another” (Rom 12:54; cf. 1 Cor 12:27; 2 Cor 12:5, 26; Eph 4:25). This is the second definition in BDAG.

And yet, many of the uses of μέλος in the New Testament refer to individual parts of our body. “So also is the tongue a small member, yet it boasts of great things” (James 3:5). “For just as the physical body is one yet has many members (μέλη), and all the members (μέλη) of the body, though many, are one body, so also is the body of Christ” (1 Cor 12:12). BDAG’s first definition is, “a part of the human body, member, part, limb literally, of parts of the human body.”

I had always assumed James was saying that the source of quarrels and disputes among a group of Christians was that people’s desires were at war with other people, but my nephew saw μέλεσιν as the individual members of each individual body. Most translations agree with him. “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” (NIV) “What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions that wage war within you?” (CSB)

This creates a helpful picture of the battles we all face with sin. Sin is an active agent in our body, affecting every part of who we are. It creates such dissension within us that our internal battles produce Paul’s quandary: what he wants to do, he doesn't, and he doesn't want to do, he does. Sin’s battle plan is to affect every individual part of who I am, turning one part against another.

I think I shared this in an earlier blog, but one of the most helpful discussions I had along these lines was with Tom Schreiner. I had been thinking of sin as a passive agent, sitting around looking for opportunities to lead us down the wrong path. But Tom helped me see that sin is very active, very deliberate, a foreign agent that is alive inside each one of us and is aggressively working to accomplish it's purposes. As Paul writes, “It is no longer I myself who do it (i.e., sin), but it is sin living in me” (Rom 7:17). This reminds me of those Science Fiction movies where the alien goes into the human body, is nurtured by the body, and ultimately controls the body.”

Wow!

This should all lead us to go easy on ourselves and others and pray daily (minute by minute even) for God’s protection and healing. Sin is so much bigger than what I understand or attribute, but thanks be to God so also is His grace in the blood of Jesus Christ, and the ministry of Holy Spirit. I’m starting to agree with and relate to how Paul concluded Romans 7, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:24–25).

Source: https://www.billmounce.com/blogs/mondaywithmounce/sin-active-and-foreign-agent-your-body-james-4-1

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” ~ Matthew 7:1-3

 

If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. ~ Galatians 5:15

 

These words of Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul from 2,000 years ago hit so hard right now. The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill is a post-mortem on the fall and destruction of one of the most prolific churches in the 21^st century. This was a tough one to listen to but I’m grateful I finally listened to it. It took me three years to consider listening and I’m glad I waited, because the lessons here sank deep. Chaulk full of 25 episodes with interviews and helpful and prescriptive contemplations, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill explored the death of one of the most influential and successful churches in America. It is also a convicting examination into my own heart and mind: the intentions, compromises, misunderstandings, and impulses. These are lessons for doing better in every space I operate in, with very real and well-intentioned people who operate in ways that are great examples of the very good, very bad, and very ugly. After listening to this helpful investigation, I had to find out who else was talking about it and how others were feeling about it. Carey Nieuwhof had one of the best takeaways I found, writing from a leadership perspective. I value good leaders, and being a good leader, so Niewhof’s lessons are prescriptive to me:

 

Originally published by Carey Nieuwhof

 

“Like so many leaders in the church space, I listened to The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast…To say it was hard to listen to is an understatement.

It took me a month or two to even decide whether I would listen to it or not.

For those who may not know, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill is a podcast produced by Christianity Today that chronicles the humble beginnings, explosive growth, and very public dissolution of Mars Hill, a megachurch that once had multiple campuses in Seattle, Washington (one of the most unchurched cities in the U.S.). 

Filled with interviews with former staff and church members, the focal point of the series is the leadership style of lead pastor Mark Driscoll.

Like many people I know, when I started listening, there were times when I shut an episode off, thinking I couldn’t go any further, only to resume it a day or a week later. The story is so painful for the multiple layers of hurt involved and yet crucial for what we can learn moving forward.

Eventually, I finished the series, but the ambivalence never really disappeared.

So, why this post?

Mainly because this is a leadership blog, and the patterns described around Mars Hill are not unique to Mars Hill. They’re not even unique to churches. 

The patterns can happen—and do happen—in varying degrees in many different churches and businesses.

While The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast isn’t a definitive account of what happened in Seattle (for example, despite attempts, former Mars Hill Lead Pastor Mark Driscoll didn’t agree to be interviewed for the show), it provided enough of a picture of the unhealthy happenings in churches and the dysfunctional happenings within leaders to convict me of my own sin (again).

For me, the most disturbing part of listening to the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill is that I saw some of myself in the story.

I recognized some of the same impulses in me.

There’s a shadow side of leadership, pride, and power lurking in most of us. Perhaps in all of us. At least, it definitely lurks in me.

And if you identify the unhealthy patterns in your own life, maybe you can catch it early enough to prevent it from harming others.

So, let me go first to say that everything I’m describing below is things I’ve had to wrestle down in my own heart and my own leadership. I hope and pray for progress and victory for all of us who lead, including the leaders and people who were part of Mars Hill.

Exposing the darkness in ourselves is one of the greatest ways to find more light.

Here are five reflections I’m processing after finishing the podcast.

There's a shadow side of leadership, pride, and power that lurks in most of us. Perhaps in all of us.

1. The Ends Actually Don’t Justify the Means

I’ve worked in a few places over the years: a law firm, at radio and tv stations, at a church, and for the last few years as an author, speaker, and a podcaster myself, running a small communications company.

You’d think it was easier to lead like the ends justified the means in a law firm or private company.

Nope.

It was easiest as a pastor.

For exactly the reasons described in the podcast, you end up saying things like:

• Well, more people are coming to faith than are leaving.
• I can’t be responsible for the consequences…that’s up to God.
• If it means more people come to faith, then let’s do it.

The church I led was not even close to the size of Mars Hill, nor did it have the influence of Mars Hill. But in the first decade of ministry, we became one of the fastest growing and one of the largest congregations in our denomination.

In the midst of all of that, some people got hurt. Often I moved fast and broke things. Sometimes I broke people.

Eventually, I realized that the ends don’t justify the means—that often different means produce much better ends.

I also realized that health and growth don’t have to compete with each other. You can have both. And if you can’t have both, choose health.

Listening to the podcast, I realized that what made those first few years of leadership so confusing was that great things were happening, and we were doing all of this ‘for God.’

In my heart of hearts, I believed that whatever we did that resulted in more people coming to Christ was a good thing.

Over time though, I realized that how you do what you do is just as (if not more) important as what you do.

In the church, more people is a good thing. But more love is even better.

As you have probably figured out, more love often leads to more people. But if it doesn’t, you’re still left with more love.

2. The Body Count Matters

I won’t go into the details outlined in the podcast, but one of the recurring themes was the body count at Mars Hill—the people who ‘fell off the bus’ or got pushed off the bus as it moved to new places and new heights.

For a season in my earlier years of ministry, we were growing quickly. But the underbelly of that season of growth was that we were simply growing faster than we were losing people.

It got so bad in some rapid growth years that I have a distinct memory of telling my team not to use pictures older than six months since there were too many people in the photo who had left.

I wince when I think about that now.

I don’t know why everyone who left ended up leaving (high growth and high churn seasons can be like that), and not everyone who left was mad or hurt—many tried it for a while and realized what we were doing wasn’t for them—but I do know that in all the churn, I started to form callouses around my heart.

When people leave or criticize you, it hurts.

The natural thing to do is to grow cynical, to stop listening to the disappointments and the complaints. And for a season, I did just that.

Had I let that go further, it’s likely I was only a few steps away from allowing the churn to be a badge of honor. Ugh.

Fortunately, I burned out after a few years of very rapid growth. I say ‘fortunately’ because, even though my burnout was the deepest pain I’ve ever gone through personally, I realize now that God was re-forming me in the midst of it.

I now think of my burnout as a divine intervention of sorts.

On the other side of burnout, I became much more sensitive to the pain and hurt I was causing, especially unintentionally. Often as leaders, we don’t mean to hurt people or even realize we’re doing it. Or we harden our hearts because we can’t stand the pain of people rejecting us.

I realized (and am still learning) how much of a mistake it is to close your heart to people or act like their leaving doesn’t matter. It does.

And while caring is hard, the ultimate damage of not caring is far greater.

Caring carries risk. So, leaders, please hear me. Your heart will get mangled, and you’ll be tempted to stop caring and trusting people altogether. Don’t.

So, you might ask, does opening your heart and caring about people stop people from leaving?

Nope. People still leave. Maybe not as many, but still, people leave. And it still hurts. (Toxic people are a different category, but most people aren’t toxic people. They just see things differently than you do).

People who disagree with you should be treated well and loved regardless of whether they are ‘with you’ or not. It’s not about you or me. It’s just not.

After I burned out and started to recover, we launched Connexus Church.

I look back on some of those launch photos a decade and a half later and smile. To my surprise and delight, most of the people who helped us launch are still with us.

And for those who left…well, if people were valuable to you when they came to your church, treat them as though they are just as valuable when they leave.

3. Charisma is a Double-Edged Sword

Culturally, we use the term ‘charismatic’ to describe leaders who have a magnetic pull to their personalities.

Leadership tends to attract and reward charismatic people. In the case of preachers, I imagine the concentration of charismatic leaders is even higher than in the marketplace as a whole.

Why? Many preachers are excellent communicators, and the ability to communicate is a significant factor in charisma.

So, what’s the challenge?

The good thing about being a charismatic leader is that people follow you. The bad side of being a charismatic leader is that people follow you.

As a charismatic leader, you have the potential to lead thousands of people to a much better future and the potential to lead thousands of people right off a cliff.

From the time I was young, people told me I had charisma. Honestly, I didn’t know what that meant at that point, but having led for decades now, I realize charisma is a double-edged sword.

The temptation to use your charisma to consolidate power and use it to your benefit is real. Another temptation is to form an inner circle of fans, sycophants, and enablers who won’t challenge you or pose a threat to your viewpoint.

I got to a point early in my leadership where I was so sensitive to criticism that I felt the impulse to create an inner circle like that.

Fortunately, prayer, counseling, and people who knew me and loved me enough to help me see the truth helped me realize that ultimately that’s a path that leads to death, not life.

This brings us back to the original meaning of ‘charisma’ for all of us who at some point have been called charismatic leaders.

Charisma is a Greek transliteration into English; it means both ‘gift’ or ‘favor’ and carries a sense of having a grace given to you by God.

In other words, to the extent you possess any, your charisma is a gift and a favor from God to be used and stewarded not for your glory but God’s.

Of all the character traits we can cultivate, humility might be the greatest when it comes to stewarding charisma. As I’ve learned, again and again, only humility can get you out of what pride got you into.

If you find yourself surfing off your own giftedness, humble yourself.

This takes quite a bit of intentionality. But I’ve learned you can get to humility through two paths:

1. Voluntarily
2. Involuntary

How does involuntary humility happen? Simple: When you’re humiliated by others or a situation.

Humiliation is simply involuntary humility. When you won’t humble yourself, others are happy to do it for you.

I’m trying to take the voluntary path moving forward. I don’t always get it right, but I’m trying.

4. Your Character Needs to Grow Faster Than Your Platform

As I listened to story after story during the podcast, I realized that the real issue is character. It was at Mars Hill and it is in all of our lives.

The challenge is that in an age of instant celebrity, your platform can grow faster than your character.

I think that’s one of the reasons so many megachurch pastors fail (here’s a post with some thoughts on why it keeps happening).

As we’ve seen too often in the church (so painfully), all the competency in the world can’t compensate for a lack of character.

Character is the great leveler. You may be smart, but if people don’t trust you, they won’t want to work with you. You may be the best preacher in your city, but if you treat others as less than, people will stop listening.

Lack of character kills careers, shatters families, ruins friendships, and destroys influence. And even if you never get fired or divorced over the compromises you make, your lack of character will limit the intimacy, joy, and depth you experience with God and with people.

Competency gets you in the room. Character keeps you in the room. As a result, it’s character—not competency—that determines your capacity.

Although I hear the argument all the time, I personally don’t believe there is anything inherently bad about a large church or organization.

But there is something inherently difficult in it. And to some extent, the larger something is, the harder it is.

Please know, this doesn’t mean leading a small church or venture is easy. I have led small churches. I get it. Few things in leadership are easy.

But I’ve also led some larger ministries and organizations, and the larger it is, the greater the pressure and the more there’s at stake.

I remember when our church grew past 300; my mind was blown. Now, it’s five times the size.

Or look at this blog or my podcast. Honestly, 100,000 readers or listeners was inconceivable a decade ago. Then millions showed up.

Nothing gets you ready for that.

It’s way too easy for your platform to outgrow your character. And that’s where all the danger lies.

Add to it one more fact: You and I are not naturally made to lead thousands or millions.

It doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It just means you’ll have to grow your character faster. Much faster.

5. Many Leaders Want to Be Celebrities—And The Internet is the Bullet Train

The podcast focused a lot on pride, narcissism, and the desire for celebrity.

It’s super easy to point the finger at a leader like Mark Driscoll, but that still leaves us with four fingers pointing back at ourselves.

And even if you don’t have a platform of your own, it’s easy to get a platform (a big one) by criticizing and destroying other people.

Before you deny that this applies to you, do a little gut check. Ask yourself, How good would you be with complete obscurity, with an irrelevance so deep nobody notices you or cares? 

Yep…very few of us are good with that. After all, God designed us to be social creatures and to live lives of meaning and purpose.

Interaction and making some kind of a difference are core to a meaningful life.

The challenge becomes, of course, that the internet is the bullet train to celebrity. Just ask any 12-year-old YouTuber.

There’s more than a little irony that The Rise and Fall of Mars Hills podcast criticized Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill for using the internet and social media to rapidly grow their ministry, while The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast itself was using exactly the same platforms as it became the most listened-to podcast in the Christian space.

And before you or I claim innocence or protest too loudly, well, you’re reading this blog post and perhaps you listen to my podcast or follow me on social and you’ll leave your comments online and…

You see?

Yeah.

It’s easy to criticize people with bigger platforms than yours, and in doing so let yourself off the hook.

A better approach is to dig deep and probe your own motives.

After listening to the podcast, I found myself asking questions like Why do I like the fact that my podcast gets downloaded so much, or how many people read my blog/buy my book/come to my talks?

There’s something ugly under that.

Alternatively, you can be so allergic (and self-righteous) about remaining obscure that your option becomes what…do nothing? Say nothing? Attempt nothing? That’s not faithfulness either.

Once again, humility and character are the keys here.

So what do you do?

Work twice as hard on your character as you do on your platform.

If we all did that, our posts would be more kind, our comments more grateful, our content more purely motivated.”

Source: https://careynieuwhof.com/some-reflections-on-the-rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/