Deadset discipleship will never do

Discipleship approaches seem to have waned or at least changed markedly in the past decade or so.  I come to this via an obvious personal crisis, not of faith, but of discipleship, and if we’re honest, us ministers, we arrive or remain at this point when we arrive at or remain in our professionalism.  God’s calling us back.

“If we are to be disciples of Jesus, we must be made disciples supernaturally; as long as we have the deadset purpose of being disciples we may be sure we are not.”
—Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, September 25.

We have all arrived at this point on countless occasions, frustrated by a ‘faith’ that seeks to do what only God can do by the “super-natural grace of God.”  In other words, by our ‘works’ of trying hard to be disciples, we get it wrong ever time. 

In the simplest arrangement of thought, it is faith done by works.

It never works, and it always leads to frustration.  “But I’m trying so hard, Lord, can’t you see the effort I’m putting in, I’m doing everything I can, and still nothing!”

Chambers further clarifies this thought: “God does not ask us to do the things that are easy to us naturally...”

God is calling us at every instant to come back to peace, to that neutral place where divine grace can work from; where the divine grace can ‘task’ the individual.

“God does not ask us to do the things that are easy to us naturally; He only asks us to do the things we are perfectly fitted to do by His grace, and the cross will come along that line always.”
—The Fuller Chambers Quote

Frustration ought to be the clue and the cue to stop.

Frustration ought to be the point at which we say, “I’m departing from discipleship here, aren’t I, Lord?”  We may discern a very quiet, “Yes, my son/daughter.   Yes, you are.  Come back to the cross.”

We’re of no use to God unless we walk humbly with our Lord.

Not just Creator God, not just Saviour and King God, but LORD God, our Master, who instructs us and demands our obedience IF we are to be IN the divine.

The simplistic faith thwarts the proud, and it rewards the humble, because God’s power can only work through the latter.

The less we bring to God, the more God will say, ‘Yes, now I’m ready to use you.”

The less of our own abilities, achievements, and altruism (virtue signalling) we bring to the altar, the more God will elevate the truer spiritual gifts that are abundant in each of us for divine glory.

This is a crushing blow to our egos, and God won’t hesitate to meet us every time around the mountain with a self-generated annoyance.  This circumambulation akin to the Israelites circling the desert 40 years is a phenomenon so many of us know all too well.

First decouple from the self, and simply ‘BE’ before your Lord.  THEN God may, at divine convenience (as it should be), from the supernatural, use you powerfully.

How can I bolster my ministry survivability?

Recently I was asked to speak on ministry survivability at a minister’s collective, and because I’m unavailable, I thought I’d lay down some thoughts here that might be useful.  It’s a collection of thoughts and resources mixed with my own experience thus far as a survivor in ministry.

I write this article, now, today, with the full intention of adding to it over the next day or so.

Anyone who’s been in ministry as a pastor or chaplain or missionary for any length of time has faced situations that have called for survival.

There’s a massive range of issues that threaten ministry survivability, from common garden-variety burnout, to mismanaged conflict, to compassion fatigue, to spiritual and other forms of abuse, to a crisis of faith, and truly the list would be endless.

Many of us have been threatened—perhaps all of us—because of conflict that ended previously strong friendships, traumatised us, ended our ministries, or ruined us for a time.  Sometimes a combination of all these.  If we’re not destroyed by the calamities of ministries that end suddenly by others’ manipulative action, we live to serve another day.  What’s required is resilience.  It’s good to take some time out, reflect, agonise, and grow.  You may find your call is clarified through the furnace of betrayal and rejection, and the profound disappointment and disenchantment that comes as a result.

But, if you asked great Australian ministry mentor, Dr Keith Farmer, by far the commonest threat to ministry survivability would be burnout through endeavouring to meet the impossible demands our ministries and our humanity can place on us.  Much of this can ultimately be attributed to attempting to be everything to everyone—all driven by a perfectionism that’s driven deep into us from the traumas of past.

We all bear some trauma, and particularly those who are driven to help and serve others.  The help and service we provide to others came usually because we ourselves were helped and served, and our need speaks of something that impacted us, i.e., trauma.  The trouble is we don’t face trauma well, because few of us are comfortable with admitting there’s something wrong with us.  Of course, trauma is a result of trauma, and it is never our fault.

Much burnout is akin to exhaustion, compassion fatigue and the like.  Again, when we dig deeper down, we find that what sent us to the brink was our agreement that we had to do it all—or that we couldn’t say no.  I know there was a season in my life when I literally felt that invincible through God’s power working through me—it took me 18 months to flame out.  Sometimes we’re in situations where leaders manage poorly and even abusively.  This will always threaten our ministry survivability.

A threat that can creep up little by little is the reverse correlation between faith and professionalism.  The better we get at preaching and pastoral care, the farther our faith appears to us as authentic, and our connection with God and our devotional lives wane.  It takes raw honesty to admit that this has occurred and gentle, encouraging supervision and mentoring always helps.

One thing I’ve consistently found in being pressed beyond my abilities to bear is my call of God has strengthened overall, even as I’ve contemplated giving up ministry a thousand times.  God wouldn’t let me.  And I’m glad of it, because when I recovered, I always wanted to serve God.

My prayer for you is that you’d be equipped by God to not only survive the conquests to your ministry, but that afterwards you would thrive.

The following are some resources that might help:

Blog Article Resources:

Passing the Baton with Dr Keith Farmer

Do you show signs of undiagnosed burnout?

10 sources of exhaustion you can’t afford not to know about (from the ministry of Ruth Haley Barton)

Warnings for when a pastor’s call becomes their profession

Contending with spiritual weariness

Restoring empathy in compassion fatigue

Overcoming compassion fatigue

A flying 7-minute guide to peacemaking

Justice for the abused and traumatised, eventually

“For there is nothing hidden 
that will not be disclosed, 
and nothing concealed 
that will not be known or brought out into the open.”
— Jesus of Nazareth, as recorded in Luke 8:17

Justice is balance and it is the perfect equilibrium of all things.  The facts of our faith in the Lord—in the revealed word of God, e.g., Luke 8:17—testify to the principle that everything will soon be revealed for what it was, is, and will be.

This ought to give us a great deal of comfort, on the one hand, and it should motivate great introspection in each of us, on the other hand.  As it is in this life, those who do the latter often find it impossible to do the former, because they’re the ones who don’t abuse but receive it instead.

Those who abuse in the first instance, and then compound that abuse by denying wrongdoing or avoiding accountability or by not being held to account, have offended not only those they abused, but they have offended God more; by hurting a person God loves, by not owning up to it and compounding the abuse into the folds of trauma, and by the testimony of a lie before Whom nobody should (or can) lie.

In short, those who commit all sorts of crimes against other human beings are culpable of much worse than merely offending us mere mortals.  Much, much worse, and the whole earth has no measure for how much worse.

When we can’t hold them to account, and others can’t hold them to account, we transfer their portion of the debt they owe us to God.

In all reality, however, because of the mercy that’s been poured out to us all through the Cross, they owe us nothing.  This is such a freeing reality.  It’s easy to forgive anyone anything when we know that God catches up with us all, eventually.  That the offence they committed, that hasn’t been repented of, was and is a much more direct transgression against God than anyone else, ever.

Interestingly, even though those who transgress us owe us nothing, their way back to the favour of God is through repentance, which means their owning of their wrong, apology, including the seeking of forgiveness.  Reconciliation is the entire purpose of the Kingdom of God.

There are no secrets.  All will be revealed, and it’s infinitely better to account for all of our personal wrongdoing, as we can, while we can.  There’s no pity for the person, who, by the Testimony of Life that all can see, either agrees that God sees and knows all or denies it and lives contravening God’s universal laws in blatantly tragic arrogance.

But peace follows the person who has faith in what is bound to happen.  Theirs is wisdom.

Nobody’s getting away with anything.

When we truly face this truth in the context of our own lives, we suddenly see the wisdom of getting the log out of our own eye (Matthew 7:3-5), for we’ll only be held to account for those things we did.

God’s timing may be very inconvenient for any who have a claim that they ought to be ‘blessed’ more than they presently are, but God owes nobody an explanation for why their life is how it is (see Job 41:11), and yet God’s timing is perfect—but we can only see that from the view of hindsight.

Humanity’s sole task in the realm of abuse and trauma is to trust that God sees all and God judges all.

And if we’re called to kindly assist a person see the truth, so far as that depends on us, they’re loved to the extent that they’re held to account and are given the opportunity at repentance BEFORE they meet God.

Photo by Khamkéo Vilaysing on Unsplash

6,574 days in a row devoid of hangover

18 years without a drink.  I started drinking in my eighteenth year.  But those middle eighteen years (I’m 54) were a journey with alcohol, and ultimately, I became dependant on drinking.  It was not only one way I enjoyed myself, but it also became the way I destressed.

I can distinctly recall a time early in my adult life where I foolishly thought to myself, “I’ll never have an issue with alcohol.  I’ll always be able to control it.”  That should have been warning enough of what I was blind to.

Over the years, my alcohol intake crept up on me, but to be honest, I always gave it a nudge in my earliest years.  Then the years of family came along, and my drinking took on a more ‘refined’ character.  I became interested in wine, especially what wines accompanied different foods—the whites with fish and chicken, reds with red meat, etc.  I think it was convenient that I could hide my desire for the effects of alcohol behind a feigned interest in high taste.

I went through a season of brewing my own beer, and a highlight in my memory was to get home from afternoon shift at 11:30PM at night and have four beers and a snack before going to bed—yes, that’s four beers each day (whether you think that’s a lot or not much perhaps says a lot about your personal approach to society’s ‘friendliest of drugs’, alcohol).

Alcohol was something that always constituted much weekly thought and planning.  But at the time, I don’t think I really considered it.

Alcohol does so much damage in society and given there’s so much broad acceptance of it only compounds the problems.

In my later years on the journey with alcohol, I subconsciously planned my Friday, Saturday and even Sunday nights to include drinks.  Alcohol became bigger than those things that should have been first priority.

But it all changed one Monday night when my drinking career finished without me even knowing it yet.  I had a more important fight on my hands—to win back my first marriage.  Well, that wasn’t to be.  But by the time I gave up fighting to rebuild my first marriage, I’d already invested nine months at AA, and, because I’d advanced so much in my personal journey with the ‘steps’, I’d become the secretary of the Kwinana Town Group that met at the Catholic Church on Thursday nights.  I’d received a lot of help and felt that call of God to help others.

18 years after the decision was really made for me—the drinking had to go!—I’m so thankful, because I’ve NEVER missed it.

A father reflects over missing his kids

Much of the innocuous past is something that disappears unless we retain record of it.

When I talk of the ‘innocuous past’ I talk of the healed past.  It’s important but it’s easily forgotten, not like the past that lingers in pain, the past you can’t get away from, and the past that many obscure through alcohol and other drugs and practices.

One part of my past that was incredibly painful at the time—a season that lasted at least three years, and probably closer to five or six years overall—was when I would live for days and up to a week without my daughters, when I couldn’t see them.

Early days in divorced life, as a single I mean, there were Tuesday and Thursday nights when I picked my daughters up from school, played with them at the park, then organised them dinner (usually ravioli!—I think they hate ravioli now), before they returned to their mother.  Then every second weekend, Friday afternoon from 5pm (or school) until 5pm Sunday.

Many an evening I would lament and weep as I drove off.  It was even worse during school holidays when my girls would be with me for a week or more and then I’d have to take them home.

I know their mother missed the girls dearly during absences too—when I had them.  My daughters’ mother and I cooperated out of a shared sense for what was good and right for our daughters.

Their absence in my life was one thing I never really got used to, though, because it’s the revisitation of loss each and every time.  Part of me would miss them terribly, and part of me would worry if I was concerned for their safety, but mostly I just missed them terribly.

Especially in the early days, particularly before I married again, I’d have whole nights where I was just low and blah.  All kinds of things would enter my mind, and I was ever thankful for the call to ministry that immersed me in the support I needed whilst I served God.

Not having my daughters around me for periods at a time left a great big hole in my experience of life, like I was bereft of a greater part of me.

I understand it’s not as simple as giving a parent his or her access all the time.  Marriages fail for reasons, and often it’s a toxic dynamic that needs to be broken.  But where there’s a missing, it’s hard, and often that missing can be a child for her or his parent.

It’s so very important for co-parenting to work for the benefit and betterment of the kids.  Vital in fact.  When two parents genuinely put the kids first, the kids can prosper despite the broken family.  But it takes humility in both parents.

All I can say here, however, is I used to miss my daughters like crazy!  But that missing always converted into plans for the next time we’d be together, so I could make it memorable or at least positive.

I’ll never forget 9/11, but to be honest, I completely missed it

Given that the 9/11 attacks occurred in the evening Australian time, the first I knew of them were the following morning.  I’ll never forget ascending ladders to enter a control room and seeing operators talking about them in disbelief.  It was then that I scanned the newspapers and disbelief invaded my countenance.

The previous night I went to bed early, and my diary also reveals an argument with a family member that led us both perhaps to be distracted from what was occurring on every television channel globally.

In the minutes of my first reconciling of the events of 9/11, I recall meeting with a bunch of engineers, managers, and designers as my role was to lead a Hazard and Operability Study on a sulfuric acid manufacturing plant.

Of course, we were all mesmerised and transfixed by what we were witnessing 12-hours later as the events unfolded.  Like the pandemic has been constantly in our newsfeeds, the 9/11 attacks were constantly in the news for the months and years after the fateful day—like it was the virus and then the vaccine, for 9/11 as I recall it, it was the attacks, the recovery, and then the war on terror.  It was never not in the News.

Like everyone alive, there was no amount of exposure to the 9/11 attacks that ever made those events normal.  Every dimension, from the human loss, to the colossal scale of two 100-plus-storey buildings collapsing, to planes flying into them, to people jumping out of them, was and still is beyond the human mind’s capacity to comprehend.

Twenty years on, it can seem like that war on terror was a waste of time.  I don’t think all of it was.  But the attacks, even as they were perpetrated politically, run well beyond it, into the stratosphere of our common humanity.

343 firefighters lost their lives among the nearly 3,000 who perished that fateful day.  Famously, it’s said, all gave some, but some gave all, making the ultimate sacrifice, knowing that their last breathes would be their last.

Twenty years on, we still pinch ourselves.  Yes, it really did happen.  Time stands still just long enough for us to hug our loved ones just a second or two longer.

Life is precious.

Faith beyond injustice when you’ve done the right thing

“You can do right and still have everything turn out wrong.  I am not certain where we got the idea that was not so, given that the one we follow and call God did do everything right and ended up treated with gross injustice.”
—Diane Langberg, PhD

One of the biggest mistakes is expecting the world will be cause-and-then-effect, i.e., “I do good and good results will follow the good actions I do.”  Yet, as Langberg points out, we do expect some return on our moral investments.

Jesus plainly set out the terms of life in the gospels—expect to be persecuted for doing the good things you do.  Why?  Goodness threatens people who are bent on doing evil.  And systems in this world revolve around power, and power has very little to do with justice.

The most obvious evidence of this phenomenon is the crucified Christ, a masterstroke of God, but the most poignant cosmic injustice possible.

If you grow to accept that you won’t always be recognised for the good you do, and in fact, the world will seldom recognise you, then you’re set up to build for the Kingdom without compromise.

But the moment we shake our fist at the world—or God for that matter—in those times when we’re incredulously livid, we lose our insight, and everything the Kingdom of God could avail to us.  We lose access to the very power that could open the door to some other form of Kingdom justice—one that the world’s systems cannot comprehend.

The only way we can sustain ourselves is by NOT looking for justice, but by expecting off-the-wall injustices to consume us.  This is neither right nor easy, but it is realistic.

The way we sustain ourselves in this ministry and in this life is by relinquishing our demand that life be fair.  Life and the world have never been fair, but take heart, as Jesus said, HE has overcome the world.

Expect life and the world to be unfair, and suddenly we’re equipped to persevere.

A vision for faith that encourages and strengthens

The morning after a night where I battled for insight, I was encouraged tremendously by anointed words from Diane Langberg, PhD.

Langberg’s 50-year ministry as a Christian psychologist specialising in genocidal and trauma therapies, and systems of abuse sets her voice apart globally.  It’s her vision of the Kingdom that I find most salient.

Diane’s words are below.  May they bless you and encourage you as we make God known in our ministries.

Here they are:

“The word for minister in the New Testament means under-rower – a galley slave on a warship who does not obey wind or weather or waves but rows ever and always according to the instructions of the captain.

“When each under-rower lives fully under the authority of that captain then that ship can survive battles, storms and weariness as they row together under the command of one.

“May we, the body of Christ today, be known for our devotion, our love and obedience to Christ – under-rowers whose service is never dictated by current ideas, or groups, or causes – but within those spheres we are first and foremost devoted to the Crucified Christ.”

For me, the term ‘under-rower’ is a fresh concept.  It reminded me of a biblical concept of discipleship.  The concept of not falling foul to wind or weather or waves was an astounding, empowering encouragement, reminiscent of James 1:6-8.

Langberg also presents the image of a church united in Christ (under the command of one) in countering the ‘battles, storms and weariness’ that encumber us all personally, yet also corporately, and at a Kingdom level when the churches endeavour to attempt great things for God.

The concept of not being subject to ‘current’ ideas/groups/causes – the issues that can seem to divide us and dilute the work at times – but being subject to the Crucified Christ within those very spheres seems just as important now as ever.  It’s not saying that the current ideas, groups and causes are unimportant – everything needs its proper perspective.

I know as I reflect, having been burdened by a higher than optimal workload of recent, and the loss of a good friend after a long battle with cancer, amid the normal stresses of life, these words spoke hope and life into my spirit in the present season.