Pastoring Standing Still

by Mike Chong Perkinson

Pastoring is such an odd profession. There is so much about it that resembles the business world and so much about it that does not. We have a semblance to the machinery of leadership and organizational prowess as any business and yet, we lead nothing like it.

Our world involves leadership dynamics, forming and maintaining the leadership engine, developing farm systems for new and upcoming leaders, navigating the organization, and so on. However ours is not simply a leadership of systems or product creation, management or sales. The world of pastoral leadership is a spiritual enterprise that affords us the privilege to lead and shepherd God’s most precious creation – people. In this organization, we are not the senior partner, but the junior partner. God is the senior partner and since it is His company; He gets to call the shots (John 5:19).

Having said that, let’s talk a bit about something I have always known but not always practiced. I have always believed that God speaks to His people (I Kings 19:12; Amos 3:7; Acts 16:9). The most frequent ways seem to be impressions in our spirit, the “still small voice”, through His Word, through others, dreams and visions, and of course, the occasional audible voice. This article is not on how He speaks but assumes that He does. Particularly when it comes to developing His people and navigating His Church into the fullness of living and representing His Kingdom life on earth.

What I have been realizing is how often my pastoring and leadership have been based on my tradition or my understanding of leadership principles. You know, stuff like when there is momentum in the organization you don’t want to stop it and so do all you can to facilitate it. Makes perfect sense and is absolutely logical. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the logic of our traditions and leadership logistics and execution. I am not contending for an irrational leadership and then calling that spiritual, but asking the question, how does one lead in a spiritual manner? The answer that I’ve come up with is the title of this article, “Pastoring Standing Still.”

It is clear that God asks us to do things He will not do and reserves for Himself things that He will do that we cannot do (I Corinthians 3:6). Somewhere in the midst of this is the key to pastoring standing still. Let me try and explain.

Jesus uses the “wind” metaphor as language for the Holy Spirit (John 3:8). I have struggled most of my ministry life trying to discern; what is apparently the knowable “will of God” (Romans 12:1-2). You know, trying to decide if you should buy that building now, lease this property or the other one, start this ministry or stop that one, plant the church now or wait, support which country in missions, preach what series or text, do what outreach project, bring on which staff member, etc. The decisions we face are many and deeply challenging.

Scripture doesn’t always help as it makes clear that God’s thoughts and ways are not like ours (Isaiah 55:8-9). We find in Scripture countless examples of what appears to be counter-intuitive leadership; a leadership, that some would call, supra-rational. Supra in the sense that is just beyond our understanding, but not irrational per se. It is rational in the spiritual domain but not necessarily in ours. It is rational from the vantage point of God who can see all things and as we learn after the fact, His decisions are brilliant and include so much more life than we ever anticipated. It is not logical in the way we understand logic and once we see the whole picture our hearts melt in humble awe. That is precisely our problem. We do not see the whole picture.

Our training as helped us look for what is next and proper for our traditions and what is the next step in the leadership matrix. We look for those obvious cues and rightfully so. But is that all there is to spiritual leadership? I think not.

In order for us to become sensitized to the Spirit’s leading in our lives, we must allow ourselves to stop and pause, to reflect and meditate, to listen; to open the eyes of our hearts (Ephesians 1:18) so that we might be spiritually enlightened; to calm ourselves so that we might be able to feel the wind blow and sense the direction of the Spirit.

After pastoring for nearly 30 years, I have come to truly know some things I already knew. I know that I am a son first and not a servant/pastor. I know that I am supposed to follow the leading of the Spirit. I know ministry is a spiritual enterprise. I know that spiritual transformation cannot take place without the work of the Holy Spirit. And yet, I have spent less time in prayer as a son and more as a pastor trying to get a sermon or a tip on what to do next. Instead of meditation and reflecting on my relationship with God and what He is doing in my life and ministry, I have opted to study leadership theory or systems or simply have gone out and done something in the name of the Almighty to satisfy my restless and uneasy heart. I have quieted my soul for the process and not the Person of Christ and as result, have missed the beauty and peace of being in relationship with the God of the Universe.

I say all of this to simply say, slow down. Spend time with God as a son/daughter, quiet yourself and meditate on what He is doing in your life and ministry. Reflect on your day with the Holy Spirit and led Him guide you through it and learn from the happenings in your life, training the “eyes of your heart” to see with understanding. Don’t act unless you sense that “still, small voice” releasing you.

All I know is that since I have committed to pastoring standing still, I have discovered that my ministry is less burdensome. I have more joy and life. Not to mention that things happen with greater ease and less work, leaving everyone amazed at God and not me.

I leave you with these questions:

1. How long has it been since you have heard God speak to you about you? If it is a long time, why do you think that is the case?
2. What do you sense in your spirit/heart that God is saying to you about your relationship with Him? Your family? Your leadership?
3. When you sense you are suppose to pause or act, what keeps you from doing it?
4. How is that we, as spiritual leaders, struggle to hear the voice of God and yet, expect our people to do it? What will you do differently to ensure that you will hear the voice of your Father and only do what you see the Father doing?
5. If God has spoken to you today, how will you now respond to that?

Walking in the Flow

by Tom Johnston

What moves you? I mean, really moves you? Not just emotively, but motivationally – what moves you to action? Is it a situation – a positive or negative experience, or perhaps circumstances – those that are pleasant, or those that are uncomfortable and challenging? Is it personal need, a sense of mission, a desire to please, an aspiration to show love? Is it a feeling, a way of thinking, a perspective; is it hope, or fear, or anger, or joy, or lust, or greed, or ambition? Could it be a desire to bring change, a just cause, a passion to see people helped and served; a wish for people to know the truth – as you see it; a passion for souls “won to Christ?” It is something you choose, or simply a “knee-jerk” reaction to some external stimulus in your life, good or bad? What is it; what drives you? It may be one of these things, or something similar. The point is, something does motivate you, and something does move you. The question is: what is the ultimate source of that motivation; that drive, that passion?

When you look at the list above, you view it through a framework within your thinking and emotions which reflects your moral values and ethical beliefs. This framework is developed through experience and learning, what you have been taught and what you have encountered in life; through your upbringing, family life, the country and locality you were born into, as well as your place within the socio-economic and ethnic status of your culture. Of the list above, you may see some as almost angelic in virtue or demonic in expression; and you would be right, to a point. What drives us proceeds from within – for good or for ill, from our own heart. Because of this we are admonished in Proverbs 4:23 to:

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

Jesus highlights this in Luke 6:45:

The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

The rabbis of His day thought of the “good intention” and the “evil intention” of the human heart, and the struggle was to master the evil intention and thereby give rise to the good. We see this in the story with Cain and Abel in Genesis 4:6-7:

The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

Unlike Taoism (Daoism), which seeks to hold these forces in the Yin-Yang balance, the Hebraic rabbi sought to teach his disciples to overcome the “evil intention.” The problem is – we can’t do either. We cannot achieve the balance the Taoist would desire, nor can we ourselves master the “evil intention” of sin as described by the rabbis. Cain couldn’t do it, David couldn’t do it and we can’t do it. Yet, the desire to do good is there because we are made in the Imago Dei, but that image is marred by sin. So, from this we can see that all human motivation in and of itself is, to some degree, corrupted. It is the self-oriented nature of the fallen human condition that taints the purest desire, with the self being both the source and the object of the motivation – what I do, I do because of me, and I do for me. After all, it really is all about me! Beyond the rare selfless heroism, we are bound to the problem of the self. What I do, I most often do for the sake of self, very often even loving and serving myself so as to be loved and accepted by others. Many are driven to preach the Gospel not out of compassion, but out of a need to be superior, to be right. Many want their ministry to prosper not for the satisfaction of Christ’s travail (Isaiah 53:11), but for their own need for success. Many even seek to serve God through “soul winning,” hoping in actuality to win the love and approval of their heavenly Father.

This is the problem Paul talks about in his Letter to the Romans, in chapters 6 through 8, the death of the self in favor of the life of Christ living in us and flowing through us, being the only solution. We can’t overcome the evil intention of the fallen nature, but we can die to it. We can live, not just in the “good intention,” but rather in the goodness of the person of Christ. Regrettably, we often view these chapters from a theological or theoretical perspective, rather than a practical one.

So what does it look like to actually live out this goodness of Christ through self-death? Sounds rather bleak, doesn’t it, dying to self and all? Is it all a road of pain and suffering? There is some of that, yes, self-mortification of the flesh is not comfy, not “warm and fuzzy.” But the key is found to all of this is in this passage in Romans 8:12-15:

So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

The key is simply living life in the flow of the Spirit, and allowing all motivation to proceed from that. No longer am I living, but it is Christ who is living within me, and through me (Galatians 2:20). I no longer have to master the evil intention or try to exude goodness, two things I can’t do anyway, I just have to choose Christ over myself in all things. I no longer must master evil or good, I must be mastered by the One who is good incarnate. For many this sounds too metaphysical or ethereal, but it is actually quite practical. While the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in each disciple of Christ is a profound mystery, the daily walk of yieldedness is a simple function of relationship: the more time I spend with the Person of Christ; the more time I spend in meditating on His Scriptures; the more time I spend with Him in reflection and prayer; the more sensitive I become to His moving. So, then, as I walk through my day, I am walking in His flow, my heart and desires yielded to His.

While this time investment sounds extreme, it is more about consistency and constancy than the actual hours allotted in spiritual pursuit. If I have time with Him and His word consistently on a daily basis, and if I build into my day the means of being aware of Him continually, I will be able to draw upon His presence, His heart, His mind, His will and His desires, putting mine aside. The real death I must embrace is not just to my fleshly desires, but a death that allows me to prioritize God in my personal schedule! Again, Paul speaks to us about this as well in Colossians 4:2:

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

We can walk through our daily life in a God-aware posture, always seeking communion with His spirit, having an attitude of awareness or watchfulness for what the Father is doing (John 5:19). Whatever we encounter, whomever we encounter, we do so in thankfulness, responding through the Spirit, in the Spirit to everything and everyone, realizing in everything the will of the Spirit, as it says in Romans 8:28, in Paul’s culmination of His dialog about the flesh/Spirit struggle:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

This should then be our goal as disciples of Jesus Christ, to walk in His Spirit daily to flow with Him in what He is doing, to be motivated by that which motivates Him and nothing else, dead to the self, but fully alive in Christ. All this is simply attained, to an ever greater degree through our relationship with Him. May this be so for you, and may you walk in the flow of the Holy Spirit daily, moved by His heart, sensitized to His directing breezes, living a life overflowing with the abundance of the Person of Jesus Christ.

The Keys to Church Growth: Trust & Obey

by Mike Chong Perkinson

The longer I have walked with Christ and partnered with the Father in His Kingdom enterprise, I have come to realize that the fundamental issue of my life has been housed in an inability to trust. I have discovered that it is easy to believe God. It is an entirely different matter to wait on Him. If I trust Him then I can wait on Him, even when it appears He is not doing anything.

This inability to trust has influenced my life at the very core of its being, expressing itself most clearly in a command and control persona that resulted in a lot of activity (more than necessary), stress, pressure and oftentimes, wasted energy. This life of command and control can be explicated more clearly in the graph below.

Relief (Soul feels the pleasure of control) >
Immediate Results (Pathway is now confirmed – it works, therefore it is God) >
Ache in the Soul/Boredom (Something still missing, success not enough) >
Pressure to fix the ache of the soul >
Results in increasing stress >
Discouragement & Despair (Ending point for some)>
Demand & Control (Isaiah 50:10-11; Jeremiah 2:13)

As you see, the life of command and control is lived in the authority of the self and not in the power of the resurrected Christ. For many years, I have lived in that mode, justifying it and baptizing it with Scripture. The basic ideology of a command and control leadership style is about the objective and the methodology or system employed to achieve it. Leaders who live in this world de-humanize their leadership teams and staff, providing on-going scarring of their hearts, speaking love while modeling performance and results as the basis of acceptance (you are valuable as long as you contribute). Everything we preach against somehow finds its way into our practice, undermining the very gospel we are trying to convey. How did this happen?

Without trying to answer the question categorically for everyone, let me tell you how it happened for me. The old hymn says, “trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey” (Word by John H. Sammis, 1997). Trust and obey, I have come to believe is the key response to the love of our Father expressed most poignantly in the Son at Calvary. We not only trust and obey for our salvation but for everything we do in our Father’s Kingdom, including how we lead His church.

An example of opting out of the life of trust and obey is found in 2 Samuel 6:1-8, when David is returning the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem. He opts to carry it via a cart instead of how it was commanded in the Law which specified that it be carried by Levites who would bear it on their shoulders by means of poles passed through gold rings attached to the ark (Exodus 25:14). Even the Levites could not touch the ark or look in it. This violation of a command led to the death of Uzza.

If you’ll let me place a little modern logic to the mind of David, his rationale for carrying the Ark on a cart was based in convenience and speed. After all, you don’t need 4 people to do it, the pace can be faster and energy preserved. How do we move from doing what we know God has asked of us, to doing what is expedient and convenient? The tragedy of our choice is that it often paves the way for death to be more dominant in our ministries than life. Ironically, more people burn out, die spiritually and lose their passion for Christ – including those of us who lead it – when we opt for this life of convenience, immediacy, results and success.

Years ago, God spoke to my heart a powerful phrase that still reverberates in my soul. He said, “This is a sacred trust, never treat it as common.” This powerful exhortation had to do with His Kingdom and my small part in it, shepherding His church (a local expression of it) for His pleasure and purpose with a methodology of equip and release rather than command and control.

As much as I have known this, I have struggled with it – what I know and what I do have not always been the same. Years ago, when I came to Christ and entered ministry I knew it was about loving God and loving people and making disciples. Somewhere in the simplicity of my faith, I opted for expediency, results and success – using people to achieve my vision (or as I use to say, “God’s vision”). While I contended for those who did not know Jesus and sought to love them and include them at my Father’s table, I minimized those around me as I dictated what they should do to achieve the vision, loved them well when they performed and replaced them when they didn’t, preached about love and family but modeled perform or lose your spot. While I opted for the convenience of carrying the Ark on a cart, I still could hear the voice of my Father speaking to my heart. I simply ignored it or paid more attention to the voice of convenience, results and success.

I am a classic “Type A” personality and so, waiting has never been easy for me. My idea of patience is a 30 second wait – microwaves even irritate me. When it comes to God, who seems to move at “Three Miles an Hour”, I have found myself opting for convenience and immediacy, rather than “trust and obey”.

When we adopted our second daughter, we were so amazed at God’s kindness to us. Ephesians 3:20 seemed to be happening as God was simply blowing our minds. However, during the second week of the adoption the birth mother changed her mind. It was a time of tremendous heartache for us as we were well aware that we were about to lose our daughter. We prayed and trusted God, with no other options but prayer and waiting on Him (rather good options, I think). The following Sunday my wife went to the altar and laid our little girl on it (I joined her) and thanked God that we were able to be parents of a newborn baby for 2 weeks. With our baby girl in her arms fully extended to God, we said thank you to God and wept. We let our baby go into the hands of our loving Father (waiting on God which is to look to God, Isaiah 40:28-31). Well, God took our daughter and gave her right back to us and we have enjoyed this sacred trust and will never treat it as common. What I have learned is that when you wait or look to God (Isaiah 40:28-31) the results are far greater, the death happens inside of us and the life and health of those around us is vibrant, alive and maturing.

Dear leader, as you contend for our God, be mindful of His voice. You know, the one that reminds you to love your spouse and speak kindly and tenderly to her; the voice that prompts you to show affection and verbalize it to your children; the voice that encourages you to appreciate your staff and leadership team with words and acts of kindness; the voice that asks you to give up your fear; the voice that tells you are a beloved son/daughter before you are a servant or a steward. Whatever you do, be sure to carry the Ark the way it is supposed to be carried – “trust and obey for there is no other way.”

More Than Mechanics

by Tom Johnston

In the classic 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz, the young girl Dorothy is transported to the Land of Oz, and in her journey to return home to Kansas, she seeks out the Wizard of Oz, purported to be the wisest man in the land, to aid her in her quest. Through all of her adventures, she and her friends (the Scarecrow, Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion) finally encounter the Wizard, who is not all that he at first seems to be.

First appearing as a giant, fearful apparition, the Wizard is exposed as just a man who is operating the “smoke and mirrors show” of his avatar from machinery hid behind a curtain. Amazingly enough, once he is exposed, the travelers gain the benefit of his very real, and gentle, wisdom. While the Wizard messed up and is eventually unable to facilitate Dorothy’s return, he is able to help the others discover that the things which they seek are already in their possession.

For too many of us who are pastors, we have been trained to be the men and women “behind the curtain,” pulling the levers of the church machinery, keeping everything (apparently) running smoothly, creating a larger-than-life presentation each Sunday morning. We wow the crowds with our sermons, video clips and worship experiences while staying safely behind the “curtain,” holding people at a distance, all the while saying “ignore that man behind the curtain!” With exposure comes vulnerability, and the regular folks from Kansas might find that Pastor Oz is not quite as huge as the twenty foot projection screen makes him out to be. So, we focus on being “church mechanics,” operating and maintaining the machine of ministry, a safe recluse accessible to all through their avatar, but available to none as a real person.

But it is that kind of encounter, the encounter with the “real Oz,” that allows for those “regular folks” to access the gentle wisdom of Jesus resident in each of His shepherds through the Scripture and the Spirit. And what we help them discover is that what they seek they already possess in Christ. Too often we try to give them what we think they want – the big show with all its apparitions or pomp or laser-light shows, yet in doing so we most often fail to give them what they really need.

It is much safer for us to touch them lightly through our public avatar than to touch them deeply through our personal presence. Indeed, the avatar allows us to present, like the Wizard, a perspective of who I am without revealing the true me – the “spiritual giant,” the “Sermonator,” the faux-vulnerable servant of God who is close to no one. (Social networking sites allow us to do the same – I can show you the “me” I want you to see and never allow you close enough to see the real “me.”)

Now, you can’t have deep relationships with everyone in your congregation, especially if you have a large church. No one can handle that many relationships, and it is foolishness to try. But you can be open and go deep with your staff and leadership team, modeling vulnerability, giving them access to the wisdom of Christ in you, setting a standard for the culture and ministry of your church community. What you do with them, they will do with others. What you give to them from Jesus, they will give to others. Pretty soon, the light show will seem dim due to the brightness of the Son in your midst. You’ll find the levers you used to pull don’t flip the spiritual switch for people anymore, as they have found the real Jesus in you and your leaders – once you stepped out from behind the curtain.

We are more than mechanics operating and maintaining the machinery of church. We are not professional performers, staging a larger-than-life drama. We are the “regular folk,” the men and women of God, called to live a way of life together with others, with all of our flaws and vulnerabilities – all our human frailty – making disciples with His gentle wisdom.

So, come out from behind the curtain, and join the rest of us. The first steps might be a bit scary, but the rest of the journey is a blessing – both for you and for those you minister to.