I heard John Ortberg tell about a time that Dallas Willard was teaching a class, and at the end of the class period, a student who disagreed with Willard asked a question trying to expose what he perceived to be an error in Willard’s lecture. According to Ortberg, the student made a mess of things in the asking, and clearly needed to be set straight. As Willard prepared to respond, the rest of the class leaned in, hoping to learn from the teacher how to handle those dumb questions we’ve all been told don’t exist, but actually do.
But to their amazement, Dallas Willard simply said that he thought that was a good place to end the discussion.
Ortberg approached Willard, perplexed about why he had responded that way. Willard simply said, “I’m practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word.”
Ever since I heard that story, I’ve become increasingly aware of how often we — myself included — position ourselves to have the last word on, well, everything.
Pay attention the next time you’re in a discussion about politics, faith, the best movies, or just the weather, and someone says something you think is wrong, or simply makes a point you don’t agree with. What you’ll find is that it’s a lot easier to correct them than it is to say nothing.
Are there times when we need to have the last word? Certainly. If your loved one walks toward the car and yells out, “I’m gonna drive over a cliff to test the strength of the airbags,” then you should probably say something.
But more times than not, having the last word is about either staying in control of the conversation, or staying in a position of power in the relationship. In my line of work as a pastor, I frequently see this in people who are gifted to teach (and yes, I’m one of those). Want to have some fun? Watch a teacher try not to teach!
Think about it: if I always think that I’ve got something to add, then I may have forgotten that I always have something to learn. Humility allows others to have the last word; pride tells me that they need me to make sure they understand everything before we end the conversation.
Which brings us to another simple, but challenging, point: if I always need to have the last word so that I can correct, teach, or explain, then perhaps I’ve forgotten that many things we talk about will never be fully embraced, understood, or explained, especially when it comes to God?
Do I want every conversation to paint me as the teacher, or as a student?
So, pray a risky prayer and ask the Lord to help you practice not having the last word. And trust me when I tell you that once you do, you’ll find yourself in plenty of situations where that prayer will be tested.
When those moments come, zip it, and don’t take the bait when everything gets really quiet. Just thank the Lord for giving you the opportunity to practice one of those other disciplines: silence.
The late Dallas Willard was once asked how he would describe Jesus if he could only use one word.
Without much hesitation, and with a slight chuckle, he said, “Relaxed.”
I’m not sure what word you would have chosen, or which one I would have chosen, but my guess is that we wouldn’t have chosen that one.
A few days after reading about Jesus being relaxed, I stumbled across a remarkable fact about the iconic Olympian runner, Carl Lewis. Apparently, Carl Lewis was known as a slow starter, a runner who almost always found himself next to last at the start of his races. He also almost always ended up winning those same races, and his slow starts and fast finishes have been attributed to the fact that he always ran at 85% effort instead of 100%.
Why? Trying to run at maximum effort results in straining, striving, and <drumroll, please> not being relaxed. But running at 85% effort allowed Lewis to find a pace that enabled him to run with rhythm, solid form, and relaxed muscles. It allowed him to find a flow that seemed effortless.
Many of us have heard and maybe even memorized Psalm 46:10. “Be still and know that I am God,” the psalmist wrote. The Hebrew phrase for being still is more accurately translated as “cease striving” in the New American Standard Bible, and even carries the meaning of that word used by Willard to describe Jesus.
“Relax and know that I am God.”
Years later, another Bible writer would record similar words spoken by that same God as He walked this earth in the flesh as Jesus:
Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5, emphasis mine)
Jesus was telling His followers then and now to just be with Him. Paul echoes this in Colossians 3:1 when he encourages us to see things differently because we’re raised with and seated with Jesus.
Again, relaxed is the word that Dallas Willard used to describe Jesus. I want to be clear about that. We won’t find a verse in the Bible that says, “Lo! Behold, Jesus of Nazareth, the Relaxed One!” But when you take the time to read the Gospel accounts of His life and ministry, it’s easy to see that Jesus was never in a hurry, but He also didn’t waste time.
How is that possible? Because He often withdrew to lonely places to be with the Father, to hear from the Father, so He could speak to others what He heard the Father say (see Luke 5:16, Luke 6:12, and John 12:49). Jesus redeemed time because He had the Father’s perspective, and understood the weight of each moment. He didn’t have to strive for validation from men, or to prove His worth to the Father.
He was with the Father, and from that place He could flow in rhythms of peace and steadiness while He walked among men. He could relax.
What about you? Me? The Church today? How many of us who are following the ways of Jesus would be described that way?
When non-followers of Jesus are surveyed and asked to use words to describe Christians, guess what word they never use?
You already know. Words like uptight and angry are used long before a word like relaxed, and that’s a shame. Why? Because we’re living during the most anxious time in recent history, and if there’s anything the world needs now, it’s the non-anxious presence of a relaxed church.
A church that doesn’t have to strive for validation or prove its worth.
A church that is seated with Jesus, filled with people who are trusting Jesus.
People who have ceased striving because they know that He is God.
It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted anything, and that’s because I’ve written, re-written, copied, pasted, cut, and started this post over every single day since I saw these posts on Twitter about a week ago. They resonated deeply with me, and launched such a frenzied whirlwind of thoughts that it’s taken me this long to get them from my head to the keyboard in words that (hopefully) make sense. If they don’t, I’d simply ask you to cover them with a bunch of grace. If they do, let’s thank God for the way He leads us to truth. At any rate, thanks for investing the time to read this one, as it is a good bit longer than most of the things I write. But this one is important, perhaps even more important than even I realize.
Anyway, as The B99 would say, enough of the “pre-post banter.” Here are my whirlwind thoughts, in no particular order:
Starting simple is easy. Staying simple is hard.
When we planted The Gathering just about 12 years ago, we intentionally set out to prove that less is more. It seemed that everyone on our team had the same story: multiple services every week (Sunday AM, Sunday PM, Wednesday PM, and maybe Sunday School and/or a youth service or some other age-specific service) with messages that were impactful in the moment but quickly forgotten. We decided that if people heard one message, got in groups to figure out how to apply it, and then went and lived it out in service to God and others, we’d be happy.
And we were. But every time we’d get new members from other churches, especially from program-heavy churches, we’d get these weird questions. “It feels so good to do less, but it kind of feels lazy to do less. I mean, shouldn’t we be busy for the King? Is this all you do? Really?”
Staying simple is hard because, while we’re made for it, we aren’t satisfied with it. Busyness is a drug that many churches and church members are addicted to, and it didn’t take long for that to creep into our “less is more” church.
As more people came, so did more expectations. Calendars got full, but people didn’t. We were starting to feel an internal struggle between serving the growing number of attenders while also trying not to kill the ones doing the serving, and it was a tough season. We tried plenty of things that, in hindsight, probably didn’t seem to go together. We walked through the book Simple Church while also talking about adding a third service. We emphasized the need to serve one week and worship one week, while also juggling the lack of servant leaders necessary to make that rotation possible.
The result was frustration and fatigue. On the outside, our church was booming. In less than 10 years, we’d become the largest church in downtown Albemarle. But on the inside, the “less is more” dream had turned into a “do more with less” nightmare.
I wish I could say that I realized all of this at the time, but I didn’t. Our motives were pure, but our methods weren’t sustainable.
The pandemic showed us that.
Camels look full until they fall.
Plenty of people blame the pandemic (or the government’s handling of said pandemic) for causing countless problems, but I think those people may be missing a crucial truth: stress reveals cracks more than it causes them. The division that seemed to happen overnight in our country? It was already there. The stress of the pandemic and social unrest just made it wider. The stress also revealed another massive crack that was just below the surface in many churches: the 20% (or less) who had for years been doing 80% (or more) of the ministry were more tired than anybody realized. While some were fighting in courtrooms to keep church doors open, many in that group of the faithful few were in their living rooms just thanking God for a chance to catch their breath.
John Eldredge was the first person I ever heard compare camels to people. In his book, “Resilient: Restoring Your Weary Soul in These Turbulent Times,” Eldredge wrote about what a remarkable beast the camel is – strong, resilient, dependable, and having incredible stamina. The camel can carry heavy loads across a burning desert and go for weeks without water.
But for all of its strengths, the camel a glaring weakness – one that quite literally kills it. The camel will keep going for hundreds of miles, giving no indication that it is getting tired or weak and then suddenly, it will fall over dead. One minute it appears to be fine, the next it collapses and dies. The reason? The camel’s reserves of water, food, energy, and strength were all being progressively depleted without being renewed, but because the camel is so strong and so resilient, it gave no indication of the depletion that was happening until it was too late.
The camel looked full until it fell.
Ask a hundred pastors about pastoring during the pandemic, and you’ll probably get a hundred different answers. Everyone had struggles unique to his or her context, but as I started sharing our experience with more pastors, I found out that many churches had a lot more in common during the pandemic than we realized. The biggest? A lot of people who were serving in high-capacity positions simply never came back. Like the camel, they had served faithfully and selflessly until they simply couldn’t do it anymore.
Returning to The Way doesn’t mean people will return to us.
I lost a father and a close friend during the COVID-19 pandemic, so I don’t make this next statement lightly: I lost even more in relationships. My guess is that you did, too. In many ways, I think that the worldwide church is just now beginning to deal with a sort of PTSD from the relational loss experienced during those years. The anger felt at first toward people who just didn’t come back, and who never bothered to tell anybody, was replaced over time with a very real soul wound over the relational hole left in the body. I know this will sound silly, but even now, while I’m preaching, I sometimes wonder if they’ll walk in the door. I mean, they never actually said they weren’t coming back, so…
But in all seriousness, who could blame them? When you’ve played the camel once, you think twice about going back to the place where your reserves were depleted. But all of that just begs the question, doesn’t it (or, maybe, three)? If people had served until they had no more reserves, was that their fault? Was it the church’s fault? Was it my fault as a leader? I feel pretty confident that the correct answers are yes, yes, and yes.
Only a fool would spend time and energy worrying about things that he or she has no control over, so it does no good for pastors and leaders to sit and fret over what was, or even over who was. What is fruitful is the Biblical practice of repentance, and so we started doing the hard work of asking God to bring us back to what matters most. As it turns out, when you ask God to show you where your systems may have “tied up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders” (Matthew 23:4), it allows the Holy Spirit to lead you back to ancient ways, or, in the words of John the Revelator, to help you “repent and do the things you did at first” (Revelation 2:5).
That’s what we have done, are doing, and will continue to do. Remember, and return. Do more of the less that marked us at the beginning. I’m so proud of the way our – in some ways, new – church is responding. With hunger and passion, with curiosity and questions, with determination and hope. Where we’ve been was great, but where we’re going is greater, healthier. More fruitful. I still ache over relationships that may never be what they were, especially because I want those people to see the wonderful ways we’re growing. But I am grateful for the journey, and for the wide-open places of freedom and joy that the Lord is bringing us to (Psalm 18:19).
He is good.
As I’ve said many times to the church I’m honored to lead, churches can be weird places. I can live with that. But churches don’t have to be manic places of activity without the foundation of identity, and as I seek to implement the valuable lessons we’ve learned, I pray that it’s an unwavering commitment to (with apologies to Dallas Willard, John Ortberg, and John Mark Comer for changing the last word) “the ruthless elimination of fury.”
Not the fury we think of as anger and rage, but the fury associated with frenzy, or an “intense usually wild and often disorderly compulsive or agitated activity.” At The Gathering, we’re grateful for the way God has brought and is bringing us back to the way we began, and we’d love to invite you to come and detox with us. It’s a long road, but one that we can walk together.
