I left this story hanging in July, right before things began to take off. You may remember that all I had was a picture of a tunnel with some light at the end. Step by step, I hoped I might get out of the darkness and into the light.
A few weeks after I posted that story, everything changed.
Within two days, I had a 501(c)(3), a firstborn to launch, and I picked up a contract. I had to laugh, but I wanted to cry. I felt frustrated by everything happening simultaneously instead of bit by bit when I had ample time.
Thus began the project of building the plane in the air.
First, let me back up.
Shortly after I sensed that I needed to take steps toward the light, I met with a small team of friends who were praying for my next steps. At that point, it was clear to me that turning in resumes for jobs as a method of discernment was not working.
My heart knew what I needed to do. I just really wanted to find someone to pay me to do it.
The discernment team asked me if I felt ready to start my own ministry organization. With reluctant clarity, I said yes. I was hesitant because I still did not like the idea. I was clear because I had to admit the fruitlessness of the four months prior. The best I could do was to take one step at a time and see if there was confirmation down this road.
Slowly but surely, there was. It would be hard to recall all the steps in detail now. In short, I spent early 2024 consulting with a few churches, leading local prayer groups for parents, speaking at retreats, and gradually filling out paperwork for a non-profit in the cheapest way possible. (Because the nearly $1000 of upfront costs to start the ministry were $1000 I did not have at the time.)
Still, I felt unsure of precisely what I was building. Was it a prayer movement for the next generation? Was it a consulting ministry for healthy churches? (Why would churches pay me to help make them healthy?) Was it a ministry to families? Would I be speaking and teaching? As it turns out, it’s a little of all those things. I am trying to find all the appropriate words to describe this succinctly on a forthcoming website. That feels vulnerable too.
It seems obvious, but I had no idea that following Jesus’ call to ministry in a renewed sense of vulnerable dependence would require building every piece like I got a new Lego set with a step-by-step manual. In other words, none of the who, how, or what would come primarily from my strategic gifts, which I had relied on my whole career. Instead, it would be a process of following directions, even being willing to experiment with ministry ahead of knowing everything I wanted to do.
So many of the concerns I had been expressing in my prior senior ministry management role were obsolete when I considered created something new. The choice was mine to do ministry more organically and trust the Lord to provide.
I have a big vision for this little airplane called All Gen Movement. We are living in a time when one could easily say that God’s promises do not seem to be true for our kids, the Church, or the future. But I believe the Spirit has been doing a work of renewal before the crumbling even began. Like the twelve getting sent out with the bare minimum, I feel like I am on a journey to share Jesus’s healing ministry.
This healing is what we need.
Falling off a cliff with no one to catch me was painful. Getting scraped off the pavement was not much better.
But as these stories go, the longer the time passes, eventually, we get a broader perspective of why it had to be this way.
My work requires freedom to operate away from systems that do harm.
Outside the constraints of a management job.
I am used to being a loyal employee who tries to bring up concerns in the context of values.
Now, I am creating with the Creator.
Being an employee was much easier.
But right now, for me, this feels much more sacred.
And, yes, on most days, the whole process feels a bit insane too.
Photo taken after speaking at my last work conference, flying home into the unknown.
Upon leaving my last job, I am sure that all my weaknesses and flat sides that had not already been obvious were exposed. That is how the cycle of leadership works. God is gracious to use a healthy rotation of leadership so that teams and organizations do not get stuck with the same blindspots as their leaders.
Yes, it is uncomfortable to sit in a senior leadership position where you are under constant scrutiny before, during, and after you occupy the role. But, this comes with the territory. You can either resist or embrace it. One path leads to destruction and the other to health.
Expect your weaknesses to be visible and known.
Unfortunately, there are many fakers out there. They ride the wave of charisma without a lot of depth to fall back on. With a thin sense of security under the surface, they receive praise for being good leaders, fearing the day that they don’t. Their house of cards is flimsy with leadership energy constantly used to maintain the delicate balance of perception and performance.
It hurts any cause when we calibrate our leadership expectations to this model. We would be better off looking weak than to feel compelled to conceal our vulnerabilities to be strong. After all, Christ is made perfect in our weaknesses. Christ can work with that. Hiddenness that leads to shame is not Christ’s domain. We know whose it is.
Resist the temptation to spend your energies hiding your weaknesses.
Even as we expose our weaknesses we have to be careful not to exploit them or the people around us because of them. If you want to be a good, potentially great, leader I will share with you what made my leadership worth anything at all. It is simple, yet unexpected. I had at least one person on my team who would never tell me what I wanted to hear. Her insight was spot on and she always told me the inconvenient truth. I knew she was watching me and would not tolerate just a little fudging on integrity.
This is highly inconvenient. The external trials of leadership combined with the internal insecurities that arise tempt us to line up “yes-men” around us. But that instinct is dangerous and foolish.
Receive truth-tellers, forgo yes-men.
You are better off having someone on your team who refuses to let you get away with anything and does not turn a blind eye to your inconsistencies or missteps. You need someone outside of your peer friendships or spouse to hold you accountable. Someone who will not err on the side of giving you the “benefit of the doubt,” but will give you holy interrogation. Someone who will not “believe the best about you,” but will make you aware of your sin disguised as good deeds. All because they want to protect you and your ministry from the worst.
It will be a pain in your neck, slow things down, and cause anxiety to know you have to hear hard things. The alternative is that once you have someone (or heaven forbid a whole group of people) making accommodations for your blindspots without letting you know, you are in both leadership and spiritual trouble.
Invite and appreciate a team member who is unafraid to shed light on your blind spots.
Whenever I tell people that it is possible to have integrity in a complex, high-level position of Christian leadership, they seem skeptical. It is a unicorn most have not seen. Likely this is because we are taught to make excuses and accommodations for ourselves and the leaders around us. We call this grace, but it is really no grace for anyone in the long run. Rather it is the kind of thing that damages and destroys all of us.
The greatest grace that I had in my senior leadership role was one colleague who I was close to before my promotion. She would not let our prior relationship create a slippery slope for my integrity and values. She let me know out of the gate that friendship was not going to give me a pass. Any time you make a leap up the ladder, the temptation to make excuses because your job is harder and onlookers do not understand what you are going through is looming.
Get yourself a team member who will not let you off the hook, always demand that you show up in alignment with your values, and call you out if you slip. If you do not have this person, get them on your team right away. Empower your employees this way and resist punishing them for the inconvenience and ego bruising it causes. Make sure they have some real power to evaluate you to a boss or board so that there is a real consequence for your failures and inconsistencies. Resist the temptation to choose a peer who will scratch your back if you scratch theirs.
Receive hard truth as grace.
I can predict the quality and fruit of your ministry today based on whether you open doors for truth tellers.
Today I want to thank my dear friend and colleague who gave me the holy inconvenience of accountability and truth-telling. I believe it saved my leadership. Your presence and your insistence on high standards was a grace that keeps on giving in my life.
Nathan and David, Original Source: The Easter Gift PAINTED BY B. WEST F. R. A. ENGRAVED BY S. SANGSTER.
Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits. These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts…” (Mk 6:7-8)
The loud pounding inside of me from early in the year was deafening by October. I would agree to speak at a faculty and staff conference in Sisters, Oregon, with no idea whether I would still be working for my employer. The clarity around leaving was so strong going back to March. But, I said yes. It would help me end well to prioritize a trip to see my newest staff in Portland. We could travel together to the conference.
I was just beginning to learn to do the next thing without being sure what was ahead. To give my “yes” unless and until I had to give a “no.”
When it came time for me to prepare my opening talk, my heart was exploding with new lessons and ideas. I had so many possible things to share and say. My spiritual life was growing and stretching. I had a pretty comprehensive set of notes on my phone for a scripture that I thought I might use to build a good talk. It was Mark 6 where Jesus sends out his disciples to begin the ministry he has modeled for them. I knew I should speak on the theme of vulnerable dependence out of this passage.
There was just one problem. Whenever I would begin to think about the message, something was blocking me from prepping. I do not mean that evil was causing the blockage. I sensed an intentional barrier. It was like something was preventing me from shifting over to my notes in my phone or preparing something new. I sensed God was taking ahold of my mind and asking, “Would you be willing to do this without relying on your intelligence, your preparation, or your polish? Would you be willing to move backwards in your sense of professionalism and expertise?”
This was new. I kept hoping that as I got closer to the moment to deliver the talk, I would feel permission to open the notes. But, in my spirit, I sensed that I was supposed to do what I was willing yet not eager to do. I was to obey the passage on vulnerable dependence by living it out and modeling it. The speaking was not going to matter. It was not going to be a great talk. I was going to be the object lesson. I would have to surrender measures of success and believe in the invisible fruit of obedience, nothing else.
You might think that surrendering ego and letting God speak through me would make for an excellent talk. It was not that. I could not think clearly. I fumbled on my words. With all the awkwardness of an amateur taking the stage to audition, I took a deep breath, exhaled and tried not to think about how this “performance” reflected on me. It may as well have been my first talk as a student from 2001.
Nothing was familiar. I was learning a new skill of minimizing myself and depending on God live in front of an audience. In a room full of university professionals, I did not even have a Power Point to try to cover me. Listening to the Spirit with nothing on the agenda was peculiar. They could have saved some money by not flying me up from Southern California for this.
Moments before, knowing what I was about to do, I had kneeled down in my beautiful, pristine speaker cabin in the woods of Oregon and sang with full gusto, “I surrender all. I surrender all. All to Thee my blessed savior. I surrender all.” This was my only and final preparation, and I knew it.
Performance. Ego. Polished Slides. Respect. I surrendered all. And it was not comfortable because I was doing it as a guest of someone who had invited me to bring something. Instead, I was showing up with nothing and practicing letting the Spirit work in spite of me.
It was not outwardly beautiful. But it was important. Thankfully, the second day I had permission to bring my best. I was not ready to go back to back in that kind of humiliation. In the end, I think the Spirit showed me that the Spirit worked equally the day I did my best and the day I brought very little. It was a reminder that the Spirit’s work and effectiveness are not up to me. All we can bring is obedience.
The day before, I still had 24 remaining hours to write the first talk. With all the time in the world I went to dinner, came back and stared at my computer screen.
I just can’t do it.
It did not make sense because I already had notes written. I went to bed and hoped the next morning there would be a lift to move ahead. Maybe God was holding me back until the last minute to see how much I trusted. Maybe God would flood my mind with new information about the talk I should give.
I woke up. Nothing. Still felt the same barrier and sense that I could not cross it.
With no talk writing to do, I walked down the Willamette River on my way to get coffee and doughnuts for my first time in Portland. Maybe God would speak to me as I moved instead of sat. It was raining.
Typically while on the road doing ministry, I would send a WhatsApp message to my colleagues and ask them to pray for me, especially if something felt stressful or difficult. But, I did not know what to say. It was our job to plan and perform well and I was planning to not perform.
Instead, as the weather fogged my glasses and the raindrops wet my light jacket, I took out my phone and texted R . I was attempting to get clarity in case I had to write the talk on the long drive to the retreat. It would not be the first time that clarity came on the journey to a speaking engagement.
R is the kind of person who I believe is sent into my life to help me through this kind of moment. I don’t remember what I wrote, probably something like, “I am here in Oregon to speak at a conference, but I do not have anything prepared. I keep feeling like God wants me to just show up, but I am wrestling with this.”
What R wrote back began like this:
“Lisa, I’m very happy for you…”
A remarkably different response than I could have received from most anyone else.
As soon as I saw the opening line, tears streamed and joined the rain drops on the soggy overcast morning. I was not crazy. Or, at least if I was crazy, there was one friend cheering me on. He remarked that this was a deepening of my trust in God as well as God entrusting more to me.
The text was the confirmation I needed. The tears flowed because I knew.
I arrived at Stumptown and enjoyed a sacred moment replying to the text on my phone and warming up with my coffee. Whatever happened next, at least I had this.
Fortunately, after I had obeyed the first night of the conference, I went back to my cabin and immediately typed out my slides for the next morning’s talk. As I suspected, all the material was there. With the barrier removed, it gushed out of me in record time. Mercifully, God allowed me to show these faculty that I wasn’t some ill-prepared crazy person and better meet the expectations of my colleagues.
But, it was not until after I took myself out of the equation. No ego. If I am going to be so bold as to show up with no notes to do a half baked job and claim it was God and not me, then it is also God and not me when God helps me do an excellent job.
I learned that day that vulnerable dependence results in a surrendered outcome. After all, just before Jesus sent out his disciples in all authority, he went into the temple with that same authority and no one believed. He also told them that there would be some homes where they would have to shake the dust and keep moving.
Obedience is not about outcome. When you obey, you surrender the process and the outcome, trusting the Spirit to work in ways that bring fruit we may not otherwise measure.
A month later, I sent an email to resign from my job. Oregon had given me one practice round in vulnerable dependence before doing so.
Last week, I returned home from another trip to Portland. This time, we were taking my daughter to college orientation.
As the plane descends to Oregon soil, I am keenly aware that my vulnerable dependance has been continuous from my trip in October 2022 to today. Instead of moving into a secure job, I find myself in a very exposed state, starting a ministry. I feel just as much like the disciples now as I did then.
I meet Donan for coffee in Downtown Portland while I’m in town. She is the staff I hired in 2022 to cover the Northwest. We are just a few blocks from where I wrestled along the river in the final hours before she drove us to the retreat. Amidst cozy Portland vibes and coffee, we joyfully ponder the Spirit’s unexpected work in the Northwest. We hope together for new fruit in the mystery of the place.
My daughter’s decision to go to college in Oregon surprised everyone, including her. Though she has shown little interest in faith in her teenage years, she will land where my faith was tested and tried before I set off on an arduous prolonged season of trust. It was during a month and a half of weekly fasting (a practice I never do) that I felt confirmation to send her here—one of the least churched areas in the entire United States. Another opportunity for surrender and trust.
As we send her, I know that God is present there–along the Willamette River, in the woods, and on the campus. Oregon has become a sacred pilgrimage for me and it is fitting for me to return on the cusp of another new season. It is the flight of my firstborn and the anticipated flight of a new ministry.
Last week, I felt like I completed a full circle. It was a journey around the same town, same people, same river, and same coffee shop that punctuated my last visit. And when I return in a few weeks, I have one more big surrender ahead.
God, I am struggling. Like the disciples paddling in the dark storm after you told them to pull out in the middle of the water. It’s the last watch of the night. I am exhausted and scared, but I think you are here. I believe you have a purpose.
I was waiting. Everyone who knew me was waiting too. They checked in with me moment by moment, which was kind, but very similar to being nine months pregnant. You have no control over when you have the baby, but feel like a watched pot that never boils.
Then it finally happened. The first glimmer of progress. A job posted that I had been waiting for.
As summer progressed I was in a lengthy process for this role, which I felt passionate and excited about. It clearly aligned with God’s calling and words for me. From the outside looking in, it was like the job had been created for me. It fit the scope of my life and ministry experiences well—so much so that my former colleagues called it a “no brainer.” Jeff and I felt anticipation for what God might do as this application process unfolded.
Prior to the posting, other opportunities came my way. Early on, I was even given the opportunity to write my own job description out of my sense of call, but something did not feel right. I held it in prayer until I finally got a clear answer to wait and take this other emerging path instead. A team of people praying for me through my transition asked, “What will you do if you don’t get this job? Are you applying to other jobs?”
I responded, “It feels like the Holy Spirit is stepping on my neck and telling me there is only one path to take. If I do not get this job, I will have a lot of questions for God. It just will not make sense.”
I should pause and say that I never heard God promise me this job as an outcome. God did give instructions to exclusively wait on and apply for this specific role. One might assume that would mean a positive outcome. This was my assumption. If, for some reason, God did not give me this job, we believed there must be something better that would soon become obvious.
As the summer went on, I made it through every hoop and stage of the process down to the final two candidates. I was eager and ready to resume work. I went in for the final interview early in the kids’ new school year–perfect timing for something new for myself. The following day, Jeff and I celebrated our 21st anniversary, anticipating a long-awaited season of change. That next morning, I received an email that gut punched me so hard it knocked me off the face of the earth. They had chosen another candidate who “God had been preparing for the job.” I have no doubt that is true, but what on earth had God been preparing me for?
The process was over.
Eight months dragged out in waiting came down to a swift rejection. Despair moved across my entire body. I had walked out to the edge, jumped off the cliff, and no one caught me. I plummeted. Like a cartoon from my childhood, I had crushed myself into a puddle at the bottom.
My husband encouraged me about all the possibilities at my fingertips, but all I could feel was beautiful clarity from the voice of God ending horrifically with a heavy door slammed abruptly in my face. Even then, I sensed how seemingly impossible it would be for me to move forward from this place apart from a supernatural lift.
In a normal application situation, at this point, you work through any disappointment, assume the best about doors closing and opening, and keep dreaming about what the future might hold. You move on to the other logs you’ve thrown on the fire since this one has burned out. But, just as I told my prayer team, I did not have any other logs on the fire. God only gave me one log and it just burned its last ember.
In retrospect, I was expecting God to bring me to door #2 if door #1 closed. If I really got this far out into two years of obedience and then this was not the final destination, surely God would provide for our family by quickly showing us the real thing we had been waiting for. Right?
At this point, I did what any person who had already been several months without income waiting on a specific process would do, I began applying to all the other jobs. In so doing, I tried to approach it with an open mind and choose jobs that overlapped with at least one clear aspect of my calling.
Day 150
In a short matter of time, I began to have interviews almost every week, a process that was like goldilocks trying porridge. Everyone I knew had desires and opinions for me about the bowls I was tasting.
A large ministry’s development director.
A director of church partnership for an institute of higher learning.
A Dean of Spiritual Development at a college.
A Discipleship Pastor at a megachurch.
A CEO of a local ministry home.
A high profile family’s covert charitable foundation.
I took the approach that if God opened doors, I would walk through them until the processes closed. I was curious as phone calls and emails came so quickly in comparison to the long, slow slog I had just gone through. But, each time, a sadness and concern would come over me. I knew that this path did not match the clarity God had given me. The unmistakable clear trajectory that began when the Holy Spirit spoke to me and sent me on a new journey never lifted.
It would have been easier if it had.
Instead I found myself in daily and nightly despair about the disorienting process I had just been through. Then, for a few hours I would have to dress nice, throw on a blazer, put on makeup and perform to my highest abilities. It was brutal.
This interview season spanned six months and yet I was no closer to my calling than before I began. In fact, I always knew in my gut that I was not supposed to be on this journey. God never asked me to leave my job so that I could go on a wild goose chase. There was no reason to leave the previous job for this kind of a journey. I just did not know what else to do.
I tried to keep an open mind in the event that momentum would start to build and God would give me a clear direction or nudge. Mostly I just found myself panicking when I became a final candidate for jobs. The morning before the Dean interview, which seemed like the best fit for me, I abruptly awoke at 4am, sweating. I was thinking about a church up the street going through a season of scandal.
“Churches…making churches healthy. I’d rather work for myself if I have to.”
I tried to show up for every interview and bring my best, but the truth is, I felt locked in to the original calling God had given me. It just would not let up.
Having interviewed dozens and dozens of people for ministry jobs in the previous decade, I knew my problem. A) I wasn’t called to these jobs B) I was aimlessly looking for work C) I had a specific vision and calling that was coming through more strongly than the work at hand. Jeff and I both agreed. We wouldn’t hire me for these jobs either.
As each door closed, I felt relief instead of sadness. But, I also felt confused and aimless.
Day 260
Sunday morning comes and Jeff and I decide to take our son an hour away to the megachurch where I will be interviewing. It is Christmas time.
A famous worship singer and songwriter comes out on the stage. Jeff and I look at one another with the same knowing chuckle. We were not expecting that!
As the worship plays, I merely close my eyes and God begins to speak to me with direction for the first time since the early part of the year.
I receive a vivid picture. Standing outside the door of my calling, I am weeping. I feel sadness all over my body as I stand in a sewer tunnel staring at a door vaulted shut like you might see at a bank. I see I am at the end this tunnel and notice there are other doors along the sides. With no other choice, I begin to ponder these other doors. They are not welcoming but they are not vaulted shut either.
I could knock on these.
But, in the distance, on the other side of the tunnel is a sense of heat and daylight. Reluctantly, with curiosity impeded by sadness, I sensed an invitation to start to take steps toward the light.
The image panned out again and I saw that the path toward the light would also put me over and above this sewer. A different access point to my calling would become available. I would be above all these doors instead of knocking on them.
I thanked God for speaking. The slow pursuit toward heat and light had begun.
My spiritual director, sitting with me in our usual meeting place of over a decade, declares with confidence, “You really hear from God! When I make reference to you, I tell my husband, she really hears from God.” This was news to me. I never thought of it this way. As far as I knew I was just minding my own business in my faith life. I had never claimed to anyone that I heard from God. God made things clear to me as circumstances lined up, as I looked at how things had worked out in the past, or in my gut. I never heard a voice that I connected to God’s. How interesting that this was my descriptor–the one who hears from God.
This was a little external reinforcement to look back upon for the road that I would soon begin to travel.
Days later, I found myself in the midst of a profound supernatural experience that brought me to tears. I had never experienced anything like it. I was wrestling in mental frustration about a particular circumstance when, out the blue, God began to show me how he saw me by providing clarity to a longtime question which was related to my struggle.
What exactly is the thing that I have been made to do, no matter the job or the season of life? It came through crystal clear. I sensed it all over my body along with God’s presence as I was driving down the road. It took me by surprise and was so powerful that after I pulled into the garage and parked the car, still weeping, I walked into the house and wrote it all down. I was very clear on what was happening and I knew I would not be the same.
Like Moses and Mary, while minding my own business, carrying on with my daily life, an encounter changed my life without warning.
From there, I began to grow in new and deeper ways in my relationship with the Lord. I also began to know my time in my current career was ending because what I was made to do and the current reality of my job was no longer in alignment. This visitation was the beginning of a redirection.
In the process of redirection, at times it feels like I have the faith to walk on water. Other times, it feels like I am sinking.
2022
12 months later, I am sitting in a room at church where a meeting has just wrapped up when my Facebook messenger makes the distinct noise of an incoming message. “Hi Lisa, I promise this is not spam, but have you ever thought about a career change?” How curious! “Why, yes. Funny you should ask,” I answered the friend on the other end. “I am thinking of leaving my 20-year career. Why?” What followed was an incredible opportunity that I should have/would have jumped at if I did not have so much specific clarity on what God had called me to. Nonetheless, it was exciting, tempting, and flattering.
The next day I got on a plane for London for a work trip. This new job option would be a nice pay bump. It would open doors to a new world. And, it would be local, an important component to my sense of redirection. But, it would not check the main box. That entire night as I was bouncing my head forward and backward, sleeping and waking, in my economy seat, I would hear over and over again, “Church, not non-profit management. Church. Not non-profit management.” It was persistent and clear. Take the opportunity as a sign of good things to come, but do not take the bait, I decided.
I would stay the course and wait.
Six weeks later, urgency was growing in me. The end of the calendar year was drawing near, but no opportunity to follow my new sense of call had materialized. I told God early in our conversations about new beginnings that I could by no means afford to lose my salary or go backwards in progress after all the early years of ministry penny pinching and struggling to advance as a woman, so I was sure that God would honor my bargain and there would be no gap from one job to the next.
Eventually, I had to pay attention to the pounding sound in my chest. It was sounding an alarm of release from my job. It was not that I did not like my job. I had felt excited and called to that job. In so many ways it was the best job ever. But just as easily as God had given me a call to the position out of nowhere, I knew God had taken it away. God had been preparing me to go where God sent me. I did not know where I was going, but I was no longer sent there.
One night, as I lay in bed, I felt the Holy Spirit again. This time it was an urgent, clear, step-by-step plan. The instructions included exactly what date to leave my job, a volunteer ministry assignment to step into, and a financial plan to cover our family for two months after my last day of employment. I sent the appropriate emails to enact the plan and went to bed with peace.
Since God led me step-by-step and I followed all of them, I naturally expected there would be more instructions by the time the plan ended. The last thing I expected was a gap, let alone a long gap.
2023
Early in the year, I worked one final month in my career, completed my volunteer assignments, and then came to the end of the lit path of instructions. It was difficult. What lay beyond was darkness. It was terrifying. In the beginning, every calendar day was excruciating. One day out in the wilderness…two days out in the wilderness…
Over 400 days out in the wilderness…
At this point, I have learned to walk with a very tiny headlamp on a very dark path, sometimes making no steps of progress on the path, and often taking the tiniest step imaginable. I cannot see far enough out to take any huge steps. Every day is an act of trust and obedience.
Ten years ago, I was about to graduate from seminary when I was asked to give one of three sermons for our Homiletics class celebration, alongside two distinguished classmates. It was a great honor and a special culmination for me.
My sermon was centered in John 14, when Jesus promises his disciples that he’s going to prepare a place for them. This promise sounds like good news, but their responses indicate just how unsettling Jesus’ words were for the disciples. They wanted to go with him. They did not like that he was going ahead. They were troubled and did not know the way to get there! They wanted to see the Father. But Jesus asked for their trust in him, or at least belief based on the things they had seen already. They did not need a physical map to get where they were going. They needed Jesus.
I opened the sermon with a real life illustration of attending a banquet at the end of my first year in ministry where the theme was “God never forgets you.” Each person had a place setting that was marked by a rock with their name on it to symbolize the theme. And, guess what? They forgot to prepare a place setting for me!
It was a sermon highlighting my own journey of starting in ministry and feeling totally overlooked and forgotten, of no worth or value compared to my husband who was made the center of the attention by our employer because he was uniquely needed for emerging ministry on campus. I encouraged my classmates that while there would be times of despair and discouragement, we do not need a map of where to go. Jesus has already given us his presence through all the intersections he has walked us through. When we cannot see where we are going, we look back at where we have been and know that is enough. We know the Way.
I do not have a transcript, but according to Facebook I said, “He is who he says he is. Don’t let your hearts be troubled. He has been leading his people without a map for a long, long time. He is preparing a place for you.” Even before this memory popped up today, I have often thought of this sermon. As we were instructed in this class, I preached the sermon to myself before I preached it to others, and it is one that I continue to preach to myself. On this day, I was looking behind and standing grounded on the truth. I have to do the same now.
In the ten years that have followed, I have been asked very infrequently to preach a text in a church, definitely much less than my fellow male classmates. In part, it is because of where I worship. In order to finish the assignments for the class, I had to preach at the retirement home behind my church during their Sunday service. It was the option offered for those who did not have an option to preach at their own church for practice. My church has a large staff and I can count two Sunday morning guest preachers that have been women in our fifteen years there.
I have lived with this reality for a long time because I was given other assignments that made up my calling. After this class concluded I was offered an opportunity to become a Homiletics TA, but I declined because my kids were 5 and 8 years old and my life was full enough with my part-time role as Co-Area Director for Southern California. As a pastor’s wife at the time, the thought of needing to be different places on Sunday morning to encourage the development of my preaching was untenable. Three years later, I accepted a full-time role as Regional Director for the Western US. None of these were going to be preaching roles. I took assignments here and there to be faithful to preach the scripture–speaking at student retreats, to my staff, and teaching Bible Study to 100s of students at Urbana. I took the many teaching opportunities available at my church–MOPS, adult Sunday Schools, and other one-off invitations. These were all highlights in between the day to day of the job. And, let’s be honest, writing sermons is a huge amount of prep that is hard to fit into an administrative job’s weekly schedule. I was content with this ratio of preaching and teaching to other types of work, even if it was a gift that was sitting on a shelf.
But here I am. It is a different season. God is making something new out of me for a new season. On the one hand, it is the least comfortable I have ever been. On the other hand, with my open schedule this spring, I had an uptick of opportunities to preach in churches and at retreats. God is preparing a place for me, but I do not know where I am going or how to get there. I am filled with just as much fear as the disciples in John 14. I would like a map. But, instead, I will remember where I have been and who has been with me there. If I keep walking with Jesus, I will never fail to know the Way.
Have you ever studied a scripture that you could not get out of your head? One that became so clear and so pressing that you had to go on and obey it no matter how inconvenient and abnormal it seemed. I like to think those who follow Jesus are always trying to obey the scriptures, but at certain times, there are invitations that grab ahold of us and just will not let go.
This happened to me a couple of years ago when I noticed, in a new way, Jesus’ radical requirements for sending out his disciples on mission in Mark 6:8-9, “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt.” Familiar words. A simple reading allows us to have a basic understanding. They were supposed to rely on others and God, resisting self-reliance.
Profound as it is, this observation might normally manifest in something like a self-check. Am I growing in relying on God and others? Am I too reliant on myself? But this bothered me. I began to realize that I wanted to experience the power and authority that the disciples exercise. Not because I wanted to be powerful, but because the world needs supernatural help–to cast out demons, heal the sick, and receive the good news in the authority of Jesus’ name. I have been told that all believers have Christ’s authority during many sermons and Sunday school lessons. Yet, quite honestly, my ministry hardly resembles that of the disciples. I work through all the vulnerable and dependent parts of ministry and get them out of the way during my fundraising and personal prayer times so I can arrive ready with my skills, my tools, and the authority of my employer. I bring my PCard. I do some good. But I hardly feel like the authentic expression of the power of Jesus on campus or in the world when I do that.
Why? This elicited in me a deep desire and curiosity. Is this a mindset issue? Or something else?
When I read the words of Jesus in Mark I understand that the power and authority of the cosmic God is passed from Jesus to his disciples. That is dangerous. It was dangerous enough when incarnated into Christ and now in Mark 6, he’s giving it to sinful, scruffy humans? How on earth can this be so?
I condense this phenomenon down to two key words. Jesus sends out his disciples in vulnerabledependence.
They are in danger among the elements (no extra clothing), in need of provision, and risk rejection. They are depending on the power of God and the hospitality of others while dressed like shepherds with just a staff. (This uniform cannot be accidental).
I simplify this picture to myself with my two-word refrain.
vul·ner·a·ble, adj, susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm
de·pend·ence, noun, the state of relying on or being controlled by someone or something else
Putting the two together, Jesus asks his disciples to go out on a trip into strange towns and homes susceptible to harm and relying on, even being controlled by, someone else. In this case, they were relying on strangers and the power and authority of Christ in them.
The shepherds, sent out in the name of Jesus, are also the sheep, lovingly protected and controlled by the staff of their own Shepherd amidst the dangers of the journey.
How terrifying and how beautiful.
Perhaps this sounds crazy and unappealing, but then we have to consider the brilliant quality controls within this model. God’s antidote to human corruption of power is to require that his colossal power and authority, when entrusted to humans, come in a vulnerable package, dependent on others. First a baby, then a crucified carpenter, and, finally, disciples with just a staff and the clothes on their back.
But do we take this seriously? It is no wonder that so many efforts in ministry now have abuses of power and authority connected. How often do we come to preach the gospel in authority given to us by someone other than God and in our self-reliance instead of in the vulnerable dependence Jesus laid out for the disciples? (And we insist upon some fruitful measure of success that neither Jesus in Mark 6:5 nor his disciples in 6:11 are expected to obtain).
And so I obeyed. I undressed. I left my PCard, my email address, my title, and my monthly ministry expenses behind. Ministry has never been comfortable, but I decided to surrender the comforts I had acquired along the journey. My success. My reputation. My significance.
I was worried about who I would become if I kept going with power and the extra tunic. I longed for the kind of pure power and authority that can only come from God, unblemished to heal the world. Because who am I to try to insist that I have Christ’s authority while tucking money in my belt under my overcoat?
It has been a little more than a year. I’m still lightly clothed, vulnerable, and exposed and it’s the hardest thing I have ever done.
Yet, I trust that this journey of decreasing visible treasure is also increasing something invisible, powerful and eternal.
If you know me, you might be surprised to hear I feel nervous about writing and publishing my thoughts. I am known to be less than shy about sharing them and typing them has usually come easily. At the same time, metaphorically speaking, I have never been so far out in the deep, without a view of the shore. I have never before written without lines that form a box from which to know my limitations.
I love clarity. Clarity is my friend (and your friend too) because clarity is caring. When things are unclear, it is much easier to get hurt or hurt others. The expansive lack of clarity I am living in leaves me uncharacteristically quiet and cautious.
For example,
I have no clarity on who my next employer will be.
I have no clarity on when I will begin working for an employer again.
I have no clarity on whether I should become self-employed instead of seeking an employer.
I like writing, but I do not have clarity on a topic for which I am uniquely called and qualified to write.
I do not have clarity on where we should go to church.
I do not have clarity on where we should live.
I am writing from this space of limited clarity.
I know I heard the voice of God call me to a new season.
I know that call came with a sense of who I am and what I uniquely bring.
I know where I feel a tug to use my gifts and talents and where I do not.
I know God to be Provider (even if I wobble in my faith moment by moment).
I know God will not abandon me.
I know God will lift me up in God’s time.
What about you? Where do you have clarity? Where do you feel unclear? How do you feel when you have to exist in a space without clear lines? Is it freeing or terrifying?
As we enter 2024, my commitment is to be brave, explore the world beyond the lines, and see where it leads me.
A “burning bush” I saw in May 2022 at University of Washington in a moment that helped me step out of the lines.
At the beginning of 2020, I had everything I wanted–a job I love, two happy kids, and a husband making an exciting career move. Beyond my home, local families from the kids’ school community enhanced our lives. My colleagues inspired me daily. I was growing, learning, and enjoying life. While raising my kids far from my parents was always a source of pain, I finally had enough income to get the four of us tickets to my home state without excessive financial strain.
Then, life changed in March 2020, and I have not been able to regain equilibrium since. With numerous subsequent losses, disorientation has lingered and grown. For a while, I believed that this was just me. Other women seemed to recover from the pandemic and resume a sense of normality while our family remained in flux. In the last year, however, I have come to a realization. I am not alone. The majority of women I know are not okay. What exactly is going on?
Early in my pandemic disequilibrium, I attended a Zoom prayer meeting with three women. Kim, with six grown kids of her own, told me, “One thing I do not regret is the time I spent praying for my kids in those mom’s prayer groups at the schools.” Without any other levers to pull for greater sanity, I took her comment as sage advice. I recommitted my time to the weekly mom’s prayer meeting, now located on Zoom, that began years ago with a group of elementary school moms. Before too long, I had started three new prayer groups, one at church and two for my kids’ new schools. I am not sorry that I took Kim’s advice. And with my recommitment to gathering moms for prayer, I now have a broader data set to draw from. Moms are not okay. In my observations, some themes are contributing to our aches and pains.
Faith Community – Difficulties in our faith communities cause stress on the family and make youth group offerings strained or slim. Commitment to our kids growing up in a faith environment does not necessarily translate to receiving the support we need. Youth groups stopped meeting during the pandemic, and our kids may not have rejoined or connected. Churches are struggling with relational strains, transitions, budgets, and, in some cases, a full-on crisis, making church a stressful category in life instead of the community support system it was for previous generations. On top of this, the pandemic accelerated the breaking point for passing faith from one generation to the next. As kids hit their tweens and teens, they often see church as something they do with their family, but that has no relevance or future for them and their peers.
Generational challenges – Our kids lived through a pandemic that migrated more of their social life and academics online while trapped at home, giving older kids almost 24/7 access to the internet and social media. Teens report mounting pressures to succeed in a system with no guaranteed reward or outcome for effort. With extreme costs and oversaturated admissions pools, even straight-A students are not guaranteed that hard work will equal acceptance at a “good” college. These factors all lead GenZ tweens and teens to increased mental health struggles, and stress out their parents.
Whereas previous generations may have felt boxed in by strict societal expectations, this generation has fewer boxes, which can cause its own kind of stress and anxiety. Parents are navigating new territory. Whereas 5-10 years ago, young people sought freedom by shedding the constraints of societal spaces, GenZ and Gen Alpha kids will not be oriented by deconstruction. Instead, they are increasingly floating around in the ether with nothing to hold onto. They live in rubble. Of course, they can’t identify it as such because it’s all they’ve known. Disoriented parents watch this rapid generational shift unfold without the resources and structures that were there for us. A sense of shame ensues in the absence of clear measures to point to the success for our parenting efforts.
Unsustainable systems – When I received a promotion into my last job in 2017 with a seven and eleven-year-old, I knew I was joining a small cadre of women in breaking our organization’s barriers. A female predecessor told me the job was nearly impossible if your kids were too young. Maintaining and functioning in that role, which I loved, required optimal conditions. I was fortunate to have a six-month sabbatical before beginning the job to gain energy and establish family rhythms that worked for me. A few years later, when the pandemic hit and the announcement for remote K-12 education came out, I knew I instantaneously lost my thriving. The suboptimal conditions would last almost an entire school year, directly impacting all families. When I talk to women my age, we universally understand that our jobs exist in systems not built for us. We are intelligent and savvy, and by mid-career, we figured out how to make accommodations on our end to succeed. Still, since 2020, the obstacle course has become more strenuous, and without the system changing entirely, it seems impossible to continue. I used to say that I felt like I was just trying to get through the obstacle course of my day, which was strenuous enough. Then, after 2020, it felt like people were throwing balls aimed at my head that I had to dodge while running and jumping through the course. It was exhausting to make it through every day on that type of alert. Many women I know have taken career breaks, and others want to but cannot afford it financially, leaving them stuck in this cycle.
Caretaker burnout – Women are not the exclusive caretakers of our families, but there is no denying that we take on more of the burden in most cases. There is a saying that “a mother is only as happy as her least happy child.” Truer words were never spoken. With a lack of solid faith community support, increased generational trauma for our kids, and strain over career sustainability, women are burning out. Imbalanced hormones, dysregulated nervous systems, and off-kilter relationships abound, but healing is expensive and time-consuming. When everything is breaking at once, which aspect do you tend to? Whose needs come first? Are some things shattered to the point of being irreparable? These questions call for new skills, paradigms, and resources for many of us.
There is no space within our faith communities, family systems, and work lives to accommodate the work of healing. In an environment where you face daily threats, you cannot carve out a space for restorative pathways on your own. At some point, the threat has to relent so you can move toward repair and thriving, but these days, dangers seem more pervasive and impactful.
Some may wonder, as I have, how this can be so bad when, for generations across time and place, women continue to face many, if not more, instances of trauma. I speculate that we may be in a perfect generational storm. While I am not describing any challenges that women in strained socioeconomic, war torn, and other marginalized realities have not faced and overcome, I believe it helps to put words to what exactly the middle-class is experiencing post-pandemic. It is not the worst suffering in the world, but the mind and body only know suffering as suffering and trauma as trauma. The security system of the middle class is dwindling, making more of us susceptible and vulnerable to loss of agency and systemic failures. Instead of reaching for insights from the successful and well-off, we need to turn to the resilient faith of those acquainted with systemic disenfranchisement and the related cycles of trauma. I anticipate this need will require both tapping into a theology of faith and suffering that is underrepresented or nonexistent in many of our churches and learning moment-by-moment dependence on God.
Successful Baby Boomers who achieved a comfortable American life raised my generation of mothers in the workforce. As their offspring, we may have been ill-prepared to imagine a regression of thriving and lifestyle choices for ourselves and our kids. A lack of hope for a better future brings about depression and fear. Inflation, living further from family support systems, and having less hope in our faith communities may contribute to a sense of crisis. Additionally, more of us work outside the home, simultaneously taking on the burdens of providing and nurturing, unprecedented in previous generations. Pre-2020, we may already have been on a path of burnout. Still, the pandemic accelerated burnout by isolating us and demolishing support systems, such as interactions with grandparents, public school education, and Sunday school or youth groups. We never imagined we would be here, raising our kids without a sense of a hopeful, bright future for ourselves and them. We thought they would have access to the same things that gave structure and provided guardrails to our lives.
While devastating and disorientating, this may be the best thing to happen to middle-class American parents spiritually as well as to our kids. After over two decades of working with young adults, I have noticed that those who attend church are more serious and committed to Christ than in previous generations, where previously there was a social benefit to joining a Christian group. Faith expressions and prayers will likely be more authentic as trials test us. Like Hannah, the mother in the Bible who cried out desperately for a child, we must come to terms with releasing our kids back to God. We did not fully anticipate this because we trusted the “program” to guide our kids in the right direction before the pandemic. Three and a half years after it began, our kids’ childhood, parenting, churches, and society are forever changed. Fortunately, God was never counting on these programs, and our desperation as mothers can become the beginning of a prayer movement where we otherwise, unknowingly, might have sat back and trusted in humans more than God.
A photo I took during the pandemic in 2020. The little playhouse in a town nearby.
In January I ended a twenty-year career with a large ministry organization, exiting at the senior leadership level. There was something about the crushing of the pandemic season that left me sure that I needed to move into a new place of ministry calling, one where, among other priorities for this season, I could have more influence over the core operating system of an organization. Following the advice of Gordon T. Smith in his book, Teach Us to Pray, it was not a decision made out of desolation. It was a decision made out of consolation with a sense of the Lord’s leading, promises, and call to more deeply explore who I am created to be.
My unique talent, I realized, is to make unhealthy things healthy–to bring alignment where alignment is lacking. Not alignment from the top to the bottom. I’m convinced that is a wrong alignment which has fundamentally distorted us in this world. Rather, I envision and implement spiritual alignment of an organization, more like the plumb line we hear about from the prophet Amos.
Six months after my last paycheck, I am still looking for where to land. I hope someone is willing to pay for a prophet practitioner’s work. In the world we live in, the paycheck goes to those who can hit numbers and outcomes for organizations. I wonder whether a livelihood can be made by bringing the true alignment that the world needs?
Isn’t that what a pastor is called to do? Doesn’t a pastor speak God’s words to align our hearts to God’s heart? This is the only job that is supposed to be incorruptible, a job that answers to God and not to man. But here in the U.S., churches are businesses and brands. We end up needing to bring alignment to pastors and churches.
In this season, I can often feel so alone and yet I am not alone. When I left my role earlier this year, I received calls from a half a dozen women who were leaving or had left their institutions for a sense of new calling and purpose with an unknown trajectory. They all took risks.
And here we wait wondering where to go. I recognize this isn’t a new phenomenon for folks to feel outside of institutions, but I do think we are arriving at another crucial breaking point. We need new wine and new wineskins.
Just this week I prepared a breakfast table for a couple moms and we poured out our hearts to one another in anguish and tears. We attend three different churches. We have seven kids of all ages between the three of us, but we all have similar situations.
1) Our kids’ lives are on the line.
2) We are in religious institutions that we serve which often don’t work for us and our families.
3) We are brave.
So brave women of faith, this is a serious question. Where do we go?
Or maybe a better question is, what space will we create?
