9. Identity
I sat in the meeting. I was the new guy, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This leader who I looked up to and wanted to be like was confessing stuff I wouldn’t have thought of confessing. He was telling the people around the table about a person whom he was called to lead and love but instead had come to loathe. He had developed such antipathy toward this person that he dreaded seeing him, only tolerated talking to him, and complained about him. I was shocked, not because I thought this leader was perfect but because he wasn’t afraid of admitting his imperfection to the fellow leaders he worked with every day.
My response was, “No way!” I had just arrived on scene. I wanted the people around the table to think well of me and to trust me, so there was no way I was going to be so self-disclosing. I was more focused on building an identity than sharing my heart. I said almost nothing during that meeting, but I sat in my office with an unsettled heart. There was a war going on inside me, a war of desire. I was delighted to have been offered a seat around the table. It was more than I thought I would ever achieve in ministry. I was overwhelmed that I was now a colleague of leaders I had looked up to for some years. I didn’t want to be the weak one. I wanted to be strong, a contributor on par with the other leaders in the room. But I also knew if pride in position controlled my heart, I would not run to the graces of the gospel or the help and protection of the gospel community around me. Rooting my identity in ministry leadership would cause me to hide important details about myself, control conversations, compete for position, deny weaknesses while projecting strength, and a host of other spiritual dangers.
I am thankful that God arranged that I would be confronted in that very first meeting with the danger of getting my identity from ministry leadership. So I want to expand the conversation of this point, which we began in the last chapter. Getting our identity from ministry is not only a dangerous and miserable ministry experience, but also disrupts the kind of ministry community that we need and that serves the spiritual health of fellow leaders.
I want to take time to develop a bit of a biblical theology of identity with the hope that it will argue for the importance of this issue and its impact on the spiritual health and functionality of any ministry leadership community. This Bible is rife with identity statements and terminology: creature, Creator, male, female, child, parents, son, daughter, Son of God, children of God, Master, disciple, body of Christ, strangers and aliens, and the list goes on and on. Thinking about identity and the identities that we assign to ourselves is a significant part of our rationality. You see, we are wired by God to be constant interpreters. Everything we do every day is rooted in fundamental interpretations about who God is and who we are, about right and wrong, about meaning and purpose, about relationships, and about motivation, and this is just a suggestive list of the long list of interpretations that shape the way we see, think, choose, act, and speak.
This means that none of us, from the most influential leader down to the least influential follower, responds to life based on the pure facts of our existence. Rather, all our responses are the result of how we have interpreted those facts. That is precisely why there can be two leaders in the same organization who have very different responses to the same set of circumstantial facts. We’ll never stop interpreting, because we were wired by God to search for meaning and understanding. We all have a deep desire to make sense out of life. All this was wired inside us by God to drive us to him so that he would live at the center of the way we understand ourselves, understand life, and make sense out of our circumstances.
In one of my very first books, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands,1 I wrote that this is why God, after creating Adam and Eve, began to talk to them. Without God, they would not have known how to make proper sense out of life. In the garden, God gave them the foundational elements of a Godward interpretive structure so that they could make valid interpretations of life on the ground. For example, understanding “creature” as a basic piece of your identity changes everything. If I have been created by someone, then that someone had a purpose in mind for making me, so understanding that purpose is vital to my proper functioning.
I’ve already begun to hint at it, but let me just say it: there may be no more important and life-shaping interpretation that human beings make than identity. In God’s perfect plan, the man and woman he made and their children and their children’s children were meant to get their foundational sense of identity vertically. This is how they were meant to know themselves, how they would understand their meaning and purpose, and how they would find that inner sense of well-being that every person wants. This vertical identity was to give them guidance for their daily living and erect protective boundaries around their hearts. So the disobedience of Adam and Eve was profoundly more than the eating of forbidden food. It was a rejection of their identity as creatures of the Most High God and buying into an identity that did not have God at the center. And with that sad rejection, human identity became not only a morass of confusion but the battleground for spiritual war.
Since the fall, people look horizontally for what they were designed to find vertically. They ask people, places, and things to do for them what only identity in the Lord can do. And what people fail to understand is that wherever you look for identity will then exercise rulership over your heart and, in so doing, will direct the way you live your life. Things that were never meant to be sources of human identity become just that, creating endless layers of difficulty and brokenness.
A job is a wonderful provision from God, but if it becomes your identity, it will leave you regularly unhappy and will destroy your family. Your marriage is a significant human relationship, but if it becomes your identity, you will ask your spouse to be your personal messiah, placing on your spouse a burden that he or she will never be able to bear. Your body is a significant aspect of who you are, but if you look to it as your primary source of identity, then aging, weakness, or disease will rob you of your sense of self. Depression is a deeply personal and powerful emotional experience, but if you take it on as your identity, it will do you even further spiritual and emotional harm. There is always the temptation this side of eternity to look for identity horizontally, but looking there never delivers what you seek and never results in a harvest of good fruit.
This is why the New Testament works to instill in every believer an identity in Christ and to exegete what that looks like in terms of the way we think about and approach our everyday lives. Check just a few New Testament examples:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Cor. 5:17)
You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Pet. 2:9)
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal. 2:20)
No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. (John 15:15)
To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:12)
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Rom. 8:16–17)
You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Col. 3:3)
In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. (Gal. 3:26)
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Rom. 8:1)
Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. (Phil. 3:20)
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Cor. 12:27)
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Cor. 6:19–20)
We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:10)
Put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Eph. 4:24)
It is very clear from these passages, and many more, that identity in Christ is intended to be the defining element in the way that a believer makes sense out of who he is and what he is supposed to be doing. Any other identity will unsettle his heart, expose him to various idolatries, ask of creation what it cannot give, and cause him to step outside of God’s wise and loving boundaries. Because identity is the ground of how we make sense of life, it is both a spiritual war and one of the ways the gospel gives us back our sanity and security.
Now, I am aware that what I have just taken the time to lay out for you is, for most ministry leaders, not so much a body of new insights but a review. I have taken the time so that you would reflect on the significance of this issue, particularly as it applies to the ongoing spiritual health of a ministry leadership community. Every leader in every leadership community is doing his or her work out of some sense of identity. It is neither accurate nor safe to assume that ministry leaders always function, at street level, out of their identity in Christ. A ministry leader’s identity is a place of temptation and a spiritual battleground and, sadly, does not always remain constant. It is clear to me that a significant aspect of the drift and then fall of ministry leaders begins with an identity exchange. This exchange is not a dramatic event but rather a subtle and often long-term process.
Likely no one goes into ministry saying, “I am going to make ministry my identity,” but along the way, something happens. The things that we have talked about throughout this book, which are the fruit of heeding Christ’s call and surrendering gifts for his use, begin to become identity markers. Theological expertise; detailed biblical knowledge; years of ministry experience; success; the acceptance, respect, and love of people; and the strengths of one’s gifts and the power of influence and position begin to be where a leader looks to know who he is. It is incredibly ironic that the fruit of a leader’s identity in Christ is what tempts him to look elsewhere for identity. Somewhere, without a conscious rejection of his gospel theology, he has exchanged the stability of vertical identity for the instability of horizontal identity. Because he has made this exchange, his heart is exposed to a variety of ministry idolatries (e.g., knowledge, power, control, position, success, acclaim, lifestyle ease), and he is not the same person and does not function in the same way that he did in the early days of his ministry.
This is happening right now to leaders all around us. How can we not be concerned about this dynamic? How can it not be part of our regular conversation as leaders as we try to protect one another and maintain the spiritual health of our leadership communities? How can we not examine the sins of our own hearts and the conduct of our lives, seeking to know if there is evidence that we too have made that dangerous exchange? Ministry leadership really is a miserable, spiritually dangerous, and leader-destroying place to look for identity. Nothing good is produced in a leader who has along the way exchanged identity in Christ for some form of identity in ministry.
A Profile of a Leader Who Has Made the Identity Exchange
If identity in ministry is a battleground for every ministry leader, and if the exchange from identity in Christ to identity in ministry is often subtle and usually takes place over an extended period of time, then it is important to identify some of the symptoms you will see when a leader is looking to get from his ministry leadership what he was meant to get from Christ. Following is a suggestive, but surely not exhaustive, list.
When you look horizontally for your sense of self, your daily worth, your reason for keeping on, and your inner rest and security, you are all too attentive to the opinions, responses, reactions, and situations around you. You look too intensely at how people are responding to you, and you listen too carefully to what people are saying and how they say it. You notice discussions or plans that have included you. You are troubled by the advancement of others and quietly envious of their ministry successes. Your hyperattentiveness crushes your peace of heart, leaving worry, concern, anxiety, and/or fear in its place. It is a vicious cycle, because the more you pay attention, the more you find reason to be concerned, and the more you’re concerned, the more you pay attention. It is spiritually defeating, relationally unhealthy, and motivationally paralyzing. The reason you’re experiencing fear is that you’re asking ministry leadership to give you what it was not designed to and is not able to give. In your position as a ministry leader, you have been called to be an ambassador of the Savior, but that leadership position cannot give you what the Savior alone is able to give.
Ministry success won’t give you the well-being you’re looking for, because ministry successes are often followed by failures. People’s appreciation and respect won’t offer you the worth you seek, because the person who praised you today will criticize you tomorrow. The esteem of busy fellow leaders won’t deliver the spiritual wholeness you crave. No other leader is able to function as your personal messiah, because he or she is in the battle too. The buzz of position is fleeting, soon giving way to the burden of responsibility. When you look horizontally for what you have already been given vertically, the things you look to will always fail you.
There are too many leaders among us who do too many things out of fear and not faith. Too many of us are anxiously driven. Too many of us are too moved by the criticism of others. Too many of us care too much about our opinions winning the day, our sermons being applauded, or about people liking us. Too many of us, in the suffering that is the life of every ministry leader, are not suffering well. Too many of us develop negative attitudes toward people we are called to minister with or to, because we overly need them to appreciate and cooperate with us. Looking horizontally for our identity and peace is burdensome, exhausting, and self-defeating. For some of us, it will make us fantasize about moving to another ministry leadership place or quitting altogether.
There are times when I have looked too intently, listened too hard, let someone get to me, and felt discouragement wash over me. All of this has happened as Jesus was loving me, showering me with his grace, fulfilling all his promises to me, blessing me with gifts, calling me to be part of his redemptive mission, and providing for me with his enabling, protecting, transforming, and delivering grace. That means that in those moments, as a ministry leader I had lost my gospel mind. Because I had lost my mind, I gave in to the insanity of feeling poor and searching to be fed, when actually I was rich and well supplied.
When it comes to identity in ministry, fear and pride have the same root. Although the fear and pride can have very different manifestations, the same in either case is a leader looking where he should not look for something that has already been supplied. When you look to your ministry leadership for worth, security, and a reason to continue, you need your ministry to deliver. So not only are you hyperattentive and aware, but you also take credit for what you could never earn, produce, or achieve on your own. A leader’s struggle with pride is often connected to the identity exchange we have been discussing.
Because a leader needs his ministry position to give him what it was never meant to give, he needs to see himself as more essential than he actually is. And because he looks to ministry to give him his sense of worth, he is tempted to assign to himself more power to produce results than any leader will ever have. In his search for spiritual rest and stability, he again and again does poor spiritual math, adding two and two and getting five. No leader has the power to create change. No leader is able to determine results. No leader can control the response of people, let alone the flow of events. No leader has the ability to soften hearts, to make them faithful, humble, and courageous. No leader can control the opinions of fellow leaders. No leader can cause people to hunger for the gospel. No leader is a change agent; rather, every ministry leader is a tool in the toolbox of the one who alone holds the power of change in his hands.
A leader’s pride in ministry achievement is not only a self-serving delusion; it is redemptive thievery, taking personal pride in what only the Redeemer can do. It is a thin bubble that will soon break, because it is not true, and it does not give the spiritual nutrients that every leader needs.
Emotional Highs and Lows
The truths of the gospel, that is, the radical realities of the presence, promises, power, love, and grace of the Savior, are the only rock of stability for a ministry leader. It really is true and needs to be said again and again: all other ground is sinking sand. For all the high mountains of ministry leadership, there are many dark valleys. For all the people who love and appreciate you, there are people who misunderstand and misjudge you. For all the wonderful moments of unity, there are moments when it seems as if you’ve been torn asunder. For all the times you feel prepared and able, there are times you are faced with your weakness and inadequacy. For all the leadership things you delight in doing, there are those you hate doing. For all the seasons of joy, there are seasons of sorrow. Such is the inescapable ebb and flow of ministry leadership.
Your ministry cannot give you the peace that passes understanding, but Jesus can. Your ministry cannot offer you unbroken love, but Jesus does. Your leadership position cannot give you courage in the darkness, but the Savior, who walks with you, will. Your ministry leadership does not always make you feel worthy, but the one who shed his blood for you will. Your ministry cannot satisfy your hungry soul, but the bread of life and living water can. When a ministry leader feeds on spiritual food that cannot satisfy, he has the high of feeling spiritually full for a moment, only to be hungry once again.
Leader, you will never experience long-term spiritual health and stability when you look to your ministry position and function to give you what the Savior has promised you and is delivering to you. I am convinced that emotional volatility and instability in leadership are often rooted in the identity exchange we have been examining.
The most controlling people I have counseled or worked with have always proven to be the most fearful. When you look somewhere for what you weren’t meant to find there, you tend to be afraid, and the way to assuage your fear is to control what needs to be controlled in order to best guarantee that you find what you’re looking for. Psalm 112:7 says of the righteous man:
He is not afraid of bad news;
his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.
I love those words. A leader whose identity and security is in the Lord is liberated from fear, even in the face of bad news. His heart is firm, not wobbly, unstable, or weak. He is not fear-free because he is in control. He is not fear-free because he has nothing to fear. He is fear-free because he gets his stability, his sense of well-being, vertically. He does not need to be in control, because he does not need the things around him to go well for his heart to be firm.
Every leader in every leadership community is either resting in the complete and perfect control of the heavenly Father over every person and every situation or seeking to take control. Every leader is looking for firmness of heart either vertically or horizontally, and when you look horizontally you crave more control over people, plans, and circumstances than any leader was meant or qualified to have. Desire for control is a symptom of fear, and fear is a symptom of trusting a replacement savior who just can’t deliver what your heart cries for.
I have covered sensitivity already, so I won’t spend much time on it here. When you need things and people around you to give you what they weren’t designed to give, you care too much about responses and results, and because you do, you are way too sensitive to what is happening around you. You take yourself and others way too seriously. You take people’s responses as being way more important than they actually are. You care too much about what results say about you, your gifts, your insight, your commitment, and your faithfulness. You tend to take offense where no offense was meant. You tend to personalize what is not personal, drawing personal messages out of events and conversations when nothing personal was there to be found. All of this creates a self-focused seriousness that troubles a leader’s relationships and disrupts the spiritual health and unity of the leadership community that surrounds him.
Leaders, is there any evidence in your heart, relationships, or leadership that somewhere along the way this identity exchange has taken place? Is there any way that you’re looking horizontally for what you’ve already been blessed with in Jesus? Is fear, pride, control, or sensitivity an indicator of something you should examine? Do you have a firm heart, one that is secure and at rest? Is ministry leadership a bit of a fearful burden or a joy? You don’t need to be afraid of examining your heart, because whatever you find there has already been addressed by the person and work of Jesus.
I want to close this chapter by speaking to those of you who have been discouraged by what you have read. Yes, it is true that a ministry leader’s life is messy, but it is God’s mess. Your Lord knows the sin and weakness of the people he has chosen to lead his church. He knows there are times when we look to the wrong things for our spiritual stability. He knows that at times we are too fearful, too controlling, too proud, too sensitive, and too needy of affirmation and success. He knows all our susceptibilities, yet he still chose us to lead his people on his redemptive mission. He is not shocked or dismayed by our struggle, and he surely is not about to give up on us. He meets us in our weaknesses, smashes our idols, exposes our hearts, and then draws us near once again and says, “I’ve called you to my service, not because you are able but because I am. Rest your heart on my grace and don’t look elsewhere for what only I can give you.” And with those tender, loving words he grants us yet again another fresh start and new beginning.
1. Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change, Resources for Changing Lives (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2002), n.p.