12. Presence
It was a coup of sorts, done behind my back by people I trusted. I had founded a Christian school, written its philosophy of education, assisted in the design of its curriculum, and hired and led all of its teachers. I had rallied a community around the school who loved it and worked to make it healthy. I was not a perfect leader. I was young and made many mistakes. We did have some facilities issues and financial stresses, but that is not unusual for an independent Christian school. I led a board that seemed unified and ready to address the school’s weaknesses. I was very willing to turn the leadership of the school over to another because I knew I could not do what needed to be done there while also serving as a full-time pastor. From my vantage point, the next leader simply wasn’t on the horizon.
That Thursday evening the unthinkable happened. In a well-planned move by a group on the board, I was voted out of my position as president of the board and removed from all leadership over the school. I was so shocked and hurt. I’ll never forget walking into my house later that night. I must have had a devastated look on my face, because my wife, Luella, asked me what was wrong. I blurted out, “I have been kicked out of the school!” She also couldn’t believe what was happening. I had been the school principal for years, without pay, while paying tuition for my children to attend. I didn’t know that I had lost the confidence of my fellow leaders. I didn’t know that there was so much disunity among us. I didn’t know that we would never have a chance to talk about our problems before I would be voted out. I didn’t know.
Now, when you go through something like this, bitterness lurks right around the corner, as it did for me. In the days that followed, instead of rehearsing once again the greatness, grace, and presence of my Savior, I repeated to myself over and over again all the wonderful ways I had served this school. With each rehearsal I got more bitter. “Do they have any clue of all the things I have done for them?” I would ask myself again and again. I felt that I had been robbed, as if something that belonged to me had been taken away. The school had been my baby. It was precious to me. It was a valued piece of ministry fruit. I was preaching a false gospel to myself, and I didn’t know it. But my Savior was faithful and began to remind me of the true gospel, the one that has him at the center and not me.
Tearfully I began to accept that that school was not mine nor had it ever been. God had given me the vision and gifts that I employed there. God had raised up a community of support. God had provided the resources so we could have a building. God had gifted and connected us to wonderful, dedicated teachers. God had worked insight and commitment into the hearts of parents so they’d be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to send their children to our school. And the children in that school didn’t belong to me but to my Lord. Not only had they been created by him to live for his glory, but they had also been chosen by God to be in families of faith, families pursuing a distinctly Christian approach to education.
All that the school was, was the result of God’s presence. There was a central leader, present and active at every point, who had led the school to this point, and that leader was not me. There is no way, on the basis of my gifts and ability to lead, that I could have independently produced those results. I do not have the wisdom, power, and control necessary. The school wasn’t first a testimony to my insight and hard work but rather to God’s presence and grace. I had been improperly removed from the school, but God hadn’t. He was still present. It was his school and not mine, and he had the right to do with it whatever he wished.
Along the way, in my work with the school, something had happened to me. I didn’t know it had happened until that disastrous evening. In my daily focus on what I could do and should do, how in the world I would do it, who I would do it with, and how it would be funded, I had become a presence amnesiac. Here’s what I mean. I was so busy being present that I had lost sight of the awesome encouragements and important protections that are only ever found when a leader keeps his eyes focused on the glory of the presence of the Lord.
Bad things happen to a ministry leader and to a leadership community when ministry leadership work so commands focus that they begin to functionally forget the presence of the Lord. I’m not talking about becoming theologically liberal but about the dangerous gap that often begins to grow in ministry leadership between our confessional theology and our functional theology. There are times when what we say we believe doesn’t seem to be guiding our actions, reactions, and responses or the state of our emotions. There I was—I hadn’t altered one cell of my theology, but I had become self-focused and self-reliant—and what actually belonged to God, I viewed as belonging to me (although if you had asked me, of course I would have said that the school belonged to the Lord). When the school was taken out of my hands, I took an emotional and spiritual header until the Lord met me in his grace and reminded me of the game-changing reality of his presence.
You may have had no experience like that, but if you are a leader of a church or ministry, you are probably focused and busy, and you too may be in danger of being so central to yourself that you too have become a presence amnesiac. Leading a ministry without the presence of the Lord filling the eyes of your heart is dangerous for any leader or leadership community. If it’s possible to look at creation and not see the glory and presence of the one who created it all and controls it to this day, then it is also possible to look at your ministry and forget that every good thing there is the work of hands greater than your own.
Case Study 1: Presence and Glory
As a means of drawing your attention toward the protective power of leaders reminding one another again and again of the right here, right now presence and glory of God, I have decided to use Daniel 4 and Nebuchadnezzar’s dream as a case study. Now, I know that the primary gospel message of Daniel is to remind us again that God rules over the affairs of nations and the sweep of human history in order to advance his redemptive plan for our good and his glory. At the same time, it seems important to ask why there is such fine-grain detail in Daniel. Could it be that the detail is there to illustrate once again the fundamental human struggle and the gracious transforming work of God in response to it?
Following is a portion of Daniel 4 (vv. 24–37) as he is interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s confusing dream. I know that this pagan king is in ways totally unlike any ministry leader; on the other hand, there is one place of significant commonality: the temptation to self-glory. It will be there until sin is finally eradicated from our hearts. The core of sin is self-glory. Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 5:15 that Jesus came so that those who live would no longer live for themselves. Nebuchadnezzar stands in Scripture as an extreme example of what lurks in everyone’s heart. In this way, this passage should expose, convict, and encourage us all. Nebuchadnezzar really is a man just like us.
“This is the interpretation, O king: It is a decree of the Most High, which has come upon my lord the king, that you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. You shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and you shall be wet with the dew of heaven, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, till you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will. And as it was commanded to leave the stump of the roots of the tree, your kingdom shall be confirmed for you from the time that you know that Heaven rules. Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you: break off your sins by practicing righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed, that there may perhaps be a lengthening of your prosperity.”
All this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of twelve months he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, and the king answered and said, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” While the words were still in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, “O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.” Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.
At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever,
for his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
and his kingdom endures from generation to generation;
all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
and he does according to his will among the host of heaven
and among the inhabitants of the earth;
and none can stay his hand
or say to him, “What have you done?”
At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me. My counselors and my lords sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble. (Dan. 4:24–37)
There is a warning there that every ministry leadership community needs to hear and constantly consider with watchful eyes. If we are not living with the presence and glory of God always in focus and always as the primary motivator of all we say and do, what we say and do will be driven by the glory of self. Every human being is glory oriented, because that orientation is meant to drive us to God. So we are all always living for some type of glory. It is important to understand that this is one of the primary spiritual battlegrounds of ministry leadership. For ministry leaders, success is more spiritually dangerous than failure, much power rather than no power tempts us to dominate, acclaim is more of a potential spiritual pitfall than rejection, and seasoned experience carries with it more temptation than the unknowns of starting out.
It is vital that we minister and lead with God’s presence and glory always in view. If we don’t, this passage warns us of three things that will invariably happen. Verse 27 alerts us to the first: “Therefore, O king, . . . break off your sins by practicing righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed.” If the glorious presence of God does not fill our eyes and rule our heart, we will lead not out of submission to the Lord and love for others but for ourselves and our glory. Notice that the framework of verse 27 is the two great commandments: love God above all else (practice righteousness) and love your neighbor as yourself (show mercy to the oppressed). When, as leaders, we are daily blown away by the presence and glory of God (I’m not talking here about our confessional theology but about our moment-by-moment consciousness), we joyfully do our work inside the boundaries of the two great commandments, laboring for God’s glory and the good of others. But if we become presence and glory amnesiacs, our actions will be driven by a very different set of motives.
I have been shocked by the selfism that is regularly accepted in our ministry leadership community, as I have been saddened to see those temptations in my own heart. You can see ministry leadership self-glory in self-aggrandizing Twitter posts, in Instagram photos, and all over Facebook. You see it in the needless demands that speakers regularly make. You see it in pastoral entitlement and impatience. You can see it around the table in regional and national leadership gatherings, where way too much bragging takes place. There is too much confidence in self and self-importance among us. There are times when we are too similar to the disciples arguing about who is going to be the greatest in the kingdom.
We must never quit reminding ourselves of God’s presence and glory lest we quit doing what we’re doing out of allegiance to him and love for others and do it for ourselves.
Daniel 4:24–37 alerts us to a second danger of losing sight of the presence and glory of God. It is found in verse 30: “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” What a mind-blowing, spiritually delusional statement! There is no way that Nebuchadnezzar was in his position from the independent exercise of his own power. The entire book of Daniel is an argument against such a self-aggrandizing perspective. But the spiritual dynamic here should live as a gracious warning to every ministry leadership community. If we are not doing our work with the presence and glory of God in view, we will take credit for what we could never institute, produce, and control on our own.
We ministry leaders are given way too much credit for the results of our ministry, and we should all resist it. People tend to think that we have way more power and wisdom than we actually have. Ministry success is a testament to who God is and what he is willing to do through us by grace. We have no ability whatsoever to control all the things that need to be controlled for ministry success. We have no control over the gifts we have been given. We have no power to turn the hearts of people to the Lord. We are tools in the hands of one of awesome power, glory, and grace, and nothing more. The gospel institutions we have built have been built by his power and grace, so they stand as monuments to his presence and glory and not to us. As Romans 11:36 so powerfully says, “From him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”
There is a third thing in this Daniel passage. It is found in the humiliation of Nebuchadnezzar. If God intended only to bring judgment down on Nebuchadnezzar, there wouldn’t have been the dream and its interpretation. The dream and interpretation were God’s gracious warnings. Even the harshest of warnings in Scripture are expressions of grace, God giving people one more opportunity to listen, examine, confess, and repent. So the humiliation of Nebuchadnezzar was not judgment but grace. And as he surrendered his glory to the glory of the Lord, his kingship was returned even greater than before.
God will not surrender his glory to another. He is not willing that we take credit for what he alone can do. So he will lead us into those moments when we face the humiliation of our self-glory devastation. Those moments when it all comes crashing down, when sin is exposed or where ministry leadership is taken away, are not judgment but rescuing mercy. We know our judgment was borne by Jesus, so God lays us low because he loves us and is drawing us once again to himself, to live and lead once again inside the wise and loving boundaries he has set for us.
It is vital that every ministry leadership community is bathed over and over again, as a regular part of its ministry culture, in the right here, right now presence and glory of God. This glory-of-God culture is a protection against self-glory and will keep us from taking credit for ministry successes we could never produce on our own.
Case Study 2: Presence and Grace
There is another aspect to keeping the presence of God always before your eyes. It is the need for ministry leaders to continue to remind themselves of the inexhaustible resources of protecting and enabling grace that are theirs because the source of that grace has promised to never leave them or forsake them. I want to take you to that moment when the army of Israel is encamped in the Valley of Elah, ready to do battle with the Philistine army. Remember that God had promised this land to the children of Israel and had committed himself to releasing his power to defeat the enemies they would encounter there. This account of the defeat of the giant Philistine warrior stands in Scripture as another reminder that God will not only defend his people but will also allow nothing or no one to get in the way of his grand redemptive plan. At the same time, the way his children interact with his agenda is instructive.
“All the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were much afraid” (1 Sam. 17:24). This is the reaction the leaders of the Israelite army had when they first saw Goliath and received his challenge. They were immediately terrified and fled, and they did this for forty days. As you read their response, it should strike you as very wrong. They are terrified not just because Goliath exists but, more foundationally, because they are in the throes of devastating theological amnesia. This is the army of the almighty God, who is with them and for them. No power on earth is able to tell God what to do, stand in his way, or defeat him. The men of Israel are afraid not just because Goliath is big and powerful, but because they are forgetful. When a leader forgets the powerful and gracious presence of the Lord, he also forgets who he is and what is his as God’s child. Vertical amnesia always leads to identity confusion.
Because they are forgetful of God’s grace—that he would choose them, deliver them from slavery, preserve them in the wilderness, give them a land of milk and honey, and fight their battles for them—they are making the wrong calculations in this moment. The reality is not these normal-sized soldiers against this huge Philistine warrior; it is this puny Philistine against almighty God. Now, who would you predict would win that battle?
David shows up, sent by his father, Jesse, to bring provision to his brothers, and he is immediately bothered by the scene, so he says: “What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” (17:26). And David volunteers to go down across that valley and face this fierce warrior.
David doesn’t volunteer because he is delusional, has an overinflated view of his abilities, or because he is full of himself. What he says next lets you know why he has such courage: “Let no man’s heart fail because of him. . . . Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God” (17:32, 36). From his own experience, David is deeply convinced of the grace of God’s presence and power. He is convinced that God keeps his promises. This means David is convinced that God is right there with him in the valley, and that because he is, David will be able to do things in the power of God that he could never do on his own. “The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine” (17:37). David is saying, “I’ve already experienced God’s enabling power in moments of danger.” His remembrance of the grace of God’s presence and power is the sole source of the courage he has in this moment that would bring terror into the hearts of seasoned soldiers. The subsequent defeat of Goliath is a testament not first to David’s courage but to the presence of the Lord and the gracious exercise of his power on Israel’s behalf.
Perhaps it doesn’t need to be said, but I’ll say it anyway: effective, long-term ministry leadership takes courage. You will face opposition. You will endure accusations, misunderstandings, and questions about your qualifications. At times precious relationships will be strained and family burdens will weigh you down. Physical illness and weakness might at times make ministry look impossible, and you’ll feel weak and unable, not up to the task God has assigned you. The enemy will taunt and tempt. At times your work will bear no visible fruit. You will be tempted to fantasize about an easier place or ministry. There may be times when you feel undervalued and underappreciated. At times you might feel overburdened by trying to balance family ministry with your gospel ministry, and it seems you’re not doing either well.
It is the distinct honor of every ministry leader to be an ambassador of the Savior. It should give you joy, make you pinch yourself to make sure it’s not a dream, and be the thing that yanks you out of bed in the morning, ready for another day of service. It is wonderful to be called to stand next to the gospel every day of your life and to be a leader in the worldwide movement of the gospel. But it must also be said again that a call to ministry leadership is a call to suffer. Jesus warned the disciples he was leaving behind that they would suffer as he had. Paul says that we have been chosen not only to believe in Christ but also to suffer for him (Phil. 1:29). It is in those difficult, unwanted, and unexpected moments of hardship in the life of a ministry leader that presence amnesia is so debilitating and devastating.
When, as a leader, in a moment of hardship, you forget the grace of God’s presence and his commitment to exercise his power for your sake, you are then a sitting duck for the cruel lies of the enemy. He wants you to give way to anxiety-producing “what ifs.” He wants you to go back and question your calling. He wants to rob you of your courage and desire to continue. He wants to create chaos inside you and disunity between you and fellow leaders. He will attack as often as he can and take any foothold he is given.
As a ministry leader, you should remind yourself over and over and over again that you do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces in high places. And as you remind yourself of who it is that actually opposes you, you’d better also remind yourself of the presence, glory, and grace of the one who is with you and for you. What every ministry leader will face he cannot endure or defeat on his own, and this is precisely why God has promised that he would not think of leaving you and that forsaking you is simply out of the question. As a ministry leader, God’s presence is your hope, God’s presence is your confidence, God’s presence is your refuge, God’s presence is your courage, God’s presence calls you to humility and dependency, and God’s presence is your constant motivation to continue. Ministry leadership, at its core, is about a community of leaders practicing together the presence of the Lord.
I wrote this book because I love the church of Jesus Christ and have a deep affection for all who have surrendered their lives and gifts to ministry leadership. I love spending time with young leaders. I love encouraging them in their work and warning them of the dangers to come. I love any moment I get to sit with seasoned pastors who have served and suffered with joy. And because my heart is in the church, I am concerned about the spiritual health of the community of leaders that pastor its people and direct its ministries. This book is not about the strategic work of the ministry leadership community but about protecting and preserving its spiritual depth so it may do its work with long-term fruitfulness. Really, this book is about the Lord of the church, about his love for the ambassadors he has called to represent him, and how he meets their every need with glorious and faithful grace. What kind of ministry leadership would I hope this book would stimulate? I’ll let the apostle Paul answer:
Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says,
“In a favorable time I listened to you,
and in a day of salvation I have helped you.”
Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.
We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. (2 Cor. 6:1–11)
May God form in your heart the spirit expressed by these words, and may he bless you with every grace you need as you lead in his name.