I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve heard someone say that spiritual leaders should go outside the community they live and serve in to confess sin or struggles. The problem with this approach to community and spiritual formation is that it is hierarchical and non-relational. In affect we are saying, “Do as I say, but not as I do.” After tens-plus years in pastoral ministry, I am convinced that you cannot expect others to be authentic unless you are first willing to model it yourself. This goes for all relationships that are “Christian” and not just for the pastor-types. Before we try to lift up up another brother, we first have to be willing to be the guy who is face down in the mud reaching up to be helped.
The problem that we have with being the guy “down in the mud” is two-fold: 1) No one likes being the “messy” guy – it’s hard on our self-image. 2) Letting people see you “in the mud” conflicts with the conditioning we have received from society, including the church. The church tends to make everything a technique for ministry and “message transfer.” Accordingly, the ultimate goal of the Christian life is to be spiritually “competent”…but never “muddy.” But relationality , “being with” and “being for” one another, is not a technique. Relationships and sharing life with one another, even “life in the mud”, is God’s outline for Christian life and spirituality. Some people in this community would go so far as to say that relationality is the outline of God’s very own existence – the trinity (hmmm).
We must keep in mind that every encounter we have with another person will always involve a certain risk. One of the biggest risks for us is in our confession – confession that we are presently hurt, struggeling, fearful, confused, sinful, and “muddy.” Henri Nouwen reminds us that Christian community is a “shared life” experience. But what exactly do we share with each other? According to Nouwen, community that is “Christian” is grounded in the experience of a shared brokeness (confession) and a shared hope. These two things: brokeness (confession), and hope go together and must never be separated from each other. Hope without brokeness (confession) is blind optimism and leads to slogans and “winning formulas.” Brokeness without hope is also blind and too easily leads to despair; for we should never seek to judge ourselves outside of Jesus Christ, who is our hope.
This is all counter-intuitive to our logic and our habits – we share our brokeness with one another and in so doing we experience a profound sense of hope. Why is that? Why do we experience hope just by showing each other our private “messes”? The answer has something to do with the fact that Christ loves us “as we are” and not “as we should be.” In other words, Jesus doesn’t love our “virtual selves”or our “idealized selves”, but our “real” selves. Why is it so hard to admit to someone that we fall short of God’s laws and our personal standards? Could it be that we have wrongly assumed that mature Christians don’t get “muddy”? Could it be that we have lost the practice of modeling authenticity with the people we live with?
Chris, I agree. We have difficulty in expressing our brokenness one to another or scripturally being “poor in spirit”. Especially, when you’re the professional (Pastor or Minister) setting and controlling the reality for everyone in your flock. Nobody wants to be that guy, the needy one. As a professional, in the words of the “Robert the Bruce” in the movie Braveheart talking to “Sir Wallace”, he says, “We (the nobles) have much to risk…and from top to bottom (nobles to common folk) we don’t have a sense of ourselves”. The other reason why we are not able get muddy with our brothers and sisters is because of a lack of identity. We don’t truly know who we are in Christ as the Body of Christ. If I truly knew my place in Christ in relation to the Body of Christ and the riches of Christ in each of us, I would not depend on those guys running the show.
Identity to me is important. In this culture image is everything. But Christ does not seem to care about what others think about him or me.
Keep the posts coming…
Hey Mark,
Oh, to be “identity driven” and not “ministry-driven.” As you know, that has been a struggle of mine for a long, long, time now. Like you shared with me recently in the Parable of Great Banquet (Lk. 14:12). The people who begged off the invitation were not “evil”, they were busy living their lives doing “important” things like running businesses and raising families.
Rather than cancel the banquet, the master does a radical thing. He ends up sending out invitations to the “poor, crippled, blind, and lame.” Now here is the thing. If I’m honest, I don’t want to go to a party with a bunch of “poor, crippled, and lame” people. I guess that’s because all my life I have been waiting for an invitation to the VIP party.
The people that you and I have admired and aspired to be have all been “great leaders” in the church. These are the men who, in my view, are anything but “poor, crippled, and lame.” These are men who command attention, dispense with wisdom, and who are adored by many. We have been discovering however, that there is a serious problem with the myth of “the great man” (especially the religious “great man”). One problem we have found is that our definitions of “greatness” and “success” are really antithetical to God’s (Phil. 2:5-10).
The other problem with “the great man” that you’ve pointed out is that when we allow “great man” to reign over us as though he were the head of the Church, we end up corrupting the Churches relational outline (Mat. 23:8-12), which is a Christ-centered-brotherhood. You are right to say that this is both a tragic loss of relationship and identity.
hi Chris… I’ve been looking forward all week to sitting down and reading this in a peaceful… way… and especially today I couldn’t wait… i’m up at my friend’s cabin… in the woods and rain and my heart couldn’t wait to dive into a word from my friend Chris… so what a treat! I feel like I live so much brokenness… that that is my #1 challenge just managing that… especially in my identity… and in my desire for community and closeness… sometimes the whole thing in the world of relationships seems beyond hope… or at least so limited … dan’s been working at my friend’s cabin… so tomorrow I will be headed back home to face another week of battling lonliness in our home… and facing the empty spaces of our lives…. trying to embrace the beauty of what is in the midst of loss and challenge… my greatest desire is not for everything to be fixed… but a present community to live and sometimes grieve with…. and in a speckelled patch work kind of way that does exist if i can have an incredibly flexible low-expectations attitude about it…. last week was a great example of something…in my life… dan was gone and we were in “needy” space… and all my regulars were unavailable.. not one person was able to show up in any way for lunch,, or helping w/ the kids or an opportunity to go to my bereavement group…. it was like my neediness was in a direct opposing swing with anyone’s availablity… and it was painful…. but also I could see God wanted me to be mellow and restful about being home and being alone and ok with it… of course it brings up the “lacks” of my life… including church … and the internal message feels like… “don’t need anybody… don’t be needy.. no one else is… you are an island”… sometimes the journey feels so inhuman and a part of me is struggling with lostness… and a part of me is pretty whole and at peace… but boy the struggles rage …. i really don’t know how people manage without the still quiet voice… and sometimes that’s all i have…
… thanks for bringing okness and even beauty and dignity to brokenness… and thus to humanity and to me.. your voice is a great comfort to me… even just in my head
blessings on you my friend!!!!
xo Ruthie
Nice post Chris. (could have a more wordy response, but this is all I have now!!)
Hey Ruthie,
Good to hear from you. Thank you for honoring me and this blog-community with your confession. I hear the pain and the sense of loss. And yes, that is the amazing thing about Christ, and hopefully this little blog – he brings “ok-ness” to our brokeness. For so long, I was not interested in “ok-ness” for brokeness. My brokeness is such a source of shame that I either needed “miracle cure” or the ability to keep the brokeness concealed. Like you, I’ve been learning how to live in the tension and the promise of, “My grace is sufficient for you for my strength is made perfect in your weakness.”
Thanks for adding to the thread. Say hello to Daniel for me.
C
Hey Phil,
It’s just good to know that you’re out there.
Thanks for stopping by.
C
Back to this, are we? Yes. We are the messy ones. Broken, bankrupt, uncertain of our futures. But I like this company.
Hi Ruthie, miss you girlfriend.
Wonderful post Chris. As I ponder this idea of brokeness I am reminded of the idea of living the dialectic of confessing our brokenss, and yet resting in hope both of which we experience in the reality of our union with Christ who was also broken yet victorious. I am reminded of the words of Dr. Perkins that we must “share in the pain of others.” More than just confessing our own brokeness and needs we must be abel to allow others into our pains and in a loving way make ourselves available to enter into others’ lives as well.
I think until we mutually experience eachother (by sharing each others joys and pains) even in the “muddy” places of our lives we can never be fully present to each other. This should especially mark the life of the body of Christ…the church. I agree with you Chris. Confession must be vitally part of the life of the church even in the life of the “great man”.
Joe
Well said Chris my friend…and by the way, thank you for helping me out of the mud. And thank you in advance for being there to help me out of the mud in the future. Oh, did I just say I might get muddied up again in the future? That just doesn’t make me sound like I am a man of strong faith, because a man who is strong in his faith doesn’t get very muddy…or does he? I know the feeling of wanting to protect my “image” among the church community. It’s like we are walking around trying to impress everyone with how together we are. Is anybody very impressed anyway? I have learned that God’s acceptance of me as I am is more impressive than anything. That is what I am thankful for and greatly indebted to Christ for…and BTW, indebted to guys like you for being there to help me wash the mud off.
Well I’ll be a ding-dang-dong!
Yeah, all this business about facing ourselves is no small thing. Twentty-five years ago I cried out to the Lord, “Jesus, save me from ‘sex and drugs and rock’n roll'”, and now twenty-five years later I think I’m almost ready for the second conversion, the conversion of the “false-self.” That’s what we’ve been talking about and it turns out that the hardest “false-self” to convert is the “religious-false-self” because as my friend Wess Pinkham at King’s seminary likes to say, “That guy is ‘double-dipped!'” But hey, thats, what friends are for. We are helping each other to be honest in ways that we had never imagined. As for indebtedness, it’s mutual – you have been a true “mud-brother” to me for many years now – so grateful for our friendship!
C
“double dipped”…funny