Do You Have the Faith of a Mailman?

Do You Have the Faith of a Mailman?

Do You Have the Faith of a Mailman?

 

While I’m happily married now, and have been for almost 20 years, I fielded all sorts of unusual questions when I was a single pastor, and dating. One in particular sticks in my mind. “Do you think I’m an apostle?”

Do I think you’re an apostle? This was a first. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how to answer this guy. To begin with, he was Catholic, and I didn’t think Catholics talked about apostles; it seemed like a word more connected to Pentecostals. Second, he was a mailman. It was the first time I had heard a regular person apply the word apostle to themselves.

The word apostle seems to be reserved for the select few, or as alter egos for the disciples. Or maybe as I said for Pentecostal leaders. But mail carriers? I wasn’t sure.

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Its usage begs the question: What’s the difference between an apostle and a disciple? And is the word apostle even still to be used?

Disciples and Apostles

The word disciple comes from the Latin discipulus. It means scholar. A disciple is a student who learns from a master teacher. The disciple’s primary focus is the teacher, and their primary job is to learn from those teachings. All so that the disciples can live out the “way” or the path of the teacher.

(Recall Jesus saying: I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”) John the Baptist had disciples, the Pharisees had disciples, and Jesus had disciples. Of all three, we know the most about Jesus’ disciples. His disciples traveled extensively with him to observe and absorb all they could about his life and ethos.

An apostle, however, is an altogether different animal. Even though the word apostle sounds similar to the word disciple, it hails from the Greek, apostolos meaning envoy. While disciples are students, apostles are agents. They don’t follow the master. They’re sent out by the master.

They’re delegates, commissioned to act on behalf of another.

The Twelve functioned first as disciples and second as apostles. According to Mark: 3:13-15, Jesus went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons.

The Twelve first learned from Jesus, then were sent out in his name. They were followed by many others who were also sent out in his name including Paul, Silas, Barnabas, and Junia.

In today’s language, we might say that disciples are followers and apostles are leaders. But there’s more to it than that.

Disciples and apostles have qualitatively different kinds of faith. Disciples have faith in Jesus while apostles have the faith of Jesus. Otherwise, there’s no way that apostles could do what Jesus did. And make no mistake—the apostles did.

Jesus first sent the 12 out, and later the 70, to do exactly what he did. Even while Jesus was alive, his apostles healed the sick, cast out demons, and preached the Kingdom. They had authority over unclean spirits. After Jesus ascends into heaven, Peter heals a paralyzed man. Paul and Silas sing in jail until the chains break. Mere shadows of the apostles cause people to heal.

faith of an apostle

Disciples have faith in Jesus. Apostles have the faith of Jesus. So what is the difference between the two?

Faith in Jesus

Faith in Jesus means trusting in his power, his love, his teachings, and his saving grace. This is the kind of faith we commonly teach in church—in songs and hymns, sermons and Bible studies, and children’s messages and youth curriculum. It is the focus of much teaching on salvation.

Faith of Jesus

Having the faith of Jesus takes things to a whole new level. It means trusting in what Jesus trusted in, abiding in a deep knowing that you are one with God and one with the Holy Spirit. Having the faith of Jesus means cultivating an unwavering trust in your life purpose, and entertaining a rock-solid knowledge that all things are possible. It means living with an ever-ready expectancy of miracles.

Most of all, it means living in constant communion with, and surrender to, God. In other words, having the faith of Jesus means operating in an elevated state of consciousness in which there is no separation between humanity and divinity, between us and God. This kind of faith is hinted at in church, but is often not emphasized, even though it is a big part of Jesus’ teachings (see for instance John 15). Is it any wonder that apostleship is so little known?

You may say: I’m a disciple; I can’t be an apostle. I challenge you to re-think that. You see, discipleship was always and only meant to be the first step in your relationship with Jesus. The end game was always apostleship. You’re called. Anointed. Appointed. Authorized. Accountable. You’re agents of the Kingdom.

If you’re ready to step into apostleship, then it’s time to pray the prayer of the apostles: “Lord, increase our faith.” (Luke 17:5). After all, if a small-town mailman can envision himself as an apostle, why not you?

By the way…back to that date some 21 years ago. After he asked me about apostleship, I had to question my own level of faith. After all, he was a mailman and I was a pastor. Where in the heck was my trust in God? Maybe this guy was an apostle. I prayed my own version of the apostle’s prayer: Lord, increase my faith, when the mailman eventually asked me another big question. This time on bended knee. With a ring. God showed me the right answer and I said yes.

When God speaks to you, what will your answer be to God?

Forty Days of Apostleship: Believe in Your Potential

Forty Days of Apostleship: Believe in Your Potential

As COVID-19 continues to sweep the world, its impacts are many. There has been a loss of work, loss of human contact, and even life loss. The pandemic’s most devastating impact, however, is the loss of a predictable future. When will life return to normal? Will life ever return to normal? The uncertainty can be debilitating, and this is why it’s more important than ever that you believe in your potential.

I wonder if this loss of certainty, of predictability, is what Jesus felt as he set his face toward Jerusalem? If so, your Lenten journey is likely more closely aligned with his than ever before.

As the church heads into Palm Sunday, that’s why this week of the 40 Days of Apostleship is paramount. Jesus had to deepen his faith to make it through an uncertain future. The same is true for you. I want to tell you how Jesus did it, and how you can too.

We have explored how to expand our faith from merely believing in Jesus to thinking like Jesus. This expansion accompanies the move from discipleship to apostleship. Are you ready to take the next step?

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Jesus Believed in His Potential

Because Jesus believed that he and the Father were one and that he did nothing apart from the Father, he could maintain an abiding belief in his potential. In other words, Jesus trusted that with God, he was capable of accomplishing what he sent him to accomplish. Even on the way to the cross—amid great suffering and uncertainty—Jesus leans into this belief. Listen in as Jesus talks with God: “Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.” (John 17: 1, 4). You can hear the trust and confidence in Jesus’ prayer.

But what does this prayer mean? I had to look up glory and glorify to be sure myself. The glory of God refers to the radiant presence of God. To glorify, then, means to confer this quality on another. It’s a sign of divine approval. Jesus, through the quiet confidence of his belief, is asking to share in the glorious presence of God as a sign of God’s divine approval.

Soulful Step

When you are facing extreme uncertainty, belief in your potential is essential. Even so, it is one thing to know that God fully approves of Jesus and that the Divine presence and radiance is with him. It is another thing to know that Jesus and God fully approve of you. And that the radiant presence of God dwells within you. But it does.

Check this out. After Jesus prays for himself, he reveals his desire for every believer to be welcomed into divine unity. “I have given [all believers] the glory that you have given, that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me.” (John 17:22-23a)

Embrace the Belief

Do you believe that you can fulfill your potential? Or do you wrestle with the seven fears of highly effective leaders? If anxiety gets the best of you in uncertain times, you are not alone. So, let me ask you this: Would it make a difference to know that you bear the radiant glory of Christ within you? Not as an afterthought or an earned reward, but only by your connection with him? Most of us yearn for God’s attagirl or attaboy. The scriptures say you have it.

As you embrace this belief, it becomes easier to believe in your potential. You can do what is in front of you.

Perhaps you have heard of the “human potential movement.” It’s the idea that even ordinary people have the extraordinary untapped capacity. While it’s a movement that gained a footing in the 70s, it’s a biblical concept. If mere fishermen could train into apostleship, then you can rise to COVID-19 and the leadership challenges it presents.

The truth is, you not only have untapped human potential, but you also have untapped spiritual potential. Believing like Jesus means that you have a divine partnership, your prayers have power, you have superpowers, and purposeful life. The more you believe, like Jesus, the more your spiritual potential begins to take shape.

Apostolic Action

It’s time to let the glory of God shine through you. Co-create a positive future with God by rising to the challenges that are before you now. 

Finally, as you face uncertainty this week, practice seeing the glory of God in yourself and the people around you, even if you are standing six feet apart.

© Copyright 2020 Rebekah Simon-Peter. Adapted from the forthcoming volume, Believe Like Jesus.

Women, Leadership and the B-Word

Women, Leadership and the B-Word

When a male leader is direct, confident, or decisive, he’s often known by a C-word:  Confident.  Competent.  Charismatic.  He’s prized as a strong leader, a natural leader.  A woman who shares the same characteristics in a leadership position, however, is often stuck with a less desirable word. With less desirable connotations.

 

I told my husband about the title of this blog and asked him what he thought the B-word was.  He answered tongue in cheek.  “Bright?  Balanced? Bold?”  I laughed.  The truth is, we both know she’s more likely to be known as bossy. Or worse, a b#tch.

 

Strangely enough, it’s not just men that make these pronouncements. Other women do too.

 

Why would women resist strong female leadership?  Is it because women are afraid of their own power?  Is it because women fear the backlash that comes when another woman displays such qualities?  Or maybe traditional female gender socialization is so ingrained that it’s simply hard to accept this sort of female leadership.

 

I’m not sure.  But I do know this.  Women, as well as men, are naturally shaped to be direct, confident, and decisive.  As well as tender, compassionate and collaborative. Traditional gender norms tend to skew socially acceptable behaviors, but in studies about personality type, all of the above qualities occur almost equally in both men and women.  Moreover, since each one of us—male and female—is made in the image and likeness of God, there are no mistakes about how we turn out.

 

The church needs strong, decisive leaders who are confident, competent and charismatic.  As well as compassionate and collaborative.  And the church needs them in both the female and male versions.

 

So how do we move beyond the negative monikers of bossy and b#itch? I have three suggestions for the women in the pews and pulpits:

  1. Remember the power women from your past.

    Identify women from your past that shaped their families and communities with their insight, intuition, and ability to get things done. You are part of that history. Women have always been leaders, even if not in the public square.

 

  1. Mentor the next generation of women.

    Elizabeth supported Mary when they both carried miracle babies who would change the arc of history.  In the same way, mentor younger and older women in developing their own confidence and skill.

 

  1. Own your inner boss.

    Get comfortable with your own power.  The power to move a conversation forward, to motivate a congregation, to envision new possibilities. A female colleague gave me a prized mug that says: “I’m not bossy.  I am the boss.”

There is one more B-word that is under-used when it comes to women.  One we should wholeheartedly embrace:  Bishop.

 

In 2006, I attended an international United Methodist celebration of the 50th anniversary of full clergy rights for women.  All of the female United Methodist bishops in the church were in attendance.  They told their stories, spoke on panels, and cheered each other on.  I was amazed not only at their leadership, but at their everydayness.  As I navigated airports on the way back home, I thought to myself that if I had seen any of these women without their episcopal robes or name tags, I wouldn’t have known they were bishops.  They looked like other women I knew:  grandmothers, mothers, sisters and friends.

 

In the same way, women leaders are all around us.  Women who accomplish amazing things in their communities, families, and in the Kin(g)dom of God.  We need you. Yes, in some settings, you may be thought of as bossy, or even bitchy.  But let’s not forget, you may also be thought of as bishop-material.

 

Learn more about our work at www.rebekahsimonpeter.com.

3 Deadly Sins of Leadership

In many churches, this is the time of year when pastors are settling into their new appointments, and congregations are learning to work with their new pastors. In other churches, people are starting to come back to worship.  Across the board, committees are beginning to reconstitute, fall plans are being made, and activities are gearing up.

 

As you connect or reconnect with your people, and prepare for a season of ministry, you may stumble unwittingly into the three deadly sins of leadership.  Although well-intentioned, these sins are deadly because they snuff out aliveness. Not only that, they generate unnecessary conflict.

 

Read on to discover the three deadly sins of leadership, their deadening effect, and how to keep calm in the midst of conflict.

 

Here are the three deadly sins of leadership.

 

Sin #1.  Trying to be all things to all people.  Wholesale people-pleasing never works.  First, because it’s impossible to know what everyone needs.  Second, because people won’t know the real you.  Third, because it demands too much of you, and not enough of them. 

 

Community is based on give and take.  People-pleasing takes away the need for people to show up as they are, and to work through the challenges of being community. Anything less is deadening.

 

People-pleasing leads to internal conflict.  Let’s say you give up your day off to attend to someone’s need. But the needs are never-ending.  So, what’s next—your vacation time?  If so, it won’t be long until you’re giving up your convictions. 

 

The one who suffers the most will be you:  you’ll be resentful, feeling taken advantage of.  And it won’t be anyone’s fault but your own.  People-pleasing is always a choice. Yet, it takes great strength of character, great emotional intelligence, to be true to ourselves. 

 

Sin #2. Make no changes.  Or change everything.  Life is full of change; now more than ever.  We are living in a time when the rate of change continues to accelerate. Pretending like you’ll never change anything is unwise and dishonest.  Equally unwise and dishonest is acting as if everything in place needs to be scrapped. 

 

When I began local church ministry, I abided by the rule to make no changes in the first year.  What I didn’t know was that people were eager for me to make changes.  They were tired of being stuck.  When I was slow on the uptake, they grew more resigned, and more contentious. Following the rules was safe for me, but deadening for them. 

 

Pacing change appropriately reduces resistance, eases conflict, and builds buy-in.

 

Sin #3.  Assume your emotional or spiritual space is universal. For instance, just because you are arriving fresh and sassy, full of ideas and open to the Spirit, doesn’t mean that they are.  Or just because you are tired and burned out, doesn’t mean they are.  One of the challenges of pastoring a congregation of differing ages, personalities, and life experiences is that not everyone is in the same spot, ever. 

 

Conflict comes when leaders don’t recognize the deep work that the Spirit has been doing in that place for generations. Or when they don’t pay attention to the promptings of the Holy Spirit they are receiving.  Either approach stymies the work of God.

 

Congregational Intelligence If sin is missing the mark, then salvation is collaborating with the Spirit.  This collaboration takes courage, and resilience.  It also requires trust in yourself, an ability to sense the Spirit, and an understanding of how to read and lead the people around you. Together, these qualities comprise what I call congregational intelligence. Finally, knowing how to self-regulate during conflict is essential.

 

Not sure how?  Register for a free 45-minute webinar on “Keeping Calm in Conflict,” Noon Mountain Time on August 30.

 

In the meantime, notice what is happening in your spirit.  Are you feeling less than alive?  Deadened?  Perhaps you have stumbled into practicing these leadership sins. 

Why Clergy Get Kicked Out

Every year thousands of clergy are moved, removed, or otherwise asked to retire from the pulpit.  Aside from big splashy issues like running off with the choir director, making off with the money, or not showing up for worship, there are a few key reasons clergy are kicked out.  According to denominational resources, these reasons are surprisingly consistent across Protestant denominations—from United Methodist to Southern Baptist.

You might think that rapidly growing acceptance of gay marriage coupled with denominational tensions about the rights and roles of GLBT people would make doctrinal differences a primary reason clergy are shown the door.  But it’s not. Nor is it outspokenness on other hot topics such as racism, excessive police violence, poverty, immigration, or climate change. So why do clergy get kicked out?  For the surprising results, and what they might mean for you, read on.

Southern Baptists, who have been tracking this for over 15 years, show that 4 of the 5 top reasons clergy are let go is related to the leadership style of the pastor. Too strong a style is cited twice as often as too weak a style.  But one thing that is consistent no matter the style is poor people skills.

An inability to get along with others is not limited to Southern Baptist pastors. In a broader study, Christianity Today has found that personality conflicts account for one third of all clergy dismissals.

On the flip side, a recent study conducted by United Methodist Bishop Grant Hagiya explores the top qualities that highly effective clergy share.  The number one quality they exhibit is high Emotional Intelligence.  EI is the ability to accurately know and manage oneself in a variety of social settings, as well as how to work well with others.

Similarly, another denominational study on clergy effectiveness indicates that strong people skills is central to the work of clergy, whether rallying people to enact a vision or helping them do good in their communities.

How do you know if you are close to being shown the door?  Keep in mind these three indicators of your people skills:

Excessive Conflict
If everything comes with a fight, or resistance, this may mean that you and others have a hard time establishing a mutually agreeable framework for making decisions.  Or that you disagree on the fundamental vision that underlies your ministry.  Even worse, it may indicate there is no vision at all except to survive.
If excessive conflict is the symptom, immerse yourself in prayer.  One of my favorite prayers is what I call the prayer of alignment:  “God please prepare my heart and mind for them, and their hearts and minds for me.”  This is a good starting point for seeking a new alignment whether the issue is timelines for decision-making or the need for a growth-oriented unifying vision.

Too Little Conflict
While too much conflict is a warning sign, so is too little conflict.  On the one hand it may mean your style is authoritarian and you do not encourage any debate or disagreement.  On the other hand, it may mean your style is so laid back that no new ideas or ministries are being proposed.  Neither is helpful.
Develop your internal capacity for healthy debate, and begin to encourage the give and take of ideas.  Ask for input from your allies and enemies.  Pray for the courage of Christ to share your vision of how the Kingdom of God is at hand in your setting.

No Results
In some churches, people skills are overly prized.  These clergy pay so much attention to maintaining harmonious relationships that results suffer.  Very little tangible work actually gets done.  No new ministries, no new outreach, no new worship experiences.  Perhaps committees do not meet and paperwork is left undone.

Re-read the Gospel according to Mark.  Notice how much Jesus actually did in a few short chapters.  Much as he loved people, he didn’t stay put and just cater to one population. He was on the move; he got stuff done.  He preached, prayed, taught, healed.  If tasks take a back seat to people, check to see if your church suffers from either people pleasing or analysis paralysis.  Pray the Spirit emboldens your spirit and quickens your pace.  Increasing the sense of urgency is key to accomplishing results that truly serves people without being a people pleaser.

Still need more insight?  If you are having trouble with people skills, check out the Platinum Rule for Thriving Congregations.  You’ll increase your ability to bring out the best in the people who frustrate you the most.  At the same time, you’ll learn how to grow in self-awareness and self-management encourage others to do the same.