A TIMES IHAVE FELT AS THOUGH who I really am did not match what I was doing. At one time I worked my way through a phone directory, teeth clenched, telemarketing for unchurched people—enduring something that was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. Such experiences always leave me with a hollow feeling and the sense that I cannot sustain this kind of activity for very long.
In a TV interview I did, I noticed that the bookshelf in the background, like most of the set, was only for show. The “books” were spines with nice-looking titles but no printed pages inside. Sometimes I have felt as though I was propping up a similar pastoral facade. I was doing what I thought had to be done but I was not acting authentically from the core of my being. My outside actions and inside motivations were in conflict.
Sunday night services are an example of what once commonly gave me this feeling. After pouring my heart out on a Sunday morning, I would go home and have lunch and a short nap. By four o’clock I felt lower than any other time of the week. The last thing I wanted to do was stand in front of a crowd, try to smile and be enthusiastic, and get my heart into another sermon. My throat hurt; my legs were tired. I can honestly say that on most Sunday nights for several years, I raised at least one person from the dead! I am basically an introvert, and I felt I had been with people enough for one day.
Of course, most occupations require that people do some things they do not feel like doing. Fulfilling such responsibilities doesn’t make you a fake; you are simply dealing with the real world. Nevertheless, at times I have had to wonder, Is God in this? Are my feelings a signal that we should be doing something different? Am I trying to fight Goliath wearing Saul’s armor?
Equally important, such times have made me wonder how long I could sustain what I was doing. To work from something other than the core of who I am draws a tremendous amount of energy, like a locomotive pulling a long freight train up a hill. Consequently, when authenticity is lacking, I perform poorly and often feel like quitting.
The pursuit of authentic ministry is therefore of vital importance. How do I fulfill the demands of my role without losing the sense of who I am as a person? Is it possible in ministry to always feel a true match between who I am and what I do? Can I step outside my comfort zone for Christ and yet feel as though I am working from my core being?
Genuine authenticity
When I think about authenticity, I have to be sure I am working from a biblical concept, not a distorted notion from pop-psychology. I have grown up hearing my culture tell me about the need to find myself, know myself, be true to myself. While valid in many respects, these ideas can slip into error when they leave God out of the picture. God is the ultimate standard of what makes me authentic, not my dna helix.
I cannot find authenticity, though a good word, in any of my Bible versions; rather, Scripture addresses the concept of personal genuineness with words like sincerity, truth, hypocrisy, faithfulness. Authenticity suffers a humanistic distortion when the sentiment becomes “I’ve gotta be me.” Although the concept is not necessarily false, the Bible shows much less concern with the notion of whether I am true to myself and endless concern with whether I am true to God’s will.
What I find unambiguously clear in Scripture is that my authenticity as a minister stands like a table on four legs:
1. My spiritual gifts. God calls me to recognize the spiritual gifts he has given me and to manage them faithfully as my primary responsibility. When I feel hollow, the problem may be that I am minoring in the areas of my spiritual gifts.
2. God’s leading. God expects me to obey his call whether or not I feel qualified. When God tells me to do something that lies outside my sense of competence, it means one of two things: (a) I may be qualified and not know it. (b) God can make me qualified when the need arises. He told a reluctant Moses, “Who made your mouth?”
One criterion for authenticity is to recognize what God’s direction and purpose is for my life, not what I feel natural doing. The point is less Who am I? and more How is God working through me?
3.Christian character. The ultimate standard to which I am to be true is not some subjective notion of my identity, but the person of Christ as reflected in the objective teachings of Scripture. For example: Is shyness a part of my personality, or is it a lack of love for others? Am I introverted, or self-centered? The difference between personality and character can be gray, at best. My ultimate authenticity is based not on the personality formed by my genes and experiences, but rather the character of Christ imparted to me by the Holy Spirit.
4. Wholehearted obedience. God calls me to follow his bidding willingly, not reluctantly. If I halfheartedly obey, I will feel—and be—inauthentic. In such moments my lack of genuineness has more to do with my chief desires and less to do with how I am wired. God shows his concern with authentic obedience in 2 Corinthians 9:7: “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”
If I feel hollow, it may be that I am more excited about other things than I am about the will of God.
Ring-true ministry
After two years in my current position, I regularly marvel at how well this church fits me—and how satisfying such a match is. For the first time, I feel I am working largely from my core being. I love what I do and look forward to office days and Sundays. I feel I could pastor this church for a millennium and beg for more. My responsibilities, however, differ little from those in my previous churches. (We do have Sunday night meetings!) What has changed?
1. I now minister in a manner truer to my personality.
Generally my temperament is not that of a high-energy cheerleader. Nevertheless, in my early ministry I usually tried to be very enthusiastic. While enthusiasm helps in many ways, mine was sometimes forced.
In the current stage of my life, I am more enthusiastic when emotion flows naturally from some cause; but as a general rule I am not wired for enthusiasm. In terms of the classic four categories of personality, I lean toward the melancholy and choleric rather than the sanguine or phlegmatic. Even when I feel deeply anointed by the Holy Spirit, I am more apt to be quiet than loud. When I force enthusiasm, I sense in others the discomfort of being subjected to what is emotionally contrived, a discomfort similar to what one feels in the presence of a man wearing a cheap toupee.
I forced my enthusiasm in the past partly because I thought others expected it. Last week, for instance, one man who has attended our church for a year told me that on a business trip he visited a church that was having revival services. He described how much he appreciated those meetings. “They were really on fire,” he said. He told me he didn’t intend his comment as a slam on me or our church, but the implication was clear.
If my spirituality is lacking, I need the challenge of such a comment, but now I am secure enough to express my zeal for God in a manner that is genuine for me (which I would describe as animated rather than loud). I trust love, sincerity, faith, the Holy Spirit, and God’s truth to carry the day.
2. I have a greater sense of freedom. In my previous settings I felt much more constrained about how we did church. For example, our services had to have a certain level of formality; we needed to have certain programs.
My feeling of obligation arose from several sources. Wisdom had something to do with it, I trust, for change is always risky, especially for an inexperienced pastor. Temperament played a part too. I think as well that I had a commendable desire to lay aside my own preferences for what I thought was the good of others.
It is likely, however, that my sense of constraint did not always benefit me or the church. Although I must not be, nor do I want to be, a self-indulgent leader, I recognize now that what suits me may very well be of the Lord. As one called and filled with the Spirit, I must assume that God inspires many of my passions and sensibilities about how to do church. Therefore, as I die to self in order to serve others, I still may often order ministry in a way that goes with the grain of who I am. I believe God works through the design he has given me.
This freedom to go with my own grain is crucial to authenticity. If I persist in a manner of ministry that feels alien, and probably lacks the Lord’s blessing, I will feel hollow.
In my present church I feel an exhilarating sense of freedom to experiment—within the boundaries of wisdom and self-giving love. As never before, I feel I have options. If I prepare people properly, we can try different ideas to see whether God is in them. I am doing a higher proportion of things that I feel passionate about, that I truly believe in, and that I have confidence will be fruitful. The point of this freedom is not to please myself but to find a style of ministry that God works through and that suits me and the church.
For example, we have tried several different ways of praying for people at the end of our church services. I often give traditional “altar calls.” I have sometimes broken the congregation into small groups in order that people may pray for one another. I have invited people to come forward for prayer after the service is dismissed. I have asked people to pray silently where they are. We have even tried holding a mini-prayer meeting at the end of the Sunday morning service, inviting everyone to spend ten minutes in prayer. Although I have not yet found an expression for prayer that works ideally in our church, I intend to keep experimenting.
Of course, many things still do not match me perfectly. I wear a suit on Sunday mornings, even though I am the only one to do so in our church and I feel out of place. I suggest that others call me “Pastor” or “Pastor Brian,” even though I would be more comfortable without the title. I freely choose to deny myself these preferences, though, for the sake of what I feel is best for others.
3. I focus on how everything can serve my highest goals.
I feel as though my ministry has a solid core when my activities align with my purposes and goals—even if those ministry activities fall outside my strengths. If I feel hollow about my work, I may have missed the connection between how it can or already does serve the goals I am deeply motivated about.
For instance, administrative paper work, in itself, leaves me cold. In the past I completed my monthly financial report to my denominational superiors with a sense of frustration. Now I remind myself that my paper work fulfills a purpose I feel strongly about: the oversight of my church’s corporate health. Our finances are obviously of one cloth with that. We must have financial integrity and we must make wise, vision-based expenditures over the long run if we are to accomplish our mission. To do that I must be involved. When I think in these terms, I am working from the core of my soul.
To work from my core, I need to know what my highest purposes are and then see how what I do serves those purposes. If a particular task does not do this, I must find a way to give that work to someone else whenever possible.
Pushing the envelope
In Scripture, the Lord often called people to serve in ways outside their comfort zone, whether it was washing feet or walking on water. When the Lord calls me to do this, I need to be able to expand the envelope of my service with a sense of authenticity in order to persevere. This works if I attend to three things.
1. Discover the genuineness of God’s grace in me. The familiar passage in 2 Corinthians 12, in which Paul says God’s power is expressed most fully in our weaknesses, teaches me a critical lesson: God’s grace is one authenticating element in my life. Who am I and what is genuine to me? The answer includes not only my personality but also whatever God adds to me by his Spirit. His power in me is also who I am.
No matter what I do, as I rely upon his grace, I experience a deep reality to my ministry, for I fellowship with my Creator, who is the Truth. As I serve with a greater dependence on the Holy Spirit, my experience deepens with the One in whom I live and move and have my being. What could be more authentic than that? My genuineness at this point is not necessarily a combination of my ministry and my core self but that of my ministry and the Core of the Universe—in me!
For example, while cold-contact outreach has at times sapped my resources because “sales” would be my last choice for an occupation, at other times outreach has exhilarated and satisfied me immensely. I think this is true because I have had to pray much and rely completely on God’s help at these times, and I have seen him work through me.
2. Wholeheartedly seek God’s will as my highest purpose. My core self comprises not merely my personality and my abilities but also my values and purpose. In other words, my core being includes whatever makes me tick: all my motivations. Thus an integrating sense of genuineness comes from my decision to serve God in any way he desires—not merely in a preferred role such as preaching. My main goal in life is not to preach but to serve God. Preaching is a legitimate subsidiary purpose.
When I left pastoral ministry for three years to work full time with an editorial staff, it was a hard decision because I had not lost my love of pastoral ministry and, frankly, I disliked the prospect of sitting in front of a computer every day. I made the move, however, because I felt God had clearly led me to do so, and that was what mattered most to me. My life purpose gave authenticity to a task that was not my first order of calling. Sometimes other pastors would ask if it was hard “to leave the ministry.” If I had truly left the ministry, I would have been heartbroken, but I had not. I simply ministered in a different capacity, one in which God wanted me to serve, and that is what I want above all else in my life.
3. Honestly acknowledge my personal inability and fallenness without God. Deluding myself about my abilities or character is the quickest way to become a fake. Facing hard reality puts me on genuine ground.
For instance, I have faced the fact that I will never build a church through leadership charisma. I just don’t have it. If I believed I did, I would feel every day like the king who had no clothes. Further, I have confessed character weaknesses such as my inclination toward despair. As a result, when I step outside my comfort zone, I may battle despair and I may struggle with the limitations of my personality, but I do not feel like a hypocrite or a phony because I know God intends to use me in spite of these encumbrances.
I am not pulling anything over on myself or others. I acknowledge that I am genuinely unable to minister without God’s help. As Paul said, “Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God” (2 Cor. 3:5).
Authentic ministry resembles a good jump-shot in basketball. Sports announcers occasionally comment on the excellent technique of a good shooter. The player does not merely flip the ball toward the basket or shoot across his body in a contorted fashion. Instead, he squares his shoulders to the basket, jumps well, and with each shot has an identical stroke. All his motions integrate to support the shot, meaning that his whole body shoots, not only his hands.
When I minister genuinely, everything within me supports the effort. When I minister from my core self, I do so with strength and greater effectiveness. When I am authentic, I can stand and stay with a sense of stability and integrity. I become a person of truth through whom the God of truth can flow.
Only when I am authentic can I persevere with spiritual vitality—strong to the finish.
Craig Brian Larson, pastor of Lake Shore Assembly of God Church in Chicago, is a contributing editor of Leadership He is the author of Hang in There … to the Better End and Preaching That Connects. He makes his home with his family in Illinois.
Copyright © 1998 Craig Brian Larson
