Leader's Insight: The High Price of Dying (to Self)

Geologists say that constant and significant pressure can turn rubbish into something precious. Given enough time, such conditions produce oil, coal, and even diamonds. This also happens to be the process for forming the character needed for leadership.

Since 1980 David Johnson has served as pastor of Church of the Open Door in Maple Grove, Minnesota. During his tenure, the church has experienced both growth and decline, and in recent years has shifted its emphasis, as Dave puts it, “to produce ‘formed people,’ not formulas for more nickels and noses.”

Leadership sat with Dave to ask how, below the surface, he is being formed into that paradoxical combination: follower of Jesus and leader of people. The following is an excerpt; Dave’s whole story is featured in the Spring issue of Leadership.

You were the 27-year-old pastor of a church of 160 people that grew dramatically. It exploded. What was that like for you?

We had a season where, this may sound weird, it felt like everything we touched worked. I remember feeling like the only thing limiting the size of the church was how big our room was. I was humbled and overwhelmed. It was exhilarating and exhausting.

I remember getting a plaque from some organization for being one of the ten fastest growing churches in the city. But inside we were a mess.

My personal life was a mess, because at the time I didn’t believe you could lead a large church and have a quality personal life. I thought the two were mutually exclusive. Our key staff people were stressed and exhausted.

Every incompetency that we thought we could ignore because we’d been growing came and bit us. Really hard. Then three big and very bad things happened, [including the painful loss of two staff members and a failed attempt to purchase land].

What did all this do to your soul?

Two things emerged deep inside: anger and fear. I told the elders that I was going to have to do something to survive, even if it meant leaving. Fortunately the elders told me not to resign but to take a three-month sabbatical. That allowed me to get away without leaving.

Did the sabbatical restore you?

Not at all. Those three months were horrible. We still joke about it as “Dave’s sabbatical from hell.”

First off, the very thought of taking a sabbatical ran counter to every instinct I had. I was a go, go, go person. I had no idea how to slow down, how to catch my breath. So I didn’t have peace about it. Then the whole thing was one catastrophe after another. [My wife was diagnosed with cancer and our house caught on fire.] I’m thinking, Where are you, God? Anger just showed up everywhere.

No, the sabbatical wasn’t doing a thing for me.

I was fighting with God. I was so mad. I put on some headphones intending to play some screaming rock ‘n’ roll that would match my anger. So I’m sitting there, dialing the radio, and I accidentally came on some worship song. And it just melted me.

How did you recover from your “Job” season?

When I came back, I was not healed. I was not better. But I did a talk that people still ask for today called “Writing on a Rock.” It’s from Job 19, where Job is in a pit after arguing with his friends who had all the reasons why he was suffering.

Finally he asks for help, and I imagine him emotionally giving up in the confusion of trying to grasp what is really going on. Then he asks for something with which to write on a rock. A piece of paper wouldn’t do. He wanted a rock. And this is what he wanted inscribed on a rock: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand.”

What kind of things do you write on a rock? I came back with a message on things I needed to write on a rock, including, The way out is through. That is, there are no magic wands. The only way out of pain is through it.

Write that on a rock! It’s true!

In recent years, your church has spent a lot of time discussing the nature of the gospel. Is this part of your understanding of what Jesus meant?

The way I see it, the whole point of the gospel is that we are supposed to die. That doesn’t mean I like it. I don’t like to die, but Jesus says, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself alone, but if it dies it comes to life.”

The message of the gospel is that the only way you come to life is that you’ve got to die. You die first, and then you come to life. Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow me into this kind of life.”

I know when I hit the wall, I died. But in so many ways, that experience resulted in things coming to life, for me and for Open Door.

David Johnson is pastor of Church of the Open Door in metro Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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