The words of Jesus haunt me: “Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3-4). As a pastor and leader, I’ve often asked, “How do I lead meetings and write sermons like a child?”
Today something fell into place as I prepared this week’s sermon on Solomon.
As he prays his famous prayer, asking for wisdom to rule well, Solomon says, “Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties” (1 Kings 3:7).
Here is this great king of Israel, raised in the courts of King David, stepping into what he’s been groomed for, and instead of a king, he feels like a child.
I wonder if that day and that prayer were in Solomon’s mind when compiling these words in Proverbs: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10).
Knowing who God is—and that we aren’t God—forces us to ask questions, seek insight from God and from others. And in so doing, we gain wisdom. So the kind of reverence that shows us how big God is and how small we are becomes the beginning of wisdom. But it’s a never-ending beginning, always returning to our need for him every time we’re reminded how small we are.
We are regularly faced with church needs that are beyond us—a heart beyond our repairing, a passage of Scripture beyond our understanding, a ministry challenge beyond an easy fix.
Work That Makes Us Feel Small
Our work will, inevitably, take us to the place Solomon is when he says he’s like a child. We are regularly faced with church needs that are beyond us—a heart beyond our repairing, a passage of Scripture beyond our understanding, a ministry challenge beyond an easy fix. The question is: how will we respond when we feel inadequate and incompetent, when the questions are bigger than the answers, when we can’t control outcomes?
Not long ago my church found itself in the middle of a neighborhood in crisis. You may have seen the news stories about the shooting of Samuel Dubose. It took place just a few streets from my church. On the day of the hearing for the police officer accused of killing him, the nearby university closed its campus and tension was in the air. Will justice be served? Will there be unrest in our streets? I have to admit that I felt like a child. I knew the church should do something, but I had no idea how to respond. I didn’t know how it felt to be a black member of our community that day. I didn’t know the best way to foster community-building or real peace.
I felt like a child. And it didn’t feel good. I wanted to understand and control. But this situation was beyond me, so I did all I could think to do: call a few folks and say “What should we do?” Without any concrete plans, we kept the building open all night, not knowing what to expect. It felt insubstantial and unprofessional to have such an unstructured response but it became something beautiful as church and community members gathered and helped shape what the night would become.
A community member started playing hymns on the piano, an intern set up prayer candles, a few brought art supplies, someone made a prayer-journaling table. And throughout the night around 75 church and community members talked about their pain and prayed for peace. Something happened that night that showed me it’s okay to be a child. Being like a child had led me to invite others because I knew I couldn’t do it alone. Being like a child forced me to ask the questions which actually helped me be a better leader. Even though I didn’t feel much like a leader.
At Home With My Limitations
Katy Smith, Minnesota Teacher of the Year, shares what she’s learned from toddlers about leadership: “I stand in awe of how unapologetic they are about their approach to life. They are messy, impulsive, and uninhibited.” We value the playfulness of children, but hearing her experiences with children made me see how very serious their example can be for us. Small children trust their instincts. They bring their whole selves and engage with honesty, integrity and courage. They’re unashamed to be fully themselves in front of other people and to be found without an easy answer. They are prolific creators, continually trying new things, even if it doesn’t always work out as planned. They are not afraid to say hard or joyful things. They will let you know when they’re hurting; they know how to ask for help and don’t see emotions as weakness. They are both self-confident and okay with the fact that they sometimes need others.
Perhaps the thing we can learn most from them—and from our own selves as children—is how to be comfortable with our own humanness.
Next time I’m faced with my own human limitations, I hope I remember to overcome a lifetime of learning to control and direct. To learn the kind of wisdom Solomon had, the kind that knows its limits.
But Solomon is both a positive and negative example here. He knew how to seek God from childlikeness. But as we see later in Solomon’s story, he became puffed up in his own strength and resources and lost that childlike sense of his need for God. We’re tempted to think he went from being like a child to being like an adult. But, in fact, he went from childlikeness to childishness. Childishness stomps its feet, demands its way, tries to control beyond its reach. So how do we avoid childishness and protect childlikeness? Like Solomon, when our job is new it’s easy to know we’re children but when we’ve done the job for years, when we’re confident in our own strength, how can we, as leaders, retain a healthy sense of our smallness?
4 Spiritual Disciplines that Protect Childlikeness
In short, we protect our childlikeness by continuing to put ourselves in places that remind us of our limitations and humanity. But this goes all the ways we’ve been taught to control our environment and protect our image. Childlikeness takes practice. Here are some spiritual disciplines to foster childlikeness.
1. Beware the Lie of Technology and Consumerism
Solomon was a king with wealth and power. But in many ways he could not imagine the kind of power you and I have today—to reach only as far as the medicine cabinet for pain relief, to have any kind of entertainment at the touch of a button, to google for answers within seconds, to order exotic items delivered to our door within a day. Technology helps us forget our childlikeness, how small and dependent we are. If we don’t have, we turn to Amazon. If we don’t know, we turn to Google.
If you want to see how much lack of control is unacceptable, read between the lines of any advertisement: there is a product or service for every way we feel out of control, promising to “fix” our hair-loss and weight gain, our children, our relationships, our work performance. So setting aside consumerism and technology helps us remember, if even for a time, that we are small and dependent.
2. Keep a Sabbath
It’s humbling to be reminded that our bodies and minds need rest. We can pretend to be superheroes who power through every exhaustion. But eventually it will catch up with us and we will learn how small our minds and bodies really are. There are few things more humbling than leaving the work in God’s hands for a time. Maybe it doesn’t all depend on me after all? Maybe God can run the world without me for a day? Maybe others can contribute something when we’re not doing all the work?
3. Feel the Expanses of Nature
Sitting by the ocean, watching a storm, exploring a cave. All remind us of our smallness. It’s easy, in the city, to be surrounded by human strength—buildings and bridges that tower, that make us feel secure in their strength. But, even in the city, we have a huge, expansive part of nature that is only partially blocked by buildings—the sky stretches beyond our vision’s reach and, while it looks like a flat blue sheet, it is more like looking into a bottomless pool—endlessness hovers over us every day! While it’s more convenient to hide in our temperature-controlled, bug-free homes, don’t miss a chance to experience something more expansive. It makes you feel small in a good way.
4. Keep Getting Lost in the Mysteries
The mysteries and history of Scripture make me feel small in a good way. And engaging with a God I can’t understand, who calls me to go to places I don’t yet see, keeps me on my childlike toes. Avoiding the big, risky steps and the big, mind-blowing questions will help us feel in control. But the more we don’t understand more than one step ahead of us, the more we feel in over our heads, the better. Trusting God for building campaigns is one kind of faith-stretching experience, but I think it takes even more faith to let God work on our hearts and take us to places we’d prefer he didn’t ask us to go. For some, engaging with people who are very different from us and truly listening to their pain is the scariest thing he could ask us. For some, the scariest thing is trusting that he really loves and forgives us, and then living as if he does.
It’s a wonderful experience to look over Solomon’s shoulder and eavesdrop on his prayer for wisdom as he steps into a role that overwhelms him. It reminds us, when we feel overwhelmed, that there is no shame in it, that it, in fact, can be a way toward wisdom. And his story also reminds us of what can happen when we stop feeling our childlikeness and how dangerous it can be for those who lead the people of God. Where are you feeling like a child and how does God want to use that? Where are you feeling very comfortable and in-control and how does God want to shake that up?
Mandy Smith is lead pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.
