A Journey to Wholeness: Reflections for the New Year

The beginning of the year is always a great time to look personally at the journey that we've walked and the places we’ve come from. It’s a time to understand again how good God is to us, and how even the difficult times were used by Him. 

My journey in ministry and in starting The Brook certainly falls into that category. Three years after starting our church, there was great difficulty personally and there were challenges in the church. The brokenness within and the overwhelming nature of my life at the time motivated me to get help and see a counselor— something all of us should do when needed.

I was 36 years old and had just described for him how one night, after several weeks of doubt about my leadership and the feeling of failure in my ministry, I picked up my two-year-old son Ryan and placed him in my lap. As I sat at the kitchen table with him, a deep emotion came over me and I began to cry. In that moment I was overcome by a profound emotion of love for my child. I cradled him tightly in my arms and thought to myself that I would do anything for him and that he means the world to me. There was something pouring out of me that I didn’t understand and that had never been expressed to this degree before.

“I don’t know why I did that,” I said to the counselor. He replied in a surprised tone, “You don’t know why?” He then said, “In that moment you were giving your son everything you never received as a child.”

It’s Counseling 101 right? Yet while acknowledging the void produced by the home in which I was raised, I was oblivious to how it drove my life as a parent, a spouse, and a leader. In this sense I had never truly owned the pain of my past. I soon recognized how I was living out the meeting of my deepest needs for love and approval through the roles that I held in life. It was through this and other meetings with that counselor, along with the countless hours of processing his statement, that I began to discover how much of “me” was conditioned and motivated by that void.

The conflict and chaos of growing up in a home plagued by alcoholism certainly had its effect. My family did not attend church, nor did I grow up having serious considerations about God. It was out of that environment that I subconsciously determined at a young age to be accepted by others and to achieve. As a teen I sought to satisfy these motivations through sports, an income from work, and excelling in school. My father had a high school education and my mother quit school in the ninth grade. My three older half-sisters all dropped out of high school early to get married because they were pregnant. I resolved that I was going to be the first to graduate and go to college. I also decided (since we grew up with very little money) that I would gain financial standing. So I began working as a teen to earn money for clothes, dating and a car of my own. I also sought to make several friends.

Although these attainments were not inherently wrong, they were illegitimate for me in that they cloaked my inner turmoil and the unhealthy desire I possessed for acceptance and achievement. Though on the outside I tried to look the part, in reality I lacked meaning, I was insecure about life on my own, and though I didn’t ponder it much, I felt a raw fear of God.

Then, late in high school, I visited a church with a few of my friends. After several weeks of attendance, the youth minister at the church offered to take me home after a youth event. It was there in his car that he shared the gospel of Christ with me and as a result I trusted Jesus as my Savior. A wonderful, profound and almost instant change resulted in my life from this decision. Through Jesus, I had discovered love, purpose, direction, hope and security.

Two years later, I believed that God had called me into vocational ministry and I began to formally study Bible and theology in college. It was here that my relationship to God flourished. I was altruistic in motivation, purposeful in direction, and driven to succeed in ministry-- to do something great for God. I got involved and began to lead in churches where I had opportunity.

Yet without knowing it, those inner needs I felt as a teenager for acceptance and achievement lingered into my Christian journey and unknowingly fueled my church leadership. Although disguised in spiritual terms, a larger church, a bigger salary, and more prestige in ministry was what motivated me. I worked in very large churches— which only stroked the needs of my ego. I was determined to be "successful"— but that success was not defined by simple faithfulness to God. Instead, it was defined by external measures... and it was all about me, not God or His Kingdom.

The early challenges of ministry, marriage and parenting, as well as the awareness of my need for something more eventually drove me to sit in front of that counselor and search for other kinds of answers. Here I began to learn about who I truly was, how I had been unfaithful to that identity, the false assumptions that I had about “success” in ministry, and how deeply other dimensions of life affect leadership.

After about 18 months of darkness, I began feeling whole and free. I still forget sometimes, but I know that walking in that freedom is a true blessing. It allows me to hold things more loosely than I naturally would, and to see myself not as an owner of my blessings, but as a steward and a servant of them.

I’ve concluded that God is much more interested in doing a great work in us as doing a great work through us. That leading from a measure of security and health is leadership that is truly effective: and that ministry on this side of wholeness is worthwhile… both to those I lead and to myself.

Thinking back over the years today and writing this provides a fresh perspective about God and the freedom I’ve found. One of the true blessings I experience now after 18 years of pastoring The Brook is the blessing of being myself with people in my church that I love and respect. We have such wonderful people in our church family! You all share an understanding of how difficult it is in this cynical, selfish world to build a place of authentic faith. You all bestow grace as we journey this mission together. The amazing way you give yourselves is evidence to a Christless world there is something real about following Jesus. That here, we’re more concerned with being authentic disciples than building a big church-- and that the love of God and others is what matters most.

God is indeed good and as I began 2014 I’m thankful for the journey of the past. It gives me great hope and confidence for the future.

Happy New Year!