by Joe Steinke

From the Series: Stories From the Meekness Training Files. To read part one of this series, click here.

There’s times when you think you’re right and your upper level leadership is wrong or they just don’t get it. So, in your younger development years, you speak your truth in the only way you know how, highly filtered through the exaggerated ego’s sense of entitlement, through the preciousness of your personality posing as your identity, through unconscious biases blaming those others with unfounded judgments, mix in some raw anger and a good dose of fear that this could go so wrong and get quite ugly and threaten your job and your family’s future, and you’ve got a punchy cocktail of conflict in your hand. So, you take a deep breath, knock back that dangerous drink, and say what you need to say!

Welcome to a Special Episode of –  Stories from the Meekness Training Files: Leadership Backlash. 

I was in my young thirties, working in a big church as a part time teacher and youth pastor, an after-school coordinator for elementary kids, and was gigging worship for the Sunday evening service. It was around 7 years into my jack-of-all-ministry-roles season and had found great favor among the leadership of the church. The senior pastor was a gracious man with a large heart who opened the doors for anything I suggested as a potential new ministry, so I waltzed right through each one and pioneered every role I served in. 

Until…I had a vision that threatened the big house with the big stage and the big people who did the big things for big money. 

Scene 1

Setting: A small boiler room off the kitchen of the lunch room where a Bunn Coffee Maker holds 2 glass pitchers ( brown handle – regular/orange handle – decaf ) of bad coffee getting scorched from long stretches between pours. The blue flame of the gas water heater provides just enough glow for a perfect lights-off secret prayer space. 

Enter the part-time youth pastor/teacher/after-school coordinator/worship leader for his morning sit on a small wooden stool huddled up next to the glow and drone of his favorite prayer partner, Wally the Waterheater.¹

My eyes are closed and I’m mumbling something to God, complaining about how the leadership is always stunting the Sunday evening worship set with the need to give their input on song selection and limits on how long we go and for being so tone deaf to the Spirit. After a good rant, I get quiet. And then I see a short scene playing on repeat in the theater of my mind. 

I’m on the sanctuary stage leading worship, looking out over the swaying crowd and gazing up into the balcony where a glass wall has been built and huge waves are crashing up against it. It feels like; “If only this wall wasn’t here those waves would crash down upon our eager hearts and we’d be drenched in a revival!” But, the wall is strong and seems to have something etched into it. Then I see it. Running the length of the wall, written with ornate large letters was the word: PROPRIETY.

End Vision. 

I knew this was from God² and it was my responsibility to bring this vision to our leadership so that we could address this wall of PROPRIETY that was holding back the waves of revival we were to experience. 

My wife tells me that back then, I was a bit naive on how to interpret and engage the troublesome world of power dynamics in relationships. But I’m a bit wiser now, thanks to several rounds in the Meekness Training Ring, getting knocked around by a variety of characters throwing jaw jabs, body blows, and at times, a big left hook that put me on my back trying to figure out – What the H#%L just happened?! 

Scene 2 

Setting: The senior pastor’s office with him and his handsome black hair and white collar shirtsleeves rolled back, hands fingertip to fingertip, thumbs cradling his chin, sitting in a tall-back burgundy leather swivel chair behind a large cluttered desk and 9 staff seated in the round awaiting their turn to report or share anything significant for everyone to know. 

My name is called and I bypass all other reporting to bring the most important thing to the room first: The PROPRIETY Vision. I share it with passion and a compelling invitation for us to shatter the glass wall, break the stronghold of PROPRIETY, and let the Spirit fall like waves upon us at our next Sunday evening service. To my surprise and disappointment, it felt like everyone was holding their breath, waiting for our senior pastor to say something. And he didn’t. He just moved on to the next person. 

Soon after this, I was informed that the son-in-law of one of the senior pastor’s daughters was taking over Sunday evening service and I wouldn’t be leading anything. 

Jab to the jaw. 

Well, happy-go-lucky me steps aside without a fuss, wipes the blood from my lip and tries to be agreeable and amiable with the new leaders of a very bland and happy clappy cheerleading set of singalong songs that had invaded my awesome gig that was going to usher in revival. It took me a while, but I got over the cringe I felt and tried to get on the happy train of PROPRIETY and be a good team player. But man, I could see it, sense it, it was right there and I still think we may have missed it. But what I didn’t miss was the opportunity to take it on the chin and submit to our leadership’s decision, and walk off a stage that wasn’t mine anyway. 

Platforms have a way of proving you, if you can stand on them with a view toward God, and step off them with grace when you’re dismissed without an explanation or a good reason. If you do, you may just pass one of many tests that are staged for your leadership development that seem to have been marked by signs of God’s design. 

Soon after this, a few of us church friends got together and dreamed up a scenario where we would start up a Saturday evening gig for all the young adults who wanted an alternative worship experience to the 3 services on Sunday. We got our pitch together and I was elected to share it with the leadership team.  

Scene 3 

Setting: Senior pastor’s office with him behind a large cluttered desk and 9 staff seated in the round awaiting their turn to report or share anything significant for everyone to know. 

Enter the bruised-chin and fat-lipped part time youth pastor to the weekly staff meeting. 

This time, I actually report on the various things I’m juggling and get good feedback. “And, there’s one more thing I’d like to propose that some of us feel called to experiment with, a Saturday evening gathering for young adults.”

Our senior pastor asked for a bit more information and by the next team meeting it was green-lighted! We were so excited. A space where we could do anything we wanted in our pursuit of God with our friends? Wow! 

So, we planned and launched a gathering that was open to all and open-ended and had shared leadership and time for interactive dialogue and prayer and started with a pot luck and there was a core group of us with some kids in tow,  most of them ours, and it was a bit messy but great fun. We started with around 20 people meeting in the lower level, which was the lunch room and kitchen, and that was very manageable and not noteworthy. In five weeks we’d grown to 150 people showing up on a Saturday for a 3 hour gathering, and this caught the attention of our senior leadership team. We had started a church within the church. It was quickly becoming the primary weekly gathering for most everyone who attended, who also then skipped the Sunday gatherings and enjoyed the day off. 

Soon after this blissful and blossoming ministry was just getting started, we were informed that the Saturday evening gathering would have to come up into the sanctuary and would be led by…guess who? Yep, the son-in-law and a team he would select. I didn’t get invited to that team, nor did any of us who dreamed it and led its launch. 

Body Blow 

This one I felt and it knocked the wind out of my resilient soul for a while. I recovered my stance and staggered out from this round in the Meekness Training Ring with my head down and a bit more cautious to step out and take a faith risk toward anything new. 

Then came the  Seven-Year-Ministry-Itch. 

I was going through the motions of ministry with a sense of loyalty and faithfulness to my calling, and to the good people that had afforded me such a grand space to grow up in ministry. But the walls of my office started closing in on me and I was getting moody and antsy and started to recognize a holy snarl rising up from some primal place inside me that curled my lip as I prayed;

C’mon God. Whatever this season is about, I’m ready to keep submitting and learning and yielding, but I need your willingness to become mine. Share with me again your “Not my will but yours be done” surrender, and I’ll happily ride in the slipstream of your gracious way. But what do I do with this unction, this desire to pioneer, to architect, to build something new and innovative in your kingdom? It keeps getting me into all sorts of unintended trouble and yet, I believe you made me this way.  

It wasn’t long after this that some missionary friends of ours were talking about pioneering a mission base in our town that would reach out to college students with the Gospel and mobilize them into missions. We were very intrigued, and I was personally ready to make a bold move forward into something that was fresh and challenging and wasn’t inside the walls that were closing in on me. 

But as they say;  You’re paced with who you’re partnered with. So, I needed to walk this out with Angie and 4 kids in tow – ages 7, 5, 3, and 1. I’ve had the fortunate privilege of having a wife who was not only up for a new adventure that required a faith risk, but also one who has a big satellite dish that can receive spiritual insights and illuminations that have been directional for our family’s discernment in every season. Our missionary friends invited us to consider joining them, we prayed, Angie had a confirming dream, and we said yes. 

We were discipled into a way that honored the voice of God speaking, and us obeying whatever was given as directional for our lives. This required a fair amount of experimentation and experiential confidence, which we leaned on really heavily as we said goodbye to our cushy lives in a big church with a good salary and benefits and a great school for the kids and friends that we had come of age within ministry and favor to spend like a million bucks. 

As it is with any season that comes to a close,  it offers a time of reflection and celebration.  Among the goodbyes and send-off parties, I recognized the need to do some personal reflection. 

What were the invitations to transformation that had been given during this seven year season?

 Whom do I need to honor and thank for the love and generous investment they gave to me as a young leader? 

So I staged a time to thank the senior pastor, his wife, his daughter and the son-in-law and the staff team for all the ways they opened doors for me and my family to grow up in the ministry house they had built for over 30 years. It felt right and good, there was something healing about it for both of us, and we were sent with a blessing into our new adventure with prayers that put wind in our sail. 

I also took some time to name the things I was learning about my own gregarious ego, how in the kind yet strong discipline of God, it was being tempered and humbled, told to sit down and ride the bench for a while, and wait with meekness. I was reminded of a book I read in college titled: A Tale of Three Kings by Gene Edwards. It was a dramatic retelling of the life of David as he navigated his rise to becoming king under the insanity of Saul in his youth and the brutal betrayal of his son Absolom in his old age. The whole book was a master class on Meekness Training, and I just had my own much less dramatic version of this play out without the life altering consequences of King David’s great failures and grievous losses. I could relate to being the young shepherd in the field singing songs of love to God, careless and free, as well as the fugitive hiding in a cave, not understanding why he was such a threat to the current leadership, yet still being called to be a reluctant leader in God’s kingdom. 

I think this is when I first used the term – Meekness Training. It seemed a fitting moniker for the ways we are invited, during the Ministry Maturing years³, to learn how not to demand that we get our way, to learn how to serve another’s vision, to submit without always knowing the reason why, to step aside without demanding our rights be honored, because – we are owed nothing from anyone. I also think this was perhaps the first time I recognized that if I was going to be entrusted with any kind of significant leadership roles, my character had to be refined by these invitations to go low, get humble or even humiliated, and serve others with a joyful heart and a surrendered will. 

And perhaps king David, after becoming king, wrote these poetic lyrics and put them to music as a way to rehearse his humble beginnings and as a way to get low to the ground again; 

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. 

He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. 

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, my cup overflows. 

Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life…

And I like to imagine that this song was written in the remains of the day, looking out some balcony window overJerusalem, in the height of his reign; 

Lord my heart is not haughty, 

Nor are my eyes lofty.

I do not concern myself with matters too great for me,

Nor in things that are too high.

Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, 

Like a child that is weaned of its mother. 

Yes, my soul is like a weaned child within me.

I wrote a song from this Psalm in my young twenties, moved by the lyrical way it brings you home to your childlike state of utter dependence and deep contentment. Angie sings a lovely harmony that creates a graceful lift from the verse into the chorus, and brings us into the arms of God as our nurturing mother, where we need not be anything but calmed and quieted in our soul. All that is haughty, lofty, too great and too high gets wrestled down by love, and we can rest in these strong arms, again. Perhaps this is what meekness looks and feels like when we let ourselves be held by the non-anxious presence of God, named and known, and dearly loved. 

Perhaps you’d like to consider how a spiritual director might be a trusted guide who could accompany you on your journey of faith. If you’d like to have a conversation with us to explore what this might look like, please contact us and we will follow up with you. Contact us here: Soul of the Shepherd.

1.   They eventually put a Pastor Praying sign on the door when I was in there for the daycare staff who were often freaked out on their coffee break, not suspecting me to be hunched over in the corner backlit by a blue glow. ↩︎
2.  I now know that not everything you think you hear or see in a secret prayer time is a direct message from God, but try telling that to an amped up young leader who’s not quite yet learned the wisdom way of personal and corporate discernment. ↩︎
3.  See a previous written reflection titled: The Buffet Years – Settling Into Our Ministry Maturing Stage of Life with Grace for more about this season of leadership development. ↩︎