Page 1362 – Christianity Today (2024)

In his career of 54 years, Reinhard Bonnke has encountered jealous rivals, angry witch doctors, violent thunderstorms, corrupt heads of state, and rioting Muslims.

But this fall the global evangelist journeyed on uncharted ground—his first revival in the United States. In shifting his schedule to include U.S. audiences, he must overcome a major obstacle: In 2000, Reinhard Bonnke preached to 1.6 million people attending a single meeting in Lagos, Nigeria. But as he steps on U.S. shores few Americans have even heard of him.

Bonnke is up for the challenge. The 73-year-old evangelist has preached in many places with low expectations and emerged with massive attendance and conversion numbers. In fact, Bonnke's ministry, Christ for all Nations (CfaN), claims 72 million people have filled out decision cards in response to Bonnke's salvation invitations since the 1970s.

Most of those conversions—55 million, according to CfaN—have occurred in Africa. The harvest appears especially bountiful in Nigeria, where Bonnke has focused his ministry for the past decade. While Bonnke plans to keep preaching in Africa, he is devising a still-unspecified revival circuit in the United States.

"We will go from city to city, from state to state, from coast to coast," Bonnke told Christianity Today.

For the past 30 years, CfaN has relied heavily on funds from American donors. In 1995, Bonnke told CT he had no interest in preaching in a land with around-the-clock Christian television. Yet Bonnke says the Lord made the need for an evangelism shift evident to him last year.

"God told me that he had not sent me to America just to be the offering plate for Africa," Bonnke says. "I've seen a new generation growing up in America that knows very little about the gospel of salvation. It must be preached."

Paul Cedar, CEO of Mission America Coalition, supports CfaN's expansion: "We thank God for how he has used Bonnke in other nations of the world and pray God's best for him as he ministers in the United States."

With his signature proclamation, "Hell Empty, Heaven Full," Bonnke started CfaN in 1974 in Johannesburg and moved to Frankfurt in 1985. He has conducted gospel outreaches in 47 nations. The vast majority —227 tent and open-air meetings—have taken place in 34 African countries.

Indeed, Bonnke has shown no fear in treading where few Christians venture because of violence, strife, or extreme poverty. He has escaped murder plots of Islamist extremists, but refuses to demonize Muslims or Islam.

"I do not preach against religions; I preach Christ," Bonnke told CT. "I do not consider those who oppose us enemies, because Jesus died for them as much as he died for me."

Crowds typically grow during a weeklong revival when word spreads about miracles. In 2000, Bonnke preached to 1.6 million people attending a single meeting in Lagos, Nigeria, and, according to CfaN, nearly 1.1 million of those accepted Jesus as Savior.

"I still have only one sermon," Bonnke wrote in his 630-page 2010 autobiography, Living a Life of Fire. "I preach the simple ABCs of the gospel."

Since his early years, Bonnke has sought the cooperation of a wide spectrum of Christian denominations. CfaN lined up 150 churches in Orlando. Bonnke follows the crusade organizational playbook created by Billy Graham. Local pastors spend months beforehand preparing because their churches stand to reap the rewards of the outreach. "I tell the pastors I am an evangelist," Bonnke says. "I bring my nets; I want to borrow your boats so that we together will have a mighty catch of fish and then pull that net to the shore. I will not take a single fish with me. I take my nets and go to the next city."

Ron P. Johnson, lead pastor of One Church, an Assemblies of God congregation, was a local leader of the Good News Orlando planning committee. He says non-Pentecostal churches had no qualms about participating. "Increasingly as we live in a post-Christian nation, we all desire to see the gospel go forth," Johnson says.

After Graham

Still, if Bonnke is going to branch out, he must raise his profile. "The reason people don't know more about him is that the divide is wide between orthodox evangelicals and our charismatic and Pentecostal friends," says Lon Allison, executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in Illinois. "It's not an intentional divide; it's just that there are different camps in a very big Christian world."

Cecil M. Robeck Jr., director of the David J. DuPlessis Center for Christian Spirituality at Fuller Seminary, wonders whether mass public meetings still are an effective form of evangelism in the West. He notes that Americans relate primarily in other ways, especially through social media.

"Billy Graham's day has passed," Robeck says. "I don't think Bonnke can raise anywhere the level of anticipation or participation that Graham did in the 20th century."

Candy Gunther Brown, a charismatic/Pentecostal historian at the University of Indiana, questions whether Bonnke's old-fashioned traditional techniques of evangelism can transcend a culture saturated with high-tech media preaching. "In Africa, Bonnke is a novelty; his meetings are big events," Brown says. "People come to his meetings often because they are sick, disabled, and feel spiritually oppressed."

H. Vinson Synan, dean emeritus of Regent University's School of Divinity, says history will vindicate Bonnke's contribution to global evangelism.

"He will go down as the greatest mass evangelist of all time, even greater than Billy Graham as far as numbers of converts and huge crowds that hear him speak," says Synan, who first attended a Bonnke tent crusade in Zimbabwe in 1986.

"I saw the greatest miracles I've ever seen," Synan says. "Blind people received sight, people got up out of wheelchairs."

Synan, who convinced Bonnke in 1987 to begin keeping meticulous records about his events, says mass revivals in the United States featured few true converts. Many "decisions for Christ" involve backslidden believers rededicating their commitment to live for the Lord, he says.

Bonnke has had a different impact in Africa, according to Synan. "Everybody goes to Bonnke crusades—Catholics, Muslims, people from all religions, and those with no religion," Synan says. "Muslims are converting because they are healed in Jesus' name."

Not all Christian scholars are so enthusiastic. Grant Wacker, professor of Christian history at Duke Divinity School, saw Bonnke preach in Oslo in 1992. He found Bonnke to be a charismatic preacher in every sense of the word.

"At the conclusion, hundreds of people ran to the front for healing and to have demons exorcised," recalls Grant, author of Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture.

Yet Wacker rejected the sermon emphasis he sensed Bonnke projecting. "Bonnke's God was a God of terror," Wacker says. "His world was filled with demons and demonic powers."

Prosperity Label Rejected

To reach a broader audience and burnish his credibility, Bonnke has moved to establish that he is financially accountable and transparent, selected a reliable leadership team, and kept his distance from prosperity theology.

But since the 1980s, Bonnke has been a visible friend of Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn, both strongly associated with prosperity teaching. Copeland has been CfaN's largest financial partner, beginning with an $800,000 donation for a massive tent in 1984.

Bonnke does not espouse a name-it, claim-it theology. He believes that God chooses to heal or not heal. "When I pray for someone and that person is not healed, I do not blame it on a lack of faith," Bonnke says in his autobiography. "The longer I live, the less I pretend to know about the mind of God. I do not know why some are healed and others are not. I only know that sometimes it is the faith of a sick person that makes them whole, and sometimes it is the faith of others."

While some high-profile health and wealth preachers have eschewed financial oversight, CfaN joined the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ecfa). The ministry took in $12,851,281 in 2011 and spent $10,273,545, according to the ecfa. Ministry Watch, a financial watchdog organization, gives CfaN a three-star overall efficiency rating (out of five stars). CfaN reports that the average cost of a crusade is $900,000.

Anticipation for miraculous healing follows Bonnke wherever he goes. Bonnke emphasizes healing prayer for the ill, diseased, and disabled. Without a doubt, much of the overwhelming response in Africa stems from reports of the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, and the lame walking.

Skeptics regularly deride the "come and receive your miracle" aspect of Bonnke's ministry as deceptive. One of the most controversial healings was the reported resurrection from the dead of Nigerian pastor Daniel Ekechukwu in 2001. Three days after the pastor was declared dead by a local doctor, Ekechukwu's wife took his body to a nearby Bonnke-sponsored prayer service, where pastors prayed and massaged his body. He suddenly revived. Since then, Ekechukwu has resumed ministry, including speaking at Bonnke events.

"Some people call me a healing evangelist. I do not like that," says Bonnke. "I define myself as a salvation evangelist who also prays for the sick. Wherever we go, 95 percent of the meeting is a clear preaching presentation of the gospel. We pray for the sick because many people cannot find healing through conventional medicine."

Leadership and succession in organizations with a charismatic founder are tricky. Several renowned pastors and evangelists keep the leadership reins in the hands of family members—with mixed results. Bonnke's son, Kai-Uwe, is part of CfaN's technical television team and told his father he isn't called to be an evangelist.

But Bonnke has already selected a successor, Daniel Kolenda. "I am getting older," Bonnke says. "I desire to pass the burning baton to the next generation." Kolenda, a graduate of Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida, is a fifth-generation preacher. He began working in the CfaN mailroom in 2004 as a way to supplement his church-planter income.

In 2009, Bonnke promoted Kolenda to president and chief executive of CfaN. Kolenda, 32, has been at Bonnke's side for seven years, preaching to millions on his own. Far from mass evangelism being a relic of the past, Bonnke believes CfaN could realize even more salvation decisions under Kolenda's mantle. Allison, Brown, and Synan commend Bonnke for having his successor primed and ready. "It is the best case of a Timothy coming alongside for active training that I have ever seen," says Synan.

Brown says it's sensible for Bonnke to work in tandem with Kolenda so that CfaN contributors keep giving after the transition. CfaN has offices in 10 countries, with a combined workforce of 130.

The day after Bonnke debuted Good News Orlando, California evangelist Greg Laurie began his annual two-day evangelism event called Harvest America. Laurie, long associated with Calvary Chapel founder Chuck Smith, has hosted in total 4.4 million people at his evangelism events. But in addition to the live stadium event in Philadelphia, Laurie will be webcasting Harvest America.

Bonnke, who also makes extensive use of live webcasting, announced Raleigh, North Carolina, as the next location for a U.S. event in May 2014. In the meantime, CfaN has crusades in Ghana in November and Cameroon in December.

John W. Kennedy, a former CT news editor, is news editor of the Pentecostal Evangel, the weekly magazine of the Assemblies of God.

Chaos and Grace in the Slums of the Earth

I read the September cover story with great interest. I am seeing points of Light injected into the deep darkness of cities and the urban core. However, feeding programs and educational assistance are not the full gospel. I pray that while the New Friars are living holistically with the people, they are also preaching repentance and faith.

Nathan SwensonCT online comment

I enjoyed reading the article written by Kent Annan, who extolled the virtues of the New Friars. I beg to differ with one of his statements that there are only about 200 missionaries in this network. There is a much larger group outside the New Friars, such as those serving with New Tribes Mission, who live and minister with great financial sacrifice. And there are probably thousands of such impoverished servants of the Lord—who one day will be richly rewarded!

David M. DenlingerHutchinson, Kansas

Under Discussion

The example of pastor Jim Standridge berating individual church attendees during a sermon is such an extreme case of pastors rebuking from the pulpit it is hardly worth attention. (And it wouldn't have any if not for YouTube.)

A discussion of cases that are closer to the boundaries of how church leaders commonly deal with individual sin would have been more useful.

David RandallCT online comment

God's Word in Two Words

I love Tullian Tchividjian's way of incorporating his love for family in his writing—beautiful. But it seems he is driving down a theological dead-end road. A view that sums up the Scripture in ways that ignore New Testament categories isn't all that helpful. The reformational fathers were asking questions of the biblical text that the authors of Scripture weren't asking. That seems anachronistic at best. Paul doesn't line up Scripture into law and gospel—Luther does that. Paul uses the categories of law and promise in Galatians 3. He also states that the fulfillment of that promise is the coming of Holy Spirit. The law is really irrelevant—it is good, but its purpose has been fulfilled. The exile is ended, the King sits on the throne. Jesus is King—that's the gospel! When the churches were in trouble, John didn't write a treaty on gospel and law. He told them that those with ears to hear should listen (Rev. 2:7). We must learn to hear the Holy Spirit.

Gary ArchibeckCT online comment

Christ in the Capital of the World

Very nice article. I found it encouraging that the capital of the world has people within it that are attempting to turn the culture there into something besides the stereotypes a lot of us have concerning NYC. Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and Paul eventually made their way into the major cities, spreading the gospel all over the Roman Empire. NYC (or, in my view, the Rome of today) has large sway not only in the United States but all over the world. The UN, major banks, and many centers of the world emanate from New York. The gospel could be reinvigorated from NYC in the same way that the Holy Spirit started spreading the Good News from Jerusalem on Pentecost.

Joshua ScrantonCT online comment

Why We Need Small Towns

As a pastor serving in rural communities for the past 10 years, I have witnessed firsthand the "ecclesial desert" that Jake Meador described. The lack of pastoral leadership, uncommitted pastors, and denominational indifference that Meador notes as plaguing small town churches are all too real.

Thankfully, this is not the whole story. In small communities all over rural America, there are vibrant churches where the gospel is preached by faithful pastors committed to their communities. Organizations such as the Rural Home Missionary Association and Village Missions are working in small communities to keep the small town church alive and thriving. And not every denomination has turned its back on rural America, either.

I suggest that you take a second look at what is happening in the rural church. Here in our corner of western Nebraska, you would find many positive things. I encourage you to consider an article that presents not just the "ecclesial desert" but the flourishing rural church as well.

Chris CostriniVenango, Nebraska

Prodigal Love

What a beautiful, thought-provoking, kick-in-the-heart article from Karen Swallow Prior.

I am a prodigal who took more than 20 years to return. My own walk through those absolutely turbulent years can only be described as descending to hell, selecting a seat, and making myself at home. I knew full well the emotional turmoil I caused my family. Those memories are almost more that I can bear. Stranger and more painful now is watching my own father, sisters, and brother walk away from their faith. I pray for their return and for the love, grace, and mercy of Christ to lavish upon them.

LynnCT online comment

CT did a fine job treating a neglected—or, perhaps avoided—topic. The church has a spotty history of dealing with those who abandon it, as well as those who come slinking back.

Glen A LandCT online comment

Hungry for Outrage

Katelyn Beaty's editorial makes a very good point. Modern media trade on outrage—the more outrage they can generate, the more they can sell. The search is on to tell us why "we" are better than "them," and it's done in a way to reinforce our natural inclinations to consider "us" superior to "them." The result is self-perpetuating outrage.

The gospel has a powerful message in this milieu: that whatever the differences, they lose their importance in the light of the Crucified and Risen One. Christians, fewer pitchforks, please.

Martin JacobsCT online comment

Village Green

As the attorney who handled the Encinitas (Sedlock v. Baird) yoga trial for the plaintiffs, I would like to clear up some confusion. Although the judge found that apparently enough religion had been sanitized from the program, the judge ruled that yoga is religious. This finding was based on the consensus of religious studies scholars that yoga is "pervasively religious," which was brought to the court's attention by our eminent religious studies expert witness Candy Gunther Brown [see p. 73 for an interview with Brown]. This truth may surprise Christians who falsely believe that they can "do yoga" with their body, and "think about Jesus," without any spiritual implications.

This specious mind-body separation is not based on Judeo-Christian biblical theology about the nature of man but is rather based on false dualism. We communicate what we value, believe, and worship not only by our thoughts and words but also by our bodies. Yoga poses represent prayers, meditations, and worship of pagan Hindu deities. For a Christian, practicing yoga is like bowing down to a golden calf and saying that it is not idolatrous because she is thinking about Jehovah.

There is no holy yoga. If Christian teacher-initiated prayers are not permitted in public schools, neither should Hindu indoctrination occur in the form of yoga.

Dean BroylesPresident, National Center for Law and PolicyCT online comment

Summit in the Spirit

Regarding Everett Worthington's testimony: Forgiveness is something I struggle with too, especially the latter forgiveness you mention: forgiving oneself. Christ's forgiveness is such an amazing thing—forgiveness from our past, present, and future! A love that surpasses all understanding! It's just so hard for me to understand sometimes. I'm glad Worthington has found that and has been able to share it with others.

Brianna HeinCT online comment

Correction

In Spotlight's "The Wars Over Christian Beards," Alan Robertson is Phil Robertson's beardless son.

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"Thanks for hanging in there through my mini-meltdown."

Jason Harrod is playing the legendary Club Passim in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He wipes sweat from his forehead (and was that a tear?), then leaves his hands on either side of his head, like he's just run a sprint and needs to catch his breath.

At 6'2", the 41-year-old songwriter dwarfs the already small stage at a venue where Joan Baez and Bob Dylan hung out in the 1960s. Tonight he's in a pair of dark jeans and an eggplant button-up, which haphazardly hangs open beneath his guitar strap. The strap holds a handmade Lowden 032c, marked by a piece of graffiti: Pete Seeger's autograph.

The "mini-meltdown" wasn't a meltdown, in fact, not even a "mini" one: Harrod forgot the words to one of his old songs—not entirely uncommon for singer-songwriters whose careers span three decades. "My spirit's willing, but my mind . . . ." he trails off.

After playing a full set from his third solo record, Highliner (Lincoln City Records), accompanied by a drummer and bassist, Harrod treats the 90 or so fans gathered to a solo acoustic set featuring songs from the earlier days. The crowd is virtually sitting on top of each other, leaning into the stage, but the intimacy is part of what makes Club Passim special.

Tonight the room is brimming with longtime Harrod devotees who have been following his career since the early 1990s, when he was just a kid out of Wheaton College and one half of the folk duo Harrod & Funck. He and Brian Funck moved from Illinois to Boston, when the folk scene was experiencing something of a renaissance; Patty Griffin, Tracy Chapman, and Peter Mulvey all got their start busking Beantown's streets and subways. While Harrod lives in New York now, playing in Boston is a kind of homecoming.

I was a freshman at Gordon College when I first heard Jason Harrod in 1999, right around the time Harrod & Funck were getting ready to call it quits. If you're familiar with Harrod & Funck, there's a good chance that you were a Christian college student when you first heard them. They were that kind of group—the kind that attracts young Christians who don't listen to much Christian music.

Maybe that's because on each of their two studio albums, as well as on their final recording (a live album), the duo sang casually about smoking and committing "murder in the first," and imagined life (and death) as a member of the Heaven's Gate cult. Still, Christian record labels came knocking. Harrod tells me that they turned down several Christian labels, including Michael W. Smith's Rocketown Records as well as a subsidiary of Word Records.

Probably, though, their lyrics—as well as the ones that Harrod writes today—aren't the reason Harrod eschews the "Christian singer-songwriter" label. Rather, it's because Harrod's songs reveal a personal anguish rarely spoken of among Christian artists, even those on the fringes who openly struggle with institutional faith. His lyrics betray a deep-seated insecurity, about his own abilities, about his value, and, ultimately, about his belief.

"For a long time I wasn't sure if I was [a Christian] or not," Harrod says. "And I flirted with the idea of 'taking a leap of doubt,' that is, living as if there was no God."

These are bold words from a man who currently serves as a church music director at a Christian Reformed Church on Manhattan's Lower East Side. But, Harrod tells me, Dwell Church leaders knew what they were getting into. It's his lack of "slickness," he says, that got him the job. Still, even when leading worship, Harrod wrestles with doubts. "There are times when I'm singing a hymn in front of the congregation and I think, I need to quit this job."

Harrod's doubts extend beyond his faith, however; he often wrestles with personal insecurities as well. Concerts, especially, have long proved challenging for Harrod. Ever since Harrod & Funck split up, in part because Brian Funck disliked performing live, Harrod has faced extreme performance anxiety.

"It's just a feeling of ugliness," he tells me. "I think partly my singing has always been, in a way, combating that—trying to make a beautiful sound, trying to make beauty."

That moment at Club Passim when Harrod lost the lyrics of "39," a track from Harrod & Funck's self-titled second record (1997), perfectly exemplifies Harrod's ongoing struggle. He recovered when the room full of fans picked up the lyrics where he left off. "My songs are so personal because they really are a part of me," he says. "To make this beautiful thing come out of me is a way of combating that feeling [of ugliness]."

Coming Off the Mountain

Harrod's latest record marks the latest stop, the furthest outpost, in his struggle toward a more grounded faith.

Highliner sounds much like his previous records: a hybrid of twangy folk, superb guitar work, and catchy hooks. But this record is more polished, in part because it was funded by a very successful Kickstarter campaign. The record interchanges stories from Harrod's personal life with fantastical tales and folk romps. For example, in back-to-back tracks, "Moon Mission" and "Grandma," he memorializes the underappreciated last man on the moon, astronaut Eugene Cernan, and pays tribute to his grandmother.

On "One of These Days," Harrod promises to "get it right," but then counters, "until then I want to get so gone, I want to be so wrong, I want to see what damage I can do." He refers to himself as a "bitter old batch" and "a filthy old rat" who is "sinking down to a deep dark place." Still, he invites the listener along: "I'm thinking when I'm sinking I don't want to sink alone."

"Mountain," the third song on Highliner, neatly describes Harrod's lifetime experience with faith:

When I came down off the mountain

I was breaking like a wave, rolling over everything in sight

Shining like a silver-plated nickel in the sun

I was dispersed across the universe of light.

Scannin' the horizon looking for a sign of you

When I saw your silhouette my heart stopped

But then I got up close and found out it was just a ghost

And I was sad that I had left the mountaintop.

"I knew vaguely that it was a 'God song' when I wrote 'Mountain,' " says Harrod. "But when I was asked to talk with a youth group at a Detroit church about how my faith affects my songwriting, it became very clear to me that the song is autobiographical.

"The last verse of 'Mountain' isn't about resting in God's arms or about resting in faith," Harrod tells me. "It's about climbing a mountain looking for God. So there's an element of dissatisfaction and searching."

There's reason to be hopeful for Harrod, however. In "Chains," the eighth track on "Highliner," he sings, "I'm not old / I'm not young / I been down / but I'm not done / I believe, I don't know why / Only you can make me shine."

And shining is almost literally what Harrod does after his show at Club Passim. He was in the middle of a national tour that brought him into people's homes and backyards in small towns and suburbs, as well as onto stages of music clubs in major cities. He had, for the most part, managed to keep his performance anxiety and persistent insecurities at bay while doing what he loves. And, at each stop, he was surrounded by people who love him for doing it.

Writing and singing over the past two decades has been, for Harrod, his literal lifeblood. As a professional musician, the songs pay the bills, but more than that, they connect Harrod with God. "For all my doubts and for all my periodic profligacy and dissolution, I can't escape the kernel of faith that is in me," Harrod tells me.

"I'm happy when I sing, Praise God. I believe when I sing. I might be a tired, angry guy, with an underlying suspicion of futility. But when I sing, I believe."

When he sings, his fans believe too.

Jonathan D. Fitzgerald is the author of Not Your Mother's Morals: How the New Sincerity Is Changing Pop Culture for the Better and the editor of Patrolmag.com.

Editor's note: When We Were On Fire, Addie Zierman's memoir and the inspiration for this post, was named among the top 5 religion books of the year by Publishers Weekly.

There has been lots of talk lately about the millennials leaving the church, the roughly 60 percent of us who step away from Christian community at some point.

It's a perplexing issue, a knot that church leadership has been trying hard to untangle. I can't tell you how to fix it, but I can tell you that I was one of them. I left the church for a lot of reasons – some legitimate, some imagined. Eventually I found the courage to come back.

As in my new book, When We Were On Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love and Starting Over, I share this story not to assign blame, but to add a new dimension to the conversation. I hope it will give us the courage to offer one another grace as a generation of Jesus Freaks like me tries to find their way home.

During my self-imposed exile from church, I journeyed with others. The wounded, the cynic, the angry, the doubting.

First, we joined gyms. We started training for 5ks and 10ks, marathons and triathlons. In the mornings, we ran next to strangers, breathing in tandem, keeping stride, and though they didn't know us, they called out the strength in our tired bodies.

"You got this!" they called. "Almost there!"

At the finish line, people we didn't know cheered for us madly. They held up their hands to meet our sweaty palms, and for the first time that we can remember, we feel like the victors that the pastors always promised we were.

We attended book clubs that we found from craigslist postings on the Internet. We sat in some stranger's house with a glass of wine, and we felt strangely free to express our opinions. We said what we thought about the book. We asked questions. We wondered aloud what the author was trying to say about hope.

We batted around ideas, feather-light and beautiful, and we thought briefly of all of the Bible studies we attended. Those times when we kept our complex, doubt-filled questions bottled up in our hearts because we couldn't figure out a way to ask them.

Back then, we were in search of a place where we fit. We were leaving the churches where we grew up. The youth groups where we took our first wobbly steps toward whoever it was that we were going to become.

We knew it wouldn't be pizza parties and camping retreats and yellow buses heading toward Florida – this new, grown-up church experience. But we expected belonging. We expected grace and support and love.

For a while we tried, moving from one church to another. We were never looking for perfection. We weren't that naïve. We couldn't even name what we were looking for – a fit, a holy place, some siren song calling us home.

Some of us searched longer than others, but in the end we faded out. We were looking for Jesus. Instead we found programs, guilt, and awkward small talk. We found fog machines and Five-Simple-Steps-to-Spiritual-Growth and fill-in-the-blank Bible studies.

So we started sleeping in on Sunday mornings. We went to the farmers market and bought good things straight from the earth. We drank our morning coffee at small café tables outside, and people walked by with their dogs at a slow, Sunday-morning pace. It felt more like rest to us than those chaotic church mornings, when we moved through the loud small talk of the church foyer and felt invisible.

Some of us went to neighborhood bars after work or late at night, and we were surprised to find that all we had to do was sit down at the bar. All we had to do was sit down, and we were part of that place, that crowd, that beautiful mosaic of people, all of them broken in their own ways – few of them pretending otherwise.

Under a fluorescent Miller Lite sign, nobody told us to "get plugged in" or suggested that nursery duty might be just what the Lord wanted us to do for the next 8,000 Sundays. Instead, we drank a few too many, and we began to ramble, and people we didn't know listened earnestly, layering their memories over ours until we were united by our stories.

We went on Facebook and played at community. We went out to dinner and to concerts and to the movies. We went dancing and felt the thrum of the music in our bodies, and once, some Church Person told us that dancing was a gateway to sin – but there we were, in a haphazardly formed circle of strangers, singing the same song at the top of our lungs.

We went on road trips and on airplanes, and we were searching, still, even then. We slung our backpack over our shoulders and went farther out into the world.

Some of us went to therapy and began the hard work of untangling our knotted-up hearts. If we were really brave, we tackled our angst about the years when we were on fire. We tried to find the heart of Christ beating, still, under the sticky, webbed Christian culture that had grown up over it.

Some of us went under the dark waves of our own depression and pain, never to resurface.

Some of us came back.

Tentatively.

Slowly.

We came back because we were beginning to believe that it might be here too. In these churches with all of their brokenness, all of their clunky programs and squeaky-clean sermons. We'd figured out that it still existed, and that it can be found in the most imperfect of people.

We saw it, after all, at the end of our first 5k. We found it slumped over at the bar, sobbing out our story to a stranger. We encountered it on the unfamiliar roads that we were driving, felt it course through our body like dancing music.

And it turned out to be that unnamable Thing we'd been looking for all long.

And in our better moments, we've learned to recognize it for what it is: Grace.

Addie Zierman is a writer, blogger and recovering Jesus Freak. She recently published her debut book, When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love and Starting Over through Convergent Books. She lives in Minnesota with her husband, Andrew, and their two young sons.

On the eve of this week's gathering of restive Anglican conservatives in Nairobi, Kenya, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby on Sunday said "the colonial structures" of the past should give way to reform.

"We need a new way of being in communion," he said during his sermon at the Anglican cathedral in Nairobi, according to media reports. Starting on Monday, the Global Anglican Futures conference (GAFCON) will host about 1,200 leaders from 40 nations.

In 2003, a flashpoint occurred with the consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson (now retired) as bishop of New Hampshire of The Episcopal Church (TEC). This triggered an exodus of conservatives from TEC, the American branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. TEC then started extensive litigation against clergy, churches, and dioceses that withdrew from the national church.

The first GAFCON meeting, held in Jerusalem in 2008, among other issues condemned as false the view that proclaimed "God's blessing for same-sex unions over against the biblical teaching on holy matrimony."

At yesterday's services in Nairobi, AnglicanInk reported:

To combat the subordination of the church to the culture of the world, the "Bible must be at the heart of our study, our life, our walk with Jesus" [Welby] said, but a "church that only reads but does not act, disgraces the Bible." The archbishop then moved into the heart of his sermon, saying "our differences will always exist. How we deal with them is clear from Scripture; but the church seldom follows" Scripture when dealing with conflict. "There is a need for new structures in the Anglican Communion," the archbishop said, adding the issues that divide us are "simple and complicated." To address them "we need a new way of being in communion, not the colonial structures" of the past, he said. But it was unclear as to what the solution was as each province offered its own solution to the problem, yet "we must find a way to live together, so the world will see" Jesus is Lord. The Anglican world must be a sign to the world of the power of Christ and must engage in a deliberate program of "witness, worship, evangelism, and a passion for the Holy Spirit." "The more seriously we take the Bible" the more effectively we will be able to deal with our divisions," he said.

Leading up to this event, African Anglicans said the situation in the global church had gotten worse since 2003. "We have a new Archbishop of Canterbury who is born again and has a testimony," said Uganda's Archbishop Stanley Ntagali. "I have personally met him and I like him very much. But, the problems in the communion are still there, and they don't change just because there is a new global leader. In fact, 10 years later, the crisis has deepened."

Many African Anglican conservatives draw inspiration for reform from the renowned East Africa revival, which started in Rwanda in the 1930s. "We need to learn from our history," said Kenya's Archbishop Eliud Wabukala. "Divisions about the Bible had spread to some missionary organizations in East Africa after the First World War, but the leaders of the East African Revival knew that there could be no true evangelism and no true revival unless the scriptures are allowed to speak as what they really are, the inspired Word of God."

The Anglican Communion has more than 80 million members and is the third largest after Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox churches. The sponsor of GAFCON is the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.

Welby was in Kenya about 18 hours before he returned to London for a flight to Iceland for a previously planned meeting with European church leaders.

The nonprofit media organization, AnglicanTV, is providing video feeds from GAFCON.

The economic crisis has forced our culture to confront deep questions about the purpose and value of our work. These questions matter now more than ever, as surveys show that as many as three-quarters of Americans have no sense of dignity or higher purpose in their jobs. Meanwhile, a faith and work movement has been exploding among American evangelicals, with tens of thousands of ministries reaching millions of people.

A recent empirical study found that Protestants suffer more distress from unemployment than others. The authors interpret this as evidence that Protestant faith motivates people to work. Some media outlets, even outside the church, have noticed their findings and asked whether the research proves the so-called Protestant work ethic.

This research is only the latest in a long series of studies to raise questions about calling and the spiritual meaning in our work. Tricky methodological issues make it difficult for social scientists to reach a consensus, but we don't need social science to know that God cares about our work.

American evangelicals have been rediscovering the precious truth that all honest work serves as a spiritual calling to fruitful and worshipful service (Gen. 2:15; Col. 3:22-24). That means everyone – not just religious professionals – has the opportunity to glorify God with their work. We shape ourselves into the kind of people God wants us to be in everything we do, not just in the few hours we spend engaged in church activities. Most of life is work, because God designed us that way.

This truth has been championed by Christians in every era. In a recent article in Leadership Journal, Chris Armstrong, professor of church history at Bethel Seminary, traces the concept of vocation from the New Testament through Gregory the Great, the monastic founders, and the German mystics of the High Middle Ages. The economic thought of Thomas Aquinas and the late-medieval Salamanca School also represented important steps forward in acknowledging how people's work advances God's purposes in the world.

That doesn't mean all the issues are clear and simple. Nothing shows the difficulty of understanding the relationship between work and faith more than our continued insistence on framing this issue as a debate over Max Weber's long-discredited theory of the Protestant work ethic. Weber argued that Protestants value work because they think prosperity is proof that you're saved; as anyone who knows anything about church history can tell you, this was and is slanderous nonsense. He also argued that teaching people that God values their work created an economic system that thrives on greed and materialism; as anyone who knows economic history can tell you, this is just as preposterous. Weber's theory has been almost universally dismissed by a century of theologians, historians, and economists.

Nonetheless, Weber's terms and categories continue to dominate popular discussions, because his approach strictly separates "facts" from "values." This allows secularists to think about possible cultural connections between faith and work while preserving a comfortable work/spirit dualism in their own lives. That dualism is exactly what the faith and work movement seeks to challenge. As long as Weber dominates the conversation it's difficult to get people to understand the message.

However, the idea that Protestantism impacts attitudes about work—which the recent research investigates—is not misplaced. The Protestant Reformation brought unique advances in our understanding of God's purposes for work and vocation. Luther's message that justification is by faith without the works of the law forced the church to discover God's purposes for daily work at a much deeper level. The first thesis in his 95 Theses states that "the whole life of believers" is to be transformed for Christ. When we forget that we serve God through all our work, we tend to focus on church activities and become unspiritual in the activity that takes up the majority of our lives.

Luther also showed that the gospel demands equal human dignity for ordinary workers. He stood up against the church hierarchy to defend the humanity, virtue, dignity, spirituality, and freedom of people in all economic and social stations. As Luther explains in his theses, the church can preach the gospel or it can legitimize a leisure class that sustains itself by exploiting the people who work for a living, but it cannot do both.

These concerns have enduring importance for our own time. As the church in America struggles to raise its level of discipleship and holiness, rediscovering vocation will be key to restoring a sense of consecration to God and obedience to his will in all things. Christians are blessed and encouraged in their vocational stewardship when their churches recognize the value of the service they render through their workaday lives. And as "knowledge workers," politicians, financiers, entertainers, and other elites are developing increasingly paternalistic attitudes toward ordinary people who do ordinary work, Christians should take a stand with Brother Martin for the dignity, virtue, and freedom of all workers.

Our culture's hunger for meaning and dignity in everyday work is a window through which Christians can shine the light of the gospel. No civilization can grow and flourish when its people spend the vast majority of their waking hours in an activity they find meaningless. The deepest root of our economic crisis is that people no longer find a worthy purpose in the daily practice of diligence, honesty, self-control, generosity, and service. This creates a timely moment for people to rediscover how God brings dignity and meaning to daily life.

Our theology equips us to help our neighbors understand why work is meaningful and where economic flourishing really comes from. We can challenge the comfortable work/spirit dualism of secularists, showing that the dignity of ordinary work is not an arbitrary "value" but a metaphysical fact. Helping our neighbors see the transcendent dignity of work will reveal to them the power and grace of God at the level where they really live their daily lives.

God has a mighty challenge in store for us. Let's get to work.

Greg Forster is a program director in the Faith, Work, and Economics program at The Kern Family Foundation.

Girl Rising, a new documentary about girls around the world pushing for their place in school, had me alternately gaping and smiling during a recent screening at Wheaton College. The film moved me—darn near broke me—not because of the facts or figures it presented or the stories it told, but because of who told the stories: the rising girls themselves.

I already knew the horrifying statistics of the millions of girls in this world who don't—or can't—go to school. I understood the connection between lack of education and global poverty. I agreed that educating the girls of this world is key to reducing—or eliminating this poverty, among other societal evils.

But this time, I heard these girls' stories, written by their own hands, spoken in their own (well, translated, narrated) voices. Girl Rising confirmed something I've long suspected: When we Christians speak of "being a voice to the voiceless," we'd better be careful. We'd better think hard about what it means, what it does, what it communicates when we toss out this oft-used line. We better ask, Is being the voice of the oppressed, the poor, the maligned, and the hurting really what God wants from us?

When God tells us in Proverbs 31:8 to "speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute" and in Isaiah 1:17 to "learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow," God means it. No doubt. Good things happen—his Kingdom sparkles all over—when we pipe up and plead on behalf of others.

But when those of us who care about living lives of justice and mercy seek to become the "voice of," are we speaking up and pleading on behalf of? Or, are we speaking for or speaking over them? Certainly there are people in this world who depend on us to be their voices; those with no access to authority or difference-makers, those who live in terror, who stand to suffer greatly for raising a voice, need our voices to rise for them. But not everyone who suffers lacks a voice. Not everyone who is oppressed or maligned or terrorized or victimized is truly voiceless.

And even if they are—even the girls trapped in dungeons, those too terrorized to speak out—voicelessness shouldn't their permanent state. As Christians, instead of setting out to be someone else's voice, we can instead listen—and get them heard.

Even while seeking another's "best interest," being a voice for someone else smacks of colonialism, an I-know-best imperialism, since the voice gets to deem which parts of a story to tell, which elements stand out as most compelling.

Consider: In Girl Rising, each of the nine girl-written vignettes had a different flavor—they were shot differently and structured differently. Some were funny, some somber. Some first person, some third. Some stunning in beauty. Some stark in despair. Each shot from the girl's point of view, each featuring the girl's own "newsworthy" bits, each using the girl's voice.

As a journalist, I'd be remiss to say no one should ever tell another's story. The world is a better place because writers have interview, observe, sift and report. Their work has done wonders in carrying out justice missions big and small, in opening our eyes to the wrongs that need to be righted. But still: most Christians who care about justice are not also journalists (though the reverse may be true!), carefully crafting a story to capture essence and voice.

And without being a journalist of sorts, being a voice gets kind of nervy. And not in a good way. Because sometimes our voice wants to scream out an "injustice" that might not in fact be one. For instance, not long ago, a white woman rage-tweeted about the lack of African Americans at her local coffee shop. While I'm sure she saw herself as "being a voice," in reality, I wondered: Was this really an act of injustice or discrimination? What if black people just don't like your stupid coffee shop? Do they have to be there to make you feel better?

It seemed more likely that this woman was making an injustice mountain out of a preferential molehill. Our good intentions sometimes have us becoming the voice of something that didn't need voicing or the voice of people who have a voice already and would've used it if they saw a problem. Much like the Asian American community recently did in Next Gener-Asian's open letter to the Evangelical church after some terribly offensive remarks and behavior from the church toward the Asian American community.

In some cases, our being a voice can drown a voice. When I teach writing or talk to fledgling writers, I talk voice: the mysterious soul of great writing. Anyone can learn to write, can learn grammar and usage rules, the syntax of language, the quirks of spelling. But not anyone can be a great writer. To be great, a writer must not only "find" her voice, but use it. Voice is the tune by which we distinguish writers, by which we fall in love or shrink away, repelled. Voice is the writer behind it. Stripped of voice a writer is just plunking words, not creating art, not shaping her craft.

So it goes for the "voiceless" we seek to serve. When we become a voice for them, when we speak for instead of speaking up, we strip away their very essence, the humanity we seek to serve or save. To seek justice and mercy and love and peace for the oppressed in this world, we'd do better to stop being voices and start listening to and magnifying them.

I'm a 48-year-old professional minister. I have two master's degrees and a doctoral degree in Bible and practical theology.

And I'm out of work.

I possess six years of experience as a senior pastor, 12 years preaching cross-culturally, and nine more teaching in a Christian college.

And I'm out of work. Again.

This isn't the first time I've been in this position. It may not be the last. But it sure is frustrating.

Some ministers go an entire career without any downtime between their places of professional service. Ministers like them may find it unthinkable to imagine that God would ever shut the door where they currently serve without already having lined up their next assignment.

Truthfully, I envy those ministers. A long-term, full-time ministry position provides a sense of identity, stability, and success. Being able to say "I am the senior pastor at such-and-such church" or "I serve as associate professor of Christian ministry at such-and-such university" makes you feel like you've arrived, that you're a person of value. When you can't make those sorts of claims, especially after obtaining all the credentials that should have positioned you to be able to make them, it leaves you scratching your head and wondering, "What the devil is going on here?! Why did God call me to the ministry only to place me on the shelf?"

Vocational Presumptions

We who grew up as males in traditional homes with working dads and stay-at-home moms, reached adulthood assuming, "When I get married, it will be my job as husband to bring home the paycheck." That's what I presumed. Dad worked outside the home. Mom worked inside. He brought home the bacon. She fried it. I'm not necessarily saying that's how it should have been. It's just the way it was. And it seemed biblical to us. After all, didn't God tell Adam that by the sweat of his brow he, and presumably his family, would eat? Didn't Paul say, "If a man will not work, he shall not eat?"

I also assumed that if God called me into ministry as a career, I should be able to expect to support my family through the ministry. Again, the Bible seemed to back it up. "If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you?" Paul asked in 1 Corinthians 9:11. Then, in 1 Timothy 5:17-18: "The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, 'Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,' and 'The worker deserves his wages.'"

How can it get any clearer than that?

The summer after I graduated from college, I worked as an intern at a small town church in Alabama. One of my responsibilities was to take our kids to camp and work with them there for a week. One of the little boys who went with us attended our church semi-regularly but did so without his family. Consequently, he knew little about how churches operate. At lunch one afternoon we talked about where his mom and dad worked. He then asked me what I did. I told him, "I'm a preacher."

"No," he said, shaking his head, "what's your job?"

"I'm a preacher," I repeated.

"No," he said again, "what do you do for a living?"

Once more I told him, "I work at the church. I'm a preacher." Wide-eyed and incredulous, he exclaimed, "They pay you for that?!"

I smiled at him and whispered to my wife, "He'll make a good deacon someday." I understood his confusion. He hadn't grown up in the church. He didn't know how ministry is supposed to work.

Harsh Realities

As difficult as it's been to have my ministry expectations unmet, I'm hardly alone. The following stories are all true. Only the names have been changed.

Donna served the Lord for 18 years as a single missionary in South America. Afterwards, she felt led to return to school, earn a master's degree, and begin a career as a college professor teaching other would-be missionaries. She picked a great graduate program, earned her degree, and began applying for work. I met her many years later. Despite her experience and academic credentials, no school had ever hired her. Donna possessed a sharp mind, pleasant personality, and good sense of humor. There was nothing terminally weird or off-putting about her. But she just couldn't find a job in her chosen and, what she believed to be, divinely-ordained field. Was it because she was a woman, single, or something else entirely?

Ken earned his Ph.D. a couple of years before I earned mine. Upon graduating, he found work as an adjunct instructor at a local college, where I eventually joined him. We worked side-by-side for two years until the school had enough money to eliminate our adjunct positions and add four full-time faculty members to the department we were serving. The provost invited us both to apply. In the end, the school hired three people from out of state and me. Ken was left out. To this day, seven years later, he supports himself and his wife as a school bus driver and adjunct instructor at another local college.

Tony answered the call to ministry, and attended a fine Christian college straight out of high school. After, he completed seminary, then moved to Europe for a doctorate. He returned to the States and landed a job teaching within a few weeks. Tony still teaches in that same college, but he's miserable. He loves working with students but hates the fact that his school has changed so much over the years that it is now a Christian college in name only. He has looked for openings at other schools and even been one of two finalists on four separate occasions. Great guy, brilliant mind, hard worker, but he just can't find the kind of job he believed God was calling him to so many years ago.

Last month I was asked to interview for a faculty position that had opened unexpectedly. The opportunity felt like an answer to prayer. The school is one that I have long admired. The position was perfectly suited for my academic credentials, professional experiences, theological leanings, and it was near where my aging parents live. It was all so perfect. My wife and I flew there excitedly and returned home confident. We just knew the president would call with an invitation for me to join the faculty. After all, when we walked out of his office, he shook my hand saying, "You're the most prepared candidate that I've ever interviewed." How could they not hire me after a comment like that? I don't know, but they found a way. When the school's dean emailed me one week later to break the bad news, he admitted he couldn't explain exactly why they didn't want me. "There were no red flags," he said, "just not enough green ones, I suppose." What does that even mean?! "Intangibles," he said.

Behind the Scenes

I believe that God cares where his ministers serve. Ultimately, it is up to him to decide who goes where. In Psalm 75 Asaph declares, "No one from the east or the west or from the desert can exalt a man. But it is God who judges: He brings one down, he exalts another" (vv. 6-7). Joseph earned his position in Pharaoh's court because God gave him wisdom and favor in the king's sight (Acts 7:10). Nehemiah obtained Artaxerxes' permission to lead a major rebuilding campaign in Jerusalem and to fund it from the king's own coffers because God's hand was upon him (Neh. 2:8). Ezra received a similar permission earlier for the very same reason (Ezra 7:28). When Esther was invited in her husband-king's presence, I think we can safely assume God was at work behind the curtain, orchestrating events (5:2). He brought Daniel into favor with the prince of the eunuchs (1:9), and we all know where that eventually led. As much today as then, I must believe that the hearts of those making decisions that affect us in ministry are in the Lord's hand. He can still turn them wherever he pleases (Prov. 21:1).

N. T. Wright has suggested that God sometimes gives us ambitions knowing that we won't fully achieve them but that we'll accomplish other important things in their pursuit. As an example, he points to Paul's ambition to visit Spain. According to Wright, there is no reliable evidence that Paul ever made it that far. But in order to make such a trip, the apostle would have first needed to establish a western base of operation. That would have been Rome. But before he could start counting on the Roman Christians to support his missionary efforts, he needed to iron out some things to help stabilize their churches. And that's why he wrote his epistle to the Romans. Without Paul's ambition to visit Spain, we might not have what many consider his most important theological work.

That's a helpful insight. I think about the juvenile correctional facility that I served as chaplain for 12 years. It started out as a way for me to satisfy a practical ministry requirement of the seminary I attended. It became something more. Looking back now, I count those years among the most significant in my ministry. I never would have experienced them had it not been for my ambition to obtain a doctorate so that I might teach in a Christian college some day. Only the Lord knows whether I'll ever be a professor again. But no one can take away those 12 years of sharing the gospel with young inmates.

As I've considered where I should go next, God has been reminding me that I'm part of a ministry team. My wife has stood by me through everything for almost 27 years now. When she was only a teenager, she felt God calling her into a very specific type of ministry—that of a preacher's wife. Afterwards, she would only date guys who felt called to preach. Fortunately for me, I fit the bill. Patti is one of the smartest people I know. She holds a graduate degree in educational research and works as a data analyst for a healthcare corporation.

She currently earns more than I ever did as a pastor or professor. Up until now, we've always assumed that our place of residence would be dictated by where the Lord wanted me to serve. Unless things change, the next period in my career may consist of a bunch of adjunct online teaching assignments and a handful of other part-time and volunteer opportunities—the kind of work I could do anywhere. My wife and I are now considering the possibility that we may be entering into a new phase of ministry where she'll be our primary breadwinner, freeing us up to move to where she'd like to live and work next.

Some preachers serve bi-vocationally. Perhaps God wants us to serve as a bi-vocational ministry couple. He will provide for our needs through her job. And because of her willingness to sacrifice for our family, I'll be able to minister wherever without worrying whether the salary is enough to feed us.

In Mark 3:14 we read, that Jesus, "appointed twelve—designating them apostles—that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach." The call to ministry is first and foremost a call to "be with him." Only afterwards is it a call to pursue whatever work he assigns. It's up to him to decide the "who, what, where, and when" of those assignments. He may decide to move us from one career field to another or one place to another without any break between assignments. Then again, he may see fit to pull us out of ministry at varying times for indeterminate durations. But as frustrating and confusing as the ministry journey can be, I can't imagine wanting to do anything else.

Gregory K. Hollifield, Ph.D., currently serves as an itinerant preacher, lecturer, and adjunct professor while awaiting his next major assignment from the Lord. He is also author of Preaching in Red and Yellow, Black and White.

Copyright © 2013 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Years ago before anyone called me their pastor, I was assigned a ministry team of about 15 people to manage. I was excited, and diligently prepared for our weekly meetings. I wanted to manage them responsibly and with integrity. But after several months, something wasn’t working.

A third of the group hated me and quit attending our meetings. A third of them loved me. The other third was undecided. Not an ideal ratio. I was blindsided because I felt like I had done a sterling job as a manager; but I felt that I had failed somewhere. So I began to study management again with a more sensitive spirit.

I found that the word “manage” originally referred to training horses The French word manège means a school for teaching horsemanship and training horses. Rather dehumanizing when it comes to people. I had an epiphany: Though I was prepared, organized, and communicated clearly, I treated my team more like horses than people. People aren’t horses, or things, that we can simply “manage”.

Whatever our context—a ministry group, a corporate department, a congregation, a small business staff, a medical team, or a class or faculty—we must remind ourselves that every individual is a soul designed to exhibit the image and ingenuity of God.

A six-gun, lasso, and hearty “giddyap” just won’t work for most people. They need a different kind of “management.”

Industry and information

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Industrial Revolution transformed America’s predominantly agricultural economy into an industrial one. Factories were built to house new machines where assembly lines facilitated processing and production more efficiently than ever conceived before. The Industrial Age made many workers expendable, and the machine-driven industry eventually cut 90 percent of agricultural jobs.

We must remind ourselves that every individual is a soul designed to exhibit the image and ingenuity of God.

Late 20th-century innovations in digitalization and communication, along with the development of the modern computer and the internet have hastily pushed us over another divide. Our knowledge-oriented economy is often called the Information Age. Furthermore, a growing percentage of our nation’s production sector has been organized offshore. Countless rickety barns and vacant factories whisper a testimony of two bygone eras. Farming and industrial production always will be needed, but the emergent players dominating the new economy are companies that have been birthed or overhauled with Information Age evolutions in mind.

As products and processes and design and development have changed radically, so have people, their priorities, their options, and their mobility. In the Industrial era, the administrative objective was optimizing the output of manual workers who followed orders from above. “Knowledge workers” didn’t play predominant roles within the organization. Peter Drucker says: “Today, however, the large knowledge organization is the central reality. Modern society is a society of large organized institutions. In every one of them, including the armed services, the center of gravity has shifted to the knowledge workers, the man who puts to work what he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles or the skill of his hands.”

Spreading out

I made a lot of mistakes during the first few years after my wife and I launched our new church. But in hindsight, I did one thing right on target. I spread the work of ministry out.

Many churches and companies have retained management philosophies rooted in the Industrial model, where people are viewed as machine cogs at best, disposable at worst

As soon as possible after our grand opening, I gathered the few people we had into ministry teams that would carry out facets of ministry that initially my wife and I did all by ourselves. I divided everything we were doing—which was far more than Jen and I ever could sustain—into crews and bite-sized chunks. As People’s Church has grown, we’ve expanded this multiple team-ministry concept to integrate more people and more work. Today around 98 percent of our church membership serves on at least one ministry team—and many on two or more.

We’re approaching our seven-year church anniversary and I can’t imagine how we could have undertaken so much without these teams—and I can’t fathom how I would have even survived. I naturally don’t receive any esteem or feeling of superiority that might come from accomplishing all that is achieved by our ministries, because I’m not doing all the work! Others rightfully deserve the merit and I want them to have it all to themselves. Like Harry Truman said: “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

Nevertheless, many churches and companies have retained management philosophies rooted in the Industrial model, where people are viewed as machine cogs at best, disposable at worst—and where employees are liabilities and equipment an asset. The new economy and current culture not only demands a different breed of workers, but also a new class of managers who understand that they cannot tap the talent, creativity, and genius of knowledge-workers while functioning on factory-based ideologies. It’s like trying to navigate Facebook on a Commodore 64.

Shifting our language

Several years ago I was speaking near Fort Wayne, Indiana. Carl, a kind and bright-minded man in his 80s, hosted my wife and me in his home. He spun yarns about his family, home, career, and what retirement had been like.

Carl was initially hired as a janitor at an international tech company, and worked himself up to a lucrative management position. For years he drove thousands of miles supervising the labor force at 13 locations and retired after 43 years feeling fulfilled. I mentioned that I had been studying the subject of management and asked if he’d share how he’d seen corporate management evolve during his lifetime. His eyes lit up. We had a long conversation, but Carl’s bottom line was this:

“The goal of a manager isn’t to prove he’s the boss, but to prove he’s a co-laborer. Many managers are afraid to lose their superiority. Anytime a manager is thinking about his own superiority, he’s in the wrong boat. You don’t demand authority; you gain authority by earning respect.”

People aren’t mere moving parts, but souls with incalculable value and eternal destiny. Don’t consign people to an expense on the P&L statement.

Stewardship doesn’t just apply to money or time, but also to the human resources God has entrusted to you. You are a steward of those placed in your care and they are the living testimony of your leadership. When the Queen of Sheba paid King Solomon a visit, she was amazed at how sharply his employees were dressed and how happy they seemed to be (1 Kings 10:8). Those contented and cared-for people were evidence of a great boss.

People aren’t mere moving parts, but souls with incalculable value and eternal destiny. Don’t consign people to an expense on the P&L statement. People have bodies, souls, minds, and spirits; everyone on your staff was designed by their Creator, and Jesus Christ gave His body and blood for every one of them.

But for many of us, this change requires a shift in thinking, and a shift in the language we use to talk about leading ministry teams. Here’s a list of terms that contrast Information Age management ethos with Industrial Era understanding:

Contribute vs. controlThough management methods will vary with the circ*mstances, if you have the right people on your bus, you can focus on contributing to them and with them, and not on controlling them.

Mentor vs. managerSmart, skilled, and self-motivated people won’t need to be forced into compliance, and team members who fit this kind of description will appreciate a mentor who can guide them to a new level of accomplishment.

Compliments vs. criticismCriticism is sometimes necessary, but can also be the easy or lazy way out. Both criticism and compliments are required tools, but carry compliments in both hands always, and pick up criticism only when necessary.

Desire vs. demandIf you recruit people who have a drive for excellence, you won’t have to drive them rigorously. (It’s always easier to tame a tiger than fire up a slug.)

Integrate vs. implementOne afternoon a college student asked me how I “implement” my wife in my ministry. I replied, “There’s a fundamental fault implied by your question. People aren’t implemented; they’re integrated.”

Influence vs. impressDon’t feel the need to prove you’re the boss; if you are, it’ll be apparent. Forget about impressing people and, instead, focus on making an impact. Creatively inspire and instruct your team to reach their potential.

Inform vs. innuendoBe tactful, but clear and direct. Don’t play mind games and cast innuendos. No one likes to play guessing games at work, except for game show hosts.

Availability vs. avoidanceThe elusive ivory tower denizen is especially unattractive (even repulsive) to savvy and cynical young people. They want to work for an individual with a personality, not an aloof icon. In the end untouchability can breed more contempt than familiarity.

Collaborators vs. followersSanta’s elves are “followers”—many little people who work for a big man. However, “collaboration” connotes many little people who work together for a big cause. Big difference.

People vs. thingsDon’t control people—traffic is controlled. Don’t move people—pawns are moved. Don’t use people—tools are used. Don’t drive people—cars are driven. And don’t handle people—baggage is handled.

Remember that people aren’t horses, things, or paperwork—items to be processed, filed or tossed out. People are divinely designed receptacles of the love of God. None of us appreciates being treated like a checker board piece, be it in the marketplace or the church-place. And you just can’t expect your team to give blood, sweat and tears, and the extra mile, too, if you make them feel as disposable as an empty box of staples.

Rocco Dapice is a writer, speaker, and founding pastor of People’s Church in Westchester County, New York.

Copyright © 2013 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

The teenager is an invention of the Cold War. The term was first used in the Forties as a marketing term for clothing. If the 19th century invented childhood, then the 20th century invented adolescence. It's no surprise, then, that the last few decades have brought a proliferation in the publication of juvenilia.

The doggerel of poets and the young scribbling of novelists is now bound between professional covers and prefaced by serious scholars. There is quite an appetite for these early works. Readers devoured Inventions of the March Hare when Christopher Ricks published T. S. Eliot's early poems and enjoyed Hyde Park Gate News when Gillian Lowe edited the family newspaper of the young Virginia Woolf.

Whether diaries or drafts, we are all too happy to follow our favorite writers through the earliest years of their literary efforts. Dave Page brings a fresh installment of juvenilia with F. Scott Fitzgerald's boyhood diary. The Thoughtbook, as Fitzgerald titled it, begins in August of 1910 and runs through February 1911. It is only 27 pages long, but it includes some of his earliest character sketches.

Fitzgerald's first publication was a detective story that appeared in his school newspaper at age thirteen, the same year that he began keeping this diary. It's no coincidence that David Foster Wallace's "Forever Overhead" memorializes the thirteenth birthday as "the chance for people to recognize that important things are happening to you."

The thirteenth year is indeed highly significant. For Fitzgerald, it was an age of friendship and romance, dancing lessons and secret clubs. Dave Page transcribes every line of the diary with love and care, preserving spelling mistakes and even some of the more curious formatting decisions.

Fitzgerald kept the diary locked under his bed for years. Although his daughter Scottie thought she donated it with her father's other papers to Princeton, it was actually in the hands of Arthur Mizener, who quoted it in his biography The Far Side of Paradise. It was excerpted in Life magazine in the Fifties, then printed in a limited edition by Princeton Library in the Sixties. Somehow it found its way into the special collection of the University of South Carolina at Columbia, where Dave Page found it locked away.

The Thoughtbook begins in August, when Fitzgerald was living in Minnesota. "My Girls," as the first entry is titled, catalogues his memories of Nancy ("we were quite infatuated with each other") and Kitty ("It was impossible to count the number of times I kissed [her] that afternoon"). September brings a remembrance of Violet Stockton, who summered in St. Paul but "spoke with a soft southern accent leaving out the r's."

The politics of adolescent romance consume the young author, who notes without much humility: "In truth Kitty Shultz, Dorothy, Violet, Marie and Catherine Tre all liked me best." In November, the budding listmaker records: "the boys and girls I like best in order," though he is careful to note, "This list changes continually[.] Only authentic at date of chapter." The young Casanova writes later: "I have two new crushes, to wit … . I have not quite decided yet which I like the best. The 2nd is the prettiest. The 1st the best talker."

Near the diary's end, Fitzgerald turns from individuals to adolescent society. "The first club I remember really belonging to was the white handkerchief," which had dues and officers and whose members "were bound to tell none of the secrets tho [he] doubt[s] muchly if there were any to tell." That was the first, but "[t]he best club [he] belonged to was the Gooserah club." This club had elaborate rules and even a rival club to contend with, but its purpose and activities are not recorded. Its name came from the surname of a Sunday school peer. Alfred Gusan having been pitiably mispronounced, Fitzgerald writes: "The absurdity of the name struck us and I sugested [sic] that we get up a club named this."

The very end of the diary is a long reflection on Margaret and Alida, two "fickle" girls whom Fitzgerald lusts after but who have many other suitors. It's delightful to watch the young author reflect on courtship, presaging the romanticism that would fill his later novels and stories. He is a careful observer of his peers and chronicler of his own affections. The dialogue that enlivens his mature literary works is already present in these brief sketches.

It is hard to convey the precocious charm of a thirteen-year-old who writes: "Didnt [sic] do much today but learned a few valuble [sic] things to wit." The Thoughtbook is full of such delights. Everything is said to happen "quite by accident," though the yearning for narrative and order is already there in Fitzgerald's self-consciously labeled chapters. Here is the young author attempting to shape his life into a story, one with characters and plot and themes.

In February 1911, Fitzgerald writes: "I devote a whole chapter to these two [male friends] because for a long time they were my ideals but latly [sic] one has fallen in my estimation." It is not far from that devotion to his most iconic novel, where Nick Carraway decides between the idealism of Jay Gatsby and the pragmatism of Tom Buchanan.

Ceaselessly we return, not only to our own past but to the formative years of our favorite authors. Dave Page's editing of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Thoughtbook lets us do just that with one of America's best writers.

Casey N. Cep is a writer from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, and many other publications.

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