Naked Leadership and Coaching for God

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Have you ever had a dream where you show up in school naked or realize you are talking to a crowd wearing no pants? 

Embarrassment dreams like those are exactly how I often felt early in my career as a pastor. Not that I ever forgot to wear clothes to work, but whenever I had someone ask me a difficult question I didn't have an answer for, I felt naked. "Where is God when...?" "Why would God...?" "Why won't God answer my prayer?" 

I wanted to have a simple, logical answer for them. I'd love to have nice proverbs like, "God never gives us more than we can handle," but I've lived enough to know that they aren't always true AND simple phrases like that are rarely what people need to hear when they are asking tough questions. Yet, I'd try to string together something that sounded logical and smart and pray it was helpful somehow. Because I hate not having a answer. I'm an introvert that often thinks through every possible angle to a problem before I speak or act because I want to be prepared for every possibility, every question, every problem. That way, I'm never wrong and never surprised. 

Still, I felt naked, like a fraud. After all, wasn't I the expert? Wasn't it my job to have the answers to everyone's question? What good was my Master's degree if I didn't feel like I'd mastered anything?

In turn, it created a vicious cycle with my depression and anxiety, because it made me certain everyone was disappointed in me and I was worthless, which drove me to build my facade even stronger. 

Eventually, two things happened. First, I got to a point of desperation where I said, "God, I can't do this anymore! I can't solve every problem and I don't know how to be right all the time!" And God's response was, "Now you get it. Would you stop trying to be a savior, get out of the way, and let me do MY job?"

Second was a piece of wisdom I found in a weekly newsletter I received: "Leaders don't need the right answers. They need the right questions." 

I'd been trained to think of pastors as the "experts." Just like going to a doctor who diagnoses the problem and prescribes a remedy, I first saw my job as doling out spiritual prescriptions and wisdom. The problem was that I didn't always know how to treat the problem or it was chronic and needed more than a couple "God-pills."  

Instead, I slowly came to see pastoring as more like a personal trainer or a coach. I didn't need to have the answers, that was God's job. I needed to help people recognize what spiritual health looked like, where to find it, and guide them in ways that enabled them to hear God's answers. I have more experience and a deeper pool of resources, but that's not the same as an answer. 

I've had to be okay with not being the expert in the old sense, but a fellow traveller who knows what questions to ask. Now it feels less like I'm naked and more like I'm honest. God doesn't call us to be perfect, just faithful. 

From the Gray,

Pastor Ari

“To wrestle the angel for more than a name” -Switchfoot, “Twenty-four”