Sabotaging the Hero-Complex in Discipleship

Power is a tricky thing. I remember as a teenager discovering I had some speed and athleticism. I was no Superman but I was a fast little goober that could throw the ball on target. That was enough in my small school to push me to the front. I made the football team and found I had power on the field that evidently flowed into the halls of my high school. Being the quarterback gave me a compelling identity in contrast to my previous nobody ranking. Here’s the curious thing about power, I tried out for the team with a trembling spirit but within months I was relishing the attention that being a quarterback gave me. Internally I morphed into a hungry ego gremlin that began to ooze on the outside.

Powers Leverage 

My hypothesis is that most don’t seek power for the intent to dominate. Yet, power has leverage on our innocence and original intentions, eroding them both without our noticing. This is what occurred in my quarterback situation and I've seen it play out in various domains. I did not play for power but when it was attained it had an insidious effect on me. This is the moral of Boromir in the Lord of the Rings. Originally he's called “good hearted” but the Ring gave him command and influence. At first he did not desire the power of wizard-lords but only desired to protect his people. Eventually, the acquisition of power corrupted his character. Often we're not completely cognoscente of the power we've collected but when made aware of it, we can’t imagine living without it. Power offers us a firm status and more preferable identity..

Discipleship Hero-Complex

I’d like to apply this subtle power trajectory to the art of discipleship. Nothing fuels me more than the space of discipleship; I feel at home in this expanse. Discipleship is energizing as it affirms the good pulsing within, confronts the idols we cling to and sends us back into the world on mission. In most rooms I’ve been the defacto discipler since I’ve been a pastor for the last 15 years. Ten years ago I began to detect a lurking energy in the dynamic of my discipleship methods. Something about this unnamed energy was reminiscent of my time in high school. I now know a raw and real phenomenon actualizes in the discipling relationship. When guiding someone towards transformation something takes place - a power forms. A Hero-Complex sprouts in the transaction. In my good intentions to disciple, venom was simultaneously sneaking into my blood stream. This venom wanted to riddle my body with egotism. Honestly, I did not chase after this Hero-Complex, it grew in strength with my effectual influence and I ignorantly cozied up to it. I was becoming a little deity in my own little empire. Most are sharp enough not to wallow in this publicly but we know it; being a spiritual hero is intoxicating. 

Keeping an Untarnished Image

Spiritual Leaders are often taught to keep their weakness close to the vest, lest we cause someone to stumble. If it’s not taught directly it’s modeled indirectly. I rationalized why keeping my image visibly untarnished was good for everybody. I was genuine in my desire to be used of the Holy Spirit as a discipler but it could not compensate for the system I was a member of. It took a traumatic event to spotlight the egotism inherent in my approach. In 2003 there was an interruption to my Discipleship fantasy and it rattled me. I watched a deeply trusted leader collapse. My heart was cracked. I was close to this leader, I loved this leader, I was discipled by this leader. As I grieved I had an unnerving realization “I knew little of his inner world, How could this be? I was in close discipleship quarters with him. How was I not privy to his brokenness when I offered mine regularly?" Something unhinged in me. 

Agony in Vulnerability

I was done with infrastructures that created pseudo-popes out of spiritual leaders. My first impulse was to rail against all leadership that posed and protected but God’s Spirit confronted me to move beyond anger cloaked in a righteous agenda. God instead pinned me on my own unexamined discipleship practices. I needed reformation but I was confused at where to begin. Romantically, I thought I could construct a new way of discipling that had no power dynamics, no acknowledged leader. I was wrong. No matter the context there will always be a bit of deference to a defacto discipler. My fresh passion needed to be harangued into something valuable on the ground.

I had studied social psychology and found some valuable insights there but it was the oddity of Jesus that confronted my leadership principles. In one of Jesus’ weakest moments in the Garden of Gethsemane, a place of intense strain, he does something foolish in the school of leadership. Jesus invites Peter, James and John in close to behold his struggle. Jesus pioneers space for others to witness his knee-knocking fragility. “Dad, I’m afraid, could you please take this cup from me?” (Luke 22:42). Jesus is violently vulnerable. Don’t domesticate what Jesus did. In our culture this would be called “seeing someone at their worst”. The Hero Jesus was exposing disciples to the drama of his own humbling. (Phil 2) The wisdom of this is hidden from leadership experts. There is an agony in Christ vulnerability. Theologically I knew about the weakness of God on the cross but my senses were opening to how this flowed into real-time discipleship habits. To participate in Christ is to participate in weakness with others. 

Self-Sabotaging Egotism

Leaders are notorious for offering idealized reflections of themselves. We’re all tempted to suppress anything that would threaten our guru image. We must take a sledge to that superiority soaked in sage spiritual insight. Discipleship has a power dynamic that must be sabotaged. I’m convinced the nucleus for change is the self-imposed offering of vulnerability. God was not calling me to stop discipling but was inviting me into a new tension; a tension that God in Jesus inhabited with 1st Century disciples. I needed to offer teeth clenching vulnerability in the very discipleship huddles I was piloting. Over the years I’ve learned this is easier said than done. First, I’ve had to learn (still learning) how to be naked in my insecurities, fears, idols and unrepentant angers. Downloading vulnerability into my own discipleship approach has risked rejection. We're all weak most of us are just too afraid to admit it. Second, I’ve learned that vulnerability from a discipler can be disorienting for apprentices. A discipler off their pedestal looks iconoclastic to some. Many find confidence in having access to a leader who appears quixotic in their connection to God. Even the most progressive among us lives vicariously through the strength of leaders, online celebrities and writers. Having spiritual leaders secured in their place provides us with a solid point of reference. We want our spiritual leaders to be spiritual maharishis.

Taking Shortcuts

There are ways pastor’s shortcut around this; they banish their struggles into a container. One of those tricks is vulnerability in preaching or from a media/writing platform; I call this pulpit protection. There is an unspoken detachment in a platform or a pulpit. Vulnerability from a pulpit can actually prop up our image with people. This does not mean you should not model a fitting vulnerability from public platforms but please understand its serious relational limits. The other shortcut: pastors are solely vulnerable with other pastors. I used to think this was the only appropriate domain for me. I thought only they could understand. This has proven to be well intentioned but misguided leadership wisdom. If you want to call others into covenant-community you cannot contract your vulnerability out to some off-ramp or pit-crew.  

Opening Up Space

Discipleship has changed dramatically for me in the last 10 years. It has been awkward and discomforting at point blank range. Yet I've discovered something afresh, mutual vulnerability opens up space for the Spirit of God. A mini-temple springs up between us; a temple the Holy Spirit enjoys hanging out in. No longer am I convinced God needs my brilliant strength more than he needs my weakness. So be on the look out for sophisticated ways we photoshop ourselves. No matter what tool you employ in discipleship, it must include a power sabotaging element. Institutional Leaders do not offer people deep meaning, incarnational ones do. 

Missional Discipleship Cannot Be Microwaved

Discipleship is at the heart of the missional movement or at least it should be.  Jesus provoked followers to become gardeners that would till-and-toil for the flourishing of his in-breaking Kingdom.  Jesus was a rabbi.  Like other rabbis before him, he invited others to journey along side him. The rabbinic teaching style did not primarily consist of attending lectures, reading texts or going through a preset study.  The primary learning approach was through Midrash which was a way of processing with story, conversation, questions and reflection.  Today we are challenged with excavating an apprentice-heart in Jesus-followers for the sake of God's mission in the world.  But I wonder if we have time and patience for Midrash anymore?

Microwave Discipleship

In many ways in the evangelical imagination, discipleship has become so intertwined with our consumerist tendencies that we are blind to how fused they've become.  Discipleship, beginning with the twelve and moving into the early church, did not have embedded expectations of programs for felt needs, affinity groups and fill-in the blank accessibility.  It's become so innate that discipleship be quarantined to one night a week or to a 12 week notebook or to a one-year intensive.  Certainly, the previous options present people with potentially the right information in an arranged environment.  People may even have an ah-ha moment in settings like these.  But I believe this modus-operandi of practicing discipleship over the last 50 years has created some unintended consequences. You cannot microwave disciples. With these programs, participants often receive high emotional return on completion but dare I say without the invasive, conflict-exposing, vocation and life-integrated, initiative-required, vulnerability-based, relationship-saturated, locally-rooted qualities.  I‘m convinced there is a bit of smoke-and-mirrors when it comes to what discipleship tracks actually foster in us.  I understand the demand for organized ways to funnel people through essentials in an efficient fashion.  But when we establish that discipleship is a “system" we short circuit the impulse of the Holy Spirit found in the stew of community.  If you apply discipleship in-a-can you will get processed results. Discipleship needs to be purposely fastened to the rootedness of oikos, integrated into our rhythms of life.  For as much as it challenges our patience and need-for-speed, we should never detach from a communal orientation in order to fast track discipleship.

Cross-Pollinational Discipleship

We need to develop a community that begins to disciple itself.  I know that sounds impossible or idealistic. But our vision should stimulate discipleship becoming “cross-pollinational”-- circular and reciprocal. Yes spiritual leadership is required to model, direct and stir-up this ethos (more on this at the bottom).  Still we should be compelled to kindle a culture that disciples "one another" outside of formal, organized programs. Resist the factory mode of building Jesus-followers.  The “producers” in us might struggle with this.  We often want to guardrail and quantify how people are developed.  We are afraid of people telling each other “bad stuff.”  Honestly, this is happening anyways in the most highly organized environments.  Learn to push discipleship subterranean and make it less-and-less dependent on spiritual gurus and experts.   Develop people to practice mutuality and initiative with each other to intentionally “work out their salvation” (Phil 2;12).  High control works against viral disciple-making.   I promise you this is not a buy-off-the-shelf approach that becomes a simple “plug-in” for your church.  Take the long view of recalibrating over a steady period of time. 

 

Mutual Diagnostics

This is a communal diagnostic instrument we use to help empower priesthood.  This tool below is a guide for those currently tethered to a community who are working a habit of Midrash into their active life.  This tool can be used one-on-one or in a triad to "spur one another on to love and good actions" (Hebrew 10:24)  Each domain has questions to mutually ask each other.  I personally don’t bulldoze through all the domains in one sitting.  Mutually and incrementally we converse our way to a better future.

Identity - "What is God's spirit doing in me?"

Community - "What is God's spirit doing around me?"

Renewal - "What is God's spirit doing through me?"

Becoming -  "What step do I need to take?"
 

A Diagnostic Tool for Discipleship
(click to increase size)

Becoming a Community Diagnostician

A formative book for me has been "Life Together" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  It painted a breathtaking vision of community that has been lodged in my mind for the last decade.   As a church planter though, I quickly realized how un-sexy the process of shaping and sustaining Missional-Community is in contrast to the surreal vision swirling around in my head. Here's a promise: the romanticism around this burgeoning approach to church planting will soon fade under the real hands-on work of cultivating routine community. I've journeyed through a "crashing-to-earth-process" after detoxing from years of devouring leadership books combined with reading stories of modern monastic communities, realizing people are not pieces to be used for my preferred utopian dreams.  Our pictures of perfection need to be grounded and humbled.  Idealism can be the un-verbalized fuel for disappointment surrounding the concept of community. 

The Fragility of Community
It’s tempting to talk about community in abstract terms but when practiced those abstract ideals have very little traction.  The disarming reality around fostering community is the ever present vulnerability and fragility of it.  My observance is that maintaining vibrant community is even harder than active missionality.  Christine D. Pohl said in a recent lecture "this truth may be the ingrown effects of our culture's emphasis on personal freedom, self-fulfillment, easy exits, and lots of choices with minimal responsibilities."  In the ordinariness of community, we are exposed in our subtle resistance to form genuine bonds of love with people who: like Romney when you like Obama or have an outgoing personality when you’re introverted or work a white collar job when you work at a coffee shop or are married with kids when you’re still single or like liturgy when you like contemporary or are artsy-fartsy when you’re pragmatic... and the list goes on.  You will acutely discover that the chemistry of community is always under assault from our easily offended and narcissistic human nature that would rather hide from people or coalesce with people just like us.

Nurturing a Family
A core challenge in sustaining community is the effort of nurturing a healthy spiritual family.  Buildings, budgets, programs and worship services must take a back seat to the ethos of community.  I believe the church of the future will be in some shape or form a Missional-Community that is working from the margins in our society.  I look forward to this new horizon.  I believe our church expressions need to be stripped of their noise and clutter in order to construct a "togetherness" that testifies to the Kingdom way of life.  Embodied relational transformation in a Jesus Community will be the new apologetic in our civilization. The credibility of the Gospel of Jesus is explicitly tethered to the quality of our practical and emotional collective life. (1 Cor 12,13, Matt 5-7)

Gardening the Soil 
It becomes essential in this new territory to develop into "Community Diagnosticians".  This has been by far what has morphed the most in my pastoral approach. There needs to be an intentional leadership re-framing from "Platform Preacher" to "Community Cultivator" or "Program Builder" to "Community Developer."  Tim Gombis a professor at Grand Rapids Seminary has an appropriate blog post on viewing the Apostle Paul as a "Community Organizer"   I’ve discovered that one of my foremost responsibilities is to assess, identify, stimulate and disciple healthy emotional habits amongst extended spiritual families.  I cannot sweep-under-the-carpet the messy, methodical work of gardening the soil of mutual submission to each other under the Lordship of Jesus.  If we abdicate this it will perpetually sabotage our community's maturity.  Belonging may start with these practices but forging an alternative community goes beyond hosting parties, having BBQ’s, hanging out and chatting about recent books we've read.  Much of the best selling Spiritual Formation literature I've come across takes a very individualistic angle on personal betterment and intimacy with God, but the living laboratory of community should be the primary space for the careful surgery on our self-oriented hearts.

A community diagnostician becomes a student of the scaffolding of community, gradually stirring very specific emotional and practical habits into the fabric of shared life. I am in awe of the epic prophetic nature of being together. Every time our community gathers we model the future we want to create.  We bear witness to the coming Kingdom of Jesus.

Thoughts?

Blessed are the Right? Really?

There are loads of assumptions in our Christian culture about who the righteous are; who the right ones are.  There is an innate evangelical obsession to establish a status of who’s right and who’s wrong before the eyes of an all-watching God. 

The Clamoring Question 
I believe this emotional paranoia was just as much a heated concern in the 1st Century world of Jesus as it is today.  By the time Jesus arrives on the seen there were 613 Rabbinic laws on how to be “right before God.”  This is an obvious question we are all bothered and tormented by; “Am I right? Are they right? Am I wrong, Are they wrong?” These clamoring questions are running rampant in so much of our cultures discourse and dialogue today.  We don’t seem to have another framework for interacting with the circumstances in our world.  This is what we sift everything through “what is the right or wrong way to do something.”  Or “what is the right or wrong way to think.”  It seems quite natural to primarily be concerned with this matter.  Who wants to be wrong…I sure don’t.

Who's On God's Side 
We assume a tight connection between those who are right and those who have God on their side.  The challenge to this pragmatic way of interfacing with God and our culture is Jesus.  Jesus has a habit of exposing the deeper reality that those who assume God is on their side probably have the answer wrong.  He also repeatedly unveils the pattern that those who are really righteous don’t often know they are righteous.  

Beyond Rightness 
Jesus says “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” This can be a bit frustrating to interact with.   Jesus doesn’t give 5 ways to fix your life or 3 ways to get God on your side or 10 steps to a better whatever.  I don’t think Jesus' preaching style would light up the iTunes podcast's here.  His statement here is cryptically illuminating about God's angle on things.  It gives us a God’s eye view on this human concern.  God is not obsessed with us being right as much as we are.  Actually he’s quite passionate about something else entirely, what we “hunger and thirst for.” He is answering a different question that we are not concerned enough to ask.  He pushes past our agendas to be "in the right."  In contrast, when he says "those who hunger and thirst" he is placing his finger on our inner longings, desires, motivations, ambitions and holistically, the state of our affections.  

Heart Mechanics 
I'm convinced Jesus understood the mechanics of the heart's affections; that a heart oriented around a desperate longing for God and His Justice is an others-centered heart, which is a ripe space for Kingdom living.  I'm convinced it doesn't work the other way around.   My observance has been that those who live by the plumb-line of orienting first around right living, cultivate a self-centered heart which is a conducive space for pride, appearance, fear, judgement and status all under the auspices of pleasing God.  Practically this approach is an ethic that doesn’t loose sleep over motivations as long as you’re doing the right things, then God will bless you.

Kingdom Uniqueness 
Jesus is beginning to unveil a new way his Kingdom will situate itself in the midst of this world.  It will have a different ethic and a more subversive way of dwelling.  It will not be obsessively concerned with the litmus of right or wrong.  It will not find it’s voice in screaming as loud as the rest of the world in this arena.  Instead it will find its distinctiveness in what we long for, ache for, weep for, love for, burden for.  Jesus wants to disciple the transformation of our raw affections.