Liam Byrnes

A few days ago a friend emailed me asking what had been significant skills that I had sought to develop in Christian Leadership. I really considered it a privilege to be asked to input into this area and I actually appreciated the question itself.

I appreciated the question mostly because it was written with expectation that almost all the good things that God invites us to can be cultivated as skills rather than understood as gifts that some people have and some don’t.

I’m convinced much of our Christian growth is stifled by a fatalistic sense that some people just seem to have it and others don’t. In Ephesians 4 Paul invites believers to grow up into the full maturity of Christ. It is possible for us to grow into the likeness of Jesus, but we won’t fall into it, we must desire it. Desires are formed through practises, otherwise they become spontaneous and fleeting passions more akin to lust than desire. I wrote a post about this a while ago called “Practise makes spontaneous brilliance” which unpacks this idea a little more.

Many of us are growing older in faith but are we growing up? Are we entering into the promise of being men and women who increasingly look, lead and love like Jesus would if He were living our lives? I really believe the scriptures invite us into this lifelong journey of becoming and it will be the most fulfilling life we could live.

Skills are something which are difficult but become increasingly more natural. Many resources on developing skills using mechanistic language, 1+1=2, but I’ve found skill development is much more like gardening. If we do nothing things will fall apart, but even when we do the right things we are also reliant on some environmental factors which expediate, slow down, or hinder our growth. It might seem like pure semantics but I think the verb I’ve predominantly used of ‘cultivate’ helps us to imagine the process more organically which I think is a more helpful imaginative framework to apply to growth in skill.

Here’s the content of the email I sent to my friend, it focusses on leadership in the fairly narrow category of leading a group of people in a church or explicitly christian community even though Christian leadership can very legitimately be thought of in many other contexts. This list spontaneously came out, so it is certainly not exhaustive, but they represented the areas I have needed to cultivate skill in;

Here are some things that have been significant for me so far;

1. Cultivating true thankfulness when receiving personal challenges (It takes people courage to risk relationship and I wanted develop the skill to immediately respond with gratitude not defensiveness – this took prayerful practise and I certainly don’t get it right still).

2. Cultivating the sense that it is a privilege that we have in serving people and having influence in conversations that help shape our community life together (it is far too easy to respond with frustration, apathy or resentment in the midst of responsibility).

3. Saying Thank you / having gratitude for others service – a simple one, but often overlooked in leadership, especially if we have the victim mentality that we do more than everyone else.

4. Cultivating the ability to step out of my own shoes into someone else’s. Not to simply focus on how something affects me but how they might be experiencing it.

5. Cultivating an attentiveness to God’s presence with you. Too often we dichotomise that certain things are to be figured out with our intellect (or strategically) and others are to be prayed about and hear God in. This is a broken sacred/secular divide that stops us from both hearing God and using our God given wisdom and experience when making leadership decisions and processes. Too often we put our brains in a jar while we listen for God, or work things out in our own way without a thought towards God’s involvement.

6. Not letting small things become big things – At the end of our lives, we will be measured by love, not which organisational roles we took. In one sense every role God leads us into is to teach us to become a more faithful lover of God and others. In ministry as much as any other workplace, things can become petty, divisive, egotistical, and our chief goal must be to work in ways that consistently produce the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. This practise is often called ‘practising the presence, mindfulness, attentiveness or abiding’ and I think it is the foundation of Godly works.

For a while I thought maybe the trick was to be able to project a sense of these things, but a far more rewarding (yet harder) journey is to cultivate true heart depths for these things. It will take longer than just learning to ‘Fake it’ but I feel assured we are contributing to our growth in ways that cause ourselves and those around us to flourish in God’s kingdom into eternity.

What does it look like to practically cultivate these skills;

1. Identifying the skills you want to grow into intentionally.

2. Including them in prayer times to God for your own growth. Holy Spirit is the one who empowers these spontaneously holy responses.

3. Practising them when I have small opportunities and trusting God’s grace to pull them out of me when the big ones come.

4. Take up the practise of examen at the end of the day and ask God to show you places where you operated in the fruits of the Spirit and when you neglected to operate in them.

5. Share the areas of growth with people who are close enough to observe if you are growing in them. Give them permission to reflect to you when they are not being expressed in your life.

You may notice that I didn’t include many seemingly practical skills. Well, I certainly have picked up a few practical skills;

• How to have hard but fruitful conversations
• How to facilitate groups of people in processing new knowledge
• How to influence people rather than simply require of them

but most of the practical abilities are seriously dangerous and manipulative if the more foundational heart attitude skills are not in place.

Do you have some skills you want to develop? Leadership, interpersonal, fitness, discipline skills? Consider being clear about them, practising the, and inviting others on your journey, like my friend did.

What do you think the most important skills are in Christian leadership?

At first glance, there is nothing striking about water. It makes up much of our planet and we need it to survive. Because of its ubiquitous nature, we are prone to think of it as normal and pedestrian in nature. Not least in our baptism, the most ordinary of things in one sense, making the most extraordinary claim. A dunking in water, allowing resurrection power to be signed and sealed. water plays out in a multitude of ways and even plays an important symbolic and sacramental part in the Christian story;

Think about water in the Old testament.
– It was the resting place for the Holy Spirit before creation. The place and symbol of un-curated creation.
– It was the judgement of the world in Noah’s time. Cleansing the earth, leaving only Noah’s family and the animals as God’s chosen people to whom the dove returns with a sign of peace from God.
– Moses staff (a tree of sorts) removed the bitterness from the waters of Marah.
– It was moved by God to make a way of salvation for Israel at the red sea and then returned to its origin as a dramatic sign of judgement for Pharaoh’s army.

and so we turn to water in the life of Jesus;

• In his baptism where he was drowning his identity to side with John the Baptists call to repent.
• As the dove symbolises God’s choseness and his peace. Echoing that Jesus, in fact may be some form of ark too?
• changes water into wine.
• invites all who are thirsty to drink of living water.
• encourages anyone who is willing to offer a cup of cold water to a disciple in need (Mt 10:42)
• recovers his strength at a samaritan well
• walks on water
• washes his disciples feet.

During the Passion;

• Pilate washes his hands with after surrendering Christ to the cross
• blood and water flow from Christ’s pierced side.

In the way that we call Jesus, the second Adam; many early church fathers looked to the baptised as the second eve. Eve was made from the side of Adam and the church is borne, they surmised, from the water and blood which poured from Jesus’ side. At once a literal and figurative, river of living water coming from His in most being.

While reading Chris Hall’s – Worshipping with the Church Fathers, I came across this great paragraph from John of Damascus on why matter matters;

Chris Hall introduces the importance of a sacramental (God’s graces transmitted in physicality) realism;

Those grounded in the tradition of the fathers believe that to reject a sacramental worldview is to cut oneself off from the very means God has ordained for human growth and flourishing. pp. 23

and then quotes John of Damascus

I do not venerate matter, I venerate the fashioner of matter, who became matter for my sake and accepted to dwell in matter and through matter worked my salvation, and I will not cease from reverencing matter, through which my salvation was worked …. I reverence the rest of matter and hold in respect that through which my salvation came, because it is filled with divine energy and grace. Is not the thrice-precious and thrice-blessed wood of the cross matter? Is not the holy and august mountain, the place of the skull, matter? Is not the life-giving and life-bearing rock, the holy tomb, the source of the resurrection, matter? Is not the ink and the all-holy book of the Gospels matter? Is not the gold and silver matter, out of which crosses and tablets and bowls are fashioned? And, before all these things, is not the body and blood of our Lord matter?

– John of Damascus – Three treatises on the divine image

Six years ago we met Anne Harrington through going on a short term outreach together. It was a formative experience for us, as the place we took our outreach to is the place we stayed, lived and worked in now for the past 6 years. Anne returned to where she was from in the US and we stayed in touch. Anne had always displayed a desire to be reflective around the type of ministry and life of faith she was engaged in, and that has led her to Seminary. Often, when people about about my theological eduation they wonder how someone would survive it with meaningful faith in tact. Rather than resurrect my own, now somewhat distant experiences, I thought I’d interview someone who is journeying through her theology education and seeking to engage a life of faith within it.

You can read more of Anne’s writing at her blog here.

LIAM: Tell us a little bit about yourself and what experiences / circumstances led you into studying theology?

ANNE: I am in my third year at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary studying for two Masters degrees, one in Religion and one in Counseling. I have always been interested in theology and the Bible beyond what I read for personal devotions and heard in sermons, but in 2013 there was a series of tragedies among my church family and close friends, and I was forced to wrestle with God’s goodness and the problem of evil in a more personal way than I ever had before. In my wrestling, I sought wisdom and answers from mature believers that I respected and trusted, and much to my dismay they responded with a fatalistic, facile, unthinking version of Calvinism. They encouraged me to just accept that God’s sovereign will includes him causing people to murder, to commit suicide, to abuse, etc., and as I accepted that reality the Holy Spirit would help me surrender to his will.

That all seemed pretty simplistic and absurd to me, and I couldn’t stomach it. I wanted to understand the original languages of the Bible so I could engage with these theological questions on a deeper, more nuanced level rather than simply resorting to proof-texting as I felt that my friends had done. Ultimately, this desire led me to Gordon-Conwell, where I initially enrolled in the Master of Divinity program and eventually discovered my natural bent toward the integration of counseling and theology.

LIAM: Theology and academics in general has historically been a male dominated sport, have you had tangible experiences of this during your studies so far?
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In part 1, which you can read here, I wrote about the significance of Jesus becoming the image of the invisible God (a phrase from Colossians), and the significance of the idea of imaging God, which began in the garden with Adam and Eve.

..As Paul remarks so famously in Romans, Jesus becomes a kind of second Adam, a second humanity, a reclaiming of the ancient vocation of humans to bear the image of God faithfully.

Incarnation makes our bodies holy

In that sense, God begins redemption not just through the work of the cross, but actually in the incarnation. The uniting of the divine and the human is the coming together that God has longed for since our Edenic origins. Often in our desire to exalt Jesus we emphasise his divinity as the Christ. But in exalting his divinity we risk eclipsing his humanity and the remarkable ability and desire of God to reveal his glory in the form of humanity.

Often our accounts of sin can quickly dichotomise. We wrongly merge together the biblical word ‘flesh’ and the word ‘body’. This can lead us to want to somehow escape the visible body for some sense of unseen or spiritual being. This is a mistaken reading I addressed in a previous post here.

But Jesus’ incarnation shows us that a God-shaped life is a life in a body, even in Jesus’ ascension he returns to the right hand of the Father. He is forever incarnated in his new-creation body which is renewed but still bears enough continuity to his previous body to be recognised by his friends.

A People included In Christ by the Spirit with the Father

As the fully God, fully human Jesus returns to the Father in his ascension, he promises the coming of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit, which is the Spirit of Jesus, exactly because Holy Spirit enables us to be united with the risen and ascended humanity of Jesus.

This is the meaning of the phrased used again and again in Paul’s writing, “In Christ”, which pauline scholar, Gordon Fee, calls the tag line, or unifying theme throughout his letters. In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, Paul calls Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Adoption. A phrase which captures the way in which Holy Spirit re-unites our belonging to the Father in family. In all these various names for Holy Spirit we can see that the Spirit’s role in this age has been to unite God’s people into fellowship with the Father by including us, or seating us, in and with the Son.

Relationship at the centre of the Universe

These appearances of the three persons of God were later in the church’s history called trinity. It is the affirmation of the church through the ages as they read the scriptures that the Christian God is one. In that way we bear similarities to the confession of judaism and islam.

But where Christians depart from this monotheistic confession is to claim that while God is one, God is one in three persons. Do the math 1 does not equal 3. This claim is purposefully non-logical, it is the mystery at the centre of christian faith. The trinity is a truth revealed by the very persons of God. A relational God who’s being is not established by a clean doctrinal formulation but by God’s personal revelation of Himself.

Don’t worry if that last paragraph made your head spin, just know this, God is 3 in 1 and there is not a way to know that in abstract only by knowing God relationally.

Part of the reason God being 3 persons is a remarkable claim is because it asserts that at the centre of the universe is not matter, energy or divine will but a relationship of love. That is why we can say, with John’s account of the gospel that “God is Love”.

Consider that, that the very foundation of the universe is relational. That is why anything that constitutes true knowledge in this world is inherently relational ¹.

Stay Tuned for Part 3, coming soon.

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