How Confession Unlocks Your Leadership : Mandy Smith

Full-Text Transcript

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to another insightful episode of FrontStage BackStage. I’m your host, Jason Daye. Each week, I have the privilege of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader, and we dive into a conversation to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you thrive in both life and leadership. If you’re joining us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up and drop your name and the name of your church or ministry in the comments below. We’ll be praying for your ministry. And whether you’re joining us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe and follow so you do not miss out on any of these great conversations. This week, I’m joined by Mandy Smith. Mandy is a pastor, an award-winning author, and a speaker. She teaches DMin students both at Fuller Seminary and at The Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination. Her most recent book is entitled Confessions of an Amateur Saint. Mandy, welcome to the show.

Mandy Smith
Hello. It’s so good to be with you.

Jason Daye
Yes, so good to be with you as well, Mandy. Thank you for making time to hang out with us. In your most recent book, Confessions of an Amateur Saint, you sort of start out by saying, We, as pastors and ministry leaders, have kind of a professional problem. And I would love for you to just unpack a little bit what you mean by “we have a professional problem” as ministry leaders.

Mandy Smith
Yeah. So, I think a lot of us turn towards ministry of some kind out of a sense of closeness to God, longing for God, or obedience to God. It’s quite a personal prompt, oftentimes, or just a love for scripture. And then we train and we develop, we get all the things we’re supposed to get, and we become professionals in this, and we forget that original prompt, which actually disconnects us from the needs of real people who are who are needing to hear actual stories. And I appreciate that there are ways that it’s inappropriate for us to share too personally, but I’ve just come to see that the most transformative parts of my leadership come from the places where, instead of letting people see me as the goal, to model for them how to follow Jesus. I’m still following Jesus. I need Jesus, too, and it actually becomes a kind of toxic leadership if we aren’t also allowed to need God. So, what a beautiful thing it is that built into our work is the fact that it’s impossible, so that we have no other choice but to need God. And then in our following of God, in our prayerfulness and our awareness of our own limitations, we get to model for other people. No, this is a time to turn to God. Yeah, I don’t know that answer. Let’s talk to God. So I’ve watched that bring real vitality. It brings freedom to me, and it brings vitality to my ministry. It’s made me realize that I’ve often brought the world’s definition of professional into my profession. That often professional in the secular world means being self-contained, having all the answers, and being the expert who doesn’t need anything else. And instead, what if a part of our professional skill is to know how to lead from our own faith, to know in a meeting, this is the moment when we just stop the meeting and pray. For that to be actually a part of our professional skills, somehow as well, as personal as that seems. As vulnerable and unprofessional as that might seem, that it’s actually a part of our professional skill.

Jason Daye
Yeah. It’s so interesting when we think of ministry, because there is this bit of paradox, this tension that we live in in ministry between, as you said, getting our training, our schooling, and understanding what it means to serve in a profession as a clergy member, right? But then there’s this also very personal part of what it means to be a pastor and what it means to lead in ministry. And so we have these two pieces. Professional skills and understanding that are important. We also have this personal calling, as you mentioned. But sometimes the professional piece can kind of wrap around the personal and press it down. And that’s one of the things that you touch on in Confessions of an Amateur Saint, is this idea of what it really means to lead from faith and to make sure that professionalism doesn’t overtake the beauty of what God’s called us into. One of the things you mentioned is this confession, this role of confession. I’d love to hear you share more, because you do it so beautifully in the book, about how confession helps us when it comes to this idea of our profession.

Mandy Smith
Yes, absolutely. And I do want to make sure that we’re not creating a false choice here, that I’m not saying we shouldn’t be professional. I’m saying, of course, we should be professional. I think you know that. But I just want to clarify, this is a part of what it means for us to be professional, along with all the other things. So, yeah, I came to a place where I think many of us, most of us in ministry or leadership at the moment, are in a place where we’re in constant pioneer mode, whether we like that or not, because the church itself is in such change, the world is in such change, that we have to be on our toes all the time. And that in itself kind of drops us in the deep end, where every single day I just am like, I can’t do this. This is requiring something of me that I didn’t learn in seminary. Whatever I did learn in seminary doesn’t always apply anymore. And I’m having to be creative. I’m having to constantly be in the process and feel inadequate, and the world will tell me that something’s wrong with me if that’s the case. But this act of confession has really helped me. And I think of it in two ways, a confession of my tendency to be self-sufficient is saying, Oh, Lord, this reason I feel like I’m drying up is because I’ve disconnected from the vine again. No wonder I feel like I don’t have any ideas or creativity or energy or hope. I’ve been self-sufficient again, or at least tried to be self-sufficient again, and it’s not leading to life for me or for my ministry. Oh, I’m so sorry, Lord. I’m remembering you again, Lord. And the turning back to God again, and then a second kind of confession of faith, of saying I believe in you. I’m choosing, even if I don’t feel it, I’m choosing you again, Lord. I’m choosing to trust that you are the source of everything that I need. And so this is on a moment-by-moment basis, even in a moment in the middle of my week when I’m trying to write my sermon, and it’s just not coming together. And I have these deep skills from my education, from the culture, that when something’s not working, you dig in harder because you just need to depend on yourself. And it actually is quite painful to stop that habit and to pull away from the keyboard. I’ve worn a patch in the carpet where I just choose it. It actually feels like it’s going to kill me because it’s the opposite of what I feel like doing, to just lie on the floor and to say to the Lord, Oh, I did it again. I’m depending on myself again. Yes, I have skills to bring. Yes, you have called me. And at the same time, I can’t do any of this. This is your church. Even the gifts I bring are gifts you’ve given me. Even the loaves and the fishes that the boy offered for Jesus to begin the miracle, you made those, too. And in that moment, there is a turning of my heart, and what I thought I needed was answers or a really great sermon outline or whatever. And after just a few minutes of crying out and confessing in that way, I just stand up from the floor in a different posture. And it’s not usually because I’ve found all those answers. It’s because I remembered, actually, I already had what I really needed. He’s not gone anywhere.

Jason Daye
Yeah, it’s beautiful and so practical, too, because in our lives of ministry, and in the tasks that are required of us, the opportunities we have to serve, we can find ourselves, as you said, leaning upon our own skill sets, our previous knowledge, or the things that we’ve learned, which are all important. God’s blessed us with those things. But sometimes we can get to a point where we’re just kind of almost processing through the motions because we’re accustomed to them. And I think of the life of a pastor. Every week, we’re preaching pretty much, right? So we’re preparing a sermon, and that is a regular rhythm, a regular cadence, and that can become almost automatic for us. Talk to us a bit, Mandy, about how, in the very practical things that we’re doing in ministry, we ensure that we’re not slipping into just routine, right?

Mandy Smith
Yeah, that’s good. Two things come to mind. When we feel in over our heads, when we feel we don’t have the answers, and we can’t make all the decisions, and all that stuff, to see the sacredness of that moment. It’s just a confrontation with our human limitation. And when Jesus had those confrontations with his human limitation in the wilderness, he refused to disconnect from God in those moments. I think that Satan was trying to accuse him and say, Look how small you are. You have this huge mission. How are you going to do it? Here are some shortcuts. And so to not shy away from those moments, or to be ashamed of those moments, or to think it’s a sign to work harder, but to dig into those moments and to say, Oh, this is a reminder of how much I need the Lord every day, every moment. But then also when we are feeling comfortable, because there are times we get in a rhythm, as you say, and we have competencies. We’re used to some of these things. To just have rhythms that are part of our daily life, that step us out of those things. So for me, every morning I walk down to the river, which thankfully I live close enough to that I can walk every day, and it’s a moment to just sit and to just be. I always remember Psalm 46. There is a river whose streams will make glad the city of our most high God. God is within her, she will not fail. He helps her at the break of the day. Be still and know that I am God. So even if I am, it’s a great thing to do when I’m feeling in over my head and overwhelmed. It’s also a great thing to do when I’m like, ready to get on with the day, because I do that first thing in the morning when I’d actually rather jump on my email or get into the to-do list. It’s a moment to say that God is the source of everything that I do, any idea that I have. I’ve wrestled before with like, I never feel like I do enough. I never feel like I prepare enough. I never feel like I have enough time to do all the things. And am I bringing enough? I believe God can use my efforts. But am I doing the amount? Is there a particular percentage which I have to do before God can do his thing? And I felt like he almost smiled and laughed at me one time, like, Mandy, even the energy you bring, even the ideas and creativity you bring, that’s me too, right? I made you. Whatever you bring is me. So it’s a really beautiful moment to just have that connection to God. And I think a huge passage throughout this book and throughout my whole life is from Jeremiah 17, which is the comparison. It says, The one who trusts in mere mortals is like the bush, the withered tree that lives in a desert place, it’s dried up, and in a desert. And on the other hand, the person who depends on the Lord is like a tree that’s planted by the stream. Its roots go down deep in the stream, and it’s never afraid in times of drought, its leaves are always green. It’s always bearing fruit. And it’s not because that tree said I want to bear a lot of fruit, or I’m going to work hard to bear a lot of fruit. It’s because that tree is stretching out into a stream and knowing its need for something beyond itself. And so I’m very conscious of that when I’m down by that stream in the mornings, watching the roots of the trees around me. Yeah, it goes against our secular self-sufficiency to just look inside ourselves for everything. But if a tree let its roots and branches just go back into itself, it would just suck itself dry. It would probably live a day or two. A tree knows that as much as it feels vulnerable, to really live and thrive, I have to stretch out beyond myself.

Jason Daye
Hey, friends, just a quick reminder that we provide a free toolkit that complements today’s conversation. You can find this for this episode and every episode at PastorServe.org/network. In the toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including our Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. This growth guide includes insights pulled from today’s conversation as well as reflection questions, so you and the ministry team at your local church can dig more deeply into this topic and see how it relates to your specific ministry context. Again, you can find it at PastorServe.org/network.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s beautiful. Great reminder, too, because in ministry, and this is one of the things that you touch on in Confessions of an Amateur Saint. You talk about these distorted desires that we have. When we initially enter into ministry, we have these desires, and they become distorted over time. Help us understand a little bit. What do you mean by distorted desires? And in our leadership, as ministry leaders, what does that look like? And what is that maybe signaling to us, right?

Mandy Smith
Yeah. The chapter headings, it was actually really satisfying to name these because they’re kind of knee-jerk reactions that go unspoken in me all the time. So, to actually name these things was really helpful. I want to be in control. I want to force miracles. I want to know outcomes. I want to feel successful. I want to be free. I want to feel strong. I want to give up. So the book is shaped around those desires in us that we all feel, and the ways we react out of those places, the false-self kind of habits and reactions that come without us even really being aware of it, and to stop and name those things. So, a large portion of the book is about 40 different confessions where I go to the Lord from those places to just say, Oh Lord, I’m just acting out of my desire to be in control, out of my desire to be free, to feel strong, and I’m turning to you again. So I tell a little story each time of the particular situation, and I’ve actually been really interested, because that was just telling my stories. And at first I thought, Oh, this is too personal. It’s too related to my own story. No one’s going to relate to this. And more than anything else I’ve ever written, I’ve had people say, Are you looking over my shoulder? Are you listening to my prayers? Because I guess, although we all have different circumstances and we all respond in particular ways, we all have the same basic kind of drives, temptations, and confessions that we need to make.

Jason Daye
Absolutely. As I was reading through the book, I was thinking the same thing. And I love the way that you set it up because you process through these different desires that spring up within us, and then you pull back into these confessions, and you have these exercises, these questions for us to reflect on. And it takes, I think, Mandy, what is very personal for you, and allows it to be personal for me, right? As I was reading it, that’s what I sensed.

Mandy Smith
That was my hope.

Jason Daye
Yes, it’s beautiful. And those foundational things. There are some things that are true for us as we lead a ministry that we’re going to bump into, it seems, no matter what context we might be in, right? Mandy, I was wondering, as I was looking at these different desires, for you, did you sense that some of these draws towards self-reliance happen in specific seasons of life or seasons of ministry? Did you sense that there was anything that we could be thinking through and trying to be aware of, maybe as we enter into a new season of ministry, or maybe as we’re coming to the twilight years of our ministry? Is there anything that kind of stood out for you in regard to that with these desires?

Mandy Smith
Yeah, interesting. I do think it was largely necessary for me to write this in the last couple of years because I’ve been in kind of a crisis place. The church here was about to close when the denomination said, Let’s try one more thing. We’ll bring in a new pastor to do what they call regeneration work. And so it was a very challenging ministry. We had about 12 folks in their 70s and 80s, which in itself is not an impossible situation, except they confessed that they were really despairing. We’ve watched this place shrink. We’ve buried so many of our friends, and there wasn’t a lot of energy or hope. They were very tired. So, I stepped into that place. I’ve been here for four years now, and the first couple of years really were rethinking systems, reimagining habits, and changing culture, and there’s a lot of spiritual warfare too. So, I do think that anytime we’re stepping in to make change, it’s going to really stretch us. And most mornings, I honestly felt like, Why am I here? What am I doing? What am I supposed to do? And although I didn’t want to put the pressure on myself, and nobody ever said it, I felt an awful lot of pressure to be remarkable, and to be so inspiring that life was brought to this congregation. And the beautiful thing is that now this church is flourishing. We have around 50 folks and people from all different backgrounds and generations, and we’ve had five baptisms in the last three months. I mean, God’s just doing miracles. And yeah, maybe I contributed to some of that through things I learned from seminary and my teaching, ideas, strategies, and whatever. But whatever part that I brought that was truly transformative, I can see comes from the way that I needed to trust God in that. I like to think that anybody watching my ministry here saw a hopeful, positive presence here, even though, privately, I might have not always been feeling that. But it wasn’t an act. It was coming from these deaths and resurrections every single day of just saying, Do I think the gospel has stopped being good news? Do I think the spirit has stopped transforming lives? Do I think that God has forsaken his church? No. Right? I still have to choose. And I wrote on my desk Jesus, saying, I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. And so something happens when we kind of leap into those promises, even if we don’t feel it or see it yet, that does give us a lightness of spirit and prophetic kind of presence that, I think, the stories that I tell in this book and the practices that I share and invite people into are what were my part, at least, in bringing life to this place. Because I had to model, well, I had to follow God, and I chose to model that. So I would say any time of transition, whether you’re in a ministry that you’ve never done before, or the church is going through great change, or, I mean, I think just this season of the world. We’re all feeling that, and I think, honestly, if we’re just cruising, we’re not doing a very good job, because we need to be paying attention all the time and adapting. Not that we’re reacting to political things or whatever, but that we are always aware of how to communicate the gospel to this particular time and place. And that really stretches us.

Jason Daye
At PastorServe, we love walking alongside pastors and ministry leaders just like you. If you want to learn more about how you can qualify for a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, please visit PastorServe.org/freesession. You don’t want to miss out on this opportunity. That’s PastorServe.org/freesession.

Jason Daye
Yeah, absolutely.

Mandy Smith
It’s uncomfortable.

Jason Daye
It is. It is. One of the things that you touched on in your book, Confessions of an Amateur Saint, is this idea, and if I remember correctly, it was just maybe one of the confessions that you invited us to engage in. It was around this idea of thinking through the difference between leading an institution and leading a relational, missional community. And that really resonated with me. I’d love, Mandy, for you to talk to us a little bit about maybe just our approach as pastors, as ministry leaders, as we think about, yes, the church as an institution, but also the reality that the Church is the Body of Christ, right? That it is this relational, this missional, this connected community. How do we balance those two? How do we lean into that as we’re serving?

Mandy Smith
Yeah, I think it’s tempting to think that top-down things are the truly powerful things, but that doesn’t seem to be the way of the kingdom. So, it may require us to actually behave according to Kingdom ways in order to begin to learn the true power of them, because we really have been shaped by a culture that believes in corporations, brands, things with a lot of money, and things that have obvious measurable outcomes. Military force, political force, economic power, and all of those things. Absolutely, those things have force, have power. But, if you think about the Roman Empire, which would have been the most powerful force on the planet at the time of the first century church, it had measurable armies, treasuries, fortresses, and cities. A whole Empire spread across the known world, and yet it doesn’t exist anymore. It’s Rubble. And then, in some ways, the way that you could measure it and point to it made it also possible for somebody to attack it and overthrow it, you know? And, meanwhile, this little ragtag bunch of misfits were just spreading this good news from one heart to another, and nobody can see that. Nobody can thwart what’s happening in a human heart or how a human heart shares that with another human heart. And so now here I am on the other side of the planet, 2000 years later. I don’t think they even knew about this country where I live, and I’m still proclaiming the good news on the other side of the world, centuries and millennia later. So, thinking about it from that perspective helps me to begin to stretch my imagination for what Jesus was talking about when he compared it to yeast in the dough, which seems so insignificant to us. But I can’t remember the exact amount. But I think the flour is a ridiculous amount of flour in that parable. It’s like, I don’t know, 60 pounds or something crazy. I can’t remember what it is. I’ve looked it up when I’ve preached on it before, but a tiny little pinch of yeast will leaven that much flour. And once the yeast is kneaded in, if you didn’t want that dough leavened, too bad. And so I love that kind of organic, relational dynamic of how the Kingdom actually does move and function, if we will partner with it. And of course, we have to function in institutions. We have to work within their ways. But the question is, which is the cart and which is the horse?

Jason Daye
Right. One of the things is, as we’re kind of looking through these distorted desires that we have. This idea of feeling strong, or this idea of even making an impact, right? All of us enter into ministry. We feel called into ministry. We’re excited about making an impact for the gospel of Jesus Christ, and sometimes that can make us, when we’re faced with our particular context and the ministry situation we find ourselves in, feel small, because we may not feel like we’re making the impact that we, as a young youngster, were thinking we would make. Mandy, how can we again, begin to kind of think through this idea of impact in a healthy way that aligns more closely with the heartbeat of Jesus?

Mandy Smith
Yeah. I think it’s important to give ourselves permission to long for every person to come to know Jesus. There’s nothing wrong with desiring for all the world to acknowledge him and to know the love of God. I think that’s a really good longing. The question is, if that’s really what we’re longing for when we’re wanting impact. Sometimes it’s more just wanting to feel successful and look good and whatever. But it’s also a normal human response to want to feel like the energies I’m spending are worth it. It’s a good, wise thing sometimes to stop and discern if this is the best use of my resources and my time and energies. I think once we’ve discerned that, and we feel, yes, this is where God has asked me to be, the only thing I can do is just keep going back to him. And this is what I would do every morning when things were really desperate and I was really feeling alone and not seeing the outcome of the ridiculous amount of work that I was having to put in here. Just having to ask the Lord, What do you ask me to do? On a daily basis. Actually, I had just written, when I first started here, I just finished the book about child likeness, and it was so strange that those skills actually were a lot of what I was bringing here to say to the Lord every morning, What are you asking me to do today? And, of course, I had a to-do list, and I had a general sense of things on my agenda, but what should I be putting my energies into? What new thing, if there are new things to be done here to make changes, I could do a million different things. What is the right thing to do? And not that turning into some great outcome necessarily decided if it was right or wrong. There were several things we tried that we thought, Oh, well, we learned from that. We’re not going to keep doing that. It wasn’t necessarily just sometimes, I think, if I’m honest, I pray so that I can be successful, you know? I think, well, God knows all the answers. I’m going to ask him so that it’ll be a real hit. But, I don’t think that’s necessarily what he is motivated by, although, of course, he longs for everybody to know him. There’s a way that he’s okay for us to learn as we go, and maybe one conversation came from that experience that is going to lead to something else. So, it didn’t ever feel like a real professional leadership kind of way to start the day. But to just say, What are you asking me to give my attention to today? What person should I talk to, or what email should I send, or what decision should I make? And usually there was one thing of like, just give some energy to this today. So that feels really doable to just do the next good thing. Just ask the Lord day by day. And as much as we would like a to-do list at the beginning of the year that we just attend to for the next 365 days, I think, actually, the Lord would rather us come to him day by day, moment by moment, because he just wants us to be talking to him.

Jason Daye
Yeah. I love that. That’s beautiful. I love that that rhythm creates that reliance upon God, right? That daily rhythm of seeking Him for that direction reminds us that it really is God who’s the one at work. Absolutely love that. As we’re kind of winding down this conversation, it has been fantastic, by the way, I want to give you an opportunity to just share words of encouragement. You have the eyes and ears of pastors, ministry leaders, brothers, and sisters serving on the front lines. What words of encouragement would you like to share with them?

Mandy Smith
I guess I want to speak against the works of darkness which would dare to come against every person in ministry and to proclaim the power of resurrection over your bodies, over your minds, over your emotions and relationships, your homes, your sleep, and your conversations. And may you see the fullness of Jesus already reigning, whether or not it’s apparent in the work that you do every day. May you embrace those promises that the gospel is still good news and the Spirit still changes hearts. And Jesus has not forsaken his church. He is the one building his church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against her. So, I bless you in whatever you’re doing. That God sees you. God knows the struggles. And maybe those things that make you feel far from God because it’s so hard, are moments where God is inviting you to depend on him more fully. In solidarity with Jesus, that when God became human, his ministry took him into very painful places, even to death. His obedience was what took him to death. And the enemy will lie to us and tell us that when our work is hard, it’s a sign that God’s forgotten us, and I speak against that in Jesus’ name, because God himself went into suffering out of obedience, and overcame through that suffering, and offers that story to us.

Jason Daye
Amen. Beautiful, sister. Thank you so much.

Mandy Smith
It’s good to be with you.

Jason Daye
Yes, good to be with you. I want to encourage those of you who are watching or listening to read Confessions of an Amateur Saint. It’s Mandy’s most recent book, and you can find links to the book as well as links to Mandy’s website, different writings, and ministry that she does in the toolkit for this episode. You’ll find that toolkit for this episode and every episode at PastorServe.org/network. You’ll find lots of resources in there, including the Ministry Leaders Growth Guide, which has some insights and some questions that will come out of this conversation that Mandy and I shared together for you to process through with your ministry leaders at your local church. So, we encourage you to check that out at PastorServe.org/network. Mandy, it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you. Thank you for this book, Confessions of an Amateur Saint. Can’t recommend it highly enough to those who are serving in ministry. Powerful, powerful book. So, thank you for making time to hang out with us.

Mandy Smith
Thanks for having me. It’s been great.

Jason Daye
Awesome. God bless you, Mandy.

Mandy Smith
God bless.

Jason Daye
Here at PastorServe, we hope you’re truly finding value through these episodes of FrontStage Backstage. If so, please consider leaving a review for us on your favorite podcast platform. These reviews help other ministry leaders and pastors just like you find the show, so they can benefit as well. Also, consider sharing this episode with a colleague or other ministry friend. And don’t forget our free toolkit, which is available at PastorServe.org/network. This is Jason Daye, encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well.