Jay Kim : When Pastors Stop Paying Attention

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 together we dive into a topic to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you, really thrive in both life and leadership. We are blessed to be a part of the Pastor Serve Ministry, and this week I’m excited because I’m welcoming back to the show an incredible guest. A guest that you guys have all appreciated each time that he joins us. Jay Kim is an incredible pastor, incredible ministry leader. He’s the lead pastor of Westgate. It’s a multi-congregational church in the Silicon Valley of California. Now, Jay has written a number of books. He also hosts the Digital Examine podcast. His latest book that he has written is entitled The Pace of Peace. At this time, I’d like to welcome Jay to the show. Jay, welcome back, brother.

Jay Kim
Thank you so much for having me, Jason. Yeah, honored to be back with you and everyone listening and watching.

Jason Daye
Yeah, it’s good to have you. How are you doing, my friend?

Jay Kim
I’m doing well. Yeah, just before we hit record, I was telling you it’s been a bit of a week, a bit of a whirlwind here at our church with several things happening, but just have this collective sense that God is up to something new, and yeah, just humbly, open-handedly holding it before Him.

Jason Daye
Yeah, no, I get that. I get that. That’s the life of ministry and that’s the joy of ministry, isn’t it? We get to those whirlwinds, and it’s all part of it. But that’s exciting because we are jumping into a conversation around The Pace of Peace, and this is your newest book. And Jay, I love it. Early in the book, you open up with a story. It’s a personal story of yours. You’re sitting in your car. You’ve just dropped the kid off at school, and you experience suddenly a panic attack, which was an interesting experience you share, and you describe, as you’re reflecting on this, you describe that somewhere along the way you had seemingly lost touch with what was actually happening in your inner life. And as we reflect on that, I wonder if that’s, in some ways, a particular danger for those of us in ministry, those of us who are pastoring, serving in ministry, because in ministry we can become highly attentive to everyone around us, while becoming increasingly, sometimes inattentive to ourselves, right? Because we’re thinking about everyone else’s spiritual lives, but sometimes we may become a bit inattentive to our own. I’m curious about your thoughts around that, Jay.

Jay Kim
I deeply resonate with what you’re saying as a pastor. I’ve been a pastor for 20-plus years. All of that time has been spent pastoring here in Silicon Valley, which is the tech epicenter of the world. But more than that, it is a very fast-moving place. The rise of Silicon Valley finds its origins in the gold rush almost 200 years ago now, 180 years ago, something like that. And when you think about the gold rush, people came here to Northern California from all over the country, and in some cases, all over the world, to get in, get rich, and get out. And there’s a particular sort of aggression that underpins the Bay Area, and that has not gone away. In fact, in many ways, I would say it’s accelerated. But it’s not just a Silicon Valley problem. I think it is a problem of the modern West. We’ve taken that sort of gold rush ethic and mapped it onto just anywhere and everywhere where there is seeming opportunity to go up and to the right, and not all of that is bad. I think that having sort of kingdom aspiration is a good thing. I think about the parable of the talents. And I think we would all agree that whatever gifts, whatever situations, and whatever communities God has given us to steward as pastors, it is imperative that we do our best to embody faithfulness. But, at the same time, I think what’s happened for many of us, myself included, is we have taken that calling to the extreme, and we have allowed the ethics of the day, the cultural air we breathe, that we’ve got to grow things bigger and faster all the time. If you’re not moving up and to the right, then you’re dying. That sort of ethic has been mapped onto the church. And I found myself a number of years ago, I mean, quite literally experiencing the most severe panic attack, possibly maybe the only real, true, proper panic attack I’ve ever experienced in my life. I thought I’d experienced panic attacks before, but this was different than anything I’d ever experienced. It felt like I truly, for a few moments, thought, Am I going to die? Like, is this the end of my life? I couldn’t breathe. And it was during a season of ministry that was really beautiful, but pressure-packed. We were about to enter into a season with a pretty significant initiative that just felt way bigger than anything I could handle, and I tried to cover over my own insecurity by just working harder, working faster, working more aggressively, and working more hours. That’s not always bad, but it is not a sustainable way to remain human. It’s not a sustainable way to become the sort of person who can love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength. And what I learned in that season is that there is a choice to be made: that you cannot live a deep life while also living a fast life. That a deep life is in many ways incongruent with a fast life. I think of that famous line from the poet Mary Oliver, where she says, Attention is, you know, the first step of attention… attention is the first act of devotion, essentially. So you might translate that pastorally to say that you cannot live a devoted life without living intentionally, focusing your attention on the things that matter most. And human attention moves at the speed of one thing at a time. You know, multitasking is actually a myth. Even neurologically, it’s a myth. The human brain cannot actually multitask, even though you can feel like you’re multitasking. You’re not. You’re really just context switching very quickly. And that is what leads to a fragmented life, a divided, disintegrated life. And that’s what I learned in that season a few years ago, that I was living a disintegrated life; that I was not a holistic human being the way God had designed me to be, and something needed to change. And I think that most pastors are susceptible to that temptation today, because honestly, churches require a lot of us, and there is much to be done, and all of it is good, you know? So how do you pick and choose? How do you say no? But those are spiritual practices and spiritual disciplines that I think really matter a great deal if we are to lead and serve our church communities for the long haul.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. I love that, and Jay, I appreciate you. Just your openness about your own journey. I think that’s helpful for all of us whenever we can be a bit vulnerable and say, hey, these are things that we’re wrestling with. It seems, Jay, and help me with this. It seems like there are two things that might be going on at the same time here. On one side of it, as you mentioned, there is this desire for impact, right? There’s this desire for us in ministry. We want to do our best. We want to serve faithfully. We want to help people see the goodness, the truth, the hope of Christ, and so we’re leaning into this, right? And those, as you said, are good things, but sometimes we can get out of balance and we can push so hard. So there’s that piece of it, but then there seems to be this other side, in ministry specifically, that may make it more difficult for us to realize that we’re becoming disconnected with our inner life because we’re doing a lot of spiritual things, right? We’re engaging with a lot of spiritual stuff, maybe for others, and that may mask that we’re not focusing on our own inner life quite as much. Can you talk to us a little bit about that subtle bit, that we’re involved in these spiritual things that might mask that we’re not really doing the inner work ourselves?

Jay Kim
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a critically important point that you’re making that we have to live with an awareness that because the work we do, our vocational calling, is connected to the most meaningful stuff of life. I think all of us would agree that the care and nurturing of souls, that the winning of souls, that those who are far from God come to a recognition of God’s loving presence in their lives, and the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and pledging their allegiance to Christ as Lord and King and Savior; I think we would all agree there is nothing more important than that. And the subtle danger in that truth is that we can begin to believe what is not true, which is that if I work harder, or if I preach better sermons, or if I can build a better church with better programs, if I can get bigger, if I can expand our reach and our scope and our scale, if things that are seemingly within my control, I can make those things bigger and better, then we will win more souls. We will care and nurture and form more people into Christlikeness. That’s not totally untrue. There is a significant part to play as pastors to lay the groundwork and create the space. However, the actual winning of a soul, the transformation of a life, the forming of a life into Christlikeness-those are all things beyond our control. Only the Spirit can do that. Only the Holy Spirit can call someone out of darkness into light. Only the Spirit of God can save someone out of death into life. And I think distinguishing between what we control and what we do not is a critically important step to living an integrated life. Otherwise, like you said, we are going to empty ourselves, not because it’s an act of faithfulness, but actually as an act of control born out of our insecurity. That is going to be the natural default for us because the work we are participating in matters so much. You know, you see this all the time with pastors who compromise their family life. Pastors whose spouses would say, Yeah, he’s building the church, but our family’s falling apart. Or children of pastors. I have two young kids myself, so I’m mindful of this all the time, of my kids looking at me saying, they have not said this, thankfully, at this point. But I am mindful of it that my kids might someday say, yeah, Dad really loved the church, but he didn’t really love us. Like, man, that, I would say, is an act of infidelity, not faithfulness. God has called us to pour out from overflowing, not from emptiness. You can build a really successful-looking church just on your own strength, but you cannot form souls or win souls on your own strength, only the Spirit can do that. So I think we need to begin moving from control to curiosity, from insecurity to humility, to be faithful, to work hard, to do what we are able to do within our finite human limits, and then surrender it to the Lord, and say, God, this is yours. I do not control outcomes. All I can do is be faithful. But to be faithful holistically. Faithful to you, faithful to my family, faithful to our church, faithful to our staff, and whatever that looks like as a singular, integrated, holistic human being, that is what I will do. Nothing more and nothing less. And that’s really hard work. I say this not as someone who’s mastered it. I’m not some Yoda who’s like here to give you sage advice. I say this as a fellow pastoral pilgrim who is on the journey of recovery from my own insecurity and propensity to control, but I think it’s important that we all invite God by His Spirit to form us in this way.

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, I love that. I love that. That’s good, brother. One of the things I really appreciate about The Pace of Peace is that you aren’t simply telling people, telling pastors and ministry leaders, that you’re too busy, so slow down, right? I mean, you seem much more concerned about our capacity to pay attention.

Jay Kim
Yes.

Jason Daye
So, Jay, what’s the difference between slowing down and actually becoming present?

Jay Kim
Yeah, I’m so glad you asked the question. I think for many years I lived with a misunderstanding of peace. So it’s not a misunderstanding I sort of whipped up out of thin air. Essentially, I adopted the cultural definition of peace. So today, for most people, Christian or not, when we hear the word peace, most people think of like peace and quiet. We think of tranquility. We think of the getaway to the weekend cabin, the weekend beach house trip, or whatever it might be. I just saw this like internet meme. I don’t know if this data is accurate or not, but I thought it was hilarious. It said like the average adult male spends seven hours a year hiding in the bathroom just for some peace and quiet. And it was like, oh man, I feel so seen. That’s kind of me, with two young children and stuff. Except my kids will follow me to the bathroom and knock on the door, dad, dad. So the bathroom’s not even safe. But that’s mostly what we think about when we think about peace. Is just oh gosh, I just need some peace and quiet. I need to get away. Which is a brilliant marketing campaign from Southwest Airlines. Need to get away? You pay $59, and you can fly to San Diego and just be on your own. Get away from the madness and, really, get away from the people in some ways. But, when the Bible talks about peace, most of our pastors will know this already. But in Hebrew, peace is the word shalom, and the word shalom, actually, is a derivative of another Hebrew word shalem, which is actually a word about equity. And it’s about relationship, a relationship that is whole, that is void of conflict, and that is equitable. Shalom is essentially a way of saying like, hey, are we good? Are we well? Like, are we standing with a posture of love, generosity, kindness, and compassion toward one another? Of deep, meaningful connection with each other? You know that word shalom shows up in the Hebrew scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, like 250 times, and the overwhelming majority of the time, it speaks very directly to relationship amongst a people or a family, or when it’s about an individual, it’s about their relationship to another person. It’s a relational word. So when I talk about peace, living at the pace of peace, I’m not talking about living at the pace of tranquility. I’m not talking about leaving everybody behind so you can have a quiet weekend at the beach house. Although silence and solitude; those are critically important spiritual practices for sure. But peace, holistically, is understood as relationship. Deep, meaningful, relational connection. So the pace of peace is the pace of deep, meaningful relational connection. So that’s where attention comes in. You cannot love, you cannot enter deep, meaningful relationship without giving the gift of your attention. You know, M. Scott Peck, the writer, he talks about how attention is the form that love takes in our world. That to love another is to give them, first and foremost, your undivided attention. So, to live at the pace of peace is to give your undivided attention to God at all times and in all spaces. So when you are leading the staff meeting to not just think to yourself, I’ve got to get through the agenda, but to focus your attention on the God who is present in love in the midst of that staff meeting. As you’re mapping out Christmas Eve gathering plans, as you’re figuring out the parking problem at your campus, as you’re trying to figure out that strange, tense transition for that staff person who may not make it. How do you invite God into that space? That it’s not just a cold, calculated organizational plan you’re making, but that you’re inviting God and paying deep attention to His presence in that moment. I think that changes everything. And what I’ve discovered, again, I’m just a pilgrim on the journey alongside everybody else. But as I’ve tried to be more intentional about my attention, even in the most mundane of tasks, I’ve discovered not so much that it’s made me more effective organizationally, per se, but it has made me a better pastor. That there is a much deeper pastoral edge to everything that I do, not because I’ve learned new skills, but because I am learning to invite God to be present through my own awareness and the gift of my own attention as I receive the gift of His attention that is so fixed on me, on our people, on our church, and on our staff. It really colors and frames everything that I do in pastoral ministry. And that is, again, another way to feel integrated and whole as we do the work of asking God to pour out from within us onto others. So yeah, I mean, I think the question you’re asking is a critically important one that probably all pastors need to be asking with much more intention.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that, Jay. That idea of presence is challenging, especially in the midst of the activity of ministry. Another thing that you touch on is this idea, and you use this phrase, the wreckage of reactivity. And so I think this ties in when we’re thinking of presence, and then we think about reactivity because pastoral ministry can be incredibly reactive when we think about everything that’s happening. There’s always an email. Oftentimes, there’s some sort of tension or some sort of conflict. Might be a staff issue. There are decisions that have to be made. Family in crisis. Whatever it is. Sunday happens to roll around every seven days. Imagine that. There’s always a Sunday coming up, right? So we have sermons, messages, activities, and all of this. What does living reactively do to us over time?

Jay Kim
Yeah, I mean, the first thing I would say is just to sort of release some of the pressure. Reactivity is natural. So, without getting into all of the basic neuroscience of it, reactivity is sort of hard-wired into our DNA. You can imagine, if you go way back to, let’s say, a pre-modern world, and the same sort of safety structures in society didn’t exist back then as they do now. So maybe you were a part of a nomadic people wandering the wilderness to get from point A to point B in search of water. If you can imagine yourself in that scenario, your body would just acclimate to being on high-alert because you’re not wandering through developed urbanized cities. You’re just wandering through the jungle or the wilderness, and you don’t know what wild animal is going to pop out of the corner. So your body is just constantly tense, weapon in hand, and reactivity was a safety mechanism. So there’s a lot of neuroscience that shows us that reactivity is hard-wired into our DNA. It is very natural in the most sort of materialistic sense. So, as such, I would say that reflection, deep, meaningful reflection, is supernatural. You actually need God by His Spirit to do work in you to slow you down in such a way that you do not see everything around you as a possible threat, and instead you live with a sense of openness and, again, curiosity, asking the question at all times. Man, God, this hurts, but what might you be up to here? So, when it comes to reactivity and when it comes to just the relentless pace of ministry, like you said, Sunday is coming. I have a sermon to preach this coming Sunday. And we don’t control time. We can’t slow it down. It’s just like every seven days there’s another Sunday, and then you have Christmas, and you have Easter, and you have fall launches, you have this activity and that activity, and then the kids ministry has this big problem, and it’s just unrelenting. There is no optimal situation for ministry, right? I think that’s a Eugene Peterson line. I’m paraphrasing him, but basically he said that there are no optimal ideal circumstances for the pastoral vocation, and I think so many of us wait for that. Often we think to ourselves, Oh, if I could just get these two people off the team, I’ll be able to relax, and we’ll be able to keep going. Or man, if I could just get the budget up this much, because we just need these two new hires for these roles. If I could just get those people in place, we’ll be smooth sailing. And anybody who’s been in pastoral ministry for anything more than like six months, you know that that’s not true. It is untrue. There is no optimal circumstance or situation. It is all a long, slow, sometimes painful journey through the unknown. So, if that’s true, we have to choose. We can either just naturally default into reactivity, which is natural, or we can ask God by His Spirit to make us deeper, more reflective pastors. I think often of Pete Scusero. You know, emotionally healthy spirituality and his imagery of the iceberg. That all icebergs, you know, what you see above water is about 10%, but 90% of the iceberg is beneath the surface, and I think that’s where we do the work of disentangling from reactivity and leaning more into reflection. We have to reflect on what is beneath the surface. When something goes wrong, like as we’re recording this, this past Sunday during our second gathering. We have three gatherings across the morning. During our second gathering, while I was like 20 minutes into the teaching, into the sermon, I guess, we found out later, a tree fell on a power line, and our entire building lost power. And I was like in the middle of this big sort of key idea I was presenting, and all of a sudden everything shuts off. And in my body, what I felt in that moment was reactivity. I was angry. I was frustrated. What’s going on? I didn’t know what was happening, so in my mind, I was thinking like, did one of our staff accidentally? You know, all of that is happening in my body. And there’s no amount of planning that could have prepared us. There’s no amount of planning that could have prevented a tree from falling on a power line. It’s just that things happen. So the only choice I have is either I could react to this moment, or I can reflect and ask God, God, how might you use this unforeseen circumstance to help form our people, to help us become more of the people you’ve called us to be? What’s interesting is when that happened, I was actually teaching on the pace of peace. I was teaching about reactivity and reflection. I think being prepared for whatever comes our way, and choosing in advance to become the sorts of pastors who can lean into reflection, who can tap in regularly to the 90% that is beneath the surface of our lives, and to live with an awareness of it, and to surrender it to the Lord, and to ask God by His Spirit to work on that 90% beneath the surface, is what will help us become less reactive and more reflective. And serving and leading from a posture of surrender and humility. That God’s in control and that I’m not, and at the end of the day, all will be well because Christ has come and is coming again.

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, that’s good. That’s good. And in The Pace of Peace, you invite us to use this ancient tool, to examine, to help us in becoming more reflective. So, Jay, is part of the gift of the Examen that we’re able to revisit our lives with God rather than rushing on to the next experience, rushing on to the next thing, and that helps us kind of build this reflective muscle into our lives?

Jay Kim
I love the way you just said it. It is a muscle. So you think about just your own physical health. This morning I ran on my treadmill for 20 to 30 minutes before coming in to work. I can tell you right now, and this is true on 99% of the mornings when I wake up. I wake up around 5-5:30 because I have young kids, and so some of that time with the Lord and physical exercise, I have to do that before my kids wake up. So I woke up at five, my alarm went off, and I did not want to get out of bed. I just did not. But here we are. You and I are now sitting here many hours afterward, and I’m so grateful that I went for that run. I feel better now because I did, even though I didn’t want to. And the reason I’ll get up again tomorrow morning to lift some weights in my garage is because I’ve done it long enough to know that what my body’s telling me at 5:00 a.m. is that it’s not worth it, but I’ve done it long enough to know that no, no, no, it is worth it, and I’ll feel it in a few hours or a few days, and hopefully in the long run, in 10 years. I’ll feel the effects, and I’ll say, man, I’m so glad. I’m so glad that’s a rhythm in my life. And so it is with our spiritual lives. And the Examen, which comes from Ignatian spirituality, traditionally, the Examen is a prayer you pray typically at the end of the day. It moves in five movements. You first invite God to make you aware of His loving presence. You pray a prayer of gratitude, and then you reflect, particularly on something that was painful from your day, and then you confess where you sinned and wronged God or another, and then finally you ask God to help you as you head into the next day, a particular thing where you need God to step in and surrender your will to His will. So, I’ve been praying the Examen personally and actually with my family most nights for the last several years, and I can tell you, Jason, and most pastors are going to be able to relate to this. Most nights, it’s quite boring, and it’s pretty ordinary, but it is a muscle, and the effects are felt over the long haul. Like right now, because I’ve been practicing the Examen for several years, I feel its benefits not in the moment, but I feel its benefits in the sort of person I am becoming. And I think often of that beautiful Dallas Willard line that the thing God gets most from your life is the person you become. And so the Examen is an invitation to do that, and it is, as you said, which I think is such an astute point. It is a muscle that you exercise. It’s not something you do because you really feel inspired. You know, if I only ran on my treadmill and worked out in my garage when I felt like it, I would be so unhealthy because I so rarely feel like it. And I think, especially as pastors and leaders who are called to pour our lives out as a gift for others, we’ve got to stay in spiritual shape, which means the discipline of ongoing reflection. Maybe it is the prayer of Examen, or maybe it’s a different spiritual practice for you in this season, but I think that all of us need some sort of rhythm to exercise our spiritual muscles.

Jason Daye
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, brother. I love this, The Pace of Peace. As we’re winding down our conversation, you have the ears and eyes of men and women serving in ministry, what words of encouragement would you like to share with them, leave with them as we close down this conversation, brother?

Jay Kim
Yeah. Well, first of all, I would just say that if you are a pastor who finds him or herself weary and exhausted and overburdened, God is with you. You’re not alone. I want to remind you of Jesus’s invitation to come to Him. All you who are weary and burdened, come to Him. I think my temptation often is in my weariness when I am overwhelmed with the burdens of pastoral ministry, my temptation often is to run to leisure, to run to the next Netflix show that I can binge, or whatever it might be. And those things are not necessarily bad, but true rest for your soul is going to be found in deep, abiding communion with Jesus, who says that His yoke is easy, the burden is light. But I would also remind you, as a way of comforting you, even though it may not feel that way off the bat, there is a yoke and there is a burden, and you think about what a yoke is. A yoke is a farming instrument. It’s an agricultural instrument that would bind two animals together so that they would move as one. And so the yoke is not a burden that is laid upon you to carry on your own. A yoke is an invitation. To move as one with Christ, who wants to carry your weariness, carry your burdens with you, so you are not alone. Ministry is hard, but Christ is with you, and He carries that weight with you, and you don’t have to control outcomes. You can’t even if you wanted to. So just be faithful, and Christ will do the rest.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love it, brother. Good word. Good word, my friend. For those of you watching or listening along, I want to encourage you guys to pick up Jay’s most recent book, The Pace of Peace. Absolutely fantastic. Invites you into an opportunity to not just slow down, as we said, but to really be attentive in a world that’s very distracting. A world that naturally invites us to react. It invites you to really focus in and help you to be attentive. Absolutely wonderful book. You can find links to his book, along with a number of resources in the toolkit that we make available for this episode and every episode. You can find that toolkit at PastorServe.org/network, and there you’ll find a ton of free resources, including a Ministry Leader’s Growth Guide. And there you’ll find insights and questions pulled from this conversation that Jay and I just had, that you can work through on your own or with your ministry team at your local church or your ministry, and helps you dig more deeply into this conversation. We encourage you to grab that. Again, PastorServe.org/network. Brother, as always, it’s a joy to dive into a conversation with you. You mean so much to the church, and thank you. You’re a gift, my friend.

Jay Kim
Oh, man, I feel the same way about you, Jason. I love that you are serving pastors. We so need it. So greatly appreciate you. Thank you for having me on.

Jason Daye
Awesome, brother. Thanks for making time to hang out once again. God bless you, my friend.

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.