Spiritual Authority: What It Is and Isn’t : Jason Jensen

Full-Text Transcript

Jason Daye
Hey, friends, it’s Jason Daye here, host of FrontStage BackStage. Welcome back to another insightful episode. Each and every week, I have the privilege and honor of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader, all in an effort 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 ministry in the comments below. We love getting to know our audience better. We’ll be praying for you. And whether you join us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe and follow so you do not miss out on these great conversations. Really excited to be welcoming Jason Jensen to the show today. Jason serves as the Vice President of Spiritual Foundations for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA. His most recent book is entitled Formed to Lead. Jason, welcome to the show.

Jason Jensen
So grateful to be with you and have the two Jasons’ conversation here. Love what you’re doing with PastorServe, and the whole FrontStage BackStage paradigm is amazing. So, super grateful.

Jason Daye
Thanks, brother. Well, we’re grateful that you made time to hang out with us today. Jason, super excited because of your job. You have a great job. I love learning about what you get to do. So, you serve, you help, really, the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship team, the staff across the US, with spiritual formation. I mean, that’s what you get to do, which is an awesome job, helping them develop as Christ-followers, as leaders in Scripture, theology, spiritual disciplines, prayer, and all of those great things. So it must be a fantastic job that you have, right?

Jason Jensen
It’s such a gift to work with the leaders I get to work with, from our staff on the ground on campus, to leaders who lead them, to being a part of an organization that reaches across the country and partners with others. It’s just quite a privilege to work with amazing people.

Jason Daye
That’s awesome, brother. In your recent book, Formed to Lead, I love it, and we’re going to dive more specifically into some core things that you shared. But you basically paint this picture, and it’s beautiful, I think the book just beautifully walks alongside us as ministry leaders, whether we’re pastors, parachurch ministry leaders, or whatever that might look like, but this idea of what a faithful Christian leadership looks like, and of course, we turn to none other than Jesus, which makes perfect sense. Jason, I would love for you to start off, again, just broadly helping us understand. You turn to a particular place in Scripture as you worked on this book. So, can you give us just a general overview of why you turned this particular place, and what we are learning as we look at Jesus when it comes to leadership?

Jason Jensen
Yeah, I found myself surprised over many years by the beginning chapters of the Gospel of Luke. That Luke, in fact, is doing what we think he’s doing, but he’s also doing something more surprising and subversive, related to leadership in particular. So you think about the early chapters of Luke, and he names and mentions the supposed leaders of the day. Two Caesars are named from chapter one to chapter three. And then there are these two long lists at the beginning of chapter two and the beginning of chapter three, where Luke names governors, prefects, and tetrarchs, whoever they are, and some high priests as well. And of course, as commentators will suggest, Luke is being careful to set historical context. And he even says, This is part of what I’m doing. But he goes overboard in naming all these leaders in multiple lists. And I think he’s doing something a little bit subversive because then he puts them next to these other characters. Zachariah and Elizabeth, who are old, faithful, vulnerable, and humble. Mary, the single, expectant mother, rural, and poor. John, the weird, furry dude who eats bugs. Anna and Simeon in those chapters as well. Again, old, humble, and prayerful. And if we look then at Luke’s story, he’s telling, he’s saying, in fact, God is doing something absolutely revolutionary in history, and all those Caesars, governors, and stuff are just a footnote saying where that happened in time. But in fact, it’s Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Anna, Simeon, and some shepherds in a field who are clearly homeless at the time. They sleep outside. They’re involved in the revolution that God is bringing in history because they’re cooperating with what the Spirit is doing. So, overall, that big picture has informed where the book goes, which essentially says, the process of leadership for those who follow Jesus is really that we’re growing as disciples, requires tender humility, that allows us to discern the calling of God bit by bit, and that requires bold faith. You see the risks that people like Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary take. That’s bold faith going on. But my goodness, isn’t it true that God is forming people? God is the protagonist of history, and as we receive His formation in our own lives, then we can participate in his calling and what he’s doing in the world. So, God willing, we’re formed to lead, and our leadership leads to more formation, and our formation leads to discernment of where God’s calling us next.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s excellent. I love that, Jason. And I love this portion of Scripture. We often think of this as something we read around Christmas time and celebrate, which is beautiful, the way that Luke put that together. But the contrast is you’re sharing between the leaders of the world, and then these people that are being formed by the Spirit, and obedient and discerning of what God is doing in their midst, is a beautiful contrast. And a reminder for us who serve as pastors, as ministry leaders, in leadership. And so, Jason, I’d like to move toward this idea of spiritual authority. This is a conversation that’s not new in the world, obviously. Spiritual authority has been something that has been discussed for a couple millennia now, at least, if not longer. But, in our present world, in the contemporary world, when it comes to ministry, spiritual authority is something that we know. Unfortunately, we’ve seen it misused, abused, and misunderstood. So I really love what you pull out in Formed to Lead around this idea of spiritual authority. And we’re going to lean into this a little bit. But kind of leading up to it is this idea of character formation. And I loved how you presented this idea of, let’s take a look at the first 40 days of Jesus’ earthly ministry, or however we want to describe that. If we think, as pastors and ministry leaders, our first, whatever, couple of months in ministry, or new ministry role, what that looks like. But you framed that looking at Jesus. So talk to us a little bit. How did Jesus enter into this ministry that he was engaging in as a young adult?

Jason Jensen
Yeah. Well, I also think there’s in Luke 3 and 4 in particular, there’s kind of an archetype that Luke develops of the Messiah being anointed and beginning his ministry. In fact, in 3:23, I think, says Jesus was 30 years old when he began his ministry after he’s baptized in the Jordan, and the Spirit comes on him. So I see a progression there, where you see a repetition of the Spirit. The Spirit descends on him. Then he’s described as filled with the Spirit. Then he follows the Spirit’s lead into the wilderness, and he comes out of the wilderness full of the power of the Spirit and enters into Nazareth able to say, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for He’s anointed me to speak good news to the poor and recover sight to the blind. So, there’s this progression where the Spirit is going from Jesus receiving the Spirit, to following the Spirit, to being filled with the power of the Spirit. And that, surprisingly, happens by going into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. We imagine it like a coronation. The baptism of Jesus is like a coronation. The Father speaks, the Spirit falls. And you think, well, then the brother is going to go out and he’s going to do some impressive stuff right away. But rather, the Spirit leads him into the wilderness. He’s practicing spiritual disciplines out there, prayer and fasting. He’s clearly reflecting on one particular text of Scripture, Deuteronomy, where Moses is reflecting on what faithfulness in the wilderness looks like. And Jesus’ responses to the temptations of the devil are all from those early chapters of Deuteronomy. So, I find it really interesting that it is the shaping of the identity he’s received. The shaping, the testing of his character, becomes the place where he comes out with power and authority. So I just find that really interesting.

Jason Daye
Yeah, absolutely. And so as we look at that, thinking of a pastor or ministry leader, what can we be encouraged by as we see Jesus going into the wilderness, and how we can lean into that in our own ministry?

Jason Jensen
Yeah, well, what’s encouraging to me is that it seems, according to Luke and in fact, according to all the Synoptic Gospels, that spiritual authority comes from character formation, from growing in the likeness of Jesus. And that’s good news to me, because it means all the messages we receive that say, well, your authority has to be about success or charisma. How many of us in ministry, leadership, and especially pastors, feel like, well, they’re going to believe me if the church grows, or if I can do something super impressive today, then that’s going to feel like I’m anointed as a leader. And perhaps the Gospel says differently. That it’s the extent to which our hearts and minds, our embodied selves, are shaped in the shape of Jesus. To that extent, the Spirit is empowering us. I just find that quite hopeful.

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, absolutely. Let’s lean in a little more on this spiritual authority because you share some things that spiritual authority is, rather than what many of us think it might be. You just mentioned charisma there. So you talk about the idea of spiritual authority being integrity, not charisma. So, can you unpack some of these things that help us better understand what spiritual authority is versus what we might mistake it for?

Jason Jensen
Yeah, and let me start by saying authority is really complicated, right? There are different kinds of authority. There is positional authority, and most of us have bosses of some kind or another. Thanks be to God. Somebody has authority to help direct us. There are lots of different kinds of authority, and we choose to whom we give authority in our lives as well. So I find that perspective helpful. Gosh, it helps me to think of character and integrity as what I will look to when I decide to whom to give authority in my life. So rather than looking around as a pastor, for a pastor who’s awesome and is getting a lot of affirmation, or a pastor who is shiny and their frontstage persona seems quite charming, I wonder if I ought to look for a pastor to follow who it seems like their frontstage matches their backstage. Well, that’s what I want to become more like. So it does help me to think about who I give authority to in my life, and thinking about that in terms of integrity, rather than charisma. And in fact, it might make me a little bit skeptical of charisma. I think about the smell of leaders around me. That’s a weird way to say it. But there is sort of a sensory approach, where you can get a sense of Oh, I think this person is being honest to the core. I think this person might be the same in private and in public. I think this person may actually have spiritual disciplines that he or she doesn’t have to tell me about because they’re actual, real, desperate for God, spiritual disciplines. Gosh, that’s who I want to follow, and that’s who I want to become, as I expect others to follow me. I want people to follow me for a sense of integrity and a sense that I have something in relationship with God and am humbly becoming something new every day that they like to be a part of, not because they’re attracted to success, or some whatever tricky thing you know how to do.

Jason Daye
Absolutely yeah. The idea really is that we’re looking for a mentor in ministry, someone to journey with in ministry. Someone who can pour into us as we’re pouring into others. This idea of, yeah, whether they have the biggest social media following or not, isn’t really why we should select them. We’re looking for people who are just serving with integrity. Kind of their backstage, as you said, matches their frontstage. You also talk about the idea of spiritual authority being love, and you contrast that as well. So when we think of the idea of spiritual authority being love, what are we leaning into, and what are we kind of shying away from?

Jason Jensen
Well, looking at Jesus, we see a person who, if we’re measuring by success or manipulation or any number of things, control, well, questionable, right? His life looks rather downwardly mobile. And yet, what we see is someone who’s loved from the very beginning to the very end. And I just think our desire to grow in spiritual authority must be directed in that same way. How can I, in a month, or a year, or a decade, become a person who loves more, who loves God more, who loves other people more, and who gives away more? As opposed to, how can I grow in authority by becoming stronger in control, manipulation, or success? That would seem like the place where the Spirit actually becomes poured out. So if we set our sights on growing in love, I think we also get the power of the Spirit in that place. And I just think we often don’t, we misperceive where the power of the Spirit comes. We think it might be knowing how to do the thing just right, or it might be some kind of a particular approach to spiritual gifts, or to charismatic in any sense of the word. Whether it’s charismatic in a particular kind of experience of the Spirit, which is valid, right? Or charismatic in terms of being a charming person, which is also valid. But, actually, if we look at Jesus, the Spirit is poured out in his love, not in his tricks or knowing the right way to do something, but rather in the way that he gave his life away to others. I think it should be so for us as well.

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. I love it. And then you shift it from the idea of love into this idea of holiness, and you touched on this a little bit, versus pragmatism. And so how do we look at the holiness of Christ and what that means for us as we are leading, whether it’s a local congregation, a ministry team, how does that relate to spiritual authority?

Jason Jensen
Great question. Quick Bible nerd detour on that one. I think it’s fascinating. In all the synoptic gospels, Jesus is tempted in the wilderness, and then later, there comes a place where people accuse him of casting out demons by the prince of demons, in some way. And Jesus, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, goes to an image from there that says, No, a house divided can’t stand. And when you see a strong man bound, that’s when somebody can plunder their house. So, in all three gospels, we’ve got to ask, okay, Jesus is saying, I bound Satan, and therefore I was able to plunder his goods, which I take as casting out demons, healing bodies, proclaiming the gospel. Where does that happen? Where was the strong man bound in Matthew, Mark, and Luke? When I look back, Jesus starts plundering goods when he comes out of the wilderness of temptation. Isn’t that amazing? So, it wasn’t some fancy saying that bound the strong man, or some impressive this or that. It was saying no to the temptations of the enemy and saying yes to the identity, affection, and pleasure that the Father had just spoken over him. So, spiritual authority, I think, is our integrity and humility, that when we’re tempted by the enemy, which, friends, don’t we know we are every day? When we begin to learn to say no to the enemy’s temptation more and say yes more to the identity, affection, and pleasure that the father pours out on us, well, gosh, if that’s true, then that’s where we need to go in order to develop more spiritual authority. And again, of course, that’s in a humble way, and I appreciate the way that you, Jason, and others communicate well that pastors ought to have mentors, therapists, spiritual directors, and friends who help us on this journey. But, gosh, our spiritual authority, and I believe the power of the Holy Spirit on us, is actually won in the day-to-day trenches of beginning to believe God a little bit more, beginning to be healed of my wounds, and beginning to say no to the temptations of the enemy. So, pastor, be encouraged, the day that you say no, the Spirit is upon you in greater power today. The day that you decide to ignore the particular pull of social media in one way or another, or whatever those little in the trenches things that happen for us, the day that you decide to stop and listen to the Lord in solitude and silence, well, that may be a day that, on the deeper level, you’re growing in the authority of the Holy Spirit to bring the message of the Kingdom of God in power in reality within the place that God has called you.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s excellent, Jason. I love that. That’s so helpful. So, we’ve looked a little bit at this idea of how character is formed, reflecting on Christ, spiritual authority, and the power of the Spirit. What it is. What it isn’t. It kind of begs the question, and I appreciate the fact that you help us answer this question in Formed to Lead, the idea of not only what spiritual formation is, or spiritual authority, rather, but when you look at spiritual authority, what does spiritual authority actually do? What does it look like? What is the impact of spiritual authority? Because, again, spiritual authority can be abused or misused. So we’re looking at Christ. We’re looking at the kingdom. What does spiritual authority actually do?

Jason Jensen
I think that the most primary invitation to that is spiritual authority praise. I’ve had a number of seasons in my life where the Lord has invited me to become a person of prayer. So, not become a leader who prays, but become a praying person who happens to lead. Because I have a job or a calling in that direction, and gosh, that’s a lifetime of transformation, little by little, and I feel like I’m just a little bit along that journey. But what does it look like to become a person of prayer? I tell a story in the book of a season where I was first directing a team of missionaries, and the Lord, as clear as I could tell, invited me in that season to pray more and do less. Now, I was raised as a doer. If any of the things mean anything to you, strength-finder, achiever, Enneagram one, very high J on the Myers-Briggs. I like to get stuff done, I work hard, and carry my broken identity, my work, and all that kind of stuff. So, the challenge from the Lord to pray more and do less was a pretty serious challenge for me, and I made some decisions about the time I would spend in prayer, and what that meant was that left over were smaller than before. And I got to the end of that year and was having a debrief with one of the most beloved people that I was supervising and encouraging that year, Julian, and he was disappointed. He was sad that I didn’t spend as much time with him that year as I had the year before, and that broke my heart because my decision to pray more had a cost that disappointed one of the friends that I love. Then he and I looked back over the year and asked, What did God do in you, and what did God do in the ministry? And we were surprised and grateful to see, actually, I think it was better because mysteriously, God had done things in the ministry, had done things in Julian’s life, and had, inch by inch, made me a more prayerful person. It was a win in the end, but costly. So I would ask on that main thing, that spiritual authority prays, might there be an invitation for some of y’all who are listening or watching to pay a cost this year to become a more prayerful pastor or ministry leader. And what might the Lord do if that were the case? Again, inch by inch, we grow little by little, and we’re all failures in prayer to some degree. But what might the Lord be saying on that?

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. I love that idea of leaning into prayer as a spiritual practice. I love how you frame that not just a leader who prays, but a person of prayer who is also invited by God to lead. And I think that that’s a good way to frame it because, oftentimes, prayer becomes part of our kind of to-do list as ministry leaders. That’s one of the things that we do, right? I think that’s a good differentiation. So thank you for that, Jason. When we’re thinking of other things that spiritual authority does, prayer, obviously, is a big one. But what are some other things that we can consider?

Jason Jensen
Yeah, I think there are. I don’t have the list from that chapter in front of me, but I think spiritual authority repents and asks for forgiveness. If we’re remembering that spiritual authority is growing in integrity, then that means I need to learn confession and repentance, and to apologize well to people, and that is counter-cultural in a lot of our Christian cultures, where authority means you’re the strong one, you’re always asserting something, and less often asking something. I have memories of raising our kids, who are now delightful adults, of the gut check it is to learn to apologize to my kids. Yet, what I found when I began to be able to recognize, oh, that way that I disciplined you, or the way that I interacted with you in this situation, that was because I was afraid of something. I am so sorry that I spoke that way to you, and I want to learn to be better. Well, that actually, I think, added to my authority with my children, to learn to apologize to them. I find that true in leadership consistently. It’s more likely that transparency gains a sense of integrity and spiritual authority in my leadership settings than obfuscating or telling the shiny story. I think, actually, the messy story sometimes gives greater integrity to the whole team, and being able to ask for feedback and apologize, that has gone a long way, in my experience, to gaining genuine spiritual authority, rather than the fake stuff.

Jason Daye
Yeah. That’s so good. So good, Jason. One thing that I’m curious about, Jason, if you could help us think through. What are some things that we need to be cautious about when we think of the idea of spiritual authority? Like, what are maybe some red flags, or some things that could take us down the wrong direction? Because, again, helping to fully understand spiritual authority and not make it something it’s not, I think, is super key for us as leaders.

Jason Jensen
Absolutely, yes. And whenever we think and use the language of spiritual authority, we must remember spiritual abuse. Spiritual abuse often happens when a leader is claiming and demanding a level of spiritual authority, and that, I think, is really the opposite of what I see Luke developing by showing Jesus gaining spiritual authority through integrity and character formation. So, I think we need to beware of those around us demanding authority in our lives, and we need to beware of our own temptation to demand authority in others’ lives. I do believe the spirit rests upon us miraculously with authority, and yet authority also must be given willingly by those who will follow. So I do think we need to be aware of that demanding and claiming spiritual authority, because it often tips over into arrogance and abuse.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s super helpful. Jason, as we’re kind of winding down our conversation, in your book Formed to Lead, you really focus in on these things that we see in the life of Jesus early on in his ministry. The humility, the character, the integrity, and the discernment. And when we think of this idea of spiritual authority and being empowered by the Spirit, obviously, these elements are all not only present that we see in the life of Jesus, but something that we’re invited into ourselves to experience spiritual authority. And anytime that we’re caught up in things that are pulling away from the idea of humility, character, integrity, or real discernment, versus just, hey, moving in the direction that I think is best, or just what I think is going to work out the best. This helps us align ourselves with the true spiritual authority that we’re gifted and invited into, right?

Jason Jensen
Yes, absolutely. And I do think discernment is key there. I’d qualify by saying strategy is great. I believe in strategy and efficiency and all those kinds of things. And when there’s a choice to do the right thing efficiently and strategically versus like inefficiently and dumbly, well, we choose that. And yet, if our leadership is called by God, and if we’re cooperating in what God is doing in the world, discernment is more primary than strategy and efficiency. So, we’ve got to ask, Spirit, what are you doing in me? What are you doing in the world? And how might I get involved in that? That’s complicated because we’re not great at discernment. So, we have to learn disciplines along the way in order to perceive what God is doing and enter into it. So, I do just think that discernment piece is really key, and discerning well means we enter with humility, we seek integrity, we receive the love of God, and all of that, and we do so in community with others who can speak into our lives.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s excellent, and that’s another key point, I think, in helping us avoid spiritual abuse is this idea of true discernment in community, and what it’s rooted in, as you just shared, Jason. I think that’s absolutely key. Jason, you have the ears and eyes of pastors, ministry leaders, men, and women serving. What words of encouragement would you have for them today?

Jason Jensen
I would say this. There’s a lot that we could be cynical about out there. There are a lot of leaders that we could be concerned about, and yet there is a deeper way, and it is possible to cooperate with the leadership of the Spirit in our lives. It is possible, day by day by day, to grow in integrity, in prayer, in humility, in discernment, and that is the way to a life of seeing the kingdom of God break in as the Lord decides to. So, I just would say that there is a deeper way. Be encouraged to take little steps on that deeper way where our frontstage and our backstage become congruent. Where we learn to listen and follow the lead of the Spirit. So grateful that there is hope in days when we can be discouraged or concerned about some of what we see.

Jason Daye
Amen. Great word, brother. Well, I certainly appreciated your newest book, Formed to Lead, and we just kind of scratched the surface of just one small portion of it. There’s so much there. So helpful. And I love the way you walk us through Luke chapters 1 through 4, and just help us understand what faithful, authentic, Christ-centered leadership really looks like. So, for those of you who are watching or listening, we do have our toolkit for this episode. We create one for every single episode. In the toolkit, you’ll find a ton of resources, including links to Jason’s book Formed to Lead. Also, we have in there a Ministry Leaders Growth Guide where we pull key insights out of this conversation and then create questions for you to process through on your own, or we encourage you to do this with your ministry team at your local church and your local ministry, to really dig more deeply into this important conversation we’ve just had around character formation and spiritual authority and what that looks like in our leadership. So, be sure to check that out at PastorServe.org/network. Jason, absolute privilege to have you with us today. Thank you for making the time and taking the time out of your schedule to spend time with us here on FrontStage BackStage.

Jason Jensen
So grateful for the chance. Thank you for doing what you do.

Jason Daye
Awesome, brother. God bless you.

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.