Effective leaders coach. They view colleagues as experts of their own experience, and they challenge and support their colleague’s thinking.
“Open-ended questions” have pride of place in this approach: what? and how? instead of yes-or-no queries. Michael Bungay Stanier, for example, says in his book The Coaching Habit:
Instead of moving into advice-giving, solution-providing mode, you ask the Focus Question: “What’s the real challenge here for you?”
Giving advice has its place. Someone may explicitly want our advice. And the world is full of contributors and leaders whose expertise–however much drawn out–is not sufficient to the tasks at hand. So I wrestle with this tack.
But I also know how valuable it is to be coached where my intelligence, experience, and problem-solving skills are respected. And I remain convinced, with Paulo Freire, that a “banking model” of imparting knowledge has limited effectiveness.
As I move more deliberately into the practice of coaching, I am taking seriously the power the coachee has to frame the issues, explore the points of leverage, and effect change. As Bungay Stanier says, “The essence of coaching lies in helping others and unlocking their potential.”
Sometimes when we lament a problem to another person, we want help finding solutions. Other times we want to be heard, seen, understood. We want to know another person is really there with us.
More than that, there’s power in knowing that what we lament, someone else laments too. That messed up reality I see? You see it too. I hear you say with me, “Yeah… that’s not okay!” Such solidarity brings comfort, validation, and even strength.
The apostle Paul addresses “the sufferings of the present time” in Romans 8. He points us to glory and calls us to hope, but not without deep empathy as he considers our current pain.
In response to suffering, there are three groaning parties in Romans 8:
All of creationgroans as it suffers under the weight of its “bondage to decay” (vv. 21-22).
We ourselves—“who have the firstfruits of the Spirit” groan within ourselves (v. 23).
The Holy Spiritgroans in wordless intercession for us (v. 26).
I am just beginning to appreciate how the Holy Spirit is standing in solidarity with us, specifically by groaning.
The “groan” roots are all there in Greek. (“Sighs too deep for words” in the NRSV is beautiful, but obscures the “groan” language.) But I missed the connections until reading a compelling essay this morning from Richard B. Hays’s Reading with the Grain of Scripture: “Pneumatology: The Spirit in Romans 8.” In considering what the Holy Spirit does, Hays makes powerful intertextual connections to Ezekiel, Isaiah, and especially Israel’s exodus narrative.
Hays says that all this groaning in Romans 8 is “describing creation’s bondage to death as analogous to Israel’s slavery in Egypt.” The groaning we hear and make now connects to the Israelites’ groaning under slavery in Exodus 2:23-24. Paul is now “envisioning the eschatological redemption of all creation as a new and final exodus, in which the whole created world will share in Israel’s experience of redemption and freedom” (p. 216, my emphasis). A “new and final exodus”? Yes, please!
In the meantime—and it’s a very long meantime, isn’t it?—we’re all groaning for freedom from suffering, “like a woman in labor”:
All creation groans
We children of God groan
The Holy Spirit groans
Hays shows these three as existing in a sort of chain of solidarity: (1) Creation groans, and (2) “the children of God share fully in creation’s suffering and agonized groaning.” The children of God groan, and (3) “God’s Spirit joins in the groaning.”
By groaning, the Holy Spirit is passionately expressing solidarity with God’s children and with all of creation.
The Spirit’s wordless groans are not just disconnected intercessions. I don’t think Paul is making an interesting but stand-alone point about how prayer really works. He’s saying that the Spirit’s groaning is God joining himself in active solidarity with an already-groaning creation and with an already-groaning family of children who are exhausted from their bondage.
The great I AM is also with us as the great I GROAN. “I will be with you” includes “I will groan with you.”
Just as Yahweh rescued Exodus, Paul speaks of hope and deliverance in Romans 8. God’s children and all of creation will be liberated, brought into freedom and glory! Thanks be to God.
Until then, we have a great fellow-Groaner who laments with us in the waiting.
Marley’s Ghost, by John Leech, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
After casting an unclean spirit out of a boy, Jesus takes his disciples away privately. Where does Jesus direct their attention after a triumphant encounter? Surprisingly, he points them to his own death:
And going out from there, they passed through Galilee, but Jesus did not want anyone to know, because he was teaching his disciples and saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be handed over into the hands of people, and they will kill him, and—despite being killed—after three days he will rise again.” —Mark 9:31-32, my translation
The repetition of “kill” is fascinating. Here’s a wooden read of the Greek, where the verb for kill (ἀποκτείνω/apokteinō) is repeated:
…and they will kill (ἀποκτείνω/apokteinō) him, and—being killed (ἀποκτείνω/apokteinō)—he will rise again.
The first use of “kill” is an active indicative verb: “they will kill him.” Jesus is the object of that verb, the recipient of the action of killing.
The second use of “kill” is a passive participle, with Jesus the subject, translated something like: “and despite his being killed….” Here Jesus is grammatical subject, not object, because he is also the subject of the main indicative verb that the participle modifies: “he will rise again.”
I draw two conclusions from this:
First, Jesus has gone from passive recipient of a heinous action (“they will kill him”) to active agent that overcomes it (“despite being killed, he will…”). As my friend Mark used to say, “That’ll preach!” I think of the oft-used protest mantra, that I preached about the other week: “They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.”
Second, Jesus is repetitive in saying, “they will kill him… and being killed he will….” I think Jesus is emphasizing his death on purpose.
Mark and Jesus don’t need to use “kill” (ἀποκτείνω/apokteinō) twice. In fact, in Mark 8:31, when Jesus predicts his death to his disciples, even a similar verbal formula uses “kill” just once. Perhaps because you can only kill a person once! Dead is dead.1
And yet in Mark 9, Jesus says “kill” twice. Maybe it’s because the disciples didn’t understand his impending death in Mark 8. So Jesus recapitulates the prediction here and adds some emphasis in hopes that they’ll get it this time in Mark 9.2 Maybe Jesus also wants to highlight the power of his resurrection—that he rose from the actual dead. He didn’t wake up from a merely “mostly dead” state:
In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol it says, “Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.” Dickens could have just said “Old Marley was dead!” Dead is dead. You either are or you aren’t.
But since Ebenezer Scrooge will see the ghost of Marley, Dickens wants to emphasize that it really is a ghost, because Marley really is dead when the story begins.
I think Mark and Jesus are doing the same thing here: “they will kill me, and—even though I’ve really been killed, dead as a doornail—I will rise again.”
Mark sets the stage here for a powerful response of awe when Jesus does rise again—from full-on, actual death, over which Jesus has authority.
Disclosure: I did not read through any commentaries before posting this, but I’m sure many commentators have seen the same thing. Fascinatingly, the NET Bible chooses NOT to translate the second “kill,” inexplicably chalking it up to “redundancy in the statement” in the Greek text. ↩
Early in 2023 I re-read the Gospels, paying close attention to how Jesus interacted with children. Going back to how much Jesus loved and honored children in his ministry has been transformative for me.
Now I’m leading a five-session Webinar series: A Little Child Shall Lead Them: A Biblical Theology of Children and the Kingdom of God. It’s free, and I’m offering it in the hopes that all of us might grow in how we understand, love, and advocate for children.
The series uses Accordance Bible Software’s Webinar platform, but you don’t need to have Accordance to participate. Details are in this one-pager; you can go straight to the registration landing page here. First session is this Wednesday (12/20) at 12p Eastern (Christmas-themed!), and then the first four Wednesdays in January.
R.L. Stollar’s new book vaulted into my Top 5 Books Ever before I’d even finished reading it. It’s called The Kingdom of Children: A Liberation Theology. (Publisher product page / $4.99 on Kindle now (affiliate link))
Book review and additional interaction forthcoming. For now: I haven’t stopped thinking about The Kingdom of Children since reading it. It’s already having the same impact on my thinking and pastoral practice as I’ve experienced from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and from the late Sang Hyun Lee’s From a Liminal Place. I wrote more about this here, with—I hope—more to follow.
Pais is the first—and only—theologian to dedicate an entire book to a child liberation theology to date. While various individuals and organizations have explored a theology of childhood or advocated for child theology, the specific topic of child liberation theology has received very little attention. My goal with this book is to change that and bring the vital conversation about child liberation theology forward to a new generation.
Time will tell to what extent Stollar meets his goal, but I’m 100% behind it. And for what it’s worth, both theorizing and practicing child liberation theology are now front and center with me. And for that I am grateful.
New Testament scholar Michael J. Kruger didn’t expect to write a book about spiritual abuse in the church, but—a couple of chapters in to his new book Bully Pulpit—I’m glad he did.
Kruger says:
I never expected to write a book on Christian leadership. And I certainly never expected to write this one. After all, my prior writing projects have been more on the academic side of the spectrum—mainly on early Christianity and the origins of the New Testament—and not on practical aspects of Christian ministry.
But what does any of us really know about what God might some day call us to? In lines that resonate with me, he goes on:
But sometimes God leads you down pathways you never imagined you would take. And sometimes you do things not because you want to but because they need to be done.
I know the feeling: I could only write each of these posts after firsthand and secondhand experience.
Bully Pulpit’s sub-title is: Confronting the Problem of Spiritual Abuse in the Church. Here’s Kruger’s definition of spiritual abuse:
Spiritual abuse is when a spiritual leader—such as a pastor, elder, or head of a Christian organization—wields his position of spiritual authority in such a way that he manipulates, domineers, bullies, and intimidates those under him as a means of maintaining his own power and control, even if he is convinced he is seeking biblical and kingdom-related goals.
Then he unpacks the definition:
“Spiritual abuse involves someone in a position of spiritual authority” (more on this below)
“Spiritual abuse involves sinful methods of controlling and domineering others” (i.e., the abuser is hypercritical, cruel, threatening, defensive, manipulative)
“Spiritual abusers seem to be building God’s kingdom (but are really building their own)”—this allows for an important intent vs. impact distinction
Kruger notes that defining spiritual abuse can be tricky, but that shouldn’t keep us from trying:
But sins that are more difficult to spot are still sins. Pride may be one of the worst sins, and yet it is remarkably difficult to prove in any given individual. Yet if such difficult-to-spot sins would disqualify a person from ministry (1 Tim. 3:3; Titus 1:7; 1 Peter 5:3; 2 Tim. 2:24), then the church is obligated to assess them even if the task of doing so requires more nuance and care. Can the church ignore these requirements merely because they are more subjective than others? One might argue that the pileup of churches wrecked by domineering leaders over the last decade shows that the church needs to do better in this area. We have ignored these requirements at our peril.
One element I especially appreciate in Kruger’s definition of spiritual abuse is that the abuser can be a person “in a position of [any] spiritual authority.” The abuser may not be in a positional of formal authority in the church, in other words. Their power may come from years of spiritual influence in a congregation. They may be a beloved church musician with informal authority but lots of power. They may be a long-serving elder or lay leader or popular Sunday school teacher who has waited out multiple pastors over the decades.
Kruger will come to focus, I think, on lead pastors or organization heads. This is as it should be, although I eagerly await someone’s book on spiritual abuse perpetuated from the so-called second chair–and the pew.
Either way, whoever spiritually abuses does so because they have spiritual power in a community, and they take drastic, hurtful measures to maintain it.
Jesus’s “Not so with you!” is a great refrain already in Kruger’s book. He will build to a positive vision of “creating a culture that resists spiritual abuse.”
For now, though, I’m grateful for his delineating what spiritual abuse is, since it offers shared, specific language for a practice that causes real and lasting harm.
I was invited to reflect recently: Why don’t people go to church?
In this post I list reasons I’m aware people don’t attend Christian services of worship.
(Note: there’s recent research on this question, which I consulted only after writing the below. I base my answers on personal experience and the experience of others.)
For a one-page printable PDF of the below, click here.
Why don’t people attend worship services? Some bullet points, in no particular order, some of which combine with and build on each other:
don’t want to
our task: to ask and learn why
maybe someone wants to go to church, but not as much as they want to do something else: coffee and read, sleep in, go to the beach, kids’ soccer, etc.
church is boring? (either actually, or perceived)
aren’t able to
ability/disability-related reasons
accessibility challenges: transport, having to work an inflexible job on a Sunday, not having a spouse or family interested in going, etc.
don’t feel safe (aren’t safe)
in particular, due to being abused by someone at/from church, whether physically, spiritually, or otherwise
church drama and church trauma—both are real and painful
burned out on the whole church experience
aren’t even thinking about church (Romans 10:14: “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?”)… this points to the need for sharing the good news with others
disincentivized by Christians
we may fail to be warm and welcoming
we may not be culturally sensitive or trauma-informed
we may be well meaning but say less than helpful things (e.g., “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.”)
we may not be intentional with our connection/discipleship pathway (e.g., here)
we may not be giving people Jesus!
Church’s reputation (deserved or not)
e.g., reputation of being close-minded, shallow, brainwashing, homophobic, sexist, politically bought off, etc.
larger cultural forces
individualism: idea that “I don’t need other people to be spiritual”
“have it your way”: piece together one’s own spirituality without restrictions and commitments of a church
COVID: idea that “During COVID, I realized I didn’t really need church anyway.”
mistrust of institutional authority (and of the Church specifically)
spiritual forces
I’d want to be wise and discerning in how we talk about this, but surely there is a spiritual battle—seen and often unseen—that influences if/when/how people come to church
are there ways we churches are quenching the Holy Spirit?
There are more reasons, including ones I’m not aware of or am slow to admit to, as a long-time churchgoer and pastor! I want to be open to learning here. I asked a dear friend of mine—who doesn’t go to church anymore—why he doesn’t, and he just sent me this.
What would you add to the list above, or push back on?
Great little book I’m reading: Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things. Chapter 1’s title poses a question: “How Could That Person Believe That Thing?” It’s a question I’ve asked many times. Including a question that—to be fair—I’ve tried to interrogate myself with.
Author Dan Ariely sets up his chapter with this brilliant insight from Leo Tolstoy, from 1897:
I know that most men (sic)—not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic problems—can very seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as to oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty—conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.
When the stakes are high, in arguments and in life, even the smartest among us may struggle to “discern even the simplest and most obvious truth” if it means saying we were wrong. There are just some positions people hold—even “very clever and capable” people—that no amount of logic or clear evidence can overturn.
So what to do? Push harder? Try a back-door or softer approach? Give up? Break up?
It depends, I think, on the impact a particular bad belief could have.
If my friend believes Dunkin’ makes good coffee, he’s laughably wrong, but so what? His assessment doesn’t hurt anyone. Let him drink his coffee-water in peace.
If my colleague campaigns against vaccinations, on the other hand, I’m going to spend more time thinking about how to push back, since that colleague’s approach impacts other people. (And it is a public health issue.)
As for changing either person’s mind… I don’t know. Maybe you just can’t? Or maybe I just haven’t cracked some code of persuasion yet.
That doesn’t mean give up. It doesn’t mean don’t speak up, especially if there’s an important voice not represented in the conversation that stands to lose something or be deprived of something. In such cases I find myself more likely to labor with/against “the falsity of conclusions they have formed.”
In the meantime, nodding my head and accepting Tolstoy’s insight (if somewhat regretfully) seems like an important step.
Too many to count were the college papers I finished writing at 3:00 a.m. that I knew were brilliant. Just stunning stuff that was going to land me in a peer-reviewed academic journal as an undergraduate.
Not only was I never published as an undergrad, but most of those papers—even as I groggily re-read them while walking to class later in the morning—turned out to be… not as amazing as I’d thought. My twilight assessment had been clouded by lack of sleep, caffeine, adrenaline, and repeat listens to Coldplay’s first album (you know, the good one).
A rare exception is a paper I wrote my senior year in Spanish, an extended review of Paulo Freire’s 1974 essay, “Las iglesias, la educación, y el proceso de liberación humana en la historia” (“Churches, Education, and the Process of Human Liberation in History”).
I titled my essay, “Gritar con los oprimidos: Una teoría de liberación para la juventud en el ministerio,” which in English is, “Shouting with the Oppressed: A Theory of Liberation for Youth in Ministry.” In true liberation theology fashion, I wrote the paper while active in youth ministry. And falling short of liberation theology ideals, I did not quote or amplify actual voices of young people in my essay. But I set out a theoretical framework that, in practice, powerfully shaped my ministry with youth in a well-to-do, predominantly white suburb.
I concluded (grandiosely, or inspired—let the reader decide):
In this model, we do not start with ourselves, but we start with listening to the voice of the oppressed person. In this way, the voice of the oppressed will be heard throughout the world. We use power in the fight with them against the elites and towards a new historical reality, constituted by us, and that reflects the glory of God on earth.
Today Freire’s longer Pedagogy of the Oppressed remains one of books that has most shaped me. I particularly thrilled, a few years ago, to be able to discuss Freire’s work and approach in detail with school educators in my congregation. I like to think that led to all of our teaching—in our respective spheres—shaping a reality more in line with the liberation Jesus longs to bring to the world.
Still, since writing my (real or imagined) pièce de résistance 20+ years ago, I’ve often found myself lulled into accepting the status quo in church settings. Liberation theology has been an afterthought. An after-praxis.
But our God is a liberating God, and that beautiful and powerful reality is brought to bear on God’s people throughout the pages of Scripture. And today, too: God still liberates—and longs to liberate—those who are oppressed and kept from living what Jesus called “life to the fullest.”
Having nearly forgotten my writing (and practice) around “Liberation for Youth,” I recently discovered child liberation theology. It’s awesome, Christocentric, generative, and powerful.
Here are four sources that I’ve loved sitting with as I seek to reintegrate this important framework—liberation theology—into my own life and ministry, with a particular focus on children:
1. The Gospels
Recently I slowly re-read the Gospels with an eye toward how Jesus interacted with children and other vulnerable populations. The read-through has been transformative for me. And not just temporarily so.
This week what’s really sticking out to me are two sayings of Jesus, both of which call for a centering of children in the Kingdom of God and in our own lives:
Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
— Matthew 19:14 // Mark 10:14 // Luke 18:16
And this gem, which I’ve seen less frequently cited, even in literature talking about Jesus and children:
Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
—Matthew 18:3
Unless you change! This is not just Jesus talking about how he loves children, or about how we adults should love children, but about how we should become like little children. To be faithful to Jesus, we have to stop and ask: How are little children, that we can become like them? In what ways do children know and wonder about and access and experience God, and how can I do the same?
Yes, we are to love children like Jesus does. And we are to love children like we love Jesus. But Matthew 18:3 is saying also: love Jesus like children do. We adults have a long ways to go on this one.
2. R. L. Stollar
I’ve spent hours reading his site already. But perhaps start here, with “Towards a Child Liberation Theology.” Take, for example, just this extraordinary paragraph, that is already beginning to invigorate how I read the Bible:
Child liberation theology thus begins with the Child that is Jesus and the children of all histories and locations who bear God’s image. And it places these children at the center of religious texts. It asks us to consider religious texts from the vantage point of those children — from the vantage point of Jesus as the God Child and all children as God images. Thus we must read our texts from the interpretive lens of these children. Children become the point from which all our exegesis and praxis must begin and end.
He has a great, accessible 8-page PDF called “Child Liberation Theology” that is freely available here.
EDIT: Especially valuable is Dr. Nessan’s summary of the method of liberation theology:
The method of liberation theologies consists of five elements: 1) identification with particular forms of oppression and suffering, 2) prophetic critique of that condition, 3) social analysis of the causes of oppression and suffering, 4) biblical and theological engagement to address that suffering and overcome that oppression, and 5) advocacy of structural change toward a greater approximation of justice.
4. My Children
Perhaps most important of all, I’ve found that as I’ve engaged with child liberation theology recently, I’ve become more likely to be with—and enjoy being with—my own children in an unhurried, unpressured way. How do they know and love God? How do they experience God’s love and talk about it? What insights do they want to share with me? What questions are they asking, and what questions and longings are behind those questions?
Child liberation theology offers hope not just for structures and for the world and for the church, but for individual family relationships. And child liberation theology is a powerful framework—rooted in the words and person of Jesus himself—that God uses to fulfill the glorious promise in Malachi 4:6:
He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.
TW: Abuse, Sexual Assault, Secondary Trauma Caused by Inept Institutions
Given their appalling history of enabling sexual abuse, one would wish Michigan State University would take care to do better than today’s letter firing football coach Mel Tucker.
MSU says it is firing Tucker “for cause.” The cause: sexually harassing a woman who survived sexual violence and was now working with MSU football in her job as an advocate and trainer for sexual violence prevention.
Had you not engaged in this inappropriate and unprofessional conduct, the University would not be subject to public disrespect and ridicule regarding your actions.
There it is—MSU paints itself as the victim. The offense? “Public disrespect and ridicule.”
Here is a missed opportunity to send a message of hope and healing to people who have survived sexual violence. Here is a missed opportunity to name specific behaviors and abuse dynamics and roundly condemn them. MSU needs to be asking: “How can we do right by a woman victimized by our football coach?” and, “How can we do right by all the survivors of sexual violence on our campus?” and, “How can we do right by all those young football players who take abuse prevention seriously?” and, “How can we affirm our commitment to safety and care at MSU?” Instead, it seems they are asking, “How can we save face and protect our university?”
And if the response is that they have to be judicious/cautious/whatever in writing, because they stakes are so high legally, consider: MSU could set a really positive example here by expressing care for those having experienced trauma and by standing against sexual abuse and harassment even while (especially while) under potential threat of a lawsuit. “The time is always right to do what is right.”
Let’s re-center Brenda Tracy, for a moment, whom I quote here because she has willingly gone on the record with USA Today:
The idea that someone could know me and say they understand my trauma but then re-inflict that trauma on me is so disgusting to me, it’s hard for me to even wrap my mind around it. It’s like he sought me out just to betray me.”
So allow me—a lowly blogger, but also a pastor and someone who longs for a world that better loves survivors of sexual violence—allow me to subject Michigan State University to some “public disrespect and ridicule” (better: to call them to repentance), but not for the reasons they have in mind:
MSU should apologize today for expressing more concern about its own reputation than about the impact of Coach Tucker’s abuse.
Words on the Word 