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Podcast: How to Become Fluent in the Gospel (Jeff Vanderstelt)

December 14, 2020 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Do You (Really) Know Jesus?

In this episode, Jeff Vanderstelt discusses what it means to be fluent in the gospel and why that’s an essential part of what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus. He reflects on his own journey as a pastor and efforts to cultivate a culture of gospel fluency in the churches where he has ministered, highlights why the concept of the missional community is so central to how he views what the church is called to be, and unpacks why living in light of the gospel should impact literally every facet of our lives as God’s people.

Gospel Fluency

Gospel Fluency

Jeff Vanderstelt

Teaching believers what it looks like for the gospel to become a natural part of our everyday conversations, Vanderstelt shows that the good news about Jesus impacts every facet of our lives.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:54 - A Vision for a Church Culture of Gospel Fluency

Matt Tully
Jeff, thank you so much for joining me on The Crossway Podcast today.

Jeff Vanderstelt
It’s good to be with you.

Matt Tully
I think it’s fair to say that you are a very busy man. You’re the lead teaching pastor at Doxa Church in Bellevue, Washington, the founder and chairman of the board of a ministry called Saturate, and the visionary leader of the Soma Family of Churches. On top of that, perhaps most importantly, you’re a husband and a father. I guess my first question for you is: When do you sleep?

Jeff Vanderstelt
I usually get a good 7–8 hours a night.

Matt Tully
Do you really?

Jeff Vanderstelt
The key is getting really good teams and really good leaders. Every one of those things you just mentioned that I have leadership over has an executive director or a really good on-the-ground, hands-on leader leading a lot of the day to day, which I’m not as good at. I just know what I’m good at, try to do what I’m best at, and try to let others do the things they’re best at. So, with every one of the organizations you named, I could have listed that all the reasons are connected to people that I really trust that lead really well.

Matt Tully
How would you describe what you feel like you’re particularly gifted for?

Jeff Vanderstelt
One, I have a very realistic but hopeful view of the future, so the ability to be confident about what God’s going to bring about because of Jesus’ power through the gospel. I’m good at casting vision of what I believe to be a biblically-informed but realistic and hopeful vision of the future that people want to give their life to. So that’s one thing I think I do well. The other thing is God tends to use me to catalyze, to stir up energy and excitement about what his Word teaches, especially in terms of getting on mission in everyday life. So there’s a catalytic strength I bring to moments in a situation. And then I have an ability to kind of architect how a church or a person would begin to live that out in terms of painting a strategic picture forward. I think I teach the Word in a way that’s not just informative but very compelling. I’m a hands-on, grassroots kind of guy. People talk about me and say I live at the sixty-thousand foot level of vision and at the grassroots of everyday life. It’s the in between stuff that I need a lot of help with. So that’s how I think God uses me to serve others. And I have an ability to be pretty present in the moment, and so people generally have a sense that I hear them, I see them, and I’m able to enter into whatever the situation. So there’s this kind of fluidity that is missionary-like in that sense—I can get into a context and quickly assess what is needed for the moment and then enter in and bring those skills that I just described.

Matt Tully
When you talk about the sixty-thousand foot level view and being able to cast a big vision and get people excited about a big goal, do you feel like there are times when the people that you’re working with (people who are better at connecting A to Z and all those middle steps that are important) do you feel like your vision ever needs to be tweaked or nuanced because of that? Is there a tendency to oversimplify things or not think of certain dynamics?

Jeff Vanderstelt
Absolutely. I planted a church in Tacoma called Soma, and Tacoma is a very different context than Bellevue. Coming to Bellevue and taking all these things that I did in Tacoma that we saw God really bless and then coming to the eastside of Seattle, which is a very different context, and try to do the same kinds of things—the joke people said at one point was, Jeff, you can cast the vision at the top of Mount Everest, but most people are still drunk at base camp. That was the way that others put it—you’ve got to get down there and meet them where they’re at. The trek up the mountain may look very different than it did in Tacoma, and so I really needed to hold loosely some of the ways that I used to do it in one place and allow others to shape that. That wasn’t easy at first, if I’m honest. It was really a struggle to let go because I think we can fall into method-olatry where our methods are what we love more than anything instead of the heart of the gospel and the mission of Jesus and however he might want to get us there. In that situation, I had to trust that the people who were there longer and knew the challenges probably had some better ways forward than I did to connect the A to Z, to use your language.

Matt Tully
For those who are less familiar with your story: In 2015 you were asked to become lead teaching pastor at Doxa Church, which is formerly Mars Hill Church, just outside of Seattle. Was the transition hard, in part, because you were moving not only into a very high-profile role for various reasons but you also became the head of a pretty large church that seems like it was very different in terms of the model of church that you were leading before? I think Soma was maybe a smaller, more intimate, less heavy on the programming side of things, and emphasized more of a simple church model—was that part of the challenge that you were having to wrestle through?

Jeff Vanderstelt
For sure. The way I would say it is that at Soma we saw Sunday as mobilizing everyday, and at Mars Hill—and subsequently Doxa—the group life seemed to point more towards Sunday. So, the goal tended to be more to get people to Sunday, whereas at Soma the goal was to get them from Sunday—sending from Sunday to everyday life. That’s oversimplifying it, but if I had to simplify it then that’s how I would say it. The challenge of helping people realize that Sunday wasn’t going to be the discipleship center, that everyday life in the home with people in missional communities in what we call DNA groups—which are triads of men and women who are really going after the heart together—that’s where a lot more of the discipleship would happen. That was a big shift, and that did not happen quickly. I would say now that is who we are, five and a half years into it. When I came I said I thought it would take five to seven years to make a transition, and I feel like we’re there now. We don’t downplay Sunday, it’s still very important; but the trajectory is different. We’re moving from Sunday to everyday, not from everyday to Sunday.

8:52 - What Is Missional Community?

Matt Tully
That’s interesting. I think that’s probably one of the other things that you’re best well-known for is you’re the missional community guy. At least, I know that’s how I thought of you and that’s how some of my friends thought of you a number of years ago. For those who maybe aren’t super familiar with that term, what are you getting at with those two words?

Jeff Vanderstelt
The concept is that every Christian is a missionary, and we’re always on mission. If you have the Spirit of God, it’s because the Spirit of God has been given, like Jesus said in Acts 1:8, so that we might be his witnesses. We’re sent and empowered by the Spirit just as Jesus was empowered and sent by the Spirit: “As the Father sent me, even so I am sending you” he says. And then he breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit”—that’s in John 20. So there’s the concept that we’re all missionaries, and we’re not to do it alone. You don’t see any of the missionary work of Jesus and his disciples done in isolation. You have a rare occasion with Philip, for example (Acts 8), but the majority of the time they went together—they were in homes, marketplaces, temple courts—they were together. There was a sense that you could see what the family of God looked like by watching how the disciples loved one another. That itself became a witness to the power of the gospel to transform and reconcile. The idea of a missional community is we’re always on mission to make disciples of Jesus, and yet we’re meant to do it together with others. It’s the tension of mission and community together, whereas people tend to swing the pendulum between the two: We’re all about community, but we’re not on mission to make disciples. Or, We’re all about making disciples, but we’re all doing it as individual evangelists. Both of those are ineffective and really are not in line with the biblical picture that you see of Jesus and his disciples and with the early church. So that’s really what it is—it’s a smaller group of people committed to love one another, to be a picture of the kingdom of God breaking in as we serve tangibly, and then to be ready to give an answer for the hope that’s in us through a verbal witness, hopefully then making disciples in the context of community. I think what most often happens within the church is if Sunday is the primary means by which people come to faith—which, these days, hardly anybody is able to do that very effectively because non-believers are not going to church—they have to then teach them what it means to be a disciple. But if they’re coming to faith in the midst of a community that are disciples, then they’re being discipled before they even come to faith. They already know what it means to be a Christian because they’ve been in the midst of your community observing it long enough so that when they become a Christian they understand what it means. They don’t need a new believer’s course necessarily, which is what usually happens when you have no communal mission, because they actually haven’t seen it yet.

Matt Tully
I think often the way we tend to think about evangelism is that it’s bringing people to some kind of event. Maybe we invite them to Sunday morning and if you do that, then you are really taking a step out. Maybe you are actually sharing the gospel with somebody, but it’s as if you’re looking for that conversion decision and then getting them to church so that they can be discipled. But you’re saying that you think that’s out of whack as to what we’re actually called to do?

Jeff Vanderstelt
It puts a lot of weight on Sunday. It also puts a lot of weight on one person, and usually it’s the person who is preaching. In a day when we see a ramping up of narcissism and codependency in the leadership of the church—which that’s a whole separate topic, but that is real—the reason why is because we’re lifting up one person so high and putting so much weight on that one person to do what really the whole church is supposed to do. We’re all called to make disciples; we’re all called to share the gospel. So, I think it’s problematic on that front, but then the other front is that most people are going to need to you—and I’m talking about “you” as the normal, everyday Christian—they need you to share the gospel because if you don’t know how to talk about Jesus, they think that only the pastor is the one who really believes this stuff and you are kind of an infant in it. Like, I don’t know how to talk about it at all, so I’ll bring you to my pastor and let him talk about it. What that does is it perpetuates the problem, which is most people are never going to meet Jesus because how many people are actually going to make it to a Sunday? So few! So the gospel witness is so devoid of presence. The language we use is: where you live, work, learn, and play—your neighborhood, your workplace, your school or recreational places. The presence with the gospel witness is just not there. The other problem is that people then don’t think the gospel has anything to do with everyday life. They believe it has to do with Sunday: Sunday is about the gospel, but not Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. My afterlife—it’s an entry point—the gospel is good news for that, but not my work life. So, you don’t get this idea that the gospel is for all of life. Therefore, what we have is we have lives that are very, very much lacking the power of God—because the gospel is the power of God for salvation— and lacking this saturation with the good news of Jesus. Most of our life isn’t about Jesus at all. So we have this Jesus-centered life for an hour or two on Sunday, and that’s it.

Matt Tully
It’s almost like we compartmentalize the gospel. Is that another way to say it what you’re getting at?

Jeff Vanderstelt
Yeah. Tim Keller is famous for saying, Many people think the gospel is the ABC’s of Christianity, but it’s really the A to Z. So yeah, we compartmentalize. We have this secular/sacred divide in most of our minds. We won’t say it that way, but if you were to ask most people, Tell me how the gospel changes how you work. Tell me how it changes your relationships. How does it affect the way you treat your neighbors? Even in this cultural moment we’re in right now, and I won’t get into too much, but in the racial conversation most people don’t know how the gospel applies to that. In fact, they think if you talk about it you’re walking away from the gospel instead of saying, The gospel is all about reconciliation, with God and man. So, it does have something to say. Do we know how to apply to the gospel to this present moment? I think many do not.

15:18 - What Is Gospel Fluency?

Matt Tully
That concept of learning how the gospel applies and how to actually bring it into the everyday life is something you call “gospel fluency.” Can you explain why you chose that metaphor—the metaphor of fluency—as a helpful way to think about this issue?

Jeff Vanderstelt
The heart of it comes from Ephesians 4:15 where Paul is talking about growing us up in love and maturity. He defines maturity as Christ. Christ is the new man, the true picture of what it means to be human. To grow us up into Christ we have to speak the truth in love in all things, he says. In other words, in every area of your life you need to know how to speak the truth in love. Most people hear that and they think, Oh, so you have to say hard words to one another because people have made that a short phrase to say, I love you, brother, and I’ve got to say something difficult, so I’m just going to speak the truth in love. That does happen, but that’s not what Paul means in that passage. Later in Ephesians 4:21 he says the truth is in Jesus. So Paul is basically saying we’re speaking the truth about Jesus—his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension, even his present intercession before God the Father—we’re learning how to speak those truths into everyday life. That’s the only way we’re going to grow up into the fullness of Christ, into maturity. We grow up into Christ by speaking the truths of Christ and then walking and believing in faith in those realities and hopes. If anybody has ever learned a language, they know there’s a difference between cultural immersion and learning it in a classroom. In a classroom you learn vocabulary and sentence structure, and most of those people are still terrible at the language. But to attain fluency, you have to get immersed in a culture where they speak it. You know you’re fluent when you stop translating in your head. Like, I’m listening to Spanish; what does that mean in English; what do I want to say in English; now I have to translate in my head back to Spanish, and then I say it out loud in Spanish. People who are fluent don’t do that. They hear Spanish, think Spanish, process Spanish, feel Spanish, and then speak Spanish. Eventually you even dream it and you don’t know you’re doing it. So the concept of fluency is that I can take in the world with the gospel. I’m listening with gospel ears, I’m thinking with gospel heart and content and realities, and then when I’m speaking it out it’s all coming out with the gospel being the primary language. Another way to think about it is that you always speak the mother tongue that you were born into. We’re born into the family of God through the very Word of the gospel, so it ought to be our mother tongue in that sense. It really is how we filter the world, think through the world, process our own internal world, and hopefully speak it out into a world that desperately needs the good news of Jesus.

Matt Tully
What’s the difference between the gospel fluency that you’re advocating for and maybe a simplistic, over spiritualized response to every challenge we might face in life that’s essentially just like, Well, you just need to remember the gospel and everything will be okay; or, You just need to believe the gospel more. What would you say to someone who’s hearing you speak and they’re thinking it sounds like you’re kind of pushing for that—it feels very shallow, even though it says the right word (gospel)?

Jeff Vanderstelt
Right. That’s not helpful when people say, You just need to believe the gospel because what do you mean by that? A good example in this situation would be this: If I’m disciplining my kids and I watch my son, who tends to go towards shame—even as a teenager he will still kind of cover up under a blanket when he’s feeling the shame of his sin—I’m not going to just say, Caleb, you need to believe the gospel. I’m going to actually bring the gospel. I’m going to say, Son, I want to remind you that you’re dearly loved by God. You don’t have to hide. God saw you before you even had faith in Jesus, as a sinner, as one who was in rebellion. And yet, we know the gospel tells us while we were yet still sinners, Christ died for us. Christ demonstrated his love for you in that. When you weren’t even running toward God, God loved you, saw you, he sent his Son to die for you to remove the shame you’re experiencing and cover that with his righteousness. I don’t have to say all that every time because my son has heard me say that so many times. So in that moment I may just say, Caleb, remember that you don’t have to hide. I know you’re feeling shame over your sin, but remember what God has done for you in Christ. You can pull back the covers and we can talk. So that might happen. Or, I might be having a conversation with someone who’s had a really bad day at work. As they were working through it, they realize that the reason they’re having such difficulty thinking through that work day is because they felt really rejected by their boss. They might have failed at the job that day, and so I can remind them, Your sense of significance is not in your work. In fact, if it is, then we’re still believing in a works salvation—that your identity and even the way your standing is sustained before God is through how well you work—if that’s what you believe, then we’ve walked away from the truth of the gospel which says that your standing is in how well Jesus worked. His righteousness is now your righteousness by faith in Christ. Now I’m not just talking about the death of Christ; I’m actually talking about the life of Christ in that moment because he lived a life that was perfectly acceptable and obeyed God absolutely and in every way that we don’t. So we can rest when we go to work. We are going to fail. We are going to fall short. But we have a far better righteousness and a standing before God because of that. So, it’s that kind of application of the gospel that we’re talking about. It’s not just, Okay, I know you had a bad day at work. Believe the gospel! C’mon! That’s not helpful at all. It’s actually taking the truths of the gospel and speaking into a person’s life in a way that, even as I was doing it, hopefully someone who is listening is like, Oh man, that’s good news! And you’ve known that you’ve done it well because it sounds like good news. That’s what the gospel means—good news. So when I’m done, you should go, Thank you so much. I needed that. That changes the way that I look at my whole day.

21:50 - Roadblocks to Gospel Fluency

Matt Tully
It’s maybe a favorite past time for Reformed folks like us to be a little bit critical of the seeker kind of church where people can just come, walk in the back door, sit down, watch a show of sorts, and then they leave; and that’s all there is to it. I wonder, are there things in the way that we even think about the church, and maybe corporate worship in particular, that you think can contribute to this mindset— that there are experts in the church who are doing the ministry and maybe I don’t need to be as fluent in the gospel because there’s certain emphases that make it not as important, practically speaking?

Jeff Vanderstelt
It’s interesting in terms of the Reformed context, which I belong to so I’m going to tell on myself a little bit. I do think in some cases we’ve raised up certain people pretty high. We have such a value of the preaching of the Word, which is great, we should. But therefore, the ones who preach it are elevated because of the value of preaching. What that can do—and I don’t like this language, but I’m going to use it for a moment—the clergy/laity divide is quite high.

Matt Tully
Why do you say you don’t like that language?

Jeff Vanderstelt
Because I don’t really believe in it. Let me say it this way: the word laity is meant to be applied to even pastors—that we’re all humans. We’re all normal people who have sinned and fall short and we’re all broken. Oftentimes people don’t see their pastors as laity. They don’t see them as normal, everyday people who struggle just like everybody else. So that’s why I don’t like it because it does create a category: the clergy is the professional. I know this personally. I went through a really dark season several months ago. One of my very good friends, who was a pastor, took his own life. I shared honestly with my congregation and said, Hey, I’m not doing well. Fast forward a few months and God’s doing a lot of work in my life and one of the members comes up to me and says, It’s so good to have the old Jeff back. That other guy, I really don’t want that here anymore. I don’t want to tear apart that person, but I knew what was going on was we all want to have at least one person that we look up to who we think has got it all together. There is only one person that has it altogether—that’s Jesus. Even the apostle Paul in Philippians 3:12 and after says, not that I’ve already attained this. This is the apostle Paul and at the end of his life he still doesn’t think he’s gotten there. That’s the other reason I don’t like the way we handle that language because it’s like, Pastor Jeff, I’m so glad you’re back, and what that means is: Your life is really a great life that we all look up to and hope that we could have. That’s not helpful because I’m just as broken and in need of the gospel than anybody else. The more that I can be that real guy who needs Jesus in everyday life and needs the gospel applied to my everyday life, the more people are going to believe that they need the same thing. But what happens, to answer your question, is that when that gets elevated it’s like, Jeff is the expert and he can do this way better than anybody else, so let’s just keep letting him do it. But then what they miss is the fact that I’m still just as much in need of growing and changing and being transformed as they are. That brings me back down and I can say, Yes, you can be like me: a broken man who needs the gospel. But the reason I’m good at applying the gospel to everyday life is because I know I need it so badly; not because I’m good at preaching.

25:53 - Living a Life Worthy of Imitation

Matt Tully
How do you balance that with what Paul says when he gives qualifications for pastors and elders in a church where there does seem to be this expectation that someone who is in leadership in the church would be knowledgeable of the gospel, would understand what it means and how it applies, would have lives that are (in some sense) worthy of imitation? It seems like the Bible itself puts pastors and church leaders on some level of a pedestal a little bit. But then, like you’re saying, you don’t want it to seem like you’re this super apostle and everybody else is just down below.

Jeff Vanderstelt
The key word that you used there is that it’s worthy of imitation. It’s not only worthy of imitation, but it can be imitated.

Matt Tully
Unpack that a little bit.

Jeff Vanderstelt
If I’m set up in such a way that nobody could live the life I’m trying to imitate, then I’m actually creating a papal authority that says, I really am high and lofty, and you shouldn’t expect to be able to follow my example. It’s too high. Instead, consider the passage that lists the requirements for elders—I hope every Christian lives that life. I hope they all are humble, hospitable, etc. I think the example is so that it can be followed, not an example that can’t be followed. So Paul saying, Follow me as I follow Christ doesn’t mean, I know you can’t; but it would be really cool if you could. Instead he means, No, I think you can. I am ahead of you, I am an example, and I do have qualifications that I need to fulfill; but not so that I’m the only one, but so that I might set an example for the flock (1 Peter). Why? So that they’ll live that way. Really, the whole church should have lives that look like the lives of elders even if they aren’t qualified as an elder. Maybe they aren’t all able to teach. That’s a unique thing. But I would sure hope every husband is able to lead his household and every wife is able to lead her household. If they can’t, then our whole church is a mess. So all those things, I think, are so that the church might embody that reality because there are a few that have at least said, Follow me as I follow Christ.

Matt Tully
That’s a really helpful distinction that as an elder you’re called to live a certain life that others could imitate. I’m sure no pastor listening to us right now—probably very few, if any—would intentionally be thinking in their minds, I’m going to try to portray my life in such a way that everyone knows they can never be as spiritual as me. But do you find that you have to be intentional about communicating that and making that actually true and evident to the people that you are leading and demonstrating the gospels relevance for the everyday stuff of your life?

Jeff Vanderstelt
Absolutely. Whether you want to or not, people are going to lift you up. Just by nature of a stage, a platform—where else in life does one person get to talk for thirty to forty-five minutes and everybody has to be quiet?

Matt Tully
And not just talk; you are purporting to teach the very words of God.

Jeff Vanderstelt
Exactly. The position itself has so much possibility for spiritual abuse and help. There’s both extremes. Like it or not, people are going to lift you up. We should esteem and honor because there are biblical commands to do that. But it’s then on us, who have that power and position and authority, to steward that well. One of the ways that we steward that well is that we tell on ourselves. We tell the truth about ourselves. We talk about how I still struggle to live out the passage I’m preaching and sometimes I do have doubts. So we let them in—not in a way that magnifies sin or says, Woe is me! Look at how bad I am. No, we’re just saying: I need this text as much as you do, and I need the power of the Spirit as much as you do. I cannot do this without him, just as much as you cannot do this without him. So we tell on ourselves. When we give reviews of whoever is preaching at our church, we ask these questions: Did we speak in such a way that a non-believer could relate? Did we speak in a way that showed humility about our own need for the text? Was Jesus really the hero of this, or was I? If they walk away impressed with me, I’ve failed. I want them to be impressed with him. That means I, like Paul, am willing to say, I am the one who is in need of this. I am a sinner who is now a saint in Christ, but I still struggle. So that’s one way to steward our authority well. Another is we should do the very things we expect others to do. I know lots of pastors who say, We expect all of our people to be in small groups, but I’m not going to be in one because I can’t have relationships with people in the church. So, why would you expect them to have relationships with people in the church? Don’t call people to something you’re not willing to do. If you’re expecting people to invite their friends to the gathering, are you inviting non-believers to your house? All those things start to bring us down from the pedestal so that we are amongst the people. We are shepherds over the flock, whom we are amongst, Peter says. That means we’re living our life with them. I remember a woman from my missional community saying to me, I don’t understand why people have you travel all over the place to speak. Don’t they know who you are? What she meant was, Don’t they realize that you’re just a normal person? You’re not that impressive. The truth is, I’m not. Nobody is that impressive once you spend time with them long enough because you realize they are a normal human being just like everybody else. When leaders are not amongst the people living a normal life that they can see, you will be exalted in ways you shouldn’t. But when they can see you and realize that you struggle just like they do, then they might hopefully esteem you because they realize you are humble when you acknowledge your sin and you repent openly and you don’t try to cover up—they see all that. Then I think what happens is they believe they also can follow your example.

32:42 - 3 Ways to Begin Cultivating Gospel Fluency Right Now

Matt Tully
What practical advice do you have? For a pastor listening who is maybe suspecting that they have not fully applied the gospel to their life and the things that they struggle with, what would be three starting points for them? Not the whole story, but three things they could do to start down that road?

Jeff Vanderstelt
I think the first is to invite the Holy Spirit to reveal that to you. “Search me, O God, and know my heart. . . . see if there be any grievous way in me” (Ps. 139:23–24). It’s the Spirit’s job to make the truths of Jesus known to us. John 14–16 clearly lay out what the Spirit will do, and he’s really good at his job.

Matt Tully
That’s a scary thing to ask.

Jeff Vanderstelt
Yes, it is because it requires a true desire to know the truth about myself. So I would start there. Second, one thing that I try to encourage leaders to do is regularly sit in one aspect of the gospel for a while. For example, consider the life of Christ. I’ll do this with a bunch of leaders and ask, Why is that good news? They’ll give an answer and I’ll ask, Why is that good news? . . . Why is that good news? . . . Why is that good news? And then move to the death of Christ, the burial, the resurrection, the ascension, the present intercession, and then the future return. All of that is part of the good news story of God’s salvation. So just sit in one of those for a bit and say, Holy Spirit, would you help me to keep asking that question? Why is the life of Jesus good news? Because he gets what I go through. Why is that good news? Because I will never experience anything that he hasn’t experienced. Why is that good news? Because I’m not alone in this. Why is that good news? Because he has compassion for me right now. I could keep going just on that one little thing. I would say that should be a daily practice. If you wanted to, just work through all those elements that I just described. Take a week or a day on each one of them, or rotate through them. If you just did that with the help of the Holy Spirit, you would find yourself beginning to be so immersed in the good news of Christ that you would go through your day just lifted with the power of God.

Matt Tully
That almost sounds like an approach to meditating on the gospel, on the good news. As I hear that, even in my own heart, it’s so easy to quickly jump to, Well, I kinda know the answers to all those and I’m ready for the next thing. Is there something about just the slowing down and the sitting in it for a time that bears unique fruit?

Jeff Vanderstelt
Absolutely. We’re working on a curriculum right now where we’re going to be bringing pastors through a two-year journey and the first session is about gratitude. Israel’s failure over and over again is they didn’t sit long enough in the place of gratitude. They quickly moved forward to what we don’t have, what’s wrong with what’s happened. The pillar moving and stopping is, I think, informative. Moses goes in the tent, and then we know in the transition from Moses to Joshua, Joshua stays in the tent. There’s this lingering that is required in order to truly be thankful. We don’t linger. We don’t create space to sit in the moment. That little exercise I was doing in front of you, if I would have had more time I would have lingered longer in each one of those truths and just said, Holy Spirit, let that sink in. Help me to really understand how good that is that Jesus gets what I go through. Where do I need that right now? Where do I need to believe that right now? Just sit in that, and then give thanks. The thankfulness is the key. As soon as you start to really linger and give thanks for these wonderful truths in Christ, then they do take root in your heart. Thankfulness is the key. Lingering and gratitude is the key to those things taking root so that they then go with you through the day. I see a counselor regularly now to work through my own brokenness and stuff, and he said, Jeff, you have, for far too long, taken truths and you get them really quickly, you assimilate how to teach them really fast, and then you go give them away. It’s like you dehumanize yourself like you’re not a sacred soul who needs to receive these truths and let them change you first. Let them saturate your heart to the degree at which they’re flowing out of you. I think this is a danger for pastors and preachers: we read a text and immediately ask, How am I going to preach this on Sunday? We don’t sit in it and we don’t get transformed by it. In some ways, it’s the most dangerous occupation there is because you have to keep spewing out more and more stuff every week. If you’re not careful, you will do what you just said: I know the answer to this. I know how to preach it. I even know ways to make people go, ‘Wow! That was amazing! I’ve never heard that before!’ But you didn’t ever let it seep deeply into your soul. Unfortunately, you can live with the illusion that you’re very spiritually mature, but you’re incredibly devoid of the heart of Christ.

Matt Tully
You’re saying that a pastor might not even be aware of that dynamic?

Jeff Vanderstelt
I am convinced that most aren’t. I wasn’t. I’m telling on myself—this is part of who I was. I became skilled at oration. I can speak effectively and I know how to write a message well. I get the truths. I read through the Bible every year, and I’ve been doing that since I was twenty-two years old (I’m 51). I know the Word. I know how to preach the Word. I know how to pull out scriptures all over the place. But you know what? You can have all that and still not know Jesus. That’s the religious leaders of Jesus’s day. He said, You diligently search the Scriptures thinking that by them you’ll have life, but yet you fail to come to me (John 5:39). Man, I’m telling you—pastoral ministry is a dangerous occupation because you could easily spend your whole life talking about someone you don’t even know.

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January 06, 2020

Jim Hamilton discusses what to do when you hate your job, offering encouragement for those frustrated in their work and explaining the difference between a job and a vocation.

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