CNLP 708 | John Ortberg on What the Church Can Learn From Alcoholics, The Spiritual Power of Personal Inadequacy, and Why the Church Keeps Producing Elder Brothers

Summary

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The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast

Episode 708 | John Ortberg: What the Church Can Learn From Alcoholics, The Spiritual Power of Personal Inadequacy, and Why the Church Keeps Producing Elder Brothers
Date: February 6, 2025
Host: Carey Nieuwhof
Guest: John Ortberg

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Episode Overview

In this deeply authentic conversation, Carey Nieuwhof is joined by renowned pastor, author, and speaker John Ortberg. Together, they explore what the church can learn from Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), the vital spiritual power of owning our inadequacy, the lost art of confession, and why the church often produces “elder brothers” (referring to Jesus' parable of the prodigal son). They also discuss the enduring influence of Dallas Willard and the importance of cultivating humility and community within spiritual formation.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. What the Church Can Learn from AA

• Ortberg highlights that AA’s dynamic of honesty and desperation for change offers a vital model for church communities.

  • “The church can be more like an AA meeting if those of us who go to church are willing to be more like alcoholics.” (John Ortberg, 02:23)
  • AA was originally influenced by spiritual discipleship movements from the church; now, churches need to reclaim these principles.

• The strength of AA lies in:

  • Ritualized recognition of personal inadequacy (“Hi, my name is John, I’m an alcoholic.”)
  • Fearless moral inventories, authentic confession, and the communal celebration of progress.

2. The Spiritual Power of Personal Inadequacy

• Leaders often battle deep insecurity, and there’s value in acknowledging our limits.

  • “The recognition of personal inadequacy is a spiritual achievement, and it needs to be ritualized.” (Ortberg, 34:27)

• AA’s framework (the 12 steps) embodies Gospel values:

  • Confession, dependence on a higher power, community support, and daily reliance on grace.

• “There is no barrier to my joyfully serving God today.” (Ortberg’s personal reflection, 12:53)

3. Retirement, Contribution, and Purpose

• Ortberg and Nieuwhof discuss cultural attitudes toward retirement.
  • Retirement is often viewed as a season of consumption, but lasting joy is found in contribution.
  • “There’s something about giving, contributing, working that is central to human flourishing…” (Ortberg, 12:53)

4. The Lost Art of Confession

• Confession has disappeared from much of Protestant and evangelical church life.

  • Confession must move from private, individual experience to shared, communal practice for healing to happen.
  • “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you might be healed.” (Ortberg referencing James 5:16, 58:08)

• Ortberg’s Personal Story:

  • Ortberg describes the frightening yet liberating experience of confessing his deepest failings to a close friend.
  • “John, I love you more right now than I have ever loved you.” (Ortberg’s friend to him, 61:50)

5. Vulnerability, Desperation, and Real Transformation

• Transformational communities—whether AA, persecuted churches, or prison ministry—are marked by a sense of desperation for God.

  • Desperation trumps comfort as the driver for deep change.

• Carey’s Food Poisoning Story:

  • Nieuwhof recounts his recent bout of public illness, capturing the essence of “desperate need” for help.
  • This serves as a metaphor: “There was no dignity left. There was just desperation.” (Nieuwhof, 43:55)

6. Why the Church Produces Elder Brothers

• Without daily surrender and honest confession, churches tend toward legalism and self-righteousness (the "elder brother" syndrome).
  • AA is less likely to produce “elder brothers” because humility and surrender are daily, existential necessities (69:05).

7. Bridging the Gap: How Churches Can Change

• Real transformation starts with individuals willing to do fearless moral inventories, practice confession, and seek out authentic community.
• “Start where you are. Maybe step zero is, ‘we admitted that our life was not fine.’” (Ortberg, 49:26)
• We cannot manufacture revivals of desperation, but personal sincerity is within grasp; “Don’t just do something, sit there” (Ortberg, reflecting on AA’s wisdom, 49:26).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Honest Self-Appraisal

  • “There’s a gap between the person I want to think I am and the person the people who know me often say I am.” (Ortberg, 26:00)

• On Spiritual Formation and Learning

  • “I need input and I need an outlet.” (Ortberg, 17:15)
  • “If learning and stewarding what you’re learning is a significant part of your life, how do you arrange your life together with God?” (Ortberg referencing “The Intellectual Life,” 20:59)

• On Community Transformation

  • “You can go upstairs [in the church] and hear about miracles, or you can come downstairs and see them.” (Ortberg quoting an AA saying, 77:42)

• On Desperate Need and the Kingdom

  • “The garbage can in the airport is available to those who seek it with violence…” (Ortberg referencing Dallas Willard’s interpretation of Matthew 11:12, 79:41)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |---------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:23 | The church and AA’s model of vulnerability | | 12:53 | On retirement, contribution, and serving God | | 17:15 | Ortberg’s life after leading a church – calling, learning, and communicating | | 32:52 | The power and necessity of continual self-examination | | 34:27 | The spiritual achievement of acknowledging inadequacy | | 43:55 | Carey's food poisoning story as desperation metaphor | | 49:26 | The importance of sitting in brokenness, not just intellectual assent | | 58:08 | Confession in community; quoting James 5:16 | | 61:50 | Ortberg’s vulnerable confession story | | 69:05 | Why AA doesn’t produce self-righteous “elder brothers” | | 77:42 | Bringing the miracles of “downstairs church” (AA) upstairs | | 79:41 | Kingdom urgency and the “violent” pursuit of redemption |

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Recurring Themes

• Personal Surrender & Honesty: Healing and growth are not possible without deep, authentic acknowledgment of one’s failure, sin, or addiction.
• Community & Confession: True fellowship is found in the mutual openness of both struggle and grace.
• Spiritual Practices: The “12 steps” are a practical outworking of Gospel truths, indispensable for formation, not just for those with obvious addictions.
• Comfort vs. Desperation: Transformation is hindered by comfort and self-sufficiency. Lasting change almost always arises from seasons of desperation or loss.
• Ritualization of Grace: Public admissions (as in AA) and community affirmation transform shame into celebrated dependence on God.

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Action Steps / Application

• For Leaders/Churches:

  • Foster regular, communal confession and create trustworthy environments for vulnerability.
  • Reintroduce elements of ritualized self-examination and honest inventory.
  • Resist self-righteousness by continually embracing humility and dependence on daily grace.

• For Individuals:

  • Commit to a practice of fearless moral inventory.
  • Seek a trustworthy, grace-filled friend or mentor for authentic confession.
  • Pursue genuine community grounded in humility, not image management.

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Closing

John’s latest book, Steps, distills these lessons and offers a practical path for leaders and Christians alike to experience the kind of transformation AA communities model so powerfully. As John Mark Comer writes in the foreword, it is “one of the best books [he] has ever read, period.”

“When somebody gets it, they say, ‘I gotta have this. I want this more than anything else in the world.’”
— John Ortberg (79:41)

For anyone seeking deeper spiritual formation and authentic community, this episode is an urgent, grace-filled call to pursue the Kingdom with vulnerability and courage.

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Transcript

[A]

The Art of Leadership Network.

[B]

Often people will wonder how come the church can't be more like aa? And, you know, a hundred pastors have preached or talked about that. There's a whole book that just has the title, why can't the church be more like an AA meeting? And we often ask that question rhetorically. I actually don't think it's a rhetorical question at all. It's a really important question, and I think there is an answer to it. And the answer is the church can be more like an AA meeting if those of us who go to church are willing to be more like alcoholics.

[A]

Welcome to the Carrie Newhof Leadership Podcast. It's Carrie here, and I hope our conversation today helps you thrive in life and leadership. Well, I don't know how it can't, because John Orkberg is back in the house today. I love John. We've known each other for a few years, and I got to tell you, today we talk about the spiritual power of personal inadequacy. I know for a lot of leaders, a big difference between hanging in there in the long term and just saying, you know what? I can't do this anymore, is a sense of inadequacy. And often even people with a lot of bravado on the platform, when you really get them one on one, are kind of like, yeah, I don't really know. Right. And I mean, I've struggled with confidence over the years. And so we're going to talk about that. The spiritual power of personal inadequacy, what the church can learn from alcoholics, and why the church keeps producing elder brothers. I mean, we go all over the place in this conversation with John Ortberg. Man, you loved the last time he was on the podcast. I'm always eager to bring John back and I want to thank all of you who are leaving ratings and reviews on the podcast. Welcome to all of our new listeners. I know we got a recent review. This is from a guy who goes by the Timber for ministry leaders. This is top shelf you wrote. I can't say this enough. The Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast does a fantastic job in speaking to the best of leadership and management theory, current cultural context and faith perspectives. So good. Thank you for that, Warren. Also saw your review recently. Really want to thank you so much for taking the time to leave one. And if you haven't done that yet, we really appreciate it. When you do that. It's grows the show. When we grow the show, we get the best guests and get to do the best possible job. At this. And also my goal here is to bring you behind the scenes, to bring you the conversations you would have if you had an hour or two with John Orkberg. What questions would you ask him? Well, that's what I am doing, and I hope this is a good companion for you wherever you are working out here at the beginning of February. All right. You're working out, right? Awesome. And maybe going out for a walk or for a long ride in the car or whatever you happen to be doing. Welcome. Hope this is a great companion for you. John Ortberg is a pastor, author, and speaker. He's been in ministry for over four decades and teaches around a central theme of spiritual formation. John's a deep believer that the main thing God gets out of your life is the person you become. If you haven't checked out his new ministry become new. He's got a YouTube channel that's fantastic. His most recent book is called Steps. We're going to unpack that. It really compares AA and the church. And if the church was maybe a little more like aa, would we be doing better? We also really get into confession, a subject that I think is vitally important if you're gonna stay healthy as a leader. So I'm excited about this conversation. I think you will be, too. And now a quick word from one of our partners. And now to my conversation with John Ortberg. John, it's so good to have you back.

[B]

Carrie, it's so good to be back. Thank you for having me on.

[A]

You're looking all casual, relaxed, enjoying things in your favorite room in the world in Santa Barbara, your new place.

[B]

This is my favorite room. I get to have my books here who are good, good friends and feel very much at home, and then get to connect with people like you.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. You know what? That's a growing problem. We just had a new library built at our house a couple years ago, and we're already outgrowing it. What do you do with all your books? Do you cull them? Do you just keep them? Do you have a storage vault somewhere at Fort Knox? What do you do with all your books?

[B]

I have a fight with my wife about them on a regular basis because she feels like they're too many. She thinks that a bookcase should have vases and pictures and little artistic objects on it. My argument is, it's a bookcase. It is a case for books. It is a bookshelf. There is no such thing as too many books. So I have most of my books here. I had some boxed up that were being stored in another place. I've given a bunch of them away. I kind of hit the point right now where if I get a new book, I have to get rid of an old book.

[A]

So one in, one out.

[B]

I'm on the exchange program right now. Have them all arranged. So, like, biblical resources and commentaries are right over here. And then religious studies, theology, then spiritual formation, church history over there. I got one whole section of Lincoln books because I love Abraham Lincoln. He was an American president. Being a Canadian, you wouldn't know, but I'm always reading the Lincoln book. So anyway, stuff kind of scattered around where I pretty much know where they are. I'm very, very grateful. I'm very aware of how lucky I am to have this room.

[A]

No, that's. It's fantastic. It is a growing problem. I mean, I thought, oh, good. Like we built like, I don't know how many bookcases upstairs and now we're starting to grow them and I export a lot. So what you have to do, you have to take Nancy to Rick Warren's library. Has she been there?

[B]

I don't know if she has or not.

[A]

Have you been there by any chance?

[B]

I have, yes.

[A]

Yes. So you can just say, see, I'm not doing so bad.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Rick's got quite the library that's on my YouTube channel. By the way, if people see Harold.

[B]

John Aucingay, who is in some ways kind of the father of modern evangelicalism in the US he always insisted that where the pastor worked should be called the pastor's study, not the pastor's office. And it's interesting, as we think about leadership issues, it doesn't necessarily mean that it was right, but Akinge was very devoted to loving the life of the mind and believing that pastors ought to cultivate that carefully, that they ought to have a place to go that is a study.

[A]

I think that's a wonderful metaphor. What am I looking for? That's a wonderful premise. I think we all should have that place for sure. Last time you were on, we had a lot of response. We talked about. I said, what do you want to talk about? And you said, let's talk about the apparent false divide between spiritual people, people who are into spiritual growth and leadership. That sort of adrenaline fueled, CEO type stuff, which seems to be a bit of a false polarization in church leadership over the last 30 years. What a great conversation. For anybody who missed it, I'm wondering if you probably heard about that. I'm sure, because I heard a lot about that conversation. Any further thoughts on that about why that's a false divide and why leaders can be spiritual and spiritual. Spiritual people can't exercise the gift of leadership.

[B]

You know, in some ways, it mirrors a cultural divide that happens in lots of different places. It's in school, there's the nerds and the jocks, and they often don't connect a whole lot with each other. And then people grow up and you have academic culture on the one hand and business culture on the other hand. And, you know, in spiritual life, one of the old, old, old binary categories is the contemplative life and the active life. And so I think it probably mirrors differences in temperament and differences in kind of a basic orientation to life and to spiritual life that's often present in people. And, you know, always the challenge for us is how do I not divide the world up into us and them, and how do I learn to value the other and the person who. And I think that leadership and formation thing probably mirrors a divide that runs quite deeply in human temperament. And wiring reflects the difficulty we have in appreciating and learning from folks who are different. So it's a topic that I think could just be delved into more and more and more.

[A]

You know, I forget exactly what the paradigm is. I'm recovering from food poisoning, so my brain isn't 100% right. I think it was Gary Thomas who talked about different modes of worship. And there is the long standing idea that work can be a form of worship. What are your thoughts on that? Because when I hear that, I'm like, oh, yeah, I do worship God through my work. Like, what I'm doing right now is a form of worship for me. Legit, not legit. What are your thoughts on that?

[B]

Oh, you know, I think that if you look at Genesis 1:26 and just the creation narrative, we were made to exercise dominion. We were made to add value. We were made to partner together with God to bring out the full level of goodness and creativity. And so, yes, when you're working, Carrie, when you're talking with people, when you're exploring ideas, when you're helping pastors be better pastors figure out how do we build and grow healthier churches, how do we understand things? How do you do that better and better? How do you leverage technology? Well, we were just talking before getting started here about like, you know, how do you adjust lightning, lighting and audio and everything to be their maximum? And for anybody who's listening, Carrie's understanding of that is exponentially deeper than mine.

[A]

Which is not saying Much.

[B]

We are. No, that's. Thank you. That's a good point. That's a very low bar, but we were made to do that. Interesting. In the work of Dallas Willard, who's impacted me and lots of other folks a lot over the years. One of his early sentences to describe what God's about in human history is, God's ultimate aim in human history is a loving community of all inclusive persons with himself included as its primary sustainer and most glorious inhabitant. And over time, he didn't use that definition so much, although it's wonderful. People might want to write it down, but what it didn't capture was work, and that we were made for work and that we will do work. So if you look at the image in the Bible of reigning, what does it mean to reign? Well, to reign is to work. It is to be strong and powerful in the service of the good and to be creative. And so. And I think it's precisely because it is so powerful in our lives and it's so deeply a part of what does it mean to be made in the image of God, that it can become such an idol when it takes the wrong place in our life. So it's just one of those themes that the better something is, the more powerful something is, the more destructive it can be when it's misused or. Or when it becomes an idol. Money is that way, sex is that way. And so I think work is that way. But the only way to approach that then is not to discard it, but to try to redeem it.

[A]

You know, John, I've been thinking about work and, you know, thinking about the next couple of decades ahead. I'm approaching the age where a lot of people think about retirement and. And I think about retirement, the dominant model of our culture. Hadn't planned on talking about any of this, by the way, but it's always fascinating. Talking to you is consumption, right? I'm gonna go get the vacations that I've been denied. I'm gonna go and live the life where people serve me. And as Tony and I have been talking about the next few decades ahead for us, we've been thinking about contribution, realizing that some of that will be paid, some of that won't be paid. But the more I think about contributing for the rest of my life, creating for the rest of my life, the more excited I get about the future. And that's not saying I'm not going to have a month off to sit back, relax, enjoy the flight once in a while. What are your thoughts about the later stages of life as far as contribution versus consumption goes.

[B]

Yeah, I'm ahead of you on that journey. So I am now 67 years old. Have thought about that issue a lot. Folks will famously say things like the word retire is not in the Bible. And that's true. And I think it's for more than just economic reasons. And that is that we were made to contribute. That's. There is something about giving, contributing, working that is central to human flourishing and human well being. We're made to serve God, we're made to help other people, and nobody wants to be unnecessary. So life is about something more than just consuming. In my case, Carrie, part of what happened is I ended up leaving my job earlier than I would have anticipated. And it involved painful dynamics that we don't have to go into. But there were things that I would not necessarily have chosen. One of the thoughts that was really helpful to me in that process as I was going through the grief of letting go of one form of work earlier than I would have, was when I was tempted towards self pity. There is no barrier to my joyfully serving God today. On the day that I left my old job, this was during COVID so I'd had to record what would be my final sermon. And I got home and, you know, it was that mixture of grief and self pity and whatever else. And then that thought came literally as I'm getting out of the car, going into the condo. There is no joyful, there is no barrier to my joyfully serving God today. And I thought, either that's true or it's not. And if it's not true, then I had no business preaching at a church anyhow. And if it is true, then nothing's really changed at all. And it doesn't really matter too much what the task is. It doesn't really matter too much who signs the check that's attached to it or whether there is a check attached to it or not. Thought, you know, I love Peter's description of Jesus when he's talking to a group of Gentiles in the Book of Acts. So he can't use Old Testament language for it because they don't know it. And he says there was a man from Galilee and he went around doing good. It's just that he went around doing good. It's like, well, I can do that. That's what Francis of Assisi did. That's what Dorcas did. That's what his followers have always done when they're getting things right and the kingdom is at work. So then the task doesn't matter too much. And I think there's some folks. I have a real good friend, Chuck. He was a doctor for 40 years, was great at doing medicine. He's great at carpentry. He's great at cooking. He's great at a bunch of different stuff, mechanical type things, tech type stuff. He's retired from practicing medicine now, but he'll go around doing good. He'll travel to different places, he will connect with people that are in his family. There's a woman that he knew that didn't have insulation and she was a single mom. So he got his brother in law and they spent the day insulating her attic. He will do what kind of looks like retirement, but it's really just a very different form of doing good that he's great at. For me, I'm not good at lots of those things. I love to learn and I love to try to communicate. And then it's become very meaningful to me, deeply meaningful, to have individual conversations with people who might be going through a difficulty or through some form of family pain, or want to talk about LGBTQ issues or have ministry pain that they're facing. And there's something that feels very redemptive to that for me in this season. And so the work that I will seek to do probably looks more continuous with the work that I was doing when I was at churches than is the case with my friends. Chuck. But I think the real issue is always God. What can I bring to life today? And there is no barrier to my joyfully serving God today. So how can I do that today?

[A]

Got a couple of uncles who go around doing good like that. It's a great metaphor. Catch us up a little bit on what you've been doing over the last few years. John.

[B]

Yeah, so I love what I do. I think to the extent that I can understand that sense of what in the church world, we'll talk about calling. For me, it's real simple. I need to be learning. I love to read. I love to have conversations with people. I love to experience stuff, try to find out what's going on in the world. How do I understand the Bible, how do I understand what Jesus taught life of the mind, and then how do I communicate that to people? So I need input and I need an outlet. And if I had input but I didn't have an outlet, I'd be kind of frustrated. And there's something about knowing I got to communicate this that makes me think about it in a different way. How Do I really understand it? What metaphor story could I use? On the other hand, if I was doing a lot of production and trying to communicate but not getting fresh input, I would feel stretched thin and superficial. So that balance of getting input and then having an outlet, that's kind of where my sense of calling resides. And scale doesn't really matter too much. And so my primary work these days involves a kind of an online ministry. It's called Become New, and it's from Dallas's statement, the main thing God gets out of our life is the person that we become. And most weeks, Monday through Friday, be about 10 or 12 minutes of teaching about spiritual life, spiritual growth, how does that take place? And so I'll spend most of my time trying to learn and then figuring out, how do I communicate that? And that's the main thing I do. And then writing and other speaking and conversations with people that flow around that. It's ended up creating a kind of a little community online that has become a very, very meaningful place. We will often call ourselves the Fellowship of the Withered Hand, from that story where Jesus talks to that guy in the synagogue and when he's open and exposes the thing that he would most want to keep hidden, power flows and healing flows. And in Jesus, community is kind of that way. So that's the main thing I do these days, and I'm very, very grateful for it. And then lots of time for being a grandfather and being a dad and friendship in this season.

[A]

So you mentioned Dallas a few times already. Do you continue to read him daily? Is that something that you continue to do pretty much every day?

[B]

Yeah. This morning, literally, after I dropped the kids off, I was listening to. There's now a podcast that features talks that Dallas did over the years. So I was literally this morning listening to a talk he did for InterVarsity on Developing the Mind of Christ in 2003. And Dallas, for me, is helpful enough and dense enough that I kind of learn him by osmosis. So to go back over and over and over the things that he said, sometimes I'll find a talk that I hadn't heard, and there will be really helpful thoughts with that. But there's just an ever increasing sense of clarity and understanding of God, of human nature, of life. There's a wonderful book we've probably talked about, Carrie, but we might not have called the Intellectual Life.

[A]

I don't remember that one.

[B]

No, we might not have. It was written about 100 years ago by a priest, St. Liange, I think, is how you Pronounce his name. He's French, and I don't know French. You should know. You're a Canadian.

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

But it's a book for people. Might be for pastors, anybody that feels like might not be your main paid job. But if learning and stewarding what you're learning is a significant part of your life, how do you arrange your life together with God? So you steward that really well. And I probably read that book three or four times now. Part of what he talks about, he talks about four different kinds of reading, but the fundamental one is what he calls reading for formation. And he says when it comes to reading for formation, you don't want to be reading many people. You only want to have a very small number of intellectual fathers or mothers where you go so deeply into their thought that it really is getting absorbed into your mind and your heart and your eyes and how you think. And obviously, the scripture is the primary source of formational reading for us. So that thought was really helpful thought. And Dallas is that very much for me. So, yep, I'm always rereading and re listening to him.

[A]

So this might be an impossible question, John, and it's always dangerous to speak for other people, but if Dallas were alive today, looking at where we are right now, what do you think he would be focused on or concerned about in the church of the world today? He died in, what, 2013ish?

[B]

He died May 8, 2013. Yeah.

[A]

Oh, wow. Wow.

[B]

I think that would be a pretty constant one, Carrie. I think Dallas's primary concern interest always was the reality of the kingdom of God, and that the offer to live in that kingdom together with our friend Jesus from one day to the next is the greatest offer that's ever been extended to the human race. And trying to find ways to clarify that offer and then teach people how to learn how to live in that kingdom together with Jesus from one moment to the next, that's always the greatest task that human beings can pursue. And so there's always the challenge of trying to clarify that we always lose that vision in one way or another. So that requires a constant attempt to read, what's the church saying right now? Where are we missing it? How do we say it in a different. A clearer way? But I think that calling would continue to be at the center of what Dallas would be doing.

[A]

Isn't that the way it always is, though? Like, CS Lewis wasn't known for his thoughts about the Second World War, although he did speak into it. You know, Tim Keller kind of has a timelessness Dallas has a timelessness. It's a good reminder to a lot of us who tend to get caught up, issue to issue, election to election, culture war to culture war, that there's a bigger battle being fought. And I really think you're probably right. That's what Dallas would be talking about. Sort of a life message. That's a good reminder.

[B]

You know, it's really striking in those Advent passages, the story about the incarnation with Jesus. There's just that contrast in the days of Caesar Augustus. So they'll have the mention of Caesar, Caesar will make a decree, because that's what Caesars did. And everybody thinks, oh, that's power, you know. But then incidentally, oh, by the way, that has the effect of having this obscure man, Joseph, go to this obscure village, Bethlehem, which in this obscure book of Micah is prophesied to be the place where the Messiah will come. And what's really going to change the world is these little events with people nobody's ever heard of. Doesn't really matter who Caesar is. Caesar thinks he's running the show, but he's not. And you know, in that when Luke wrote those words, everybody knew Caesar. Hardly anybody knew Jesus. But 2,000 years later, what are the odds? Luke was exactly right. Nobody's following Caesar anymore. So, yes, I think that God is always at work in the margins. And ultimately countries come and go, presidents come and go, Caesars come and go. What God is doing is what remains and endures. But it's always hard for us to keep our eyes on that.

[A]

John, now that you're not leading a church day to day, has your perspective on the church shifted at all? Or how has your perspective on the church shifted?

[B]

You know, the deepest way that it has, Carrie, is real personal. What I have found is I'll be reading interestingly, especially through Paul and Paul's writings. And sometimes people think of Paul as kind of an argumentative or a cranky guy. Yeah, but. But when I'll read through that, what I'll notice is his expressions of love and how he'll talk about can anybody be anxious and me not be filled with anxious, or can anybody not be weak and me not feel weak or he's going to leave the church at Ephesus and the leaders there are just weeping, not wanting him to leave. He talks so often about his love for people and it makes me think, when I was in the church, to what extent did I really love the people who are in the church and to what extent that I kind of use the church to try to be successful. I was just recently unpacking a box of stuff here, looking at evaluation forms of a church where I used to serve, and just burdened by looking at the gap between the person that I want to think I am, and I want to think that I'm a person who's joyful and humble and patient. And the feedback from people who work with me, know me often is, no, I'm quite different than that person. So looking back now and just experiencing the pain of, oh, I wish that I had been. I wish I was now more that person. You know, I'd say the. My biggest thoughts and perceptions around that question are mostly just around me. And what did I bring to it? And then what do I bring to life? How do I. How do I try to learn from that so that I'm still alive? I'm still here today? How can I try to be that way? How can I try to be that person with you? And I work with Tim, and I work with Jackson. And I had to apologize to them, literally, today before this call, because they're working really hard to try to set up everything to look right and sound right. And I'm getting impatient and short and snippy and, you know, not overtly awful with it, but just in all those kind of Scandinavian ways that I can do. And it's like, you know, no, guys, I'm sorry. So, yeah, mostly the primary responses that I have carry are much less what's off with the church, and much more around what's off with me and in what time remains God. How can you help me with that?

[A]

Wow. You know, I can totally resonate with that. I had to apologize to a team member yesterday for, you know, it was a bad set of circumstances, but, you know, that it was just, you know, getting food poisoning, late flight out in New York City, really struggling to get home, struggling with the workload, the whole deal. And I just came across really rough and brash and had to own that and apologize to a really wonderful team member. And, I mean, it's happening less today than it did, but you and I have examples, John. Within the last 24 hours, 48 hours. Okay. So it's like, oh, for the young leaders listening. Cause I can totally empathize with that. I was saying to the staff member today, I'm like, hey, there's old carry and new carry. And my friends would say, old carry was more like that new carry. Post burnout is a little gentler, and most days I'm a little gentler. Do you have any Advice for young leaders on how to catch that early so that we're not sitting around at 60 or 70 going, you know, younger me was na, na, na, na, na. But now that I'm 97 years old, everything's all worked out. How do you catch that earlier?

[B]

Well, you know, the best wisdom that I know on this kind of material actually comes from spiritual wisdom, wisdom from Jesus and the scriptures that got kind of recaptured in our day by this group called Alcoholics Anonymous in this framework called the 12 steps. And one of them involves, we may talk more about this, but it involves taking a fearless and searching moral inventory. And so getting to the place where I'm actually motivated, willing to do that, and then can gain the tools to find out how do I actually do that so that my awareness can grow deeper and deeper and deeper, as deep as I'm able to. I'll think sometimes about when Jesus was talking to his disciples right before he died, and he says to them, there is more that I have to say to you, but you could not bear it yet.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And that thought of with Jesus, always as the great teacher, he's monitoring, what am I capable of absorbing right now? And if I'm not capable of absorbing, he's not going to try to inflict it on me because it wouldn't do any good learning how do I actually do a fearless and searching moral inventory. And then I share that with God, myself and another person. And then the next couple of steps in there are becoming entirely ready to have God remove my shortcomings and then humbly asking God to do that. So there is a journey there. And it's kind of funny, just over these last couple days talking about this, you know, it's been painful for me to look at those aspects of myself. And I can feel stuck between self pity or denial. I don't want to have to look at it, or feeling so overwhelmed that I just feel like I need to give up and to say no. I need to be part of community where that's what we do. We just expect that. We've all got shortcomings. Everybody does. Nobody's arrived yet. I don't need to. And it will not be helpful for me to compare myself to Dallas or the person I think I ought to be or where I think I ought to be right now. The only place I can meet God is in reality, right here, right now, me with all of my flaws. So I have to get the grace and the courage to lean in and be open and be humble, but not in despair. And say, yep, here's my shortcomings right now. God, I can't do this. Would you help me remove it? So learning how to do that journey, and for anybody, whatever age we are, in the process that wisdom and those resources are available to us.

[A]

You're unearthing something that doesn't seem to be going away, that I forget about sometimes. There is implicit in me this idea that if you just try hard enough, work hard enough, eventually you get rid of all these defects.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And that's not true, is it? It's not true. Hopefully you're not working on exactly the same stuff you were a decade ago, but it's almost this perfectionism, which I know has been a tenet of Christianity, but I guess that's not the case. I hope it's not the case.

[B]

No. There's another wonderful saying, aa. They've got a thousand expressions that are just real sticky, but one of them is if you have one person that's been sober for 30 years and another person who's been sober for two days, who's got the most sobriety? And the answer is whoever woke up earliest this morning.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So it is simply, literally a day at a time. Often the feeling of, I've been a Christian 30 years, so I should be here, gets in the way of the humility that's needed to acknowledge. I just have this day. And there's a wonderful book about all this stuff written by Christian philosopher Kent Dunnington for anybody who's interested in these kind of topics. It's called the Diction and Virtue. And he writes about part of the power in the community of Recovery A and so on, is that they understand the recognition and confession of personal inadequacy is an achievement that needs to be ritualized and celebrated. And it's not that inadequacy is an achievement, but the recognition of inadequacy and personal inadequacy is a spiritual achievement, and it needs to be ritualized. Hi, my name is John. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a sinner. Ritualized and celebrated. Welcome, John. And I think a huge problem in the church is that we can be pretty good at doing that when somebody first becomes a Christian. But often we lose it over time and we confuse what we aspire to with our actual lives. And then we forget. It's always true every single day. The recognition of personal inadequacy is a spiritual achievement, and we never stop needing that.

[A]

So how did you get interested in aa? How did that journey start with you? Usually it starts by someone Going, hey, I'm Carrie, I'm an alcoholic. How did it start with you?

[B]

Yeah, I've always been interested in life change and transformation and God and how do those things fit together? So that was my educational background. So I learned about AA back when I was in school and first attended meetings in those days. And it was just very striking to sit in a circle and have a group of people who were so different from each other. You know, people that were very high functioning, very educated, very successful in their career, and people that were not very educated at all or didn't have a home or didn't have a job. And there was this real deep sense of community and a deep sense of honesty and very powerful sense of community. And I thought, man, that's really attractive. I really like that. So very early on I was struck by that. Later on when I began to read Dallas Willard in particular, and then after Dallas, other folks who had written with a lot of wisdom around spiritual transformation and how does it take place? What's the role of things like spiritual practices or spiritual disciplines? The dots would kind of connect back to. Oh, yeah, that's kind of that community. And Dallas actually wrote in a couple of books in the Divine Conspiracy and another book, Renovation of the Heart, about how if the church ever gets transformation and discipleship right, it will look a lot like AA. And actually listed the 12 steps in those books and used them as an illustration of what discipleship could be like. And then many years ago, I read a book that's kind of the basic history of AA and is called Not God, because a basic premise in AA is our problem is we are not God. This is Spiritual Life 101. There is a God. It is not you. And it's very clear. That book is written by a Harvard trained scholar and he writes about essentially how really AA got the 12 steps from a ministry that was called the Oxford Group. It was started by a Lutheran pastor named Frank Buckman in around the turn of the 20th century. And it was an attempt to recapture discipleship in the contemporary era. So really, all of those steps, one way of thinking about that is AA got the 12 steps from the church, and now the church needs them back.

[A]

So I think you could say there's a lot of people in the culture who are attracted to the principles of AA, but if you know even 101 about AA, a lot of the things that AA is very big on, we resist in the church. Why do you think there's so much resistance to things that arguably were the churches in the first place.

[B]

Well, it's a huge problem that can't be manufactured. So this question is of enormous importance for all of us individually and then for anybody who's leading a church. AA is a classic example to me of Paul's statement where God says, my strength is made perfect in weakness. So obviously, the great weakness is addiction. And people recognizing I have become enslaved by a power that is essentially demonic, it's essentially spiritual in nature, and it's going to destroy me. And that's just hell. Na. Sometimes people say something like, you know, religion's for people who are afraid of hell. AA is for people who have been through hell. But where that leads people, if they run into grace, is they recognize authentically I desperately need God. I've got to have God. God is my only hope. And so they become willing to engage with the other steps in aa, like doing a fearless and searching moral inventory. They're willing to engage in that because they know they have a desperate need. And the difficult. For a lot of us in the church, I think that everybody. We all have addictions. We're all attached to something. What the Old Testament calls idolatry in our day, often we will call addictions. And. And we all have them. But a lot of us have the luxury of thinking, I'm really doing okay, that folks in AA do not have. So one friend told me years ago when I started studying this stuff, and he'd been in AA for like 30 years. He said, john, I predict before very long you will be jealous that you're not an alcoholic. And it wasn't long before I came to understand what he meant. Because very often for people who are in that community, as they begin to discover the spiritual power of the 12 steps and then connect those steps to Jesus, they'll say, thank God for my addiction. Not because it's such a great thing to be an addict, it's horrible, but because that led me into a way of life that I just wouldn't have been interested in if I didn't have that problem. So often people will wonder how come the church can't be more like aa? And, you know, a hundred pastors have preached or talked about that. There's a whole book that just has the title, why can't the church be more like an AA Meeting? And we often ask that question rhetorically. I actually don't think it's a rhetorical question at all. It's a really important question, and I think there is an answer to it. And the answer is the church can be more like an AA meeting. If those of us who go to church are willing to be more like alcoholics. That's the problem. We have a hard time conjuring up an authentic sense of desperate need.

[A]

Okay, I mentioned in passing to you before, and then briefly in this podcast, that I'm recovering from food poisoning. So I had a bit of a spiritual awakening the day after my food poisoning. I think it was lunch at the airport. I think there was something to the lettuce or whatever, but it came on violently. First time, pardon me, I've ever vomited on a plane. Just made it to the bathroom on time. And then I'm back in Canada trying to get through customs, and I've got the express lane, you know, and literally there were three or four. It's hard to keep. I was so weak, I could barely stand up. Three or four garbage cans that I had never noticed before next to the kiosks where you tap your Nexus card, your global entry, and then I had to use three of them in about five minutes to throw up. Nobody stopped to ask how I was. But, John, I was so desperate. I can't remember a time where I was more desperate in my life. I was either gonna nail the passenger ahead of or behind me or find a garbage bag. And I. In that moment, just remember, I don't care if anyone's videoing this, whether it'll show up. There was no dignity left. There was just desperation. And I spotted those. And then I got out of there, and somehow I miraculously got home and just went to bed for 12 hours. Up a lot, obviously, over the course of the night while I recovered, but. But that was a level of desperation that I don't think I'd had in my life, because I had never been in a public context. And shame disappeared. It was fascinating. Is that the neighborhood of what we're talking about here? Because I would say, as a Christian, I don't really have that level of desperation.

[B]

Yeah. Yes, it is in the neighborhood. And first of all, I'm so sorry that you went through that. I just feel like, man, I wish I would have been there to put an arm on your shoulder. And that's just miserable and crazy. It was so temporary, so violent.

[A]

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[B]

But no, that, that's exactly right. That's where in Jesus day. Either because people were afraid of what they would become apart from him, or because the vision of the wonder of being able to follow him was so positive, there was just this desperate need. So you know, people are cutting holes through the ceiling of somebody's house so they could get their friend to him, or a woman is just running through the crowd, trampling through people to grab a hold of the hem of his garment. You know, that's a picture of what's going on. I think for a lot of us that work at churches, it's very striking to me. If you think about the 12 steps, they include practices that we all know will be involved in discipleship. So self examination, fearless moral inventory, confession, admitted to another person. Prayer in Scripture sought to remove our. Sought to improve our conscious contact by God is in the 11th step. Serving and being generous and caring for other people. That's in the 12th step. Making amends with other people, seeking reconciliation, fellowship, gathering together. It's not rocket science. Those steps are not rocket science. We're all trying to figure out what's the rule of life, what's the discipleship pathway. How do we make it clear? What's striking is the places where those practices tend to be deeply transformative are places where people experience unforced desperation. Addiction is one of those places. Prison ministries is another one. If you've ever been involved in prison ministries or people have. Generally people in prison are living a different way of life. But you have a group of people who are like, I really want to follow God, I really want to belong to Jesus. And being in that position where they're cut off from a lot of other options and they're devoting themselves with sufficient intensity. So again, it's all like that. Acts 2 community. And they devoted themselves to the apostles, teaching into prayer, to the breaking of bread, and to fellowship day by day, they gathered where people experience great poverty, where the church is under deep persecution. Remember being in Ethiopia years ago when it was a Marxist country, and when the church would gather together, quite extraordinary things were going on. And people's experience of joy and depth of spiritual life, intensity of that was quite remarkable. When people have gone through great suffering, people that have gone through a divorce maybe, or people that are terminally ill, you will often find a way of life becomes intensely transformational to people when they're living on the margins. And it's not because of pain by itself. It's because it often brings to people the motivation to engage in a way of life with sufficient intensity. And that's just lacking for most of us in the church. So mostly what is needed is not this brilliant, creative how do we package the rule of life, or how do we package the steps, or how do we talk people into it? It's when that level of vision or need or desperation is strong enough, then the way of life becomes deeply transformational. And that's part of what I think we can learn from that community. That's why I think it's so important to understand, I believe, that the 12 steps can be. Should be not just a recovery thing, not just a recovery tool, but actually, if you're looking for it, if you need one, if you haven't found one yet, a framework for life, for spiritual life that can be helpful for any of us, whether we think of ourselves as addicts or not.

[A]

So the conditions that you're describing are exactly the opposite of everything we aspire to in the Western world. It's the opposite of what we want for our children. It's the opposite of what we work for in our lives. And you're sitting in a comfortable home. I'm in a comfortable, comfortable home. How do you get desperate in that? No wonder Jesus had words for the rich and the comfortable. And we're guilty. Guilty. Relatively speaking, I'm pretty stinking comfortable.

[B]

Yeah. Now, that's a great question, Carrie. And I think one of, again, a thousand sayings in recovery communities is, don't just do something, sit there. And I always used to think that was just kind of a cute little expression, but actually there's a deep meaning in it for anywhere. I think for any of us. We will be brought to the place of brokenness and pain when we confront primarily our own sin. And, you know, for me, it's often involved when I look at a family that I love and think there's a brokenness to it and I cannot fix it. Part of that has to do with who have I been as a dad or the churches that I've served where I see that gap. And I think I wanted to be that person. And I haven't been. And I'm not at this start now I'm at a different place in my life. So, God, that's a really painful place. And it might be for you, as you're listening, it might be around your children or around your marriage, are around some habit. And I think we often use money, power, success, busyness to medicate ourselves and avoid looking at the pain of sin and brokenness in our lives. And so the invitation is to come to that place and don't just do something, sit there until my sin becomes not just an intellectual affirmation that I make on the surface, but a felt reality in my soul. God, I need you. And, you know, that may come from a variety of different places, but it brings me to the place where I say admitted that we were. It's interesting in the 12 steps, they're all put in the past tense. That's very significant. They got codified after for several years, one and then two and then a dozen. And then scores of people found power from God to be liberated in them. And so they were discovered to work first. And the first one is admitted that we were powerless over. Now, in them, the word alcohol is used. Interestingly, first step is the only step that mentions the word alcohol, because the rest of them are just about spiritual life. But now you put in whatever word you need to put into that place, and it may not be alcohol. Powerless over my child, powerless over my anger, powerless over my. My ego, powerless over this sexual habit, powerless over the way I treat other people, whatever it is. And my life had become unmanageable. Now if you think you're not powerless and you're not unmanageable, it's just going to be harder. It's just going to be harder. And maybe a vision of the beauty of following God and what your life could count for will come to you that is so powerful that that will be sufficient to motivate you to. Now I'll engage in all the other steps with sufficient intensity. The guy who wrote the book about why can't life be more like? Why can't church be more like An AA meeting said it may be for Christians, there needs to be like a step zero before step one. And step zero is we admitted that our life was not fine. So often we go to church. How you doing? Fine. How are things going? Fine. So step zero might just be. You might just start. If you're not ready for powerless and unmanageable yet, just start with not fine. And you got to start where you are.

[A]

You know, it's so interesting. I've thought a lot and did some teaching around this, too. The lost art of confession. I mean, well, you and I were raised in or spent some time in a similar tradition, you know, and in a reformed order of worship, you do a prayer of approach and confession.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I can't remember the last time I heard a prayer of confession in an evangelical church unless it was following some kind of moral debacle that had happened where, oh, I shouldn't have done this. But there's no routine confession. Small group is not a lot of confession often. And I'm wondering, how do you get to that place of brokenness where you really go, no, it's not my wife. It's me. No, it's not her. Him, It. It's me. That is so painful for a lot of people these days. And I. I think we've culturally and in the church, lost the vocabulary for that, John.

[B]

Yeah, yep. Lots to unpack there, Carrie. A huge problem is we don't have good language for it anymore. You know, the word sinner doesn't do it. If you go to an AA meeting, it starts with the celebration of personal inadequacy. My name is John. I'm an alcoholic. Now, what everybody knows is whoever says that has been through hell before. Somebody says that, they have resisted saying that for days, weeks, months, years. They have been through humiliation. They have lost money, they've lied, lost marriage, killed somebody in a car accident, lost a job. By the time they say those words, they have been utterly humbled. And that's simply a reality in their life. And the problem for most of us is when we go to church, even if we say, I have sinned, we have sinned. We have not experienced what the alcoholic has experienced. And so the difficulty then is that healing power is not available to us in the same way because we haven't.

[A]

Seen the consequences of our sin.

[B]

Yeah. Yep, yep. We haven't experienced the loss and the reality and the pain of them, often in a way that an alcoholic has. And that's where, in a real odd way, if somebody gets caught, you know, we'll read all the times about a pastor who gets caught. Caught in a sexual affair or gets caught stealing money or gets caught abusing power. And we all think, what a terrible situation. Ironically, paradoxically, often Great grace is offered in those moments because as long as I'm not caught, I'm not experiencing much pain in it. But when I'm caught, all of a sudden what happens is I realize, oh, look who I've become. Look what I have done. And I recognize my need for grace now. It was there before. I just wasn't experiencing it. I just wasn't thinking of it. I promise you, we have all done things. We have all either gone to sites or treated people or had conversations or used money or lied in ways that if it was captured on film and shown to a congregation on a Sunday morning, we would be devastated by. But only because it hasn't been and is not shown to everybody. We don't feel it, we don't carry it. So really, the ones who get caught and go through that pain are not the most unfortunate ones. The most unfortunate ones are the ones who are experiencing that and not getting caught and not going through it because we don't know the healing that might be available to us.

[A]

Yeah, there's a saying in aa. I got drunk, we got sober. Yeah, I think. Did I get that right? Talk about the value of community. When we think about the lost art of confession, John, first of all, if we pray prayers of confession, they tend to be personal. We rarely confess our sins communally. And yet that's something the scripture says very clearly we ought to be doing. It's just, just lost on this generation. What's at stake when you do not confess your sins to each other.

[B]

Yeah. I think part of what we can learn from AA is just concrete spiritual dynamics and they are taught by Jesus and they are present in the Bible. The pain and reality of addiction and its weakness have a way of bringing them to the surface and making them concrete in ways that we can all learn for. So in the beginning of the Big Book, it says everybody needs two things. We need a program. What's a program? Well, the program is the 12 steps, but really that's the rule of Life. That's Acts 2 and they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. Again, it's not rocket science. It's a way of life. It's non legalistic, non superficial, non mechanical rhythms and practices that enable us to receive power and staying at home with our Father. That's the program. Got to work the program and people will know. Are you working the program? Are you not working the program? But then we need a fellowship. You can't just have the program. If you don't have a fellowship, you will never make it. And that's just an empirical matter of fact that folks who struggle with addiction know spiritually. So step two is came to believe that a power greater than ourselves, and we know that to be the God and Father that Jesus himself manifested could restore us not to sobriety, but to sanity. That is to have the mind of Christ. Now, how do I come to believe that? Well, AA will often talk about. We came. We came to. We came to believe. We came to meetings. That's community. That's the Philip. Just go to meetings. 90 meetings in 90 days. When you first get in, why do you have to do that? Because you're looking at other people whose lives have been changed by the grace of God, and you realize that it worked for her. It worked for her. It worked for him. It worked for him. If it'll work for them, then I can come to believe it could work for me. So I come to the Bible, I come to church. I come to this relationship. It's very, very concrete, but it's not abstract. I need to have enough faith that I come to believe that God can do this to me. So I'll devote myself to the program, the way of life. It's not just this abstract, ethereal, you know, how much do you believe, how much certainty you have. It's so that you actually will be on the discipleship path. And then when it comes to confession, it's very interesting. I'll skip over step four for a moment, the inventory deal. Step five is we admitted to God ourselves and one other person the exact nature of our wrongs. And for most of us, you know, in the church, we'll kind of figure out two out of three ain't bad. I'm willing to say, you know, God, forgive me and acknowledge that to some level to myself. But another person, you know, I don't have to do that. You know, the deal, Most of us in evangelical churches feel like the deal is God promised to forgive me. I don't need a priest, I don't need a confessor. I can go direct to the source, and I can get it without going through that embarrassment and humiliation. And of course, God can forgive anybody of anything. That's part of what it means to be God. The question is, what do I need to experience the power and healing of being forgiven? And so James 5:16. Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you might be healed. And can I tell you a story about that one out of my own life, Gary?

[A]

Yeah, please do.

[B]

So I decided many years ago that I'd like To have somebody in my life who plays that role, before whom I have no secrets. And I had a guy who had been a very, very good friend for 10 years. So I knew his character. I knew that I could trust him. I knew he would be confidential. And I asked him if he would be willing to hear my confession. And he said, yeah. So I spent weeks getting ready for this, reviewing my life, thinking about and actually writing down what are the moments, the acts, the habits that I'm most embarrassed about, most ashamed of in my relationships, my anger, my sexuality. For a lot of us, that's a place of lots of deep pain or shame. Money. How do I actually spend my money? What do I do with it? How much do I actually give? My ambition, my church life? What do people think with me there, my approval? Addiction. Just all that stuff, wrote it down. And then I met with Rick, and it took quite a long time. Just read through everything I had written down. It was. It was very painful and very humiliating. And when I got to the end of it, I did not want to look at him because I just felt embarrassed. And I did not anticipate what he was going to say. What he said to me was his. Just. His very first words were, john, I love you more right now than I have ever loved you. And I wasn't expecting that. And it's interesting, that was many years ago. I asked him over this last quite recently. Why did you respond in that way? I'd never asked Rick that question until quite recently. What inside you prompted you to say that to me? And he talked about how I'm a three on the Enneagram. So image management and wanting to look smart and wanting to, you know, appear better than I am and to seem to be strong and impressive. It just leaks out of me. And so, of course, even though he's my good friend, that will get in the way of our closeness. And so my walking through this exercise with him was the most real I had ever been with him. The paradox of, you know, my being afraid because I think I gotta look good, I gotta. I gotta look smart. That's how you love me. That's how you'll think I'm special if I don't do those things that won't be special is precisely the stupid stuff that gets in the way of the love of the kingdom. And so those. Those real, deep truths. I can only be loved to the extent I'm known. If I hide something from you, you might say, john, I love you, but this is just the nature of the soul. And its desire for wholeness. My mind will say, yeah, but if you knew this about me, you wouldn't say you love me. And the darker and deeper it is, the more it will get in the way of my feeling like you really love me when you don't know it. So I can only be loved to the extent that I'm known. I can only be fully loved if I am fully. This is just a law of the soul that I was experiencing there. I used to think, you know, it'll be great when we get to heaven because I won't have to worry about my sin anymore. And nobody will ever know. Nobody will ever know. It's all forgiven. And now I think, no, healing doesn't happen that way. Healing knows when we all know everything about each other and we love each other, knowing everything, that's the only way that it can be healed. And that's how spiritual community works when love comes precisely with the grace and the depth and the pain and the healing of full knowing. And so it's very interesting, Carrie, in recovery circles, folks will say that very often the desire for drink begins to diminish after step five. When someone has experienced that deep, very profound, incredibly frightening and scary but deeply healing experience of just being as utterly honest, you know, just committed to. I'm on a clean house as I'm able to be with another person. There's just enormous power and enormous healing that comes. And part of what's so sad is most people in most churches will never know that. Lots of people , lots of AA groups do. And again, this is what is taught in the scripture. And it's not saying I have to do this or God is going to withhold forgiveness from me. This is the nature of the way that healing works in spiritual community. This is why hiddenness is such a toxic dynamic. This is, I think, behind there's that weird story in the New Testament of Ananias and Sapphira, folks might remember that this couple Acts five, where they. They give some of their money, they sell stuff and give some of it, but they keep some of it back, but they lie about it. They pretend like they're given everything because they want to look good to everybody. And then they both end up experiencing the judgment of God and being killed. And that used to look so severe to me. I think what's going on now is, in a sense, that's like the second fall. That's like Eden all over again. Because that new community had been experiencing the power of God. That comes when people get real and this is the first moment that we read of hiddenness and deception and holding back in that new community. And God can heal and forgive any sin as long as it's brought into the light. But as soon as the community becomes a place of hiddenness and darkness, that power of healing, that flow of the spirit gets cut off by hiddenness. That's what we're invited into. That's the electric power of forgiveness and healing in a human life. But it comes through community and through confession. And I just think most of us don't want to go there.

[A]

Well, I was going to say there's a lot of fear, probably a hunger and a fear at the same time. One of the things that gets in the way, the word that keeps popping up in my mind as I hear you talk, John, is self righteousness. It's a problem for all of us. It's a problem for me. I think if you look at the church, it's a big problem today. Any thoughts on how to overcome self righteousness?

[B]

Yeah. It's again, a place where addiction is this tragic and wonderful gift. It's very striking that AA just tends not to produce elder brothers for a real good reason. In the church, we tend to produce that because I start looking at my devotional life and look how I'm praying or look how much I'm giving, or, you know, Jesus would talk about the Pharisee and the tax collector. And so what the addict knows is, again, the big book talks about this, that sobriety is a gift that is contingent on maintaining spiritual hygiene one day at a time. It's contingent on the maintenance of. Which means I got to run on grace every day. And the second I start to think there's any credit due to me, look at me. Look at how well I'm doing. How come other people can't be more like me? I'm free. Farther ahead than the second I start to do that, my sobriety is in peril. And it's only in humble dependence, constant surrender. That's where that third step made the decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God. It is built on surrender. And it's interesting, you know, years ago, I remember listening to Dallas and we would talk about the difference between trying to do something versus training to do something. And so spiritual disciplines are kind of a form of spiritual training and the principle of indirection and solitude and silence and fasting and Sabbath, scripture memorization, these are all practices that we can use to enter into spiritual training. And that's a real Good thing. Part of what it doesn't name yet is I might use the power of training to serve my own ego. If I'm a musician, I can train to play the piano. If I'm a weightlifter, I can train to try to have a great body. But I'm doing that just, you know, to feed my own ego. That is not true with addiction. With addiction, I must begin with surrender. Turn my life and my will over to the care of God. If I don't surrender. And, and that means that prayer, not my will, but your will be done. And that's the beginning of sanity and spiritual life. But it's every day not my will, but yours be done. So humility runs all through the 12 steps after I've done that inventory to admit to another person, that's a deeply humbling thing. And then out of that process I make a list of my shortcomings and that's humbling. And then we humbly asked, God, not just asked, we humbly asked. And then as we go on and make this a part of a daily life, doing spot checks. So like, okay, where was I impatient with somebody today where I got to ask forgiveness of somebody? 1 so yes, the problem of self righteousness is always an indication that I have moved away from that humble dependence of surrender and living one day at a time. It's an indicator that I and real, possibly the community that I'm living in. Because our community can often kind of glorify spiritual warriors or people that we think of as real spiritual. And again in aa, it's just the hard reality that arrogance, pride, judgmentalism, self righteousness will always lead to a relapse and more drinking and death. So that strange painful gift of addiction brings a self corrective factor into play that in the church we just have to be a little bit more intentional about.

[A]

Well, and that goes to my next question, which is, okay, I think we all see the gap between our experience of church. Church and what you describe of aa. How do we bridge the gap? How do we become more like what the scriptures intended us to be that has that kind of vulnerability, confession, humility, dependence, desperation that we preach about but don't live?

[B]

Yeah, you know, I do think to some extent, to some extent, Gary, that's something that we are not in control of. And although it's frustrating and hard, it's probably a good thing that we're not in control of it. God, periodically, throughout times brings seasons where the power of a desperately hungry community is reawakened. And so you Know supremely with Jesus, when he was on Earth and people saw him, they said, I got to have that. So then, okay, well, follow me. And then Acts 2 community. And then that gets diluted as more and more people become Christians. So by the time of Constantine, most of the Roman Empire is a Christian. But then it's just become, I believe in the divinity of Jesus. So you have some people who go off into the desert and they say there's got to be more power in another way of life. And they find a way of life and Benedict and the rule of Benedict or the rule of Augustine, there's another way of life that gets found. And. And then periodically with Francis of Assisi or with John Wesley, or with Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany or with AA in the 12 steps, it gets discovered. So in some ways, it's a gift of God and a process that none of us can engineer or control. And we just have to recognize it's probably a good thing. I do think, for sure, for any one of us, the place to begin is just in my own life and with my own surrender and my own willingness to sit in places of pain and need and dependence. And to the extent that I'm not experiencing that, saying, God, I'm willing, would you please help me to see how much I need you? Would you please help me? Would you lead me to a person or a group of people who can help me see or experience that? Maybe try, you know, aa, they have open meetings. Go to a couple meetings and see what that's like. Or look for people in your life who are desperate for God. You know, very often people who are in pain have that kind of desperate need for him. And I can meet with them there and begin to work through that, you know, first step and next step and third step there. So start with my own life and walk through that step of self examination and then through that step of confession with somebody else, and then begin to do ministry out of that reality. And as I'm doing ministry, you know, talk to everybody, preach to everybody, but look in particular for folks who are desperately hungry in that way and have a disproportionate amount of time and energy and conversation with those people, recognizing that's probably where we're going to find the power.

[A]

Well, fortunately for all of us, this is in a book called Steps, and John Mark Comer wrote the foreword and called it one of the best books he has ever read, period. Which is really high praise coming from John Mark, because I think he's read all the Books. I don't know, John. I think. I think John Mark has come close to that. John, I want to thank you so much for writing this, for thinking. I know you've been working on this literally for years. Anything else you want to tell us about your project, this latest project that you've been involved in?

[B]

Another of the manifold sayings that AA will use sometimes because churches are often placed that hosts AA meetings. AA meetings really did. They really did grow out of the church. So that connection is not coincidental. But usually they meet downstairs in churches when churches have or have lovely sanctuary stained glass that was too nice. They would meet on cheap metal folding chairs with bad coffee and stale cookies and cigarettes if it's an Episcopal church. So one of the sayings in AA is when you come into a church, you can go upstairs and hear about miracles or you can come downstairs and see them. And my hope and hunger for all of us is that the church could be as God intends and wants a place where we're seeing them because we're experiencing them and we are them. So that's my hope and prayer and my hope for this book as well is that it could be a little tool in that direction.

[A]

Wow. So it's available everywhere. And John, you mentioned become new so people can find you on YouTube these days. That's probably where you're most active, isn't it?

[B]

Yeah, I think if they just google become new.com, i think that would get them there.

[A]

Excellent. Well, I think I might think a lot more about being so desperate in an airport trying to get out and not really caring. That level of desperation is. Is unique in my life and probably much more needed. I think everybody would be better for it.

[B]

Can I say one more word about that? You can edit this out if it takes time. Well, you go ahead.

[A]

You go ahead.

[B]

But it's just such a vivid image.

[A]

It is.

[B]

Dallas would talk sometimes about a verse that was kind of an odd looking verse to lots of us in the old King James, I think it was translated, the kingdom of God comes by violence and violent men take it by force.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And there have been various pictures of that. But his suggestion, and you might try this on, is the garbage can in the airport is available to those who seek it with violence, who have a violent need and violent men take it by force. The violent person says, I've got to find that garbage can. I don't care who's in front of it. I don't care how big that crowd is. I don't care what it looks Like, I will do whatever I have. I. I will knock my grandmother over to get a hold of that garbage can. And Jesus was saying, that's the kingdom. When somebody gets it, they say, I gotta have this. I want this more than anything else in the world. And I don't care what I have to do. I don't care what I have to give up. I don't have to care where I have to go or how I have to be humiliated. I must have this. And it's that way. So, yep, go for the garbage can.

[A]

I'm going to take that. You know, and honestly, I think today's the first day. That was three days ago. For two days, my ribs. I mean, it was about six hours of just violence in the worst way. It was the most extreme case I've ever had. My ribs were sore for days afterwards just from the violence of purging whatever was in my body. So I'll take that interpretation. John, thank you. Don't think we've ever concluded a podcast episode with that kind of metaphor before. First time for everything. The book is called Stephen, please get it. And John, until next time. Thank you so much.

[B]

Thanks, Kerry.

[A]

Well, that was a rich conversation for sure. And hey, if you haven't checked us out on YouTube, we're there. Almost every episode has a video component. We got a growing presence there. You can check us out. Just search Carrie Newhoff on YouTube for show notes. Go to carrienewhoff.com Episode708 next time we get together. We got Jenny Catron on the podcast and she and I are going to talk about how to tell whether your culture is healthy, the power of culture in getting next generation talent, and a whole lot more. Also coming up on the podcast very soon, Craig Groeschel, Mark Clark. It's all the marks. Mark Batterson. Who else have we got? Mark Sayers. And then we're going to switch it up. Rebecca and Gabe Lyons, Glenn Packiam, Orn Bird, Annie F. Downs, and a whole lot more coming up on the show. I really hope you enjoyed our conversation today. And if you have, please leave a rating and review. And I hope our time together today has helped you identify and break a growth barrier you're facing. Hey, before we go, pastors, I know how hard it can be to keep your sermons fresh and relevant, especially when you are preaching week after week after week after week. So whether you're hitting writer's block or you're in a rush trying to put the finishing touches on your sermon, it can be hard. And so I want to help, I've created a 10 step preaching cheat sheet. Actually, I just totally revised it. After decades of preaching, I've simplified my sermon prep into a series of steps and reminders. Now updated, they're engaging, relevant, memorable, and ready for preaching in today's culture. It's 10 simple prompts with examples that you can start using as early as today day for next Sunday. So start transforming your preaching. Visit preachingcheatsheet. Com. Get your new copy for free. Even if you downloaded this a year ago or so, we've had 40,000 church leaders download it. It's updated. Check it out. Preachingcheatsheet.com to download your copy absolutely free.