Part 1 FOLLOWING THE THREAD
FOLLOWING THE THREAD — A SERIES ON AUTHORITY, PROPHECY & CHURCH LIFE
Article 1 of 9
Something I've Been Feeling
There's something I've been sitting with for quite a while. A bit of niggle more than a crisis, more like the persistent uncomfortable little nudges I get when Holy Spirit wants me to notice and pay attention to something. It's happened when I hear a prophetic word sounding something like a pronouncement or a ruling. When a leader seems exhausted in a way that doesn't quite sit right given how much they love what they do. When language used around authority, structure and governmental authority sounds almost right, but something doesn't feel right.
I haven't said much about it. Because I love the churches where I get to spend some time connecting and ministering, and I enjoy visiting churches connected with a range of different streams. Because I really don't want to be the person who makes things awkward or difficult. And I haven't been entirely sure I have the language for it yet, and naming something imprecisely can do more damage than staying quiet.
Maybe you can relate.
Anyway, I eventually paid attention, and I've been following that thread for a while now, turning to the New Testament to really look and see, listening to conversations, paying attention to what seems life-giving as well as what seems to slowly drain the life and joy out of people. And what I've found has actually been more encouraging than I expected. Because the picture the New Testament paints feels pretty inviting and like a real relief to me. Not a set of formulas as much as a sense of the shape and dynamics of community when heaven moves in somehow. A way of being a church community together that turns out to feel less like a demand and more like a welcome home.
As I've sat with all of this, one image has kept coming back to me, and I want to offer it as a frame for everything in this series. It's the image of a building on a slightly wonky foundation. The first room feels almost right, just a small tilt, barely noticeable. But as the building rises, as more rooms are added and more floors are stacked on top of each other, the crookedness compounds. By the time the building is several storeys high, the lean is evident, the floors feel off, the doors don't quite hang right, and everyone inside has quietly adjusted their posture to compensate, leaning slightly to one side without realising they're doing it. Nobody chose the wonky foundation. Nobody planned for the tilt. And everyone in the building is genuinely doing their best to live and work and serve faithfully within it. But the foundation is what it is, and everything built on it carries the effect.
That, I think, is something of what's happened in parts of how we've shaped and structured church life around authority, the prophetic, and apostolic ministry. Not through bad intentions, but through some thinking that was slightly off at the foundations, and a building that has been rising on it long enough that the tilt has come to feel normal. What I hope these articles do, gently and honestly, is help us see the tilt again. Not to tear the building down, but because seeing it clearly is the first step toward something more solid.
This is a conversation from the inside. Not an outsider's critique, but hopefully a chat amongst some people who love the church and want to see us flourishing and free.
I want to be clear about who I'm writing for, because I'm hoping that if you're reading this you'll relate, and find yourself somewhere in the picture too.
Some of us are faithful, serving members of communities that are genuinely trying. We give, we show up, we believe, but something about the language and culture around authority, apostolic leadership, the prophetic, or 'the five-fold' has started to feel heavier than it should. Maybe some of us are on the edges, wondering whether belonging requires a kind of commitment we're not sure we can sustain. Some of us have stepped back a bit because something felt off, even though we couldn't find a way to describe what it was.
Maybe we carry prophetic gifting, and we genuinely love what that means, but somewhere along the way the gift started feeling like a performance, or a pressure, and we're not sure how we got there, but it doesn't feel good.
Maybe we're leaders. I want to say something to leaders, because I don't think we talk honestly enough about what it costs to lead inside structures that ask more of one person than any one person was designed to carry. Some of the most gifted, faithful, deeply loving leaders I know are exhausted in ways they can barely admit, because the model of leadership they've inherited doesn't leave much room for human vulnerability. Some have quietly stepped away from ministry altogether. And I think we've lost some pretty remarkable people that way, without fully understanding why.
This series of articles simply comes out of a conversation I've been having with myself and God. It's an attempt to follow the thread to something that seems truer, because to me, what the New Testament shows us seems much more liveable, much more human, much more like Jesus than some of what we've turned it into these days.
A thought to sit with: Who came to mind as you read this? What's the hum or the niggle you've been noticing, or trying to avoid? It might be worth pondering before reading on.