i wrote a feature-length article for the current issue of Group Magazine. in fact, they chose to make it the cover article; and they shot this photo of me in a suit at SYMC. i’m not sure how i feel about it (“Fun!” “Look, a whale in a suit!”). but i’m also honored — blown away, really — to be on the cover of Group. it’s a little surreal. i posted the cover on facebook yesterday, and a few of the comments would have made me blow milk out my nose, had i been drinking milk at the time:
– steve knight wrote: “you know what they say, sex sells”
– mike pitts said i looked like a college coach
– adam, my partner in The Youth Cartel, text me, “I’m hoping to be on the swimsuit issue of Group next year.”
anyhow: they put the article online. here are the first couple sections:
Fear Only Fear
I’ve been fired two times from ministry positions.
Well, that’s not fair. I was fired once, and I was laid-off once. But the fearsome inner dialogue that erupted within me—despite 20 years separating the two terminations—was eerily similar. I’d grown and matured in significant ways over those two decades, so my intense reaction to the latest bombshell meant:
A. My interior self hadn’t grown as much as I would’ve hoped, or
B. My experience, while deeply personal, is not uncommon to anyone who’s ever been told, “We don’t want you anymore.”
After walking alongside several fired youth workers over the last few years, my gut tells me both are probably true.
But the focus of this article is not about coping with getting fired. Losing my job was simply the most intense personal experience I’ve had of ongoing and pervasive fear. And the voice of fear has often been the primary tool the evil one has used to keep me frozen—exasperatingly short of the fully transformed life God has dreamed of for me.
In both terminations, I saw it coming. I grasped and positioned and politicked and even begged. I tightened my grip, hoping I could somehow control the situation and distract the approaching monster of loss. Once my control was taken away, I entered a very brief stage of disorientation mixed with relief. The waiting was over. My exerted effort to control (which is tiring!) was no longer necessary.
But quickly on the heels of that moment, the voice of fear started to whisper, then insinuate, then sneer…
“You’re done.”
“No one will hire you after this.”
“You’ll never again impact the Kingdom.”
“Your family is going to starve.” (Yeah, the voice of fear isn’t always rational.)
◊ ◊ ◊
My second termination was less than four years ago, so it’s fresh in my memory. It’s very easy for me to re-live the volcanic emotions of those unendurable months. Sure, I had other strong feelings: anger, sadness, and even something I can only call curiosity. But the struggle that almost undid me was unequivocally an MMA match with my inner voice of fear.
My youth ministry coaching program (for a video introduction to the program, go to theyouthcartel.com/coaching-2/) has given me a cautious invitation into the deepest places of struggle in the lives of youth workers. And I’ve found, over and over again, that somewhere around half of youth workers struggle with debilitating fear. They might hide it well, even from themselves, but it colors their interactions, nudges their decisions in one direction or another, and limits their freedom and ability to truly be themselves.
I’ll go a step further—we youth workers nurture a collective self-image of fearlessness (“Rawr! I’m a wild one! Get out of my way, ’cause I’m a bundle of Jesus-y action and energy!”). When that vocational stereotype (which is both thrust on us and self-selected) is combined with the spotlight of ministry leadership, it misleads us, telling us that our experiences of fear are not “normal.” And that’s a killer lie.
(the rest of the article unpacks a model for change, voices of resistance, what to do with your fear, and has a sidebar excerpt of my “fear journal” from a few years ago when i lost my job. read it here!)
