When a Cloud Isn’t a Crowd, by Daniel Brown

Pastor Daniel Brown talks about being led by God in contrast to the persistent nagging to follow the crowd.

Where God leads isn’t the same for everyone.

On a recent trip to Norway, I heard of a newly married couple who spent their honeymoon with in-laws building a small chapel in eastern Europe—using materials they had purchased with the “wedding gift” cash they requested instead of toasters and bath towels. Their home church was pioneered by a friend of mine in Oslo, far away from the doctrinal preoccupations in North America and seemingly unconcerned with the prominent locations where we are told God is moving.

Whenever I learn of sacrificial ministries like the young couple or my friends who have labored to build a church in post-Christian Scandinavia, I have a mixed reaction. Mostly, I celebrate their obedience to their calling and enjoy the thought that I’m a relative of theirs—much like my daughter’s friend who wore a big smile the week after her uncle, Mike Holmgren, won the Super Bowl.

My other feeling is sometimes one of doubt. Marveling at others’ ministry causes me to second-guess the legitimacy of my own. I don’t mean that I am especially tempted to compare my labors with theirs in terms of whose is greater—maneuvering for carnal bragging rights—though that is an occasional trap set in my mind by a vain question: Whose work for God is better? But that question isn’t the one I am primarily tormented by as a pastor. There is another question that I really do care about: Have I missed what God had for me?

A Sincere Question

It is a question born of sincerity, not insecurity—a desire to be and do everything God has in mind for me. The less my ministry resembles the details of another’s testimony, the more I wonder if I am wasting my time or missing the boat. I try to remember the cloud of witnesses—spiritual patriarchs and matriarchs who accomplished so many different types of things by faith (see Hebrews 11). I know we receive both God’s approval and a testimony by obeying His unique set of instructions to us. Not everyone gets told to build an ark.

But when I hear about someone building an ark, I secretly wonder if I should, too. When I go fishing, I want to find out what bait everyone else is using. Maybe it’s normal to think others know better than I do.

I suspect church and ministry leaders everywhere face the pressures of that nagging uncertainty. Because we know our labors are vain unless they correspond with what God is building, we are desperate to know what He is building. We want to get it right. So we seek and pray and study and look for any clue that will help us align our hearts and hands with His. That’s why books about God’s will for your life are so popular, and why we attend so many seminars about church. We want to discover His will for our ministries and for ourselves.

When I re-entered the U.S. after my Norway trip, I waited in a large room with several hundred passengers from various other flights while the customs agents checked passports. At one point there was a commotion on the far side of the room, and everyone turned to see what was happening. That’s how crowds work. Individuals spontaneously respond to the movement of the crowd. If the crowd starts going in one direction, most everyone goes along. Crowds have a natural momentum.

Sincere spiritual leaders constitute a sort of crowd. Our sincere, almost desperate search for what God is doing can easily be swayed by the momentum of those around us. When several leaders are led in the same direction, or when an especially visible flow of grace manifests in the ministry of other leaders in the crowd, a movement develops. That activity can be very compelling to the rest of us who are a trifle unsure whether or not we have been correctly following our directions from God.

Have I Missed God?

We don’t want to miss God, so when many people seem sure about the direction they are to take, we are tempted to abandon the uncertain directions in our own hearts in order to follow the more certain-seeming directions that they are following. We who deal so often in the realm of the unseen long for substantial confirmation that we are on the right track. Thus, when tremendous physical evidence (numbers, manifestations, etc.) attends someone else’s ministry or style or city, it is hard to resist the momentum that draws us toward such tangible certainty.

If we are not careful, our desire to find what God wants for us individually can become confused in the midst of thousands upon thousands of other leaders who are asking the same question. Though spiritual leaders should be asking the same question, they will not necessarily be receiving the same answer. Jesus tells Peter that John’s assignment will be different than his: Peter’s focus should just be on following the instructions he hears for himself.

I want to be careful to side-step the usual discussion about various revivals, renewals, movements and cities that have captured so much interest among spiritual leaders. Rather than offering my limited assessment of what is or is not happening in other quarters, I want to focus on the subtle and dangerous pressures that plague leaders, like me, who may be waiting with the crowd in the same large room to have our passports checked.

I might be in a waiting line mostly made up of people who arrived on a different flight than mine, and maybe the three travelers in front of me are all going to Atlanta. But that shouldn’t cause me to change my travel plans. It’s fun to swap stories about what we’ve seen on our trips, and I might even long one day to visit where others have traveled. But spiritual leaders aren’t traveling without itineraries: God has sent us on various trips with particular destinations in mind. We aren’t really free to go wherever we want to go.

When I arrived back at San Jose, CA I was met by two wonderful members of my church who had so much to tell me about their ministry dreams. It confirmed my sense of direction for our church that has nothing to do with the large ministry rivers that are capturing so much attention. I’m excited about where God is taking us, but I am even more thrilled to be going there with the people who call me pastor. If I went to Atlanta with those guys in the Customs line, who would have flown to San Jose to hear this couple’s ministry dreams?

How is God Moving?

Right now in the worldwide Body of Christ, there are numerous large-scale ministry orientations—not to mention hundreds of doctrinal and denominational groupings. Godly men and women espouse widely divergent ministry priorities, from racial reconciliation to prison reform, from Toronto-ish renewal to spiritual mapping. There are those who think cell groups are the answer, those who urge us to more prayer, more activism, more worship, more friendship evangelism, and more discipleship. Concern for the unborn, relations with Israel and men’s ministries are priorities for different leaders and Christian groups.

Which of these are moves of God? If I want to align myself with what God is doing, which of these streams should I follow? Of course, all of them. But I cannot fully give myself to even most of them—there isn’t enough of me to spread around. It reminds me of soccer: though the untrained eye can’t readily see it, the players have definite positions (and responsibilities).

In my sincere desire to play my best for the Lord, I am tempted to think I ought to play the positions I see others play. A team has many positions; if everyone plays the same one, the team will lose. Being on the same team rarely means playing the same position. Spiritual leaders need encouragement to remember that. About two years ago the Lord gave me one of those I’ll never forget encouragements.

For the same two-day period I received invitations from three different and noteworthy ministries. I would have been eager to follow the momentum that had developed around each of them, and I was frustrated that my schedule forced me to choose which invitation I should accept. All would have been excellent opportunities for me to learn and share, but I couldn’t do all three.

In fairness I must add that none of the three ministries was very close to anything I had been led to be involved with in my ministry, but I want to be open to New Wine, and not miss whatever the Lord wants to do with me. Probably, discouragements related to things He had called me to made me more open to abandon the old course for a new one. So, I asked the Lord which of the three I should pursue.

His answer was quick and clear: None!

Many Rivers, Many Valleys

With the answer came a picture of a small mountain valley through which ran a river. It wasn’t big enough, like the Mississippi, to show up on a world map, nor was it significant enough, like the Feather River, to be identified on a national map. But then again, the people who fish and play in a river rarely think of maps.

Just as our nation has several large, distinct river systems (i.e. the Columbia, the Colorado, the Ohio), so too does the Body of Christ. The approach taken by Seeker Sensitive churches, Cell group churches, Worship and Warfare churches and traditional churches all differ from one another. And even among similar type ministries there can be a wide divergence of mission. For instance, church planting may have a higher priority than local evangelism.

In this picture I could sense three big rivers flowing powerfully in other parts of the country, but they were a long way off. Instantly, I got the point: not all small rivers are tributaries of larger ones; just because the Norweigan newlyweds don’t show up on a macro-level spiritual map doesn’t mean they have missed God moving. In fact, given the Lord’s predisposition to work with insignificant and unimpressive things, I’m inclined to join them more than to join some of the larger-scale movements I see.

I’m not at all denying that God does sovereignly capture the attention of His Church and bring us to times of collective awareness like He did with prophets of old—especially about widespread sin. Spiritually discerning leaders will find themselves drawn again and again to the reality, for instance, of systemic racism in our national church or the plight of the unborn. In His mercy, He will use individuals to heighten our understanding of worship, spiritual warfare, family, etc.

But that is very different from a kind of charismatic /Pentecostal legalism that tries to make one type of experience or one type of manifestation normative for everyone and for every ministry. The more one or two such spiritual happenings (like Toronto or Pensacola) get highlighted through conversations and Christian media, the less able the rest of us are to simply rejoice at what God has done for them, and the more we are forced to have opinions we would rather not have to have about other players, other rivers.

Movement Hopping or Long Obedience?

No one means to do it, but when people talk about a mighty move of the Spirit, or renewal and revival in conjunction with particular events or experiences, it exerts crowd pressure for everyone else to follow certain examples in our meetings and our services. American Christians are so oriented toward large meetings (rather than one-on-one discipling settings), that we tend to look for validation and spiritual commendation in what happens in those meetings. This puts a pressure on pastors to match their church program with “what God is doing” elsewhere. And that may not be God’s plan at all.

When medical researchers announce a tremendous breakthrough in the treatment of diabetes, scientists and doctors studying cancer, brain disorders and Alzheimer’s disease pause to rejoice. It is unlikely that the discovery about diabetes will have any direct affect on their research. How foolish it would be if they left their specialized studies in order to get in on the diabetes breakthrough. They might be very close to discoveries of their own. The same is true for ministry leaders: what we are doing faithfully today may be the very seeds of tomorrow’s great harvest.

The point is that the global Body of Christ needs even more ministry variety and Body parts than a local church does. All are neither eyes nor ears. The biblical secret for a healthy and growing church (whether it is local, national or global) is found in Ephesians 4:16:

from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

Pastors and ministry leaders will gain new courage to keep up with their unique assignments from the Lord the more that they remember the real point. When people get saved, they have different experiences: feelings of electricity coursing through them; being flushed with warm water from the inside out; shaking with relief; weeping; being overcome; feeling nothing. The message that touched them may not be the same one that will touch others; the goal is neither a particular experience leading up to their salvation, nor a particular experience accompanying it.

Likewise, the Bible urges believers to be examples in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity (1 Timothy 4)—not necessarily in experiences. Maturity is measured by true life-change. Despite all the incredible large-group happenings in the Body of Christ, the call to affect people with the Gospel, the mandate to make disciples, is given to individuals—not to movements or to revivals.

Most of the talk about what God is doing in the world today has little bearing on what He is doing in our local churches. It’s like the national economic picture: it is interesting on the macro level, but it doesn’t really affect most people’s monthly budget. The more we recognize the enormity and complexity of what the world-wide church has been given to do, the more we will realize that it will take millions of us being obedient to our unique callings. In our zeal to find the move of the Spirit in our day, let us not forget He resides within and gives directions to individual believers who have distinct parts to play.

It is one thing to be encouraged on our way by the cloud of witnesses surrounding us; it is something else to be caught up in the crowd pressing us.

PR

Copyright 1999/2000 The Coastlands, Aptos Foursquare Church. Used by permission of author. Later included in the Winter 2022 issue of The Pneuma Review.