Losing My Old Identity to Find My Lord
by Lance Ford

What does guy do when he finds himself in what should be the prime of his career questioning the essence of what he believes about that very career? I found myself in that very spot. Since age 19, I had received my living from vocational ministry. My trek was not unlike most guys. I was a youth pastor, associate pastor, then pastor. I climbed the ladder: rungs one, two and three. From age 30-40, I had planted and pastored a quasi-seeker church that morphed into a more mission-driven church. But after ten years, I came to the place where I realized it had not morphed completely into what the Lord wanted.

In 1995, I led a team that took the typical church-planting route of arriving in a city, with the vision of building from the ground up via not-yet Christians. But in reality we were hoping for some believers who were discontent in their present situation (and believed in tithing) to jump on our train. It worked. We built "cool church," and they came. We quickly grew from a core of about two dozen adults and children to about 250 weekly attendees. A steady diet of Sunday morning "juice-me-up" and sermons that added a bit of Jesus to the American Dream was the formula I used to lead our church.

By 1998, something was eating at me. I began reading several books by the guys who were calling the church to mission and away from consumerism. They were challenging just about everything I woke in the morning to do. One phrase from Dallas Willard's Divine Conspiracy stopped me in my tracks. It went something like this -- "The failure to make disciples is the elephant in the room of the church of today." I knew this was absolutely true of our church. On the outside everything was rocking along. We were even planting other churches. But two things were eating away at me like acid. We were not leading people into transformation in their real day-to-day lives.

But there was another huge elephant trampling around inside the room of my heart. This issue had to do with leadership and systems. I took an honest look at the New Testament as compared our church (and most churches I was aware of). It became painfully obvious that the two had basically no mutual likeness when it came to leadership patterns. My role and job description was not born from the scriptures or the model of Jesus, but came from modern management models, books, and seminars, which were based on CEO moguls.

At first I began trying to retrain myself, our staff, our elders, and our church to live apart from the addiction to kingship and hierarchy. I wouldn't dare say it can't be done, but for me, it was an impossible task. Everything constantly defaulted back to "what does Lance say" mode. I finally reached the decision to resign. I immediately went into a position of leading a significant church planting ministry elsewhere, but continued to cook on the inside to the point that I felt I had to leave and take time to allow the Lord to continue his work inside me.

This brings me back to the starting point of this article -- what does a 42 year-old guy, with a wife, 3 teenagers, 2 cats, 2 dogs, 2 horses, and…2 mortgages (another story) do when he declares he can't bring himself to do the very thing he has trained for over 20 years to do? For myself, I have been able to walk into a ministry that I firmly believe I was being prepared for all along. This ministry is just beginning and we are very encouraged with the direction it is headed. But the gut-wrenching moments still are only a visit to the checkbook or mailbox away. Fear for the future lurks around every corner. That is the darkside…the part the enemy plays with intimidation games.

What has happened for my wife and I is this: we have cultivated a daily rhythm of prayer and reading together that has brought mutual strength and benefit beyond words. We both realize that the Lord is taking us through the hottest refining fire we could have imagined. It truly has been a time of exile. We have never felt so alone at times. At other times, we have never felt such a sense of God's favor on our lives. This has been an almost literal season of casting crowns for us.

One of the key things I learned about myself, and I suspect is true of many guys like me, is that my total identity was wrapped up in my group position -- what I meant to the group. I am not talking about a chest-beating, wanna' be on top type of attitude. I just mean an underlying finding of my value in the value the group placed on me. So, when I left what had been my identity for my entire adult life…well, this has been very hard on the old ego. I am still relearning my value as nothing but a son in the kingdom. It is both hard and exhilaratingly freeing. I highly recommend it!

Lance Ford
lanceford@shapevine.com
www.shapevine.com

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