Chapter Three: Driven to Distraction by Success

Dear friends, 

A few weeks ago my near neighbour Giles Fraser hit several nails on their heads from the leafy London suburb of Kew when he launched a lament on success culture and ‘entertainment church’. He describes a frenetic institution whose workers were unable to sit on their own in an empty room with only God for company, and a third of the clergy felt like quitting. A church infected by a secular age whose managers are addressing the wrong problems as they demand more innovation. It’s worth a read if you’re not too depressed already.

More recently Stephen Kneale has written a fascinating blog about the pendulum shift reaction against a driven culture in the church/society. This swing he argues has got us into a mess of a different sort: 

And where has that got us? In a place where it can be hard to motivate volunteers to do anything that is anything less than exactly what they desperately want to do because they enjoy it. A place where the hard graft of ordinary ministry just doesn’t get done. A place where, if I’m not feeling it, I just don’t do it. If I haven’t had four nights in with my family, I’m really being pushed too hard. A place where the lost can go to Hell (quite literally) because I’m feeling a bit tired and need my “me time”. Or, I don’t go anywhere or do anything uncomfortable at all because I doubt I’ll be fully glorifying God in my attitude when I find it at all difficult.

Stephen Kneale

Some online memes suggest this is a generational issue. Boomers go off to work singing ‘Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s off to work we go’; Millennials chant, ‘you’re welcome’ to their boss who is expected to be thrilled they’ve turned up and GenZ shuffle in late to ‘It’s a hard knock life for us’ if they feel like it. I’m sure it’s far more nuanced than that, but the parody has the seed of something in it. 

We are clearly living in an age in the church where some people have given up hope, some people have checked out early (while still taking a stipend/wage), some people have burnout, and some people feel like they and they alone are trying really hard here, and why won’t everyone else join in? 

It’s easy to think that their stereotypes apply to the cooler kids down the road from you. But let’s bring it closer to home: 

Let’s talk Success. 

If you were talking to a mentor or spiritual director and they asked: 

• What does success mean to you?
• What would you do to get success?
• What would you do to sustain success? 

Would it prick the conscience of your heart if you answered in bare honesty? 

As I interviewed church leaders it became crystal clear that success is a validator for many of us. 

It validates not just our job performance but our sense of being. It can become the air we breathe, the expectation that we have. Our way of measuring performance. Our way of measuring up to expectations others put on us or inspire in us. 

Drivers

In the last chapter we talked about some of the messy bathwater around the beautiful baby that is the charismatic movement. A chunk of that touched on the need, desire or motivation for success. I’ve written at length about that motivation in my thesis [see especially Parts 13–17 in my blog series on HTB] and journeyed with the problem for at least 9 years. But this week I was away with our church staff team re-learning some old lessons about ‘what is your driver’ and came face to face with it for myself again.

A driver is a motivator that makes you do what you do. It may well be positive – there’s no prize for doing nothing – but it will have with a shadow side to it. But from all the options Paul and Christine Perkin laid out I couldn’t work it out what mine was until a day or two later when I was sitting at my desk reading the book of Hebrews. 

The options were

1. The drive to be perfect – we value success and achievement
2. The drive to please others – we value peace at any price
3. The drive for efficiency – we value activity and energy
4. The drive to be strong – we value independence and courage
5. The drive to try harder – we value effort and determination

None quite fit in the session, although there were traces of all of them. In some ways I’d been battling with a few years of thesis / covid induced lethargy, burying whatever talents I may have had. I felt like I was just getting my drivers back and I valued them. 

Then it hit me. And it was a shocker. 

A driver on a par with the ‘angel of light’ himself when he fell like lightning from heaven. 

An absolute scorcher of a needy driver. 

It pains to admit it.

The driver to be praised. The driver to be exalted.

It’s a bit different to the ‘please others’ driver. It’s not about them coming near or keeping peace. It’s about being praised from a distance. Being praiseworthy. Being seen as deserving of a place at the top table. It’s not quite the same as valuing success. It is valuing that others value your success! 

It’s not hard to psychologise where it came from in my life. I grew up in a very high affirmation culture at home and then was over-promoted at junior school to ‘head boy’ ( in a school where my Dad was headmaster!) I remember the angst of not making the first round of prefects in my senior school where the electors were not trying to please my Dad! This must have played into a deep need in me to show that I was good enough to get to the top. Not the top for a purpose. Not the top to do anything when up there. Just the top for the view. It all sounds shockingly Boris Johnson to me, but that may be unfair on the former British Prime Minister. 

So how could this desire to be exalted still be bobbling up in me nearly 30 years after my conversion? How have I not received inner healing to my ‘wounded child within’? How have I not put to death whatever remains of the sinful nature / been crucified with Christ? How have I not learnt to live out fully all the things I preach on? 

I guess the answers are a mixed bag. There’s a bit of me that wants to stand up on the altar we finished the last chapter with and get a whole bunch of praise. A bit of me that wants my big brother Jesus to get all the glory. A bit of me that loves having a perfect sibling. A bit of me that wants to compete. A bit of me that really, really wants other people to thank me – so I can get the double joy of ‘humbly’ deflecting it away to the ‘glory of God’.

If I’m honest it’s amazing he’s kept me going so long. 

Living for the Praise of His Glory and a heavenly ‘well done’.

Sometimes God is broadcasting a message to you. Have you ever found that? He keeps finding ways to say the same thing, until it sinks in. 

A few days before the ‘drivers’ teaching I had been preaching on Galatians 1:10. 

Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

St Paul, Galatians 1:10

I had clocked the negative, but not the positive. 

I saw clearly that if we are trying to please people we can’t be a servant of God. Pleasing people here could be through our abilities to pioneer, connect, create, nurture, protect or whatever our strengths may be. Pioneers may be trying to please a demanding dad (long dead even), nurturers trying to keep peace because they grew up in dysfunctional homes. There are all sorts of personality type versions of ‘trying to please people’ we can fall into. 

What I didn’t see was the ‘trying to win the approval of God bit’. 

That’s the game shifter. 

My heavenly ABBA is really willing to cheer me on. As we pray on ‘stir up Sunday’ he does want to ‘stir up my will to bring forth the fruit of good works’.

My heavenly ABBA does want to praise me.

He does want me to grow in perfection. After all that was Jesus’ punchline on the Sermon on the Mount. Be ‘telos’ as your heavenly Father is ‘telos’ [telos =  complete|perfect].

• He does want me to be at peace with those around me and bring peace. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.
• He does want me to expend energy and actively bring the Kingdom on earth. As Paul puts it ‘To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me. (Col 1.29).
• He does want me to grow in strength of mind, soul, body and spirit so that I can love him with all my heart, all my soul, mind and strength.
• He does want me to try hard, to use the talents he has given me to their maximum, to run the race, to fight the fight… 
• He is sitting there in heaven with a great cloud of witnesses cheering me on.
• He is delighting over me with singing as he was delighting over the people of Israel Zephaniah wrote to. My heavenly ABBA delights over me with singing.
• He does want me to have a vision of His glory and does want me to have a vision of His church that would enable me ‘for the joy set before me’ to ‘endure’ whatever ‘cross’ he sends my way, just like my big brother Jesus did.
• He does want to clothe prodigal Richard in a royal robe, and he does want to welcome me home to the sound of an Almighty party. 

Why would I live for anything less? 

Bursting the Bubble

Because it’s easy to slip from the approval of God bit to enjoying the praise of people, I’m pretty sure God puts people around us to burst our bubble and give us a chance of surviving this narrow path spiritual walk. I’ve had a few of those bubbles burst over the years.

Paul knew something of this when he talked about a messenger of Satan being sent to him to burst his bubble after he had had some ‘surpassing revelations’ he realised he couldn’t talk about. He called this messenger of Satan a thorn in the flesh. It was as irritant to remind him that we’re not here to build up ‘me’. Not to get buffed up. Not to take on the role of messiah. Not to seek human praise.

“If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” Galatians 1:10

What a tragedy to climb some spiritual ladder of success and realise it was the very same ladder the angel of light Lucifer climbed before he fell from heaven.

What a trap, to build up our own movement only to realise the ladder that seemed to soar so high is hovering over the pit of hell, while the entrance to heaven was a narrow gate, an ‘eye of the needle’ best walked through on your knees. 

I have been very blessed by a family who don’t take me seriously, and plenty of people to challenge my path so far. A few who have painfully burst my bubble – both friends and foes – may have actually been sent to save me. It could have gone differently. 

Driven or not?

We began with Giles Fraser lament about driven freneticism and burnout and Stephen Kneale’s observation that ‘self-care’ can slip into ‘don’t care’.

How about you?

You may have other drivers like the ones Paul and Christine Perkin shared with our church staff team that have got a bit out of kilter:  Be perfect. Please others. Be efficient. Be strong. Try harder. 

Or you may be uber passive. Given up on positive drivers and copped out of life, ministry and the good race.

• Didn’t want to get it wrong, so didn’t have a go.
• Didn’t want to fail, so didn’t try.
• Didn’t think you could, so quit before you started.

Ring any bells?

There are no prizes in heaven for not even trying to run the race.

Consider what Jesus said about the man with one talent, who buried it.

It’s a stark warning not to be a quitter, a sulker or compare ourselves with others to the point of giving up. 

But it really is a minefield isn’t it. Does anyone get it right?

A church leader wrote to me after reading the last chapter: He said: 

“So many people walking on the street who I long to see come to Christ who we just haven’t reached.  ‘Lord, how will we ever reach them – it’s just too much! I give up, You are going to have to do it!’  And then I paused and thought for a moment…… Of course! iIt’s only Him who can do anything; I can’t turn someone to Jesus, I can’t make them be born again; it’s all Him.  What in me, in my tradition, leans me to think constantly (while I believe in the power of prayer) that it’s about what I do, what we run, how active and engaged in the community we are that will lead people to Him.  As you observed of Alpha – ‘Alpha saved my life’, we as church leaders may smile but do we not fall into the trap of seeing the multitude of events, services, programmes and activities we run, being Messiah, and as we do, exhaust ourselves because we are the curators of these things.  I’m not advocating nothing, inertia but how do you stop Jesus’ hands and feet dislocating themselves from the body and particularly the head?” 

Church Leader

It’s a good question, a great one to end on and ponder today. 

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Previous Posts in this series: Foreword | introduction | Remember The Baby | The Bathwater Needs Flushing

HTB Network Thesis in 30 Parts: Featuring: Origins | Renewal | Success Culture | Managerialism | Theology | Trajectories.

Next Week: Chapter Four: Success – Don’t be ‘unequally yoked’ just so you can build a movement or leave a monument.