Let’s Follow and Lead by Faith
Mandy Smith
6 min read ⭑
Every day gives us a chance to understand the complexities of ego, know how to invite others into our own experiences of God without centering ourselves, and find the Christlike kind of authority that only comes from emptying ourselves. Every day requires us to welcome the quirkiness of personality and emotion (our own and others’), watching Jesus reveal himself through our own ordinary, particular ways of being. And every single moment, we’ll get to discover new ways to need God, letting those amateur skills of loving and waiting and praying and sharing testimonies enliven our professional work. All this takes tiny, daily choices of faith.
The fact remains: Faith begets faith. We’ve tried sharing Jesus through our own ideas, doctrines, rules, programs. Some of it has worked. Much of it has not enabled the transformed lives or vibrant communities that Scripture promises. When we can no longer cruise on “the way it’s always been done,” when the old language and ways of understanding Scripture begin to lose their meaning, our greatest skill will be to remember to ask once more where the Spirit is leading and say yes over and over.
If you hear my passion, hear it as the passion of a new convert. I’ve chosen a new way but am still figuring out what on earth I’ve chosen. After years of learning how to be good at this work, I’m choosing the beginner mind, at great risk. But because I see a power at work beyond my own, I’m willing to keep taking that risk. So instead of leaving you with “Six Easy Ways to Lead from Faith,” I want to leave you with a story, one that changed my life and work forever.
My conversion to this way of leading came on a Monday morning. When I answered the phone, I had no idea that call might become one of most powerful, transformative moments of my ministry experience. And the most remarkable thing about the power was that I know I did very little to make the powerful thing possible. Lely’s voice on the end of the line was quietly intense as she poured out her story of emotional, spiritual and physical torment. She’d tried everything that promised to save her life and everything that might end her life, and she was turning to me as a last effort. I felt the gravity of what she was asking of me, and my heart raced under the weight of it.
I began (perhaps partly to share the burden) with “I feel that I should say I’m not a doctor or a psychologist. Are you seeing professionals in those fields?” She said she was. I gulped. What on earth could I offer her? What is it that I, as a professional Christian, can offer? All week I’d been feeling ineffective in my ministry efforts. How could my feeble skills possibly save a life? The words came. “A pastor can offer you something different from a doctor or psychologist. But it won’t mean much unless you believe God is powerful,” I said. (I wonder now if I was hoping she’d say she didn’t believe so I’d be protected from the disappointment of more ineffectiveness.)
But before I could even finish, Lely surprised me by saying, “I do! I do believe God is powerful!” What on earth was I supposed to say now? She’d told me the depth of her darkness and the power of her faith. I’m a professional people helper, someone who claims to work for One who does miracles. I wanted to fix her, to see healing for her sake . . . and for mine. My overwhelming inadequacy leaked out in a tiny, silent prayer: What now, Lord?
And then in the darkness of my spiraling desire to feel competent as a professional, there was a small point of light: Just say what you believe about her. And so I opened my mouth and let these words pour out: “I believe you are precious in God’s sight. I believe you are loved and worthy. I believe God made you for a reason, that he smiled when you were born. Your life is unlike any other life that has ever been or ever will be, and there is a unique way God wants to show himself to the world through your gifts and personality.” And then I remembered Psalm 139, so I read that too. That’s all I did. That’s all I knew to do. So that’s all I did.
And then I heard it — a change in her voice: “I feel something lifting.” In the months since that day, Lely has told me how on that first phone call a kind of electricity was coursing through her body, bringing her back to life. She tells the story over and over, describing a spell being broken, one that had drawn her to her grave for sixteen years. That electric current has been strong enough to get her through months of battling a broken mental-health system, relational dysfunction, through therapy and prayer and Bible study.
It remains in her still, lighting up her eyes as she speaks about God’s work in her. I watch Lely tell her story in psychiatric facilities and on buses in a way that’s somehow at the same time disarming and disruptive. She can’t keep it to herself. Those who have known her awhile want to know how that shrunken lady became so radiant. Both of us know that whatever happened that day was not entirely our doing. Whatever power we experienced was not our power. Her confession of belief in God’s power gave me courage to do my work. And my confession of belief in God’s love for her spoke new possibilities into her life. Neither of us can take the credit. But both of us can celebrate how the other’s faith in a powerful God made a space for him to do miracles.
This way of following is simple — not easy, but simple. It means paying attention to how God leads through Scripture, through prayer, through the community and simply saying yes, whether we understand where it will lead . . . or not. It’s risky and costly, of course, but we’ve been promised that’s our way (Matthew 16:24).
If it’s normal to follow in this way in our personal faith, why would we expect it to be any different in our work of teaching others to follow? There are moments when I panic: Can this really be the right way to do important things? So much in my education and culture would ridicule this as the way to anything serious! When these fears arise, I remind myself: Everything about this work is based on the premise that there is a powerful God at work in and through the gathered communities that bear his Spirit. Every story of the church’s founding came from surprising encounters and ordinary human responses.
They became transcendent, transformative moments that began with simply paying attention, saying yes, and telling the stories of God’s work. But don’t hear me saying I always fully believe. Belief is not feeling or understanding. Belief is choosing. Somehow he has great faith has become a statement about someone’s own strength. But to have great faith is not to have great capacity except the capacity to choose to say yes to God. It may not be an easy choice. And we may not like or understand it. But to choose it is within our capacity. Faith is not our strength, it’s our awareness of where our strength ends, a kind of stubborn refusal to pretend we’re strong and a muscle memory of what to do when we’re not. This kind of faith is not beyond the average person. Regardless of how much certainty or closeness to God we feel, if faith is an act of will, it’s always in our control.
We can choose to say, “I don’t know what God has in store (and sometimes I wonder if he’s listening), but Scripture says God is powerful, his Spirit is active in us and the world, and that when his people get together and share Good News, miracles can happen. So let’s live as if that is true.” If following and leading by faith begins with saying yes over and over, we have great hope in this moment of crisis. As we question everything we’ve known and believed, as we watch the crumbling of all our personal, congregational and institutional practices and traditions, when so much about contemporary Christian leadership feels impossible, this way of leading is hopeful.
Mandy Smith is the pastor of St. Lucia Uniting Church in Brisbane, Australia, and a D.Min. cohort leader at The Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination. Mandy is an artist and the author of Confessions of an Amateur Saint: The Christian Leader’s Journey from Self-Sufficiency to Reliance on God, The Vulnerable Pastor: How Human Limitations Empower Our Ministry and Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture. Mandy and her husband, Jamie, a New Testament professor, live in their parsonage, where the teapot is always warm.
Taken from “Confessions of an Amateur Saint” by Mandy Smith. Copyright © 2024. Used by permission of NavPress, represented by Tyndale House Publishers.