Mandy Smith

Nestled in the busy city of Brisbane, Australia, you’ll find Mandy Smith — maybe in her parsonage crafting next week’s sermon for St. Lucia Uniting Church, writing a new book or working on her current art project. (Or maybe taking a break to heat up the teapot.) As a Jesus-loving pastor, author, speaker and artist, Mandy knows her success doesn’t rest on her own efforts. For her, it’s all about letting God display his glory through her strengths and inadequacies.

Mandy is a regular contributor to Christianity Today and Missio Alliance, where she writes about art, faith and leadership. You can find more of her thought-provoking insights in her books: “The Vulnerable Pastor, Unfettered” and her latest, “Confessions of an Amateur Saint.” In our conversation today, we’re exploring Mandy’s nostalgic delight for fresh fish and chips, her experiment with Raku pottery, her pursuit of childlike faith and how she navigates times of personal and ministerial crisis. You’ll also discover the books, songs and fables that direct her toward healthier leadership and a stronger relationship with God.

QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT

There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?

Every Friday night, my husband, Jamie, and I get fish and chips from the local family-run fish-and-chip shop (which feels a bit Lent-y). We’re transported to our childhoods when we unwrap the paper to dig into hand-breaded, freshly caught, boneless local fish and fat wedges of fried potatoes doused in ketchup (for me) and lemon juice (for him). During the 25 years we lived in the Midwest, we pined for fresh fish and chips and gobbled them up whenever we got to go home to Australia. Now that we live in Australia again, we stop at our favorite fish-and-chip shop every Friday night and say, “How amazing that we can ride a bike down the street to get this meal we once longed for!”

What’s more, when an estranged family member recently came to our house for dinner for the first time in two years, we had to have fish and chips. It felt a bit like Jesus’ resurrection reunion feast with his disciples.

Raku pottery in kiln — Viviane Okubo; Unsplash

QUESTION #2: REVEAL

We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity (or activities) do you love engaging in, which also helps you find essential spiritual renewal?

In my opinion, the best TV moment is when Keith Brymer Jones weeps over a piece of pottery (if you know, you know). So I’ve always wanted to make pottery, specifically Raku, a Japanese method that’s raw and risky. When the pot is glowing hot, you use massive tongs to carefully remove it from the kiln and throw it into sawdust, which then bursts into flames. The flames are quickly covered to extract the oxygen, and finally, the pottery is plunged into water, sputtering and steaming. This dramatic process creates some kind of alchemy between clay and minerals and fire and water and oxygen that I don’t understand. (And I’m sure I’m not using any of the right words for any of this!) It creates surprising and dramatic effects on the finished product — crackled glazes and metallic blooms and matte black depths. Something about that mysterious process feels a bit like following God — we have a part to play, but so much is out of our hands.

I finally took a Raku workshop this month and was stunned to discover that one of my first pieces became something remarkable. (You can see it here.) I had no idea what I was doing — I just listened and tried my best. Then, there was a blur of fire and hissing, and suddenly, something beyond my imagination transformed my lump of clay into something I love to hold. It gives me hope that in my efforts in life and ministry, there are things at work beyond my power and understanding.

QUESTION #3: CONFESS

Every superhero has a weakness. Every human too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you hide it?

At 35, I attended a conference for Christian leaders, thinking God might use it to prepare me for a new senior role. And he did … but not in the way I expected. Everyone on stage had answers and strategies, impressive churches and lives. They were good, faithful people. But they didn’t look or sound like me.

In deep shame, I locked myself in my hotel room for 24 hours, brutally aware of how ordinary I was and how little I could fix, control and understand. For hours, I wept, retching into the sink, shaken to discover that, after years of prayer and study, I was not cut out for ministry. I told the Lord, “You’ve made a mistake. If that’s what leadership looks like, I’ve got less than nothing.”

I wanted him to say, “You can do this!”

Instead, through the night, I heard the words, “In your weakness, I am strong.”

But I didn’t feel strong. So those words fell flat.

I know now that God wasn’t promising I’d feel strong. He was inviting me not to avoid this holy moment. I had a choice to hide in shame, pretending I was enough, or to look my limitation square in the face and ask God to reveal himself in it.

Fifteen years later, I’m still not comfortable with my limitations. But I’m getting used to the discomfort of letting them be seen. Because that’s where God’s power is revealed — to me and those I lead.

(I more fully tell the story and how it transformed my ministry in my book, “The Vulnerable Pastor.”)

QUESTION #4: FIRE UP

Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?

I’m emerging from three years of crisis, personally and in my ministry. While I could use a vacation, I’m surprised to find that the crisis has not burned me out. Instead, the crisis is healing me and my congregation and releasing a new creativity in me.

I can only think that this surprising outcome grows from the way God invited me to respond to the crisis — through confessing to him every way it tempted me toward secular self-reliance. Every day, I just wanted to feel strong, to look successful, to know outcomes, to see miracles. Or to just run away. And I was tempted to work harder in my own strength. So I chose to confess those self-sufficient habits and confess my belief in God again, even if I didn’t feel it. I found myself saying over and over, “I believe God is here, that the Spirit is still powerful, that the gospel is still good news and that the gates of Hades will not prevail against his church. I don’t feel it, and I don’t see it, but I’m choosing to live as if I believe it.” And in the discomfort of that kind of life, I had no other option but to need God.

This is bearing fruit in the form of a renewed congregation, new forms of art and my latest book, “Confessions of an Amateur Saint: The Christian Leader’s Journey from Self-Sufficiency to Reliance on God.”

QUESTION #5: BOOST

Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?

On an eight-week sabbatical, I felt invited to remember childhood — eating what I liked and napping when I needed to. I promised to pay attention to every childlike prompt in me — like walking barefoot or talking to trees. I found myself hesitating. Will it be disappointing? Will I look dumb? I wondered. After eight weeks of listening to instincts, emotions and senses, I could no longer distinguish between my own childlikeness and the prompts of the Spirit.

Now, back at work, the prompts were more daunting: invite the congregation to pray for seemingly impossible healings, open the church building during riots over racial injustice. Saying yes didn’t always lead to obvious outcomes. But I learned resilience — the point is obedience, not success. Whatever fruitfulness in me and my work continues to come from attending to these instincts.

We wonder why God’s not talking, but maybe he’s broadcasting on a million channels through nature, emotion and senses, and we’re only tuned in with our brains!

On the road to Emmaus, the disciples were oblivious to Jesus’ presence. It wasn’t until they had a multisensory meal with him that they finally saw him. And they verified it by saying, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us all along?” I don’t want to miss one way Jesus is walking with me, so in addition to what my mind is telling me, I choose to pay attention to my senses and the burning in this small heart.

(This experience inspired “Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture.”)

QUESTION #6: inspire

Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you right now?

As I emerge from a season of crisis, I sometimes have trouble focusing while reading Scripture. So I’ve been reflecting on icons of scriptural scenes to sink deeply into them. At a recent art show, I was surprised by my strong emotional response to an image of Mary holding baby Jesus. As a Protestant, I’ve never been encouraged to reflect on Mary. But I felt God inviting me to spend some time with her, so I continue to revisit the artwork.

As I sit with it, God is healing me as a mother (Mary understood what motherhood costs us), as a follower (Mary has been called Jesus’ first follower, the first to receive him) and as an artist (we all have invitations from God to let him plant something in us, to let it grow in us and take on both his DNA and ours). The more I sit with her, the more I smile to realize that, all along, Mary’s been my hero.

QUESTION #7: FOCUS

Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed the game and changed your heart? What radically altered your life? What changed your reality?

“A Little Manual for Knowing” by Esther Lightcap Meek

The Enlightenment has carved us up into a brain, body and heart. This worldview distrusts emotions, senses and joy. So it was life-changing when I read Meek’s comparison of our usual approach (“Knowledge as Information”) and what she calls “Loving to Know” — a beautiful way of learning about anything (including God) by choosing to love the thing we don’t yet know so we can truly know it.

“White Owl” by Josh Garrels (and animation by Arian Armstrong)

I’m a reluctant prophet and pioneer, but God often puts me in prophetic, pioneering places. This song doesn’t minimize the pain of such a calling but casts a vision of what’s possible when we’re faithful and courageous. My favorite line:

“Like a wolf at midnight howls, you use your voice in darkest hours, / to break the silence and the power, holding back the others from their glory. / Every story will be written soon.”

“A Nervous Condition” from “Friedman’s Fables” by Edwin Friedman

Edwin Friedman (famous for his non-anxious leadership classic, “A Failure of Nerve”) tells a fable of a man whose nerves extend beyond his body. The people in his life learn to live in the space left around his sensitivities until his wife invites healing by allowing him to experience the pain of his choices. As an Enneagram 9, it’s been easy for me to adapt to others’ unhealth. So this fable has given me the courage to invite people into health — even if it’s painful. (Here’s a podcast episode about that particular fable if you want to learn more.)

We all have things we cling to to survive (or even thrive) in tough times — times like these! Name one resource you’re savoring and/or finding indispensable in this current season, and tell us what it’s doing for you.

While this may not be the kind of resource you had in mind, the resource I’m most savoring at the moment is the birdsong in my neighborhood. Every morning, I leave my phone at home to walk. It’s not until I reach the end of the block that my lungs begin to open, and not until the end of the street that I finally look to the sky. At last, at the riverbank, I remember the birds. I sit and listen, picking out each bird’s timbre from the glorious cacophony: butcherbird, kookaburra, cockatoo.

By the time I return to the house, my brain has remembered how to order itself instead of being ordered by the things I take in online, my lists of things to do and the expectations of others. There are important things stirring in me that get pushed to the background by the demands of this life. The birds know how to draw those things to the surface. There’s a good reason Jesus told us to consider them.

QUESTION #8: dream

God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?

I’ve enjoyed making art my whole life, but I’ve often felt like it was “just a hobby.” Now I’m seeing how revival is stirring among artists in a way that’s bigger than making pretty pictures (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I’m watching artist friends powerfully moved by the Spirit to establish ministries to encourage and celebrate Christian artists (like Convergence and Creo).

Something new is stirring in me in a sense that God is asking me to let my art be part of my congregational and writing ministries, but I’m still figuring out what that means. So far, it’s meant publishing my art alongside my words in my latest book (“Confessions of an Amateur Saint”), creating an outdoor pop-up mini art show for Lent and designing a collaborative art project for the congregation to make together.

My writing in the past had all been nonfiction. Then, suddenly, there was a story in me that just had to be told. It began one day while sitting in my empty church, listening to the sound of a little gecko who lives in the rafters. At the time, we weren’t sure if the church would survive, and I wondered, If this church closes, will this gecko’s noises still echo around the empty space? Scripture tells us that all creation sings God’s praise, so what might creatures living in an empty church know that we have forgotten? I wrote the story to find out. (Hopefully, one day, I’ll find a way to share it so you can read it!)

Imagine yourself in Noah’s shoes. Everywhere you look, people are doing whatever evil thing enters their minds. No one cares about obeying God. It’s just violence and selfishness as far as the eye can see.

So you start preaching. You warn everyone of the Flood God said he would bring and encourage them to repent so they can find mercy and peace and joy.

But no one listens. Not a single person. When the Flood comes, it’s just you and your family on that ark. Everyone else is destroyed.

Some might look at Noah in that moment and think him a failure. After all, his preaching didn’t attract any new passengers into the ark. But did he fail if he did what God asked him to?

As Mandy said earlier in her interview, “The point is obedience, not success.” Do we believe that? Or do we judge ourselves — and maybe others — based on the world’s definition of success? If so, let’s ask God to realign our minds with his truth.