The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb: Searching for Jesus’ Path of Power in a Church that Has Abandoned It

by Jamin Goggin

As Martin Luther King Jr. noted, love and power are not mutually exclusive: One of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites, polar opposites, so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love . . . What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love, implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.5

The result of Moses’ disobedience was judgment: Moses was forbidden from entering the promised land. Despite the judgment, however, water still poured from the rock. The same act that brought judgment upon Moses quenched the thirst of the people. God’s power to act is not contingent upon our obedience. God can move in his grace to produce kingdom fruit despite our pride, but the call for followers of Jesus is to have hearts congruent with his work.

The way from above is power from God and power for God; it is a power known in our weakness and expressed in love. The other way of power, the way from below, seeks power from within and pursues power as an end in itself.

Our feet are trained to find paths of self-achievement and self-glorification. We use our vocations to build significance. We use our relationships to get ahead. We spend our money and our time trying to gain more power. Because we are prone to waywardness, prone to walk the path of pride, self-sufficiency, and power, we need the church to ground us in Christ and his way. We cannot live in Christ’s way on our own. This likely sounds right, but many of us functionally doubt our need for the church. Pursuing the way of Christ seems like a “me and Jesus” kind of endeavor. But our focus on ourselves unearths a deep foolishness that owes more to our culture and worldliness than it does to Scripture. We have no hope of pursuing the way from above apart from the church.

In a culture drunk on power and in need of an intervention, the church has too often become an enabler. In many places, churches openly affirm the way from below. Instead of being told how desperately I am in need of God, I am repeatedly told how much God needs me. Instead of being exhorted to pick up my cross and follow Christ, I am told that Jesus wants to be my partner in the plan I have to rid my life of all struggles and challenges. We hear gospels of moralism, centering on our power to become a better person, and we hear sermons offering up God as merely another resource along our journey for successful and happy living. Sermons become pep talks amid a quest for power and significance. Instead of worship being an invitation to come before God in humble awe and reverence, worship becomes an experience meant to lift us above the travails of everyday life and give us a sense of transcendence. Instead of hearing God’s vision of redeeming all things in Christ by the power of his Holy Spirit, we hear of the pastor’s vision to grow an even bigger church that does bigger things so that he can be powerful and we can be powerful with him.

We wanted to seek out our elders, trusting that their decades of faithfulness turned into wisdom. What we found were the holiest, wisest, and most powerful people we have ever met. These are people who had previously influenced us deeply through their writing, and in some cases, through phone calls and letters. They are mentors, and we hope that their faithfulness can be honored through this book.12 Through pain, disease, rejection, and the toil of ministering in an age when “old” is often synonymous with “out-of-touch,” these mentors radiated incredible joy and a deep warmth of spirit. In our time with each of them, we knew we were loved, and we both hold on to that love even now.

According to Paul, this is exactly right: “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). To reject this path is to put oneself, rather than God, at the center of life.

Being special is the Achilles’ heel of many churches today. They want to stand out and be noticed. This passion to be seen as special is what drives the choice of pastor, and very often it works, at least on a surface level.”

We all want to feel as if we are part of something important, something unique, something that is going somewhere. We want to be where the action is. We don’t want to be part of something ordinary; we want to be part of something special. Being a part of God’s kingdom just doesn’t feel exciting and sexy enough. The day-to-day reality of being with God in our work, our home life, and our community lacks the power, the transcendence, the specialness we crave. We long for the validation of our importance.

“Yes, well, what has replaced the focus on God and the radical, down-on-your-face spirit of worship in so many of our evangelical churches, is the sense that worship is something exuberant. It will command attention. It is something special. It will draw people in. It is a kind of exuberance that makes for shallowness because it makes for externality. People will say ‘in praise of God’ and ‘for the glory of God,’ but it’s external. I think that in contemporary evangelical worship there is often an element of showing off, which is external. Pride is the disposition controlling the heart, but externally it looks like, it believes itself to be, the praise of God.”

“You should have a fifty-year plan—a vision for growth over a long period of time as you embrace your weakness.”

The problem confronting Paul was that he did not embody any of the marks of power the Corinthians valued. In many ways, he was the exact opposite of what they desired: He did not have an impressive physical presence, he lacked bravado and confidence, and he was meek and gentle in his leadership (2 Cor. 10:10). He did not speak with eloquence (2 Cor. 11:6), and he did not boast in money, intentionally refusing to take money for his “services,” choosing to work a menial job that would have been socially dishonorable (2 Cor. 11:7). On top of all this, Paul experienced continual suffering and hardship (2 Cor. 11:21–30). Each of these things was a sign of weakness in the eyes of the Corinthians. The totality of Paul’s weaknesses had become unpalatable to them. The Corinthians wanted a super-apostle, not an apostle of weakness.

Because of sin, we are all drawn to autonomy—we are all oriented to independence rather than dependence upon God. Because of this, we will always be tempted to use our strengths (whether they are talents, abilities, or even spiritual gifts) in our own power rather than in reliance upon Christ. Even in our strengths, therefore, where we are most tempted, we need to rely upon God and abide in his love. It is in the areas of our lives where we are most able, the places we think we are strong, where we are most often called into weakness. It is in our strengths where we think we can avoid abiding in Christ, where we sow to the flesh rather than abide by the Spirit. It is in our strengths where we trust our own personal savvy rather than the calling of God. As those called, not in our power but in God’s power, we are called to know our weakness amid our strengths so that when we try to thrive in sinful autonomy, we turn instead to abiding in Christ and proclaiming to him, “Without you, we can do nothing” (see John 15:5). Power in the Christian life is found in one place and one place alone. In the words of Paul, “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me” (Col. 1:29). It is God’s energy at work within that we must come to embrace; but his energy is not the power to achieve, but the power of dependence and love.

Parents confront their weaknesses when they yell at their children, knowing full well that this has more to do with their own hearts than it does with their child, and they are confronted with a deep sort of weakness.

Our culture proclaims that the mountaintop is the land of flourishing and is the place of life. But this is all a ruse. These mountaintops are dry, parched land. Mountaintops are lonely, windswept places where vegetation is dwarfed and gnarled. We ascend the mountain expecting to find the pinnacle of flourishing at the top, but instead we discover a place inhospitable for life. God invites us into the valley. The question is whether we will accept the invitation. The valley will always be in the shadow of the mountains. The mountains, with their dramatic peaks and pillars to the clouds, will always appear more special to the world around you. Becoming a valley is truly humbling. And yet this is the place where the rain soaks deep and fruit is truly produced. The valley is the place of life. It is the place of kingdom power.

Significance, unlike wisdom, does not take patience.

We want the promised land without the testing of the wilderness; we want to have a voice that powerfully proclaims truth without first learning to be “slow to speak” (James 1:19). Jesus attacks our shortsighted impatience and calls us into the long way.

Rather than viewing our strengths as the path to a meaningful and powerful life, James was calling us to view our weaknesses as the path of our calling. Seeking to live empowered by our strengths was, in his mind, a wholly unchristian way to live. The Christian way of life is living in dependence upon God, moving forward to embrace our weaknesses so that God’s glory might be revealed. This has obvious implications for how we think about ministry and calling, but it also impacts our understanding of what it means to be a human being. On this understanding of life, part of what it means to mature as a person is to accept our weakness and abide within it.

The source of our power always entails a reaction of some kind. Coal power, for instance, has the negative fallout of pollution. Nuclear power has the unfortunate effect of creating dangerous waste. The power we tap into is no different. The power from below radiates a certain waste product and pollution into our souls, shrinking our capacity for love and undermining our ability to really attend to others. The sad irony is that using this way helps us, in the short term, to get ahead in this world, but in the long term it undermines our ability to flourish as a human being.

In the famous words of G. K. Chesterton, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”4

In the kingdom, flourishing is found in serving others, not “lord[ing] it over them” (Matt. 20:25). In the kingdom, flourishing is discovered by being last, not being first (Mark 9:35). In the kingdom, flourishing is embracing the littleness of our roles and accepting that the “less honorable” parts of the body are more honored (1 Cor. 12:21–26). In the kingdom, flourishing is known in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).

We may look to find power in God, but is it for the sake of our own greatness rather than love?

As long as it will further what we believe is “good,” we allow ourselves to do questionable things.

Maybe more than anywhere else in the church, spiritual gifts are entry points into the way from below. The way we understand it, spiritual gifts are unapologetically about power to control—where we assert our power in the service of the kingdom. These easily become devices for our self-actualization. We mistakenly believe these gifts are special abilities, almost like superpowers. This creates two problems. First, it establishes a hierarchy of value, where we come to see certain people as particularly important because of their gifts. We come to think about these “special abilities” in worldly terms, so naturally, we begin making worldly value judgments. The result is that we create a hierarchy of power within the church based on one’s particular gift. Second, it tends toward self-reliance. If we tap into our superpower and cultivate it, we can do powerful things. Since we think these are our abilities, we come to believe we own them and therefore don’t really need God. He may have given us the gifts, but now they are ours to actualize or to let atrophy. The results are up to us and our savvy.

Spiritual gifts are an interesting test case in how the church views power, because they are how we put our power into practice.

Everything we do taps into a deeper reality of power: power from below for control, or power from God for love. Power for control gets things done quickly and is the easiest way to “make something of yourself.” Even the way we respond to our sin, such as pornography, illustrates our turn to self-power. We feel shame, and so turn to self-help, self-condemnation, or willpower to defeat it, but it doesn’t work. If we pray about it, we turn against ourselves, often praying through self-condemnation in an attempt to lessen the judgment of God. We quickly forget that it was in our sin that Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8), and that for those in him there is now no condemnation (Rom. 8:1).

We asked, “Where have you learned most significantly that strength really does come in weakness?” As James leaned forward to answer, Rita muttered under her breath, “I could tell you after a few years.” Jamin and I sat silently, knowing that this disease was the great trial of her life; but then James inserted his own thought. “You see,” he started, looking over at his bride, “Rita is worried that as she loses her memory, she will forget Jesus.” James glanced at us but continued to talk to her. “So I remind her, what matters is not that you remember him, but that he remembers you.”

While many of us think about the church in terms of years (“What is our focus this year?”), and perhaps others think in terms of decades (“What season are we entering into?”), wisdom should help us think in terms of centuries. Small acts of love may not seem worthwhile or meaningful when we are shortsighted. But we have to think about what we are giving ourselves to, and how that may form the people of this place for decades and centuries.

American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationery and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.

Being a pastor automatically puts you in a position of power; you don’t have to do anything to get it.

the great temptation of power is control, and the great consequence of control is lack of relationship. The reason that intimacy is so difficult in ministry is you’re not in control—you’re in relationship. You have to enter a person’s life and they have to enter yours. The minute you start becoming obsessed with control, you lose the relationship. Sadly, pastors can get really good at seeming relational, but they are just being manipulative. They know how to play the emotional angles. I think that probably the leading characteristic of successful pastors today is their control. Is that part of your experience?” Kyle quickly responded to Eugene’s question. “That does speak into my own experience. I see this running rampant in the church today. In my experience, this seems to come up most obviously in our obsession with systems and programs as a way to achieve and quantify.” “That seems right,” said Eugene. “The minute you develop a programmatic mentality, you depersonalize it because you don’t have to know this person, like them, or pray for them; you just do your job and make sure they do their job. The one thing we can do, we can learn people’s names, we can be in their homes, and they can be in our homes. We can assiduously cultivate a sense of relationship. There is no hierarchy in friendship. We can cultivate relationships with the outsider, with the person who doesn’t think I’m important. So I think somehow we have to find ways to cultivate a sense of nobodyness. Paul...

convicting. I think many pastors, and I include myself in this, operate within our own “class” as it were—separate not only from nonbelievers but also from the very people we are called to shepherd. Eugene offers us a different vision. While the reality of church ministry today still weighed heavily on us, Eugene’s vision was a hopeful one. This isn’t rocket science.

the way of the lamb . . . The pastor gives their life for the sake of the church, regardless of what they gain. The pastor views ministry as an arena of love and service, not winning and losing. The pastor embraces their congregation as people to know and love, not tools to use for other ends. The pastor views prayer and care as the centerpiece of their work, rather than an interruption. The pastor views other pastors not as competition, but as fellow shepherds on the journey whom they need for encouragement and wisdom, and who they are called to encourage and love.

toxic leaders promise to “keep us safe, anoint us as special, and offer us a seat at the community table.”4 We want a sense of safety, significance, and belonging, and they are offering it in exchange for loyalty.

We must stand against domineering, manipulative, and power-hungry leadership. It is tempting to believe simply overthrowing such leaders would solve the problem. However, this approach is naive. Toxic leaders are the products of toxic cultures. So we don’t seek out shepherds, but gurus. We don’t desire servants, but kings. We don’t long for pastors, but celebrities. Such a leader is not known by his or her congregation, not personally, but serves more as the logo of an organization. But this is what we ask for, and, unsurprisingly, this is what it takes to be considered “successful” in much of evangelicalism today.

the things that make leaders dangerous are the very things that earn them affirmation. This is where we see the subtle temptation of grandiosity seeping into ministry. The ways of the world have been so thoroughly internalized in our church culture that we don’t even see them anymore. I recall one pastor who used to remind his congregation, on almost a weekly basis, that if people went to a different church, it meant they really didn’t want to hear God’s Word preached. He ...

Wisdom and talent are not synonyms. Arrogance and pride never reside alone; they are woven within a faithfulness to the way from below that produces death.

“The real issue for the evangelical church today,” he said, “is what counts as success in ministry? If you go back several decades, you will see that people didn’t think about ministers in the same way. They didn’t really think in terms of success. The whole idea of being a success was more in terms of being faithful to a calling. For example, you could be a minister who wasn’t a very good speaker and be regarded as someone who was faithful to their calling, someone of character. So the problem is how you think about success, and today it is very difficult to think about success except in terms of a great deal of money and a lot of accoutrements—like buildings and programs. And the model of success that is largely projected by our seminaries is tied to these outward symbols, and a very low percentage of people who are in the ministry can succeed in those terms. I’m sorry to say this, but much of what we call Christian is not a manifestation of the supernatural life of God in our souls; much of what we call Christian is really just human.

“the main thing is, such a person leaves the big things to God.

We should just get out of the business of seeking great things. Now, if we do that, then we will be more observant of the small things; we will, for example, have time and energy because we are resting in God to really do justice to the small things. And that will be to approach them as one who lives in the kingdom of God who actually cares about the people who are closest to them. Those people are the ‘neighbors’ in Scripture, they are the ones who are close to us, and we care about them. But you know, you can’t do that if you are in a hurry.”

Whereas Christian wisdom is a long process of growth into maturity, counterfeit wisdom is always easier to come by. Counterfeit wisdom is fast food for the soul. It is easy to find, cheap to get, and never fulfills its promise to satisfy you. We are all tempted by counterfeit wisdom.

It is not arrogance to know what the way of evil looks like in the world and to name it. It is deceptive, however, to name it everywhere other than in your own heart.

Many of us seem ready for Jesus to save us, as long as this saving has little to do with how we engage everyday life. We are tempted to tack Jesus onto things we are doing, while at the same time we are desperately afraid that he will undermine them. We can try to use Jesus to obtain power, but we are often less interested in the cross he bears.

Our focus on youth reveals how little concern we have for wisdom, which comes from decades of faithfulness. It is not surprising, therefore, that we’ve been inundated in recent years with stories about famous pastors having waves crash into their houses, revealing the foundation of sand beneath.

Our primary focus as followers of Christ is not to unearth toxic or abusive power in others, but to recognize our own temptations and predilections for such power. Before we “speak truth to power,” we must speak the truth regarding our own pull to the way from below. Discerning how we have embraced the way of the dragon will help us see how our immediate community has done so as well.

if a leader continually points to themselves—their gifts, talents, wisdom, resume, and accomplishments—as the source of their power, then perhaps we should begin to take them at their word. Perhaps it really is the case that their power is not from God and for God, but from the self and for the self.

A rejection of the church is a rejection of Jesus’ way.

The Israelites had to journey through the water of death in order to journey toward the promised land. Picking up this theme, Paul exhorts, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:3–5).

In the book of Revelation we read that a new song is sung in heaven that only the redeemed can learn (14:3). Likewise, there is a sense in which we are all learning the song we will sing for eternity, but we are still out of tune in the flesh and still tone-deaf because of the world. In this proclamation of our hearts, we are trusting that our God is the God who hears, and that our singing is not desperate futility, but the longing of love. Through such singing we participate in Christ’s ongoing defeat of the powers and principalities. It may seem foolish and inconsequential, perhaps as effective as blowing trumpets while marching around the walls of an enemy city (Josh. 6), but the battle cry is the outpouring of a people of love who live and thrive in the kingdom of love. Our song is a hopeful longing for the day when every tear will be wiped away, and when we will be participants in the wedding feast of the Lamb.

From the perspective of worldly power, this practice is meaningless and feeble. Perhaps this is the reason so many evangelical churches have dismissed Communion from regular practice in corporate worship. In the Lord’s Supper we proclaim a power in weakness for the sake of love that is foolishness to the world. Such a proclamation is the result of not merely the facets of the ritual, but the way in which the ritual is practiced. When Jesus established this meal as the centerpiece of community life for the people of the way, he did so in the context of washing his disciples’ feet. Jesus was demonstrating the way of power and leadership he was calling his followers into (John 13:15). Power in the kingdom gives birth to service, rather than power forcing servitude as the world continually presumes. But the table flattens out the hierarchies we like to create. At the table, we all come equally; and at the table, the power structures of the world collapse. As much as we tend to reject this idea, we do not come to this table only as individuals, but as members of a family, as brothers and sisters in Christ. The Communion Table is a place of partaking in the love of Christ at the cross, and therefore receiving the kind of love that Christ offers. Similarly, to partake in this meal is to receive and accept the call to love Christ’s body, and to give ourselves to one another in life and in death (John 15:13). The Communion Table, therefore, provides us with a pattern of reconciliat...