Theology in the Raw - Church Planting, Pastoring Post-Covid, and Cultivating Resilience: Dr. Sharon Hodde Miller

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Dr. Sharon Hodde Miller leads Bright City Church in Durham, NC with her husband, Ike. She also has a PhD on women and calling, and is the author of several books, including her most recent one, The Cost of Control. We talk a lot about pastoral ministry, church planting, and how to cultivate resilience in ministry. Register for the Exiles and Babylon conference: theologyintheraw.com -- If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe to my channel! Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw Or you can support me directly through Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Visit my personal website: https://www.prestonsprinkle.com For questions about faith, sexuality & gender: https://www.centerforfaith.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and the gospel. Is the evangelical church good for this country and transgender people in the church? We also have several breakout sessions and after, or several after parties actually, and, and, and, and the Holy Post will be hosting our pre-conference. Check out the conference at theology in the raw.com. All the information is there. You want to sign up soon in the letter because it's starting to fill up pretty quickly. My guest today is Dr. Sharon Hoddy Miller, who leads Bright City Church in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband, Ike. She also has a PhD on women and calling and is the author of several books, including her most recent one, The Cost of Control. We talk a lot about pastoral ministry,

church planting, and woven throughout all of this is how to cultivate resilience in pastoral ministry. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Dr. Sharon Hoddy-Miller. Sharon, welcome back to Theology in the Raw. It's good to have you back on. It is good to be back, especially this is, I'm calling this my theology in the raw redemption episode. The last time you were on was during COVID and you were in a closet. That was life back then though. That was so, it would have been weird if you didn't do it that way.

Yeah. Yeah. I thought I had hidden well from my children, but I had not. So that was not my best representation in an interview. So I'm excited to redeem myself. When did you guys plant your church? Is it still, you still call it a church plant now or is it a church church by now?

That's a great question. So we planted in 2018, the fall of 2018. And so we existed about a year and a half before the pandemic. We are still portable. And so I think because of that, we still feel like a church plant in that sense, even though we will turn seven this coming fall. So we're more established in that way. But I think until we get a building, I think some part of us will still feel a little bit like a church plant. That was part of a church plant that was portable for about, maybe it was about seven years. And they got a building, a really good building,

crushing deal on a building. I mean, it was one of those like really amazing things. But I will say it did change or challenge the change, but challenged the DNA of the church once they went portable to secure. I'm sure you've heard this. I've heard that. I have heard that. Yeah. We're trying to, so we meet in a movie theater and in a lot of ways it is a wonderful location. And so we're continuing to try and receive that as God's provision for us. And I actually just preached this past Sunday, it was Vision Sunday. And so I just preached about the tabernacle. And we often talk about how that is what we're doing is we are building a tabernacle every Sunday together.

And there's something really special and holy about that. And so on the days where I have a really bad attitude, I try and receive that with gratitude and an open heart. Yeah. And it wasn't that it didn't change the DNA, but it was the pastors and leaders did find themselves having to remind people more constantly of the DNA of the church. And the church was like, it's a very extremely like sending church, like a multiplying. Like the first day of the plant, the pastor brought the co-bast up on stage and said, first day, and said, don't get you too used to him, he's going to be leaving soon. You know, like, because we're going to already from the day one, like, be either trying to send people.

So I think the portable nature of the church was actually, it flowed well with that DNA. And yeah, it was just more challenging, but it's always nice not having to like spend so much time on packing chairs and doing all that stuff. I guess you don't need to do that if you're in a movie theater. Yeah. In some ways it is ideal because it's designed for good sounds. Like there's a lot of things about it and then it's located on a mall property. It has this wide open kind of courtyard. It's really beautiful. It's a central part of the community.

So there's a lot about it that if you're going to plant at church, this is an ideal place. But the portable part is really exhausting. And so it's just pros and cons. Do you face... I'm curious. I've heard somebody say, I forgot who it was. It was the same thing. They were at church in a movie theater. He says it was a little bit, the shape of the setup was challenging because it just almost like reinforced this. We're on stage, you're there watching a movie. Do you face that? Is that a real thing? 100%. Yeah, so buildings have theology. The design of a building has its own theology.

With a movie theater, it has its own muscle memory. And so you go into a movie theater for the purpose of being passive and being entertained and really being somewhat isolated. Like you don't go in there to connect with people, you're just there as an escape. And so that is something that we actually talk about a lot because all of those things are the opposite

of what a church is meant to be. And so we often talk about when we go into the meet and greet time, because a lot of people hate that. They intentionally come to church late enough to skip the meet and greet time during the service. But we tell them, no, this is actually really important for your formation because this space has a muscle memory to it. You're coming in expecting to be entertained, to disconnect. And so we need to actively resist the muscle memory of this space, the theology of the design of this building, and connect with one another. And I think that has been helpful for people to name that,

that we're not just doing it just to fill time during the service, but it's important because it's very real. Yeah. I feel like I would need a big bucket of popcorn. I just, I'm just like. Well, we actually, early in our church, we took up our offering by passing around popcorn buckets. We don't do that anymore. That's funny.

People don't go to the movies nearly as much anymore though. So I wonder if that muscle memory is not as strong as it would have been like 10 years ago. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, our movie theater is doing pretty well still, but. So last time I talked to you in the middle of COVID, I mean, to say that was a challenging time for society, people, and the church is an understatement.

What was that year like for you guys? And then I would love to know what's it been like the next, the last three or four years since then. Yeah, it was interesting catching up with you before we started recording and just reflecting on How much my life has changed since that last recording because I think that was in the middle of COVID and My guess is that I should have looked at the date of when that happened because a big part of our story, anyone who has listened to me on the Resilient Pastor podcast that I do with

Richie Volotis and Glenn Pacquiam, I've shared this there, I've shared it other places. But a big part of our story is that my husband Ike burned out during the pandemic. What led to that burnout is a big part of his personal story that he's very, very open about is that his dad was an alcoholic. We have been so amazed since coming forward with our own story, how many people have come to us to share their own stories of their parent who is an alcoholic. But a very common characteristic of people who grew up with an alcoholic parent is codependency because you are sort of taught that you are responsible

for that parent's actions, even though you are not. Maybe your parent reacts in anger to you because they've been drinking, but they tell you, I'm reacting this way because of you. If you would just behave, I wouldn't respond this way. You are given more responsibility, more agency than you actually have, and that creates codependency in people. Very, very common. Now, we did not notice that in Ike because we don't have a codependent marriage.

That wasn't a dynamic between us. I wasn't someone that he needed to save. And so I honestly had not identified it in him. What I did not realize until the pandemic is that he had become codependent with our church. And so in 2020, when everything's falling apart, where we aren't meeting in person, or if we are meeting, we're having to social distance

or wear masks and we're having to make decisions about how we're gonna do that. And everyone has really strong opinions about how we should do that. We are also navigating a divisive, polarizing presidential election. We are also having conversations around race. And every time we made a decision about how we as a church, we're going to navigate these different things. It did not matter how much Scripture we cited. It did not matter how much theology it was grounded in. It did not matter how many experts we appealed to. There were going to be people who were disappointed in us, who disagreed with us, and who were going to leave our church over it.

And at times these were people who were very close to us. I mean, we had people on staff who left, like our inner circle leaders, who we thought knew our hearts. And so this was obviously very painful, but what I did not realize at the time was the degree to which my husband was in pain. And so a big part of us, the story, and again, he would be completely fine with me sharing

this. He's very open about it, is he had started taking an anxiety medication and without my knowledge had started taking more of it and more of it and more of it. And thankfully in God's mercy, I discovered that this was happening. And it had not gotten far enough down the road where we're talking about like an addiction or even a dependency, it was more sort of like headed in that direction. But enough down that path that we realized, okay, we need to talk to our overseers about this. You need to take a break. You need to go to counseling. You need to understand like what's

going on. And that through that process, which he leaned into and has just been amazing throughout all of it, but through that process realized, you know, that's when he was able to name this codependency with the church. It was when he was able to name everything that was kind of going on underneath that and then has been able to lead in a much healthier way ever since. And it was really formative for us as leaders. And then I've been grateful because as I mentioned, I also co-host now this podcast called The Resilient Pastor and discovered through that,

that our story is not unique at all. And that through 2020, and honestly, there's been a kind of a wake behind COVID. One way that I saw it last year was actually in a number of marriages of friends of ours, like peers, people we know in our immediate community, but also that we know throughout the country leading in ministry where their marriages either ended or were sent into crisis. And I really think that COVID did critical damage

to people's mental health and their marriages, but it took a while. I think it took years for that to fully come to the surface. And so it's something that ever since has been really close to my heart. Yeah. And Ike, your husband, he's fully recovered, healthy now and everything, and back to full-time ministry. Yeah. He is. Yeah. He's really, I mean, it was a hard year for our marriage. And we had to have a lot of really hard conversations. And in a lot of ways, it kind of changed our marriage.

Because we had been, at that point, we had been married about 10 years. And everything had been pretty easy up until that point. I think we would have told everyone, we're just really good at marriage. But I think some of it is we just hadn't really gone through anything hard at that point. And so that was the first really hard thing that we went through.

But what it did was force to the surface conversations that needed to be had or realities that needed to be faced. Because what you don't realize when you get married is you sort of bake these things into the foundation of your marriage that you don't even necessarily realize are there until they start to form kind of like cracks in the walls of your marriage. And I think sometimes what happens

is we just paste over the cracks like over and over again, but this situation forced us to trace the crack down to the foundation of our marriage and ask like, what's really going on here? And that was really important, but good work for us. Wow. Is it a challenge being both, I mean, being married and being in ministry together? Oh, yeah. Like, how do you separate? Like, yeah, help us understand that. Yeah, it requires like expert level, Yoda level, like... I can imagine.

Communication. It's really hard because you learn as you go and those failures, those mistakes that you make affect your marriage. And so the line between work and your marriage gets really, really blurred. And so we've had to be very careful about protecting our marriage because the reality is at the end of the day, our church can end, or we can leave that church and another pastor can step in, but I can only be, I'm the only one that can be Ike's wife and he's the only one that can be my husband. And so that is

the thing that we want to last. And one thing that Ike said to me sometime in the last year that was so beautiful and powerful is we were talking about how early in our marriage, we sort of were using our marriage for the kingdom of God, which sounds really noble and godly and holy. But he said really what was happening is we were treating our marriage like a forest to be cut down for lumber, when really our marriage needed to be like a national park preserved for its beauty for others to enjoy. And he said, I really want us to work towards this vision of it being something that we tend to and guard and protect, not to keep it at a distance from people, so that other people can enjoy it, but to not sort of harvest it for parts.

And I feel like that's kind of what we were doing early in our marriage. And so we've gotten a lot more, we've become a lot more guarded and bounded around our marriage. And we've had to by necessity because of that. Otherwise it will really, church doesn't care about our marriage. And so,

it will ultimately take it over if we let it. Yeah. Do you guys ever like... I'm just thinking like just all the decisions that need to be made in ministry and agreements, disagreements and stuff, like you see that in my pastoral staff, but to put that between pastoral staff for a marriage, is there ever attention there or do you and I gel well in that way? That has also been tricky at times because we do disagree sometimes around direction and vision. It has been helpful for us to identify what each other's gifts are. The working geniuses have also been really helpful. Are you familiar with that the working geniuses? Oh you oh you need to look into this so it's started by

Patrick Lanzione, I think is who started it and The idea behind it is there's six different working geniuses. So one is wonder. So this is someone who just thinks like, does it always need to be this way? One is invention. So they kind of come up with ideas, solutions. One is discernment. That's the person who says, hey, that idea is actually not going to work.

Then galvanizing is the person who is really gifted at rallying everyone. Then the fifth one is enablement, which you are enabling the gifts, the leadership of people around you. These make really good managers especially. And then finally is tenacity. And so they are the ones that really take this whole thing across the finish line. And so his whole theory around working geniuses is that you excel into, you're competent into, and then two are weak. And part of the importance of this is that these transcend the org chart.

And so there are going to be times where maybe something is under Ike's leadership. But because my gift is galvanizing, that's one of my working geniuses, is he'll say, this is a galvanizing moment. And so Sharon, even though this is under me, I need you to step in and to galvanize our staff around this. And so, and he's very strong with enablement. He's really gifted at leading our staff and the interpersonal stuff is, he's just brilliant at it. And so there are times where maybe someone reports to me,

but I'm sort of out of my depth and sort of navigating a situation. And so I'll call him into that. And so that has actually been really helpful for us navigating when an issue sort of transcends the org chart in that sense. So you should definitely check it out. I got to check it out. I mean, it's kind of like an indigram-ish thing, but more in your skill set.

For like organizations. Yeah. Yeah. That's really helpful. So, if you're operating in the two areas that you are not good at and you don't even realize it, you're going to get burned out. Was that part of the burnout with Ike? Yeah. Was that part of the burnout with Ike? Yeah, there has definitely been a journey of us also just honing in on what our gifts are.

Another thing that we discovered through this whole journey, a burden that has been on Ike that has never been on me, is that we are in a culture, a church culture, that expects lead pastors to excel at a list of like 10 things. So you have to be an excellent motivational speaker. You have to be brilliant at exegeting scripture. You have to be really good at leading an organization. You have to be good at counseling people.

You also have to be an effective fundraiser. Like the list goes on and on. And so we put all of this on lead pastors and say, if you are not all of these things, then you are failing in some way. And the reality is no person checks all of those boxes. No person does. But I think because we see on social media

the image of a lot of leaders who seem to do that, I think that also has created a lot of burnout in pastors is like trying to check all those boxes. We've realized that between the two of us, Ike does not check all those boxes, but we check a lot more of them together. The reason I said that it burdens him more than me is as a woman pastor, that's a whole other thing. No one is looking at me saying, you need to be all these things. I'm sort of separate from that. But together, our gifts complement one another.

And so the more we have settled into that, he's very gifted. We were talking about this yesterday, actually. He's very gifted at the on the ground interpersonal. He's brilliant at pastoral care. He is brilliant at leading our team. He's so gifted at a lot of those really complicated interpersonal dynamics. I am not. I am like, what do we need to do? Let's do it. You know, like I don't want to waste time having to have this conversation in a way that is careful with someone's feelings.

And so I've had to learn from him in that. So he's very gifted at that sort of on the ground interpersonal. I'm much more gifted at the high level, speaking to a crowd, casting a vision, that kind of a thing. And so the more we've leaned into those individual gifts, that has also been really good for both of us. My wife and I, I mean, we're in a similar situation. We're not pastors of a church, but we run a couple of different ministries together. She's the CEO, I'm the face or whatever.

I think I'm behind the mic. The face. And we've, we come out of a very conservative background to where men did this and women did this and everything. And we had to where men did this and women did this and everything and we had to adjust that. This applies to our marriage and our ministry. Rather than the man does this, the woman does this, it's you're gifted at this area, I'm gifted at this area and where those gifts do not overlap, you do that and I'll do my

things. For years, this is going to sound so dumb, it's embarrassing actually. For years, I did our budget, which is a disaster. I mean, but I did, I actually kept track on an Excel spreadsheet, every single penny that went in and went out for years. I paid the bills that all you see, that's what men are supposed to do, right?

Isn't that right there in the New Testament that we pay the bills? And it was, but I was so stressful. I hated it. And my wife, it's just, it's, she's a thousand times more organized than I am. It comes naturally. She gets it done before I even wake up kind of thing,

you know? And it just, so for the last 10 years, she's, she does all the, I don't even know. I mean, she, I don't even know how to buy a house. Like she bought our house, went through all the paperwork and everything. And that to me, that just, I would rather roll around naked in a room full of broken glass and go through all that stuff

that I don't know anything about. I don't care. Just go, I don't know, can be afforded. OK, which one do you want? OK, we'll get that one. Like I don't, I just don't care. Yeah, so anyway, but even our ministry we've had, and this is taking, it's taking time to, it kind of unearths too. Like,, and this is taking time to,

it kind of unearths too, like, okay, this is what you're good at. I wouldn't have known that, but we've had to kind of work together and see who's doing what and who's actually thriving in certain areas and kind of fall into certain gift sets. So, but that could be challenging. Yeah, it can be really challenging,

but it's been good for us. It's helped us understand each other more and help us understand ministry and each other well. And I think the key is being okay when you can't do something well and saying, you know what, I'm not good at this. You are. In as much as you feel like this is something you really want to do, why don't you step into that area?

I'm curious, raw question. It's going to sound broad maybe, but what's it like being a female pastor? I know it's a broad question, but obviously you're at a church that is totally fine with that, I would assume, otherwise I wouldn't be at the church. But even in a church that is egalitarian, are there still these underlying challenges that you face being a woman pastor, a pastoring congregation that's half men? Like, is that the average? You know, amazingly, and we talked about this the last time I talked to you, And I don't think my answer has probably changed much since then because I've been amazed at how the answer is no. It has not been that challenging. And I think some of that is because

there's a couple reasons. One, because I am co-pastoring with my husband. Like, I know that that is helpful for a lot of people who, because not even everyone at our church feels the same. But it's a very, we talk about it as a tertiary issue. Like it is as long as we are all wrestling with scripture and submitting our lives to the authority of scripture, even if we come down differently, we have more in common than we don't. And so, if someone has a different conviction about it, we want to honor them and make them feel welcome

at our church. But I do think me being married to Ike is really helpful to people. And then I think the fact that we have been this way since day one means that if people disagree, they just aren't going to come to our church. But yeah, I've been really surprised because we're in the South. I expected to get more pushback than I have. And I'm guessing it's because we are in an area, we're in Raleigh-Durham. This is one of the most highly educated areas in the country. Women are leading in every sector here, except for the church. And so, I think this area was much more ready to see women leading in the church than even we realized at the time. And so it's not been an issue. And then frankly, I don't make it,

people ask us about it more than we bring it up, if that makes sense. Yeah. Just because I'm not in this role to make a point and I'm not in this role because women and leadership is our banner issue. I'm in this role because I want to be a good steward of the gifts that God has given me. And I want to build, I want to be a part of ushering in the kingdom of God to the best of my ability.

And I don't want to spend a lot of time arguing with people whose minds I'm not going to change anyway. I don't mean that in a snarky way. I genuinely don't. I just want to be about the kingdom, if that makes sense. Yeah. No, that makes total sense. People ask me, like, hey, I've got this uncle or brother or parent or friend or whatever, that just they're so stuck in their ways and they will not change your mind.

How can I help broaden their vision? How can I talk with them about controversial stuff? And I say, I probably would. I don't know. Like, people are just so stuck in their ways and get really upset if somebody disagrees with them on this hobby-horses issue. I'm like, let's just talk about people or something, you know? Yeah.

Exactly. OK, so when did you start doing the Resilient Pastor podcast with Rich and Glenn? Glenn. Has it been a year? It's probably about, it's been over a year. It's probably been maybe a year and a half ago is when maybe a little bit longer than that. It might be coming up on two years actually.

Two great guys to do it with. And you have East Coast, West Coast, I guess you're East Coast as well. Two very different environments, I would imagine. Rich is in one of the most multi-ethnic churches I've ever heard of. I think he said something like there's 60 languages at his church or some crazy thing. Yeah. His church is really diverse ethnically, but it's also diverse ideologically. He has really diverse political perspectives in his church as well. And so he does a really good job of navigating that. And I've learned a lot from him. He was telling me, I said him on the podcast, maybe around the same time as you, like back in 2020, I still remember him saying that the ideological differences

are all over the map with the ethnic differences. So he says in a rather weird way, my white conservative congregants resonate a lot with like my first generation immigrant congregants who typically can be very conservative too. But then there's a mismatch here too, like immigrant conservatism is going to be a little bit different than white American conservatism. So the way he explained it was like, oh my gosh, that sounds like a beautiful challenge and a nightmare at the same time. He's like the most perfect guy to pastor that.

Resilient pastor, I'm curious about that term. How have you personally cultivated resilience over the years? Because if I lie underneath my question is, some challenges in ministry can build resilience, other challenges can make you go insane, or burn out or lose a faith or whatever. What's the difference there? How do you weave challenges into a helpful story that builds resilience versus letting it break you?

That's a great question. And it is honestly a question I have wrestled with a lot, just even in the course of being a co-host for that podcast. I think it's important for me to say, I'm not co-hosting it because I've cracked the code and I've figured it out and I know how to be resilient. And so I'm on there to just tell everyone else how to do it. I think it's much more of a part of being a resilient pastor is having a community. I think you need to be connected to other people who understand the unique challenges of what you're going through and can validate that and listen to you. And in many ways,

that has been that for me. Like these are, Glenn and Rich are my friends. They're people that I can text and ask questions and know that they understand, you know, just even going into this election cycle, processing some of that with them as well. And so community has actually been a really important part of resilience for me. But the other thing that I have realized is a big part of resilience is not ignoring the

pain of ministry or soldiering through the pain of ministry, but in some sense, receiving the pain of ministry and letting it do a holy work in you. And some of that is actually metabolizing your pain and actually metabolizing your grief and naming it instead of just pushing it down. And I think that is what 2020 forced me and Ike to do is I didn't realize he was just, I mean, that's why he was taking that medication was

it was an escape from facing that pain. And you just can't outrun that pain forever. It is going to end up influence either the pain is is gonna influence you or you are going to influence the pain, one or the other. And I think for a lot of leaders, their pain is actually what is driving them. And that was what was so fascinating about, have you read the book, When Narcissism Comes to Church? I need to, I've been aware of it for a while. Oh my goodness, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It's by Chuck DeGroote. And the reason I like

this book, I didn't read it for a long time because I just assumed this was going to be an expose on why pastors are terrible. I thought that's what it was. And then realize, no, it's actually written from a very compassionate point of view. Chuck himself had his own journey of burning out in ministry. And naming that narcissism underneath narcissism is very often shame and this unhealed pain. And that is what is underneath it. And I think that is true for so many different pastors is that what is driving them is pain. That is what is making them unhealthy in ministry. It's not just that they have a big ego. It's that they're deeply in pain and they haven't addressed it. And so resilience, I've realized means I've got to really take seriously, not just wounds from

my past, but the ongoing wounds of ministry that I am giving myself the community support, the time, the space to process it and to work through it, but to also realize at the end of the day, and this is probably my biggest learning experience of 2020 and 2021, is that this is what I signed up for. That I signed up to follow Jesus and there's a cross. And that so much of what Jesus did was coming and being proximate to brokenness and that you can't be proximate to brokenness, and that you can't be proximate to brokenness without being cut by that brokenness.

And I was really resenting that for a long time, just the pain of this job, and realizing, no, I actually need to start receiving this as a gift, and that this can help me to grow closer to Jesus in the process. In ministry, where does your pain come from the most for you personally? Is it criticism or high maintenance people? For me, most of my pain is around relationships.

Okay. relationships. So when we planted the church, that was a very lonely time for me. I expected a group of friends to sort of be around me during that time, who for various reasons ultimately were not. And I had to grieve that for a long time, just the loneliness of that change. And then once you launch a church and you're leading, there is a reality that you might be friends with people in your church, but you are also still their pastor, and very likely if they choose to leave your church, then that relationship may not continue.

And I had to make peace with that. And that doesn't mean walling myself off from my people, because I think that is ultimately what some pastors end up doing is they, like I think whenever I hear a story about someone who has church hurt around leaving a church. And they say, you know, my pastor didn't even reach out when I left.

I used to hear that story one way. And now I hear that story very differently. And I wonder, is it because the well is empty for them? Like they don't have a well to go to to navigate that exit well. And so they just don't at all. Is that a symptom of them actually deeply being in pain? And it looks like poor leadership, but they're actually profoundly wounded. And that definitely, I kind of reached that point where I was starting to harden myself, was starting to get cynical about people,

starting to feel like no one is safe in my church. Like there's no one that I can trust. And I went on a sabbatical two summers ago and during that time, spent a lot of time processing my own pain around this and reached a point of realizing the answer to that question is no, no one is safe because there is only one safe person and that is Jesus. Jesus is the only one who will never hurt me and will never disappoint me and will never let me down. But everybody else, even my husband, even my parents,

even my best friends, they will all disappoint me. They will all let me down because they are human. And so I need to right size my expectations of them. And I can still be in relationship with people in my church. I just need to have appropriate expectations. And that has been really healing for me in being open and soft-hearted to people in my church, instead of walling myself off and being really boundaried without, you know, and just continuing

to have like relationships with people. So that's kind of been my own journey of metabolizing my pain. I love that word metabolizing too. It's like the most perfect word for what you're trying to communicate. I do feel like you're able to have authentic, truly authentic relationships with people that you're pastoring or do you have to find that among your fellow leaders

or maybe people outside your church? I've often heard that from pastors that they're like, I can't, I mean, half of my struggles might be them, you know? Or there's things that just can't leak out to the congregation, the stuff I'm wrestling with, so I can't really be myself. Is that... You know, I see this a little bit differently. One thing that Glenn, one of my co-hosts, Glenn Pacquiam, what he talks about, and he actually wrote a book called The Resilient Pastor. He talks about this concept of having a constellation of mentors. I've always really valued that concept.

When we think about mentors, I think a lot of us are looking for one person who has all the answers and understands us and can always give us the right guidance for the situation. And he said, realistically, we need a constellation of different types of mentors for different areas of our lives. And I think that that concept applies for friendship as well, that you need a constellation of friends who you share different parts of yourself.

The only person who gets everything is my husband. But everyone else is going to understand what I'm going through. Even my very best friend, who I tell pretty much everything to, she still doesn't lead a church and so doesn't necessarily understand. But yeah, I don't see it as like I'm in, we are in a small group at our church that we are But yeah, I don't see it as like I'm in, we are in a small group at our church that we are pretty transparent with. Obviously, we don't tell them, you know, this is what we talked about in our elder board meeting or whatever. But we, if we're having a hard time with something, even if we can't say what it is, like we will tell them and we'll say, we need you to be praying for us, and they will pray for us. And so we have different people in our lives

that are holding different parts of our lives, if that makes sense. And so it's not so much me feeling like I'm not being fully authentic with them. I'm just sharing different parts of myself with them. That makes sense, yeah, that's good. I guess it depends too on the healthiness of the leadership structure or the expectations for the leaders.

If you need your leader to be on a pedestal, then you're not going to handle your leader being authentic, right? But if it's a leader among equals kind of thing, then those expectations might not be good. if it's a leader among equals kind of thing, then those expectations might not be true. That also takes some discernment because some people cannot handle your humanity, if that makes sense. And you sort of learn to discern who those people are, that if I share If I share this honest part of myself with you, you are gonna be distracted every time you hear me preach. Yeah. Yeah.

Like all you're gonna be able to think about now is how Sharon yells at her kids sometimes. Like that's all you're gonna be able to think about when I preach. Yeah. And so some people can't handle the fullness of your humanity, but at the same time, it is important that we cultivate a culture in our church where people know that we need Jesus, that

we need the gospel, that we are preaching. We often talk about how AA is such a great model for what it is the church should be, that you're not coming to church because you have it all together, you are coming to church because you don't. And that kind of culture starts from the top down. Like you can't expect to cultivate that sort of authenticity just by teaching about it.

Like you actually have to model it. And so Ike and I are pretty, and I do make a distinction between vulnerability and transparency. I think vulnerability, when to be vulnerable takes a lot of wisdom because inherent in that is like you are opening yourself up to be hurt. That is what vulnerability is by definition.

Transparency is a little bit different and we are very transparent, I would say. And then we are strategically vulnerable when it is wise to cultivate that kind of culture in our church. That's good. Yeah, I like that. That's a good distinction. Do you get criticism a lot?

I mean, every pastor does to some extent. So how do you handle the criticism that you do get? Or maybe you don't get very much. I don't know. I mean, I think most pastors I talk to say there's moderate to high levels of criticism typically. Usually it's a small percentage of the congregation though. It's usually a loud minority.

Yeah, we don't have a ton of critics. And we also are a high feedback church, and so we give a lot of channels for feedback. And so we ideally don't have a scenario in which someone just feels completely unheard and bottled up until they explode. We try, twice a, we do staff reviews. There's one that's like a 360 review. So even like volunteers are giving feedback on our staff as well.

And so we're trying to be ahead of that, where people aren't having to figure out how to give feedback, like we are asking for it. And so I think that has helped. But with COVID again, 2020, all of that, that was a really baptism by fire journey and learning how to process criticism because that was probably the highest volume of criticism that I think any pastor had ever experienced, like all pastors were experiencing that. And my takeaway from that was really, I need to do my best at the end of the day to make sure that I am being honest,

you know, that I'm being honest about what is actually happening, that I'm being truthful, that I am seeking Scripture, that I'm seeking wise counsel, that I am doing my best to communicate clearly. And if it is still not being received, if I am apologizing when I've made a mistake and it's still not being received, that at the end of the day, I have done all that I can and I need to lay my head down at night knowing that I just can't control that person.

And that's actually, that's another thing that has changed since you and I last talked is I wrote a book about control. I saw that. Was that, yeah, was it, was it, was that for yourself first kind of thing? Honestly, no, I actually started out because I saw people responding so poorly to the pandemic. It was like, we are heirs to millennia of spiritual ancestors, tradition, where they have lived through, they have lived through pandemics, they have lived through war, exile, persecution, all of it. Are we drawing on this tradition to face this unknown? No, we are not. We are taking all of our fears to the internet instead

of to God. And so that to me, it highlighted this major gap in discipleship, this intolerance for uncertainty and loss of control. And so that was actually what led me on that journey. But then as I got further down the path, because I actually did not think I struggled with control, ironically, until I started working on this book. And then I realized I actually do struggle with control quite a bit. And that was one of the things is I thought I can talk someone into agreeing with me. And that was a control mindset and just realizing,

no, I actually cannot do that. And I can only treat them well, be able to stand blameless before God, absolutely take ownership when I have sinned against someone. And then at the end of the day, that has to be enough. And if it is not enough for someone, and sometimes it just is not, there's nothing I can do about that.

You said something just earlier I want to come back to, I mean, I think it's pretty fascinating. That you guys have, you allow avenues for people to share their concerns and criticism. I think you used a phrase, well, I don't know if it's a pressure cooker or like, it doesn't become so bottled up that it becomes really explosive, the criticism.

Do you find that, is that, do you think that's kind of universally true? Like if you're in an environment, a church environment where there's constant people know that if they have an issue, they have a criticism, they can voice it, it'll be received, there's spaces to do that, that that lessens kind of that really hurtful, explosive criticism? You know, I don't know the answer to that question. I do think that the people who are the loudest are the people who feel the least heard. And I think that that explains so much of social media,

just generally. Like the people who are spouting off the most loudly on social media, I just assume you feel unheard in your actual life. And that is why you are so loud on here. So I can't really speak to other churches, but I do think as a general rule, that is true. It makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah, I'd be curious if somebody's if there's a way to kind of measure that. That's kind of a universal truth. I would imagine anybody out there who's

a psychologist or something could answer the question. So you're seven years into your church plant. All my church planting friends say year three. Well, your year three was in the wake of the penthouse. It's almost like unique. But they said it's like a three year honeymoon. And then from the years three to seven-ish, you lose a lot of the people you thought would never

leave, the people you planted with, your leaders, many of them are gone. The mission you started out with had to change because it just wasn't working with the people that God brought you. Then God brought you a new set of people and got rid of all the... By year seven, if you can make it past your seven, then you might move from being a church plan to a church church or whatever. We want to make the distinction. What have you learned over the last seven years as a church planters or is any of that resonating? Did the stuff like that happen? The unpredictable? I didn't see this coming at all. The pandemic, the pandemic definitely

coming at all? The pandemic definitely throws all that off because it accelerated that process. If people are experiencing that in year three, I think we were experiencing that in year one and a half just because every decision that we made clarified our values. And we discovered very quickly that people on our core leadership were not in line with some of those values. And so we lost people, core people in that, like not even to year two yet because of the pandemic. And so that was very painful to have that happen not even to year two yet because of the pandemic. And so that was very painful to have that happen in such a short window of time.

I think ultimately it was really good for our church because on the heels of that, then people came who really did understand who we were and what we were about. So in the long run, it was good. But in terms of being almost seven years in, what have I learned? There's so much I would say, but one thing that I do think, Ike and I were just talking about this.

I think there is a shift that is happening around church planting right now that reflects the broader culture. So we planted with ARC. Are you familiar with ARC? Yeah. Association Related Churches. So they are really good at equipping pastors

and they're really good at especially giving us, training us to build the infrastructure of a church because we went to seminary, we didn't get MBAs or anything like that. We didn't know how to build an organization. I'd never even taken a class on leadership. I knew how to read Greek, but I didn't know how to fundraise, you know, stuff like that. And so you kind of have like this set of skills that just doesn't serve you very well for launching a church. And so, Arc really comes alongside pastors and

helps with that and helped us with that as well. But I do think that, and it's going to be interesting to see in the next 10 years how this plays out is, ARC was formed in the Attractional Model era of church planting. And so it's based on the big launch and it's very Sunday centric. And one of the things that we are finding in our context, and I do think that model actually does still work, especially in the South and in more suburban context. I think that model still absolutely works. I'm seeing it struggle to get traction in the North and in urban centers. And we have even seen that struggle here, even though we're in the South, we know of

four different church plants that ultimately closed within the first year or two. And so I do think there is a shift that is happening away from that attractional model toward what's fascinating to me is people are most attracted to our church by our lack of polish, like our lack of production value. They are suspicious of that. And so they want to feel like, I'm not here for a production, I'm not here for a show. I want to know that I'm hearing from real people who are trying to faithfully follow Jesus. And yeah, I think the more we have leaned into that, it has been healthier for our church as well. It's resonated more with people in our context. And we've even found in working with,

because I'm not trying to like pick on Arc in this way, because Arc really supported us and resourced us and they're doing wonderful things. But we've even worked with other organizations that are also using that model and it flopped here. Like when we tried it, it flopped. And so I do think that there is like a shift that is happening that we're just seeing kind of

like the beginning signs of it, I would say. I think that's pretty, I don't want to say universally true but especially in educated, more post-Christian areas, urban centers, college towns, I think that the polishedness of that, I think people, and like, I think they're all, I think they're suspicious of it. I mean, I could speak, I've got four Gen Z kids and they're all like, it's something

that's a little too polished. They're kind of like, what's, hmm, what are you hiding? You know, like. Yeah, it's so interesting. And when pastors try to be like funny and you can tell it's kind of planned, they're just like, they just tune out. They're just like, I watched Dave Chappelle. I got my comedians. I don't need a comedian. Like,

I want just give me the raw, authentic, in-depth stuff. One thing that has been so interesting, when we have guest preachers, a lot of our guest preachers come from Seattle. And the reason why the Seattle pastors work really well in our context is that when we have brought in preachers from like southern suburban contexts, their jokes do not land. Like people hate them. Yeah. That's so funny. It's really interesting. It's funny how diverse America really is.

Like you, I travel around different churches and gosh, a different context. Not quite a different country, but there's massive cultural differences, depending on where you go. Northeast is vastly different than Southern California versus even Oregon and Seattle, Seattle's. Seattle's a strange mix because it's obviously a hyper progressive environment, but sometimes that produces some very conservative churches. I see this in Portland too. All right, last question and I'll let you go.

Advice to all the aspiring church planners out there or people who are in the middle, early stages of a church plant, number one do's and number one, well, number one do, number one don't. As a veteran church planner like yourself, what do you recommend? A veteran church planter, it's kind of weird to think of myself that way now. I would say guard yourself against comparison. That was something that I really struggled with early on was I would get on social media and you know how like some women will get on social media and they'll look at other women's homes or their skin or whatever outfits and just feel so much envy or feel like I should be losing weight or whatever it is.

For me, I would compare myself to other churches and look at how they were doing it or their websites or they've baptized all these people and we're behind. And that took all the joy out of ministry. It put a lot of pressure on me, but it also distracted me from what it was that God had actually called us to do. And the way I often talked about it with Ike is that, you know, scripture uses this language of like running the race of faith and I imagine myself sort of on this highway. And when you're driving on a highway, there are some road signs that are important for you to pay attention to that tell you

how to drive well. And I think that is important to talk to other pastors, learn from other pastors how can you be growing as a leader? But then you also just have these billboards that are pointing you towards other destinations like, hey, you need to stop here and go see this thing. And they're meant to sort of draw you away from the destination that you're actually headed toward. And that's what ended up happening was I would be focused in this one direction, but then I would see this other church doing something and it was almost like this billboard trying to exit me off of the road that God had me on. And so, I would just say to really focus on the people that God

has called you to, what is the best way to pastor and care for them and to yes, learn, absolutely read, listen to other pastors, but to make sure you are not so distracted by what other churches are doing that this is actually pulling you away from what God has appointed you to. So that's what I would say. That's good. That's super helpful. Sharon, thank you so much for being a guest again on Theology of the Raw. Appreciate you and your work that you and I

could be doing out there. Your background is a lot more done up than last time we were in your closet. I know. This was the redemption that I needed. So. I just appreciated the authenticity of the last one. I thought that was cool.

Yeah, many blessings to you, your family, and the ministry you're involved in. Thanks, Preston. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network. Hey friends, Rachel Grohl here from the Hearing Jesus Podcast. Do you ever wonder if you're truly hearing from God? Are you tired of trying to figure it all out on your own? The Hearing Jesus podcast is here to help you live out your faith every single day, and together we will break down these walls by digging deeply into God's Word in a way that you can really understand

it. If this sounds like the kind of journey you want to go on, please join us on the Hearing Jesus podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi, I'm Haven, and as long as I can remember, I have had different curiosities and thoughts and ideas that I like to explore, usually with a girlfriend over a matcha latte. But then when I had kids, I just didn't have the same time that I did before for the one-on-ones that I crave. So I started Haven the Podcast. It's a safe space for curiosity and conversation. And we talk about everything from relationships to parenting to friendships to even your view of yourself. And we don't have answers or solutions,

but I think the power is actually in the questions. So I'd love for you to join me, Haven the Podcast.