Birthing ministries

There are three facts about me which underlie the whole of my life and story. These three facts name my past, my present, and my future. They shape my destiny and I cannot escape them.

1. The first is that I am female, in both body and soul.
2. The second is that my husband and I are childless.
3. The third is that I am apostolically-gifted and was called to ministry at the age of five.

These three facts taken separately are enough to shape a life and future. Taken together, they shape an experience of the world and ministry that is rarely modeled and even less articulated. After two decades of apostolic building, I finally have some understanding about what God is trying to tell the world through my story, what piece of the imago Dei I am specifically created to reveal.

Co-creating with God

Sometimes I think about Mary, the mother of Jesus. I think about the mystery of her co-creating Jesus with God. I believe in the immaculate conception, but that does not mean Jesus was an alien. He was not carried in Mary’s womb as foreign object. Mary was not an incubator hatching an egg. Jesus was flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone. Jesus’ DNA was part Mary’s DNA. His cells carried her mitochondria. Mary was Theotokos, God-bearer. While he was from God, he was also from Mary. In that sense, she very much co-created Jesus on a biological level, birthing him out of her very body. Her body risking death to give him life, as all mothers do. It is a deeply intimate way of knowing God, to carry something from the depths of what is inside you and bring it into the world with pain, perseverance, and sacrifice.

Sometimes I think about the prophets of the Old Testament. How did they know what to write? How confident were they of their message and that it was from God? What did it feel like to co-create with God the words that shaped the world? I don’t think they went into a trance, absently channeling the message of heaven.  Rather, they were conscious, awake, and aware – the message of heaven poured through their human soul. Rabbi Abraham Herschel says, “In prophets’ words, the invisible God becomes audible. … There are not proofs for the existence of the God of Abraham. There are only witnesses… The prophet is not a mouthpiece, but a person; not an instrument but a partner, an associate of God.” Time has tested the writings of Moses, the Prophets, Paul, and others. Their divine inspiration and co-creation has borne out through many generations. 

Sometimes I think about the artisans who crafted the sacred items for the tabernacle. Their hands, their dreams, their designs created objects that became holy. A human created the Arc of the Covenant, and it was permissible to touch it as they did, but anyone who touched it would die. What was it like for something that was made with human hands to carry the glory of heaven? The mingling of craftsmanship and glory. A co-created item, consecrated, not by the will of man as an offering, but as a work of art commissioned by heaven and chosen to manifest its power.

Co-creating with heaven seems at once audacious and arrogant, but it also seems inevitable. If we are called by God to do something, endowed by God with the ability to execute, and God co-mingles himself with the endeavor to bring fruit, how is that anything but a journey of co-creation? 

Such thoughts leave me in the tension of the divine and the flesh. Still, I have come to suspect that some things are holy, not because they are pure, but because the divine has chosen to mingle with what is earthly. The breath of God in common dirt. The glory of God played out in my human life, elevating the occasional word, deed, or impulse to something more. The things of heaven made manifest in my life so that when my life is tested as it crosses the veil from this world into the next, that which is of heaven remains, returning to itself as a completed work. 

These are the things I ponder when I consider my apostolic-gifting, in my particular female body, and my specific female circumstance. What does it look like, moreover what does it feel like for me – a female, without children, with an apostolic gifting – to co-create with God? 

Apostolic birthing

I have settled to the reality that co-creating with God has a timeline of its own. But like pregnancy carries the inherent promise of a child, co-creating carries a promise as well. Though it may take time, the change inside is not meant to stay there; it is destined to live outside of us. It may manifest as a church, a ministry, a book, a business. What was a dream is now no longer only in one’s imagination. It becomes real, tangible, touchable. It begins to impact others. As the corner turns, so must the apostolic posture. No longer preparing in hiddenness, the release of the co-creation into the world brings the world now into the sphere of apostolic. The world touches it, coos over it, smiles or avoids it, and experiences the inevitable smells that are a natural part of existence.

Is there a difference between divine inspiration and immaculate conception? On one hand – of course there is! On the other hand, maybe? Obviously, I have no idea what Mary went through in her pregnancy, due to the fact I have never successfully carried a baby beyond 9 weeks. But if I lean into the space of co-creating apart from the will of man, I wonder if there are not similarities. An idea, a thought, a little nudge happens in the back of my mind. I don’t know if it is of me or of the Lord. There is no clash or fanfare moment of glory descending. Just Elijah’s little whisper breathing into the sails of my life and changing my direction. 

The change is so small at first, I barely notice it. A conversation here, an idea there. But I start to intuitively note that things just feel different. My habit is then to begin to document, to write down the collection of notes in my head and look at them. Like taking a pregnancy test, I look to see if the accumulation of inklings inside of me are actually indicators of something more. 

Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it is no. Occasionally I have been pregnant with a hope and possible ministry, only to lose the pregnancy and dream of something. But four times so far in my life I have carried and birthed something apostolically. (This stands in contrast to four miscarriages – four babies that exist with God and in my heart.) In those times, I began to change as the pregnancy grew. My soul, my life, began to reorient around the new vision and new life. I was stretched, I was challenged. My husband and I had to make modifications in our lives and even our physical living situation. 

There is hope, trepidation, and excited preparation. I fill notebooks with thoughts and ideas. I work on diagrams that might be able to articulate deep ways of knowing to others. I prepare the world and the ‘outside’ for the thing that was growing ‘inside’. I think of this as the ‘nesting’ phase of apostolic birthing. 

Eventually the time would come for the first changes to become manifest in the world, the metaphorical ‘showing’ and all the conversations that come with anticipation. In my walk I have discovered that the length of ‘pregnancies’ varies quite a bit.  I have had a short pregnancy, where it was only a few months before the new ‘thing’ was visible to others. One apostolic pregnancy I carried for 3 years, resorting to remodeling my house to comfort my soul’s need for change while we waited. 

Time and again, this phase causes me to reflect on Mary and Joseph caring for Jesus as an infant. I imagine the insecurity they must have had, caring for the incarnate God. I wonder if they, like me, accounted every cry and mess to be evidence of their possible failure, as opposed to the shameless natural state of being. Somehow, I project the false idea that perfection is next to Godliness onto the haphazard and humbling phase of apostolic infancy. Somehow, I take too much responsibility and trust too little. No matter how many times I walk this stage, I can’t help but fall into the slow slide of grasping. 

I have become better at recognizing this behavior, choosing to trust, and loosening my hands. Like a child, I am not the determining shaper of all that the co-creation is to be. Rather, I get to open-handedly discover God’s intention for the co-creation. I get to stand in wonder as God reveals his intention for the creation and calls me to steward it accordingly. This means I must move from apostolic birthing to prophetic nurturing and teaching.

Prophetic nurturing

I have often approached raising a ministry as I imagine I would raise a child. The start-up phase of late nights, spills, messes, and having to nourish the ministry in a self-sacrificing way. Like nursing a child, it is an all-in phase where we give of our own life vitality to help the thing live.  It is consuming, overwhelming, full of great joy and intimate moments.

Next is the toddler phase as the ministry begins to move on its own, wiggle, roll over, crawl.  In this phase, the ministry requires a lot, but the essence of it is starting to emerge. This mirrors the language of the prophet Hosea 11:3-4 where he talks about God breastfeeding the small child (Ephraim) and gently leading them as they take their first steps. No longer it is the one-directional phase of infancy. Now it is able to give back a little and there are milestones to celebrate and things to enjoy. 

Then the ministry gains its legs. Like a child learning to walk, it starts to take off. If you thought you were at its mercy before, now it has momentum. The complexity of what it takes to oversee and mange just took a giant leap forward. Most new parents I know have been surprised by the walking phase. In their mind somehow, they thought it would be easier once the child did not have to be carried everywhere. What they often fail to anticipate are the great number of opportunities for chaos, beyond their imagination. The world is wide open and vigilance takes on a whole new meaning. 

The same has been true for ministries. Once the corner is turned and it starts to have a momentum of its own, opportunities come and decisions must be made. What kind of culture do we want to have? What is our purpose as we know it now? How do we know what to say ‘yes’ to and what to say ‘no’ to?  The grind of the early startup phase can be clear and straightforward. But the viable, growing organization needs leadership and decisions for the phase it is in.

The nicest phase is the growing stable phase. Like the school-age years of a child, you get to discover God’s intent for this unique creation and try your best to partner with his agenda. But at some point you realize that your role is temporary. Your role as a leader there is not a ‘forever’ thing. It was really hard the first time, realizing that I played only an interim part in the life of the ministry. Honestly, it wrecked me. I had invested so very much in it. But I realized if the ministry belonged to the Lord, it was not mine to keep forever. That changed my emphasis and posture. Like a parent of teenagers, I needed to invest in a new way. I need to help it develop in a way that would allow it to thrive without me.

Part of prophetic nurturing is building a ministry to outgrow you and succeed beyond you. A ministry culture based on personality will not outlive its founder. Instead, it has to be built on something more substantial. It should be able to stand on your shoulders and experience you as a platform, not a ceiling. This means creating a culture based on values that will outlast you, and setting up systems that are both sturdy and adaptable. 

Finally, it means connecting to people of peace around the mission of the organization, who share its values. Then training them to do the tasks and see the possible futures. Anything less and the organization will not make it five years passed the founder’s departure.

Leaving something you help build is not a simple transition. It has many of the same moments as sending a child out into the world. And it has the same empty space behind it – that space the co-creation used to fill. Now, as it learns to exist without my presence, I must learn to exist without its presence as well.

Apostolic empty nest

For me, the last part is the hardest. Four organizations I helped build exist without me now. The first took a little over a decade to build and it still feels like home when I visit. The essence of it has stayed strongly intact even as it has adapted and evolved. For me, it is like watching an adult child raise children of their own by passing down the ethics and values I taught them. It blesses me to the very core of my being.

The second was a three-year endeavor. While the company still exists, the values I instilled and recruited others to were dismantled by my successor. Unsurprisingly, the people I hired left shortly after me. It is easier to destroy a culture than to build one. It was here where I learned that the person most competent and best fit under my leadership was not always the right person to carry it forward without me. And the six months of successor training did not reveal enough of their character for me to know.

The third was a challenging one to raise. There were parts I had a hard time understanding and often I felt I was in over my head. But I had good people around me, raising the thing up together. And we just kept working at it. This one took some time and a community effort. Today I am only tangentially involved, like a parent with a child at college who comes home at holidays to do laundry or needs you to read the occasional term paper. I am still hopeful at the possibilities of what it could ultimately become. 

The fourth is the most recent separation and there has not been enough time to gain adequate perspective. The empty nest feeling is strong and it is accompanied with occasional sadness. I thought that after so much experience of leaving, I would be better at. But the separation always carries with it a sense of loss. Sometimes a season has ended with joy and celebration. Other times I have struggled to let go, kicking and screaming while God drags me into the next season and next assignment. Always there has been some grieving.

Grieving is part of letting go. It is healthy and necessary. More than once I have heard leaders coach each other that the ministry belongs to God and that the pain exists ‘because we got our identity from it’. This is meant as a rebuke. As if one should be willing to pour their life and DNA into something and detach from it unscathed. One would not say such things about children. Neither is it an appropriate perspective for leaving a ministry. Healthy leaving involves grieving, celebrating what has been, and embracing the very real transition in identity. ‘Parent’ and ‘empty-nester’ are two different ways of thinking about yourself and being in the world. To deny that is to miss joy and blessing while trying to avoid the pain of loss.

Apostolic reproduction

As I reflect on the last two decades, considering the apostolic calling through female sensibilities, I have concerns about what has been normalized for the apostolic. Like our human genesis, reproduction in the Kingdom should be something both ordinary and sacred.

Keeping with the reproductive metaphor, and at the risk of being harsh, I have concerns about normalizing of siring children but refusing to raise them. I know of persons who are called ‘serial starters.’  They have an idea or a notion, get it going, and move on. The individual enjoys the ideation part but not developing the organization. This raises red flags for me and I wonder if they are truly following God’s leading or just their own impulses?

If there is a concern at starting things but never parenting them on one end, there is an equal concern of raising children but never letting them leave the house. The temptation to hold on too long stunts both the growth of the child and the parent. The leader who never raises up a successor or develops an organization to live without them is too common a story. The organization fails soon after their departure and it leaves me wondering who the organization was centered around? Jesus or someone else?

This brings me to my second concern. Of all the ministries we build or churches we plant, how many of them are of the will of man or the will of God? Just because someone does a thing for God, it does not mean it was God’s will. Ask King Saul. He wanted to look good in front of the people and offered sacrifices that were not his to offer. As a result, the spirit of the Lord left him. (1 Samuel 15, 1 Samuel 16:14)

Reading Hosea 2:4-5 makes me ask the same question. We can do a lot of things in our own strength and in our own wisdom, or in trying to please others. But are they ministries conceived in adultery? Are they Jesus’s babies? It is a sobering question to ask, and rightfully so. All the more reason we should be asking it.

Talents and abilities used for God, but not with God, foundationally lies outside of co-creation. And if it is not co-created, can it be holy? These are questions I wrestle with. They keep me on my knees before the King of the Universe. They keep me praying, seeking God’s direction, and humbly recommitting to him the work of my hands and my heart. These questions have led me to stay and raise a ministry for a long time, and hand one off during the toddler phase because the Lord said so. But regardless of how long I have had the privilege to help birth, parent, or raise any specific ministry, each has been a gift and a privilege.

Birthing ministries, raising them up and letting go has been the joy and heartache of my assignment. I would have never guessed as a young child, called to serve the Lord with my life at the age of five, that it would look like this. I would have never thought that my childlessness would have created the space to parent something much different. But maybe it is that same space that has allowed me to lean into the mystery of co-creating with God and helped me understand it a little better.