An Interview with Matt Chandler

BRAD: I want to ask you about leadership. You are a great leader and you obviously are leading a movement of both The Village Church and lots of folks around the world who see you as influencing them. If you had to break it down, what is that one characteristic about you as a leader that you would say, “Man, this is what makes me”?

MATT: I think they’re biblical principles. What I’ve found is that where you tend to have strong theology, unfortunately there are people then who look at leadership as those it’s a pragmatism and it’s useless. And then what I find is really heartbreaking is the guys with these really beautiful truths who sabotage their own ability to proclaim those truths and help people grow in those truths because they’re proud. It’s pride. By taking that position, I think these men who hold this really beautiful message rob themselves of a robust development because they’re viewing something that is not their enemy as their enemy. Now, in the same vein, these guys over here that love Collins tend to over-contextualize because they view theology as the problem. What I’m an advocate of is being a strong leader, growing in all the domains that God would have you grow, and to argue that to understand and to be trained in “leadership is unbiblical” is to not read your Bible well.

Nehemiah prays for 40 days, fasts for 40 days, and then he comes to the king and says, “I’d like to rebuild the wall.” “What do you need?” “Well, I need you to do this. I need these letters. I need permission to cut down these trees to do the walls. I need letters to hold the other armies at bay.” It’s clear that he had thought through and had planned out what he needed to do. So I find among people who have really good theology, unless they’re a bit of a natural, intrinsic leader—and thank God we have some of those—they have great truth but they operate in a vacuum that makes their churches and the way they lead be half of what it could be if they simply knew just a couple of really sweet nuggets about leadership.

So if I’m reading Lencioni’s book The Advantage, and I say, “Oh, walk in humility. I’ll write a couple of verses next to that.” They’re just tapping into how God designed things to work. What I wanted to do is look at it because maybe they’re not coming from a biblical perspective, but if it’s true, the Scriptures will speak to it. Leadership really comes down to walking in humility, then allows you to hear from others, learn from others, isn’t quick to judge, and allows you to give the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise. If we could learn to walk in that in all capacities I think what we would see take place would be far more spectacular than what we’re seeing. And I think there are some really good things happening.

BRAD: This celebrity culture that many times we give fuel to and don’t mean to—the celebrity culture among church and pastors and leaders—talk about that, because you are a leader who would deny that. You speak into it in a really appropriate way, and you’re a bridge builder. Maybe for those younger leaders, give them some things to guard against becoming all that.

MATT: I think you’re going to make yourself a slave if your goal is to become all that. Another thing I’d like to remind people is when I lay in bed at night, if it wasn’t for God’s calling on my life, my fantasy is just to pastor The Village Church, not to be critiqued daily by The Globe. I think there’s this idea that what we do is somehow sexy and that what we do is really something to be aspired to. And if what they’re saying about me is what I aspired to do, which is to proclaim the Word of God fearlessly and to lead men to love Jesus as much as I am able, then I would call that “holy emulation” and encourage that. That’s not mine, that’s Piper that would call that holy emulation.

But the celebrity culture isn’t an evangelical phenomena, it’s the world we live in. So my advice to young guys is to be faithful and to steadily let the Lord make you what He wants to make you. Because there are some things about this that are exhausting and creating a whole other level of stress that’s hard for most guys to even fathom. So they see the lights and the picture on the poster, and they think they want to do that, but they have no idea what comes along with that. My encouragement to any of those guys is to have the desire to make much of Jesus, to do that as loudly as you can, and to do that in the reach that God is going to give you.

What I’m trying to speak into is that if you want to emulate these guys, emulate their passion for Jesus Christ. Because what I know is if you try to duplicate Andy Stanley it’s not going to go well for you. You’re not Andy. If you try to duplicate Mark Driscoll, good Lord, you’re going to get in a lot of trouble. Driscoll’s got this profound spiritual gift of saying, “Hey, here’s 18 reasons why I think you’re stupid,” and people get saved by it. But if some 22-year-old goes out and does that at First Baptist Church of Wauxahatchee, he’s gone. He’s not even going to get corrected. He’s just going to go home to the parsonage and all of his stuff is going to be in the yard. Be who you are, be where you are, and if you want to grow, grow in the knowledge and intimacy of Jesus and let Him decide your mantle. Don’t try to make one for yourself. That’s exhausting.

BRAD: The future in terms of even the next couple of years, I think we’re on the precipice. At least, we at Catalyst feel the responsibility to be bridge builders. And so much of the reason we wanted to have you involved is you were already doing the idea of collaboration and this sense of partnership and working together. How have you lived that out? And what does that feel like and look like? Give some advice to folks on how you do that.

MATT: It’s a constant tension. To me, what’s important is the gospel. I have strong beliefs about secondary issues. I believe I can show you where they are in the Bible and why I believe they’re biblical and why I believe that culturally and ecclesiologically they’re the way to go. Ultimately, what I’m most concerned about is the gospel of Jesus Christ and Him being proclaimed and Him being received, and a real desire to see people matured and not just converted, disciples not converts. What I’ve found is God has put me in a unique position to say to this group, “No, there are guys over there that really love the Lord,” and to be able to say to this group, “Please don’t take 15 bloggers on the Internet and say this community is like this because of these 15. Or don’t look at this one church and think that all the churches that do that model are like that guy.” That’s the kind of silly stuff that’s going on. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt until you prove that accusations made against you are true or not. And man, I just want to be friends with guys who love Jesus, even if we disagree.

There comes a time to say we’re not doing the same thing. What you’re teaching is not the same thing, it’s not the same gospel, we’re not after the same kingdom. And I think the danger in regard to unity and bridge building is that you don’t want to build bridges where they shouldn’t be built because there are wolves, there are false teachers, and those ideas are not popular with evangelicalism today. But it’s true. There are false teachers. There are churches that are not, in the biblical sense, churches. So really, that tension I feel is where is that line, and for me, it always goes back to the gospel message. Then we can disagree on other things and still partner together for gospel ministry. That’s how it works out in my head.