Your Church Is Waiting For You

Growing up in Orlando in the early 80s and 90s provided lots of opportunity for a kid actor. Nickelodeon Studios had set up shop, TV and movies were shooting at Disney’s MGM Studios and dozens of production companies were using Orlando as their hub. My first real acting gig was in a Disney stage show called Holiday Splendor as a 12 year old.

The kids in the show - one boy and one girl - served one purpose : to be cute. We were full of affectation and smiles. We entered the stage skipping.

By the time I was 15, I would lay down my acting hat, and it wasn’t until a decade later that I would pick it up again. But this time, it was very different. As a kid, acting consisted of being told to do something and doing it. It was very much about putting on a role. Think of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen on Full House. No one ever found their performance believable. They existed for the same reason I was on stage at Disney - to be cute.

But now, as an adult, I was discovering there actually is a lot of depth to acting. Between pastoral meetings at church and weekend message prep, I was sneaking away for acting classes and workshops. And this newly reignited passion was teaching me more about my life with God and as a leader than anything I had encountered in my adult life. The first lesson I learned :

An actor is most compelling - not when he plays a character well - but when he becomes the character.

Leading well, like acting well, isn’t about playing a role. It’s about living a life. There’s an acting coach named Margie Haber, and her terminology for playing a role is “slice of life.” It’s the concept that I’m most effective in my job as an actor when I become someone, not when I try to pretend to be them. Playing a role well isn’t about trying harder. It’s about surrendering more.

Sounds like something Jesus might say about leadership. It’s much easier for us to stand on stage and teach philosophically about what we believe Jesus can do, but God calls us to live a life that embodies what we believe. 

People don’t want to hear leaders tell them how they should live. People want to be inspired by example. 

This reality is why we go to the movies or the theater in the first place. We are all hungering to live a better story, and the people we see on stage and screen are living the kinds of lives we wish we were living - taking bold risks, making difficult decisions, living with emotional vulnerability, saying the types of things we wish we had the gumption to say, living lives “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

And again, we see a list paralleling the call of Christ on our lives as followers of him and leaders of others. The lives of the leaders we see in scripture paint a picture of people who were willing to take risk - most of the time in very public ways.

Moses walking before Pharaoh and saying, “Let my people go.”

David confronting Goliath on the battle field.

Ezekiel cooking bread over cow dung while laying on his side for 430 days.

Peter standing up on the day of Pentecost and sharing the message of Christ.

What we say is, of course, important. The messages we prepare, the language we use, the precepts we teach can all have power. But Truly powerful messages are messages accompanied by a life that embodies them.

Your church needs leaders like this. The kingdom needs leaders like this. When Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” he gave us a glimpse of what is to come. And how is God revealing his Kingdom on earth? Through his church, here and now.

God doesn’t need more actors playing roles. He’s looking for authentic leaders willing to embody what it means to follow Jesus.

The key to being an actor is the same key to being a Christian which is the same key to being a leader : Be open, honest and available. The primary tension of the actor is “what are people going to think of me if I truly let go and give into this moment?” But this level of vulnerability is the exact reason people came to see the actor in the first place.

The people you and I are leading are waiting for us - as leaders - to give them permission to live lives of risk by being the first to go all in.

These moments of risk might come in the form of being honest about your pains and shortcomings or in the form of making a bold choice that exhibits big faith. We all want to be more honest in life. We all want to make bold choices. And our willingness to do those things often comes on the heels of seeing it modeled for us.

Stop performing. Start becoming.

Stop trying harder. Start surrendering to the big call of God on your life.

Let go of the desire to mitigate risk and go all out.

These are the types of leaders the people in your church really want and need. Show them how to live by embodying the messages you’ve been teaching them for years.