“I believe there are few things greater to happen to a leader than to be removed from his office and given the opportunity to grow again.”
When we come to Christ as children, we learn that He only cares for two things: That we love and trust Him. And that we show others His love. Nothing else really matters to Him.
Nonetheless, there is a thing burning inside of us, deep behind the feelings of contentment, joy, peace and love. It’s up underneath our hunt for approval and gratitude. It bites at us with a notion that we are supposed to be the greatest at whatever we touch and go down in history as an amazing legend.
We shroud it behind a face of mission and passion, but if we were honest with ourselves, pride drives much of our ambition.
How do we get around God’s desire for us to live simple lives of loving Him and others when we have this almost sickening (surely perverted) desire to be famous and at the forefront of all that is brilliant? How do I balance what I believe is true—I am made to be confident and forthcoming!—yet, I know to be at the foundation of all my sin?
I’m not immune to pride. In fact, I’m detested by the amount of it in my bones. And I’ve learned the ugly lessons of subjecting myself to its will many times. I’m grateful for a father that pushed me down when he knew I was getting too high on my own accolades. Such a father that admitted his own mistakes and quickly apologized when he felt pride’s ugly disease-ridden face masquerade as his own.
When I became the worship leader at the youth church in Florida, I inhabited the position with qualities of passion and the belief that worship is for Christ and, second, our own souls to grow smaller in His presence. It is by worship we receive revelation, but just as much, we receive the character of Christ though humility and submission.
The former qualities of passion left their mark on many students following me. And for this, I regret nothing. (Though from time to time, I probably second-guessed some of the strong behavior I led with.)
For example. I remember a young man named Nick Clemetson joining the band. He was a drummer and pretty decent from the start. Sure, he had much to master in his craft, but he loved what we were doing and he was eager to help. That eagerness slowly waned over the months and years. As his expertise grew, so did his admiration for himself. In fact, I’ll never forget the Thursday evening when he showed up late to practice and walked in like a perturbed prima donna. I chided he needed to be there thirty minutes prior in a playful manner. But I was suddenly surprised when he turned his face at me with venom in his eyes and spouted, “you should be grateful for what you have!” This, I assumed, regarded the fact that we didn’t have many other drummers at the time.
I paused for a moment, took a breath, and immediately walked to the drum cage and opened the door. “Nick, you can go home. You are not playing for a month.”
He was flabbergasted and thought I was joking. I didn’t budge. The band waited in silence and awe as he left the stage and walked to his vehicle outside. Later, I told him he and I would do a Bible study together every week and specifically discuss the character of Jesus. And until I felt confident he was ready to join the band again, he would come to our practices and pray for us, but not play.
Nick is one of the greatest men I know today. He loves the Lord with all his heart. He is happily married, with a child on the way, and devotes himself to learning more and more how to be a man of God.
Some years before this incident, there was another young man in the band, Steve. He was a drummer as well. (There’s something about drummers, perhaps). And like Nick, he was the only one we had. We were desperate back then. I was commissioned to make an entirely youth band, kicking out all the old twenty-year-olds, and teaching the teens how to play. Steve was good from the start. Real good. And at some point, he knew it. He stopped attending our weekly practices. He showed up late. He listened to his iPod while I was talking to the band. He rarely joined the conversation.
Finally, enough was enough. I told him unless he attended our weekly practices and showed up on time, he wasn’t to play that Wednesday night. Well, the following Tuesday, he skipped out on practice (we had different days for practice back then). That Wednesday night, he showed up ready to play, and I looked him in the face and said, “No. You are going to worship from the other side of the stage.”
He was shocked. And so was the youth pastor. He asked me if I was serious about not having a drummer in our band. I was. And for two weeks we went without a drummer, and the music was dismal. But I didn’t care. Because perfect music isn’t what worship is about. It’s about our hearts. And if our hearts are messed up, it doesn’t matter how good our music is.
Do you know I’ve spoked to worship directors at mega churches that tell me their paid band members are fighting and cursing, throwing about “Mother Eff-bombs” backstage only seconds before leading their congregations in worship? And these directors throw their hands up like a parent at a loss, and smile crookedly, “Well, what are you going to do?” Kick them out of the mother-flipping band! That’s what!
I got a call from Steve’s grandmother the following day. She expressed in harsh words that Steve deserved to be on that stage because of his talent. I told her I believed Steve had a case of pride. And too often, when I approached him about these things, he would argue with me. I compared it to Adam, who complained and blamed all of his shortcomings on Eve, the serpent, and God Himself, instead of taking responsibility for his own actions. She cut me short and said, “Exactly! He should argue and put the blame on others! It’s his god-given right!” (I’m curious, to which god she thinks gave him that right.)
Steve never came back to the band again, and I don’t think he came back to our youth ministry either. I saw him several years later outside of a Publix, on his way to Army deployment. We had a pleasant conversation, and he thanked me for all I ever did for him. *There has never been a Steve in our worship band. I changed his name to make you happy.
This sort of punishment to pride continued on and on over the years. In fact, I don’t think anyone made it through our band unscathed. At some point, the ugly demon would pop up in their lives, and I was quick to squash it. I never threw a student out; though I probably wanted to. I merely told them to come to practice, pray for the team, and do a Bible-study with me in the meantime. And when I felt they were ready to come back, they would. A few left altogether. Most made it through. And God was glorified.
When I took over the youth internship as youth pastor, I brought the same sort of practice into that as well. I remember Aden Johnson getting removed from his leadership position (“Captain”) for a similar reason. He was only out for seven days. And that was a stretch. The kid had just too much moral character. He snapped out of that crap faster than a June Bug hitting an aluminum roof.
But one Captain… Oh! One Captain goes down in the history of the most ridiculous fodder I’ve ever had to deal with.
This girl—let’s call her Julianna—joined the internship in seventh grade. She was a gem from the start. Clearly understood the Word and had faithfulness all over her. She was confident, articulate, and had the apparent qualities of leadership. When she was in eighth grade, I broke my rule of having only high-schoolers as Captains, and appointed her. She did great at first, but slowly something strange started happening.
In those days, I was getting stretched to multiple roles and maybe didn’t have my eyes on it as much as I would have liked from the get-go. I had to trust in the opinion and observance of other leaders, both adult and student. Julianna was getting haughty. And vicious. She would snap at other students and put them down. Soon, no one but the youngest of young kids wanted anything to do with her.
I spent a few months intentionally teaching her and others around her about pride, submission, servanthood, and trying to root out the little worm that was growing inside of her. But it wasn’t working. So, I did what I normally do when people are cruel. I make fun of them.
Now, I know what you are thinking. “Keith, that doesn’t seem very Christ-like.” And you may be right. But I don’t care. When people are stupid, they should be taught a lesson. And if they are too thick to learn that lesson, they must be shown it.
I remember it all accumulated when I gave Julianna an award for “Most Likely to Judge Others.” Which I still applaud myself for coming up with. (Oh, there’s that Pride in me we were discussing.) Anyway, she took the punch with a chin up and actually started getting better. It snapped something inside of her and for a few months, she was more compassionate and loving. She listened and received instruction and was slower to speak. Other students started hanging out with her more and it seemed like we were turning the corner. We had a number of one-on-one conversations that I thought were going well.
And then the New Year passed, and her disposition tanked. For some reason, and I still do not know today, her behavior changed radically; she was belligerent and argumentative toward both adults and students. Enough was enough. I pulled her aside and told her I wanted her actively involved in a one-on-one Bible study with my female administrator, Hannah, and that she was on probation. If her behavior didn’t change in the coming months, she would no longer be a Captain. Which in and of itself, if we are honest, is not that big of a deal. It’s not like we are talking about losing salvation or grace. I say this because of the brewing storm I was about to walk into.
The next day, I received a request to meet with Julianna’s parents. They came in, and without saying a word, her mother pulled from her purse the award for “Most Likely to Judge Others”, smashed into pieces. She threw it into the garbage and said, “We reject your words.” I giggled at the sentiment’s obvious irony, and let her continue.
Then this woman pulled out her Bible and read it to me, trying to prove a point that I was unfit to not only be a pastor, but to lead youth. This went on for an hour, before I finally got the husband to speak and realized that he was a pretty sensible guy. He was probably the root of anything decent in Julianna. Because her mother was nuts; argumentative, pompous, belligerent, and downright vicious. But anyway, I realized it was going nowhere early on and tried to explain my love for Julianna, of which I had a significant amount. I spent three years teaching, leading, loving, and empowering her. And like all students, I refuse to let them stall out. We grow up, and not down. And when our character is out of gas, someone needs to kick-start us. And sometimes, that kick-start is a kick in the pants.
I learned over the years in leadership that most people love when you speak your mind and tell the truth…to others. But they don’t like it when you tell them the truth about themselves. Things get very uncomfortable, and the haughty spirit rejects instruction. It wants to know everything and be ready for everything. Therefore, leaders themselves are subject to the greatest falls. Because they have risen so high, ofttimes in their own imagination, and the fall hurts smacking the ground. But I believe there are few things greater to happen to a leader than to be removed from his office and given the opportunity to grow again.
In Genesis, God gave Joseph a dream. And this dream led to pride. And that pride held him imprisoned for decades. Don’t mix the dream God has for you with pride. It wasn’t until Joseph learned he was nothing without God that he finally realized the dream God gave him as a child. You will never get to the dream He has for you until you receive the character you require to obtain it.
Pride, jealousy, and greed sift through our lives; it’s almost as if we would not exist without them. Without the desire to be the greatest, to push others down, to compare oneself and any self with another and my own.
When we meet people, their names come secondary to the prejudice of clothing, hair, attitude, accolade, culture, and upbringing. That’s why we immediately ask someone, “What do you do?” Because we are hunting for the comparable information. When we introduce ourselves to others, we admit information that will push us up, avoid anything that will damn us in the eyes of those listening, and quickly explain away anything that might shine a negative light on who we are.
So how do you live to be the greatest—that desire festering deep in there—without becoming a selfish sinner?
“Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.”
1 John 2:15-17
The sin of pride comes from the fear that if I don’t puff myself up enough, no one will, and perhaps everyone else will find out I have just as much dirt on my face, maybe even more, than those around me. Someone will find out I don’t know everything, and I’ll get thrown away.
Pride, in itself, is a trick. One to make others feel less, that I may feel greater. It is intimately connected to shame. If you boast about yourself, I would ask, “What are you so ashamed of? And why are you insecure?”
Because pride will lead you face to face with your shame eventually, I’d much rather talk about shame instead. For those who are truly ashamed have just learned by now that their pride ran out and they can’t keep lying to themselves.
How does shame work? It tells you that you aren’t good enough and that God won’t love you. It makes you retreat and hide from Him. Adam and Eve hid themselves in shame of their wrongdoing, not because they suddenly thought God was evil and angry. No, because they thought they didn’t deserve His love that they knew He was ready to give. Shame, by this definition, is the understanding that we do not deserve God’s love. Pride is the masquerade that no one deserves our love.
When we have shame, we retreat. When we seclude from God, we get afraid. When we are afraid, we are susceptible to more sin. When we sin, we become ashamed.
Round and round we fear, sin, and hide like a merry-go-round sinking underwater.
Jesus loved us while we were yet sinners, so we can come up for air. The presence of God makes us unafraid. Fearlessness makes us strong in passion. We grow bold in our convictions. Therefore, we do not sin. That’s why it’s the goodness of God that leads men to repentance. Not the rules or law. You can’t scare someone into true submission of the heart. You can scare them into submission of the mind or body. But the heart is what God is after. He knows fear will not lead to your salvation. Therefore, He did it the hard way. Loving our selfish, sinful, pitiful selves until we learned who God really was and so chose to change ourselves forever.
Let go of shame. And let go of pride. We all have dirt on our faces. And we all need to be knocked down from our position from time to time to remember it. Or else the destruction may be far greater.
We may have a desire to be great and hold magnificent status. But the truth is, when you die, most people won’t care or remember you. Oh, there will always be close friends and family who talk about you for a few weeks or months, if you are lucky. But most everyone will continue on in their day-to-day lives. In fact, the most famous people that we talk about years, decades, or centuries after they are gone are superficial relationships at best. Most people don’t know Mozart’s or Oppenheimer’s first name, and they only know something they did, not who they were. We don’t know who Robin Williams really was, just that he made us laugh for a couple of decades.
Most people will die and be forgotten. It’s only our children and grandchildren that, on long and seemingly random days, will remember us after we are gone. And those kin will either remember us as a saint or a demon. So I say, your family may be the most important aspect of your life that you try to “get it right” when it comes to being a hero and legend. All others won’t give much care to your absence. My great-grandfather is a legend in our family, not because he was perfect, but because his character shown through; he loved Jesus with all his heart, and he repented.
So, in all this, I say, strive for excellence in your family. Lead and love them well. Chase after all God has for you, but remember that living a simple life of loving and trusting Him and showing others love is the whole summation of it.
Oh! And I never saw Julianna’s family again. Though I still have a note that the girl wrote months before the altercation with her parents, thanking me for all I ever did for her.
I’m sentimental that way.
