Does God’s guidance show us how to lead? I believe we can learn a lot about planting and pastoring by thinking about God’s guidance. He prioritizes relationship over arrival. He prefers intimacy over efficiency. He loves trusting over rushing. and perhaps most difficult, he into mystery over simplicity.
God’s guidance often feels like going nowhere fast. Which rubs against the grain of our value of going somewhere fast. It often feels like a wandering path, or even going in circles. Which confounds our efficiency of straight lines.
God’s guidance often feels like being on a boat in the middle of the ocean, with nothing but horizon—the sheer scale of our context makes it impossible to have any sense of motion (other than the nauseating bobbing up and down, up and down…). Which frustrates our desire to be in control.
It occasionally even feels lonely, as if God’s nearness envelops us in a dark cloud like he did with Moses. Which reveals that we may not trust him as much as we thought we did—we’re more apt to trust what we can clearly see, touch, smell, hear, or taste. None of which happens very well in a cloud.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying: The way God guides is good in the most unexpected, uncomfortable, and unconventional ways. As church planters and church pastors, we should learn for our own experience with God, and be willing to forge new ways of leading the church.
This article originally appeared here, and is used by the author’s kind permission.
