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A Conversation with Mandy Smith
330 Plays2 years ago
"It's only recently that I realized the greatest threat to my faith when I was a young adult was the fact that I didn't feel welcome in the church as an artist."
Mandy Smith, artist, pastor and author of the book, Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith beyond the Baggage of Western Culture joins us in this episode. Mandy shares how she's learned to embrace her calling as a contemplative leader, her artist super powers, and lessons learned from a perilous cheese chasing competition.
Get Mandy's book: Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture
Connect with Mandy: The Way Is The Way
IG: @MandySmithHopes
Other resources:
The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making
Cheese Chasing Competition
For more Be. Make. Do. follow now on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Follow Be. Make. Do. on Instagram @soulmakerspodcast
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Transcript
The Threat to Faith: Feeling Unwelcome in Church
00:00:00
Speaker
It's only recently that I realised the greatest threat to my faith when I was a young adult was the fact that I didn't feel welcome in the church as an artist.
Podcast Introduction: Be Make Do
00:00:18
Speaker
Hello, welcome to Be Make Do, a soul makers podcast where we talk about what it takes to pursue your calling as a culture maker with spiritual wholeness and creative freedom. I'm your host, Lisa Smith, and I'm here with my producer, Danny BH. Hello, everyone. And it is our passion to encourage and inspire you to become who you were created to be, make what you were created to make and do what you were created to do.
00:00:46
Speaker
So in our last episode, we started our series of introducing become who you're created to be, make what you're created to make and do what you were created to do.
Meet Mandy Smith: Artist and Pastor
00:00:53
Speaker
And in this episode, we're going to take a little pause and talk with Mandy Smith, who is an artist and pastor in Australia.
00:01:01
Speaker
Yeah, I can't wait to talk with her because I think this is going to be such a good segue coming from becoming who you're created to be. And I mean, honestly, from what a little bit of I know about her, she's basically the Australian version of you.
00:01:18
Speaker
And how did you guys meet? We've met just kind of being in similar circles and come across each other at different times. But this will be the first time that we've really had a chance to kind of really chat and get to know each other. I am familiar with her books and some of her other teaching. And yeah, she is a fabulous person to really be thinking about that become. So yeah, I'm excited. Let's do it. Let's do it.
00:01:56
Speaker
Well, we're so glad to have Mandy Smith with us today as part of the Soulmakers Be Make Duke podcast. Mandy is a pastor, author, and speaker. She's the author of The Vulnerable Pastor, How Human Limitations Empower Our Ministry, and her latest book, Unfettered, Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture.
00:02:16
Speaker
And you are so many things. You're also just this incredible encourager and generous person and you've always been so kind and available to me and even though we don't know each other that well. So I'm just, I'm really grateful for that, especially as a woman in ministry that you've been so willing to make yourself available. It's really, really a gift. So thank you for taking the time.
00:02:41
Speaker
in this early morning for you to be here in Australia. I'm glad to have a chance to be in the conversation. Yeah. Well, let's just start off by just kind of chatting a little bit about who you are and what you do. Because like we were kind of saying earlier, we're sort of kindred spirits in this artist pastor thing. Was that always
00:03:03
Speaker
a jumble together or did those two, how did those two things find each other?
Artistic Journey from Childhood to Pastoral Work
00:03:07
Speaker
What, tell us about you. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I think if you had seen me as a child you would have said this kid needs to be an artist because it was just what I did with all my spare time and I was a musician and just making things with my hands all the time and always making collaborative, like I had to get my friends all involved too, you know, and so that was
00:03:30
Speaker
that was part of the art. I don't think I realized that at the time, but that was part of the art for me of curating an experience. And so you can see how that really, there was a moment just maybe 10 years ago where I realized like, oh my goodness, that's what I'm doing in my work now. It's like we're curating experiences as Christian leaders too.
00:03:52
Speaker
So I did also just have such a love for the Lord and wanted to just say yes to Him. I had no idea that it was heading for lead pastor kind of ministry or preaching ministry. I was in a context where that was not actually affirmed and I'd never seen a woman doing that. So it just didn't cross my mind.
00:04:13
Speaker
And honestly, I think the fact that I have an artistic temperament made me think, oh, I just could never lead because I'm very sensitive and emotional. But I'm learning the skills of finding the strengths in that. And they're actually leadership skills. So it's taken me some time to go into the center of a world that often feels more like business.
00:04:41
Speaker
sadly in the church and management styles and all that kind of thing. And design thinking is very foreign in those contexts, you know, but I think design thinking actually is very much like how God thinks. Yeah. And so it's been good for me to actually have some languages say, well, actually, there are other ways to make decisions and that are more about listening and discerning and trying and experimenting.
Art in Ministry: Collaborative Experiences
00:05:07
Speaker
So it's taken me some time, but I'm coming to a place of integrating those things now. And being an artist who's also a pastor can include doing kind of art experiments with your community, even if they're not, wouldn't call themselves artists. I've had really, we've done some really great things recently that people have really responded well to.
00:05:28
Speaker
But it doesn't have to only be that. It can be the whole way you do everything is just collaborative and creative and experimental. And that kind of feels like what faith feels like to me too. Yeah, that's so interesting. I mean, I've had the exact same experience. I mean, when I went to seminary, it was really just kind of
00:05:49
Speaker
answer some questions for myself. I didn't have any aspirations to anything. I was just trying to do this integration thing. But I found this really funny thing. I'm sitting in some of my classes and thinking,
00:06:02
Speaker
Okay, my acting training is actually helping me to process this theological concept or this process easier than my classmates. What's going on here? And that kind of perked up my radar and I found that to be true. And yeah, I've struggled as well with that, you know, being a pastor and that, but there is so much what you're talking about the way you approach the work beyond any kind of artistic artifacts that show up in a worship service.
00:06:32
Speaker
just that idea of how you approach and it shows up in your writing as well. I think it's really fascinating and maybe a clue to some of the things that artists who are Christians have to bring to the church beyond maybe what people typically think about.
00:06:51
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah. Even the courage to do things that may or may not work out, which is huge, I think, at this moment in the church's life. It's scarier to do it with an audience, but I actually had a moment recently where I was really frustrated with some really hard things I was having to do in ministry and not seeing outcomes. And I think just to kind of stop my complaining, my friend changed the subject and she said, and I was actually complaining, like,
00:07:20
Speaker
It's so frustrating because I don't even know what it's going to become in the ministry context. I don't know where it's headed and it's so frustrating. And then my friend changed his subject and she was like, have you been making anything lately? And I said, no, I haven't. And it's so sad for me because I love that feeling when you get swept up in the creative experience and you don't know what it's going to become.
00:07:40
Speaker
And I heard myself and I was like, okay, I love it when I'm doing it at home by myself. And it's scarier when I'm doing it with the whole congregation. But I have the skills. I know how to be like, let's try this and then we'll bring it back and we'll have a conversation and we'll learn from that and we'll try something more. And so there are skills there.
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, especially that working in that collaborative process mode. I like that. I think you're getting towards where we are exploring as well with that focusing on becoming who you were created to be, who God created you to be, and the attentiveness to developing the skills and the gifts that you've been given in order to be able to use them, to do something with them. But that shows up in a variety of ways.
00:08:31
Speaker
And but I do it's it's really interesting the I find with artists who are Christians or who who are yeah both in and out of the church that there are all these little hiccups or knots that that they've gotten tied into either um uncomfortability like the kinds of things that you are talking about in church or unsure how they can show up
00:08:58
Speaker
in the world as a Christian and to what degree do they need to do that? And I was thinking about your book, The Vulnerable Pastor, and it was just sort of dawning on me, like I think I observe some of that hesitation from artists who are Christians in their spaces as well, because we have to delve into vulnerability with our work, but then there's this added pressure
00:09:23
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to represent in the real world and then pressure on the other side
00:09:30
Speaker
in church, it can leave us feeling a little, it might be a little risky, whatever we're doing. As an actor, when I was younger, that was a big thing for me. I really felt uncomfortable being a representative of all this stuff when I was still just figuring it out.
00:09:54
Speaker
Maybe some of these tools and things that you're thinking about with a vulnerable pastor would apply in the same way to artists, like other ways of showing up as a Christian, other than being perfect, you know, in the public eye. Yeah, and the story that I tell at the beginning of the Vulnerable Pastor was of being at a big like mega church conference and feeling, it was right, like I was in my 30s, I think, I wasn't totally
Artists and Human Experience: Biblical Resonance
00:10:21
Speaker
new, maybe late 30s.
00:10:23
Speaker
wasn't totally new to ministry. I've been in ministry for some time and I was stepping into more leadership and just hit a brick wall of like, oh, I thought this leadership conference was for me. I thought this was my people. And it felt like the opposite of my people. And they were good people, but they just weren't anything like me.
00:10:40
Speaker
And apart from the fact that they're Christian leaders. And it took me some months to discover. It was partly about gender, and it was partly because I wasn't American, but it was also partly because I'm an artist. And everything in the conference felt very business management kind of style of thinking.
00:10:59
Speaker
And when I was starting to talk to artist friends about it, they were like, I feel that every day. Yeah, I hear you. And so it's been really interesting for me to kind of process that. I think that artists fundamentally, one of the things we're doing is exploring the human experience.
00:11:19
Speaker
you know, we we don't shy away from even though we're also terrified of it. I think the best art is art that does not shy away from human limitation and brokenness. And sometimes real hope can come from that place. Sometimes despair comes from that place. And Paul goes there like I see artists in the Bible. Paul is such an artist. He's like, what will I do with this body of death? And, you know,
00:11:49
Speaker
bleeding with God to take the thorn from his flesh. And sharing those moments, those stories that would feel so shameful that he's come to the end of himself. And that's a generative moment of like, this can be a moment where I just sink, sink, sink further down into despair and darkness. Or it can be a moment where I say,
00:12:14
Speaker
God never asked me to be God. And to find the potential in our human limitation. I think that's what a lot of many artists are kind of experimenting with and playing with is like, what happens at the end of myself? What possibility is there? What truth is to be found in saying, I'm just one small part of this big thing. Is that okay? Can I bring something back from that dark place to others that
00:12:44
Speaker
is life giving. And I think actually part of what a lot of artists are doing, it feels like you're just doing your own thing. And some art can be pretty self absorbed. But I think what a lot of us is doing is like, here's a little thing I found in the darkness.
00:12:57
Speaker
have you seen this? Do you know this too? So when I'm writing and I had to wrestle with my own ego with writing because I love to hear back from people who've read my books and I remember actually when I was trying to experiment with some painting and putting it up in cafes and stuff like that, I would love to sit in the cafe and hear people respond to it and maybe a little bit of it is like I want to hear if I'm good or not but a big part of it is like
00:13:24
Speaker
Am I alone? Are other people getting what I'm seeing? And I'm just that's what's part of the vulnerability of it is like, I'm just one small person. I'm just sharing my tiny perspective. But I want to share it because I want it to connect with other perspectives and learn that maybe it might be unique in some ways. But in many ways, it's part of this chorus that we're all singing, you know, so
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think there's so much power in that, that being able to speak in a very particular way from your story, and then find that that hits a core of this, you know, maybe it's a universal truth, or maybe it's just a truth that somebody else, you know, it just, it strikes that chord in them as well. And then, yeah, there's a connectedness there. Yeah, I remember everybody in
00:14:09
Speaker
like my family, my husband, my kids and I, we're all kind of hypersensitive characters and so that makes for a fun context. I remember my beautiful daughter when she was about six, she was always overwhelmed and always emotional and I thought it was my job to just teach her language with all the different emotions
00:14:31
Speaker
And as a six-year-old, she one day just said to me, mum, I know all those words, but how can I explain how I'm feeling when there's one feeling wrapped in another feeling wrapped in another feeling? And I was like, wow, yes. And I said, oh, there's a word for that too. That's called being overwhelmed.
00:14:47
Speaker
And like her life changed at that moment where we had this really great conversation and she had a word for feeling all the things and taking in all the stuff from the world. And I had that word because I'm the same. But I remember saying to her, drawing on my own experience too, it's actually a superpower. We hear stories of Superman, he can hear for 10 miles or whatever.
00:15:17
Speaker
that's seen as a superpower that he can hear everything. But at the same time, it can be overwhelming to hear everything in a 10 mile radius. And there's there's skills to figure out how to discern that but to think of it as a superpower instead of as a because we often just feel it as a as a an overwhelming thing, you know.
00:15:37
Speaker
But there are things that you're hearing, if you have that superpower, that other people can't hear, that it's actually a prophetic gift to bring, to somehow do the work of processing it, figure out what's just for you, what's just for them, how to communicate it in a way that blesses them and isn't just like frustration.
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah, right. That's all a lot of work, but that's where my books come from. That's where there's so much journaling and so much prayer and so many walks behind every page of what I write and every sermon that I preach because there's just too much information. But I make
00:16:14
Speaker
art now, visual art because sometimes I can get it, sometimes I don't understand what's happening in words yet and I know that's the main way that people want to communicate in the Western world and so I have to make art because I can get the feelings out through the art and then I can look at the art and describe the art with words so it's kind of a two-step thing sometimes. Yeah, isn't that interesting? Yeah, so that helps.
00:16:40
Speaker
What do you think? Taking all of that further, do you ever think about this? How would you define the role of the artist in the world and in the church? I think they may be similar, but
00:16:57
Speaker
But I just have this sense where I think God created artists on purpose to fulfill some particular tasks that other people are not gifted in a way. And you kind of use that prophetic word. And I think that is that prophetic, imaginative, visionary, contemplative leaders, those kinds of things. I mean, what do you think about all that? What do you think the role of the artist is?
The Role of Artists: Imaginative Leaders in Church and World
00:17:20
Speaker
Okay, yeah, so you mentioned unfettered and it's about rediscovery and child likeness on my sabbatical side eight weeks to myself and I could just do what I felt like doing but then coming back to work, something something different was going on. So I basically
00:17:39
Speaker
thought in the sabbatical, I've got eight weeks, what am I supposed to do? And I felt the Lord say, you can be like a kid, like just remember. And all of us have done this before. We didn't have to think so much about how to be in tune to the world, tap into our senses and our instincts and our emotions, in addition to our intellect.
00:17:57
Speaker
But the Western world just compartmentalizes all those things and then makes a hierarchy of like thinking is up here and feeling is here and urges and instincts they're like way down there. But artists have to listen to all those things and I think it actually heals Western Christianity to restore the human experience that we are bodies and minds and hearts and spirits
00:18:22
Speaker
God made us all in one package and he doesn't compartmentalize or say one is more than the other. And so I came to see on this sabbatical that I basically decided I have to just say yes to those little childlike instincts of like,
00:18:39
Speaker
I wonder if that moss is soft. It looks really soft. I'm going to touch it." I feel like jumping in that puddle. I don't know why. I'm just going to jump in the puddle. When you're a kid, there's not like, I have to explain this to anyone. You just do it. What I noticed was how many very grown-up, sensible things got in the way of my childlike spirit that said,
00:19:02
Speaker
That's going to be dumb. You're going to be disappointed because it's not going to be all the things you thought it was going to be. And people are going to see you. People are going to think you're stupid. You're going to lose respect. All these false self fears coming in to so-called protect me from the joy and the playfulness. And the kid jumping in puddles is like, it doesn't have to mean anything.
00:19:26
Speaker
But so I promised myself I would spend that eight weeks saying yes to every child like prompt that came my way and it was Surprisingly scary and I had to overcome a lot of false self-stop then when I went back to work Now it's serious and I'd kind of awoken something in myself that wouldn't go back in the box But I didn't know anymore if it was like I couldn't tell the difference anymore between The just the child like prompts in me and the spirit in me So when I went back to work
00:19:56
Speaker
There was a moment within a couple of days where I heard the passage being read in a service that was the James passage about if there's anyone among you who is sick, call the elders and pray for them and they'll be healed. And I saw an image in my head of someone in the church who was incredibly sick on so many levels. And I sensed like we should pray for them. We should call the elders and ask for them to be healed. And that was terrifying. I'm not from a tradition that does that.
00:20:25
Speaker
And I just was like, I don't think so. And then I realized like, oh my goodness, this is the same child likeness in me that's now wanting to do really scary things. And so it does take a lot of work to discern
00:20:41
Speaker
what the prompts even are and what we're called to and there's a generosity that we have to have to trust to like understand not everybody gets it in its most primal sense and it's in that place and the art sometimes is what we have to do for ourselves to even process. What on earth does this even mean? Right.
00:20:59
Speaker
And there is usually a gift in there for other people, but there is a kind of a generous spirit that we have to have in figuring out how to communicate it to other people in a way that blesses them and to not do it in a way that is
00:21:14
Speaker
Because I think oftentimes we do feel so much like outsiders that we can kind of communicate in a defensive way. We can communicate in a way that is kind of coming from our own insecurity. And so it's not actually a generous spirit. But like I love if you read stories like the book of Jeremiah.
00:21:33
Speaker
God is asking him to be a performance artist on a regular basis, to do really weird, bizarre, metaphorical things, and be like, bury this piece of cloth, or go to the potter, or do all these weird things as a metaphor. God is the artist, obviously. All of these beautiful things he created, the temple,
00:21:58
Speaker
Passover, Communion, baptism, I mean it's performance art, you know, that he's inviting us into. So I can't remember the question anymore, but I hope it's okay. No, I love it. Just keep talking. Yeah, it's good. So I wonder, part of what we're trying to do with Soul Makers is help to create
00:22:17
Speaker
help to ask good questions, deeper questions, and also help people to create structures and frameworks in their lives that make it easier to live into these things well. And so I just wonder, like, there, I mean, clearly, spiritual disciplines and practices are universally beneficial for this, you know, for developing our spiritual maturity.
00:22:44
Speaker
But are there any that you would say, and I kind of feel like we were sort of hinting at it or getting a little bit to it in what you were just saying, but are there any specifically that you think are necessary maybe for artists as they're walking in that space, which really does require a lot of discernment, I think, like you said, to be able to balance
00:23:06
Speaker
I do think that the creative spirit is something that's given to us by God and we can just enjoy that. And there's a self-expression piece of that and that's just great and that's worship. But then there also is the discernment of how do I give that away? What's the piece?
00:23:24
Speaker
So, there's a lot of discernment, I think, that it can be really difficult. So, are there practices that you think are really applicable for somebody in that space? Yeah. And in terms of discernment, there's a book, I think her name's Elizabeth Liebert, perhaps, The Way of Discernment, something like
Artistic Process: Time, Discernment, and Journaling
00:23:43
Speaker
that. And it talks about discernment. It has so many different models for discernment that feel more holistic, that are listening to all parts of ourselves that I think is quite unusual.
00:23:55
Speaker
But I think just time is a huge one because, and I'm more of an introvert, so I might need more than a more extroverted artist, but if something is brewing in us, it often is not something that can be rushed.
00:24:15
Speaker
Right. And so time that's just not filled with a bunch of other stuff with social media or people or whatever it is that like keeps you from having that, you know, obviously those things become a part of the conversation. Like I have a journal where I'm just, journaling is really helpful, but I don't want to, like I think some people can be like, you must journal. If journaling is helpful, that's great.
00:24:42
Speaker
but it's been good for me to say like the journal doesn't have to be this beautifully finished piece of like poetry. It can be scribbly and scrap like I need and I've loved watching people who are studying in design worlds have what do they call like an inspiration book and so when they're making a piece of art they just it's like a scrapbook you know they're just collecting like this ad and this quote and this picture and you know this thing this experience from my own life
00:25:10
Speaker
all are somehow connected and a lot of them won't obviously show up in the final product, but it's just a place to just dump all that stuff. And so to have a place to dump the clues is really helpful, whether it's a journal or a wall or something.
00:25:27
Speaker
And to have the space and the time to just be able to say, I didn't know why all these things were important to me, but when I see them together, I see there's a threat. There's things that I'm figuring out. And actually collage is one small way of doing that all in one piece.
00:25:46
Speaker
that is the sole collage approach where you just have different kinds of images on tables. And I've done this with groups, which is so much fun. And you just say, just go and just grab the things that mean something to you. You don't have to know why.
00:26:02
Speaker
Yeah. And then sit with them and think, as I see this picture of the spider and this footprint and this eye, like why did I choose these three things? How can I put them together in a way that something's happening? And whether they call themselves artists or not, people get that.
00:26:18
Speaker
Yeah. So I think all of life can be a bit that way. And there's something, I think there's, it's important to trust our own instincts. Like we can be, it's easy, especially sadly in the church sometimes for people to not be comfortable with discomfort and with questions and with wrestling and with longing and with all those
00:26:40
Speaker
feelings, frustration. But I think a big part of my journey has been learning to trust. The feeling itself might not be truth, but the feeling might be helping me learn truth. Yeah, you were talking about time and immediately I went to how many different times I've heard
00:27:01
Speaker
writers or painters artists of different especially who work alone i don't have you know i didn't have the time i don't make the time to but i i think it it probably has a lot to do with what you are just getting out not so much the time that's a good excuse but it's really avoiding being in that space where you're uncomfortable.
00:27:24
Speaker
especially if you're uncomfortable. I do think that there is a little bit, for some people anyway, of wrestling, and maybe especially as Christians, wrestling with getting to make art. That's a luxury. Should I really be doing something meaningful with my time? Shouldn't I be feeding the hungry or something? Is this really valuable?
00:27:49
Speaker
And so, sitting aside that time feels a little selfish. Right. Yep. And just releasing whatever the time needs to be. I love the moments where something's coming together, but it often takes a lot of wasted time and playfulness and no agenda. And I'm sure listeners know this, the things that I love the most that I've made.
00:28:14
Speaker
have often come when I'm just not, I don't care about the outcomes as much. But yeah, getting back to what you're saying about being in the uncomfortable place, I think the Psalms have really ministered to me in this, that God has capacity for honesty about how we're actually feeling.
00:28:40
Speaker
that even if it doesn't stay where we currently are, to be able to say, I'm really frustrated or I'm really angry or I'm really sad,
00:28:51
Speaker
Oh, it's horrible, but that's there whether we name it or not, whether we process it or not. And so many of the Psalms that start in that place, like, are you even listening, God? Come out and pray somehow, you know? And I think it's because we've expressed that to God and we've felt like we're in a safe place that we can say how we're actually feeling.
00:29:14
Speaker
There's a deep trust that this will lead to truth somehow. There's a little seed of something true in here and we might have to get through a whole bunch of mud to get to the seed.
00:29:27
Speaker
And that's why I think God gave us emotions to find truth, you know? Yeah. And I do get frustrated sometimes in the church that people say, oh, your emotions aren't everything or don't trust your emotions. And I get it. Like you don't want your faith to be coming and going based on whether you're feeling it or not. Right. But if the church does not trust emotions, then I think it's not very scriptural because scripture expresses our emotions and God's emotions. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:57
Speaker
Well, kind of going on the value of creating and kind of not really worrying about the outcome so much. Can I read back to you something that you had in your blog and have you respond? I love this because I really, really resonate or I've had to cling on to this.
00:30:19
Speaker
But this is a manifesto to heal my writer heart. And at the very end, you write, I am called to write, so I'm just going to write. Even if half of what I write never gets published and all of what I write rarely gets read, I'm going to still write and share and let God determine my success, quote unquote.
00:30:38
Speaker
I'm going to trust the good work that happens in me as I navigate all the sticky issues of ego, returning each time in failure and acclaim to the prompter of all writing prompts. I'm going to cast my bread on many waters. May my words be one small voice in a great chorus." And then you said, and when I'm dead and gone and my books are out of publication, may some lonely soul come across a used copy of something I wrote and hear the faint hum of the hope that sings in this small heart.
00:31:07
Speaker
And I love that. I have written the exact same thing. I have come to this sense of peace and almost a mission for myself that everything that I'm doing, everything I write down is for somebody a hundred years from now in some little room somewhere, some little basement who just happens to pick it up or hear it from somebody else. And there's kind of a joy in that of being able to just let go of
00:31:36
Speaker
what the results might be and just create and know, okay, God's going to use it, however God wants to use it. Right, right. Yeah, I think that's a huge part of just the partnership with God that the Missio Day, you know, that he
00:31:53
Speaker
has a mission in the world of making all things new.
God's Mission: A Partnership, Not Solitary
00:31:56
Speaker
He said, I am doing this. And for some reason, he calls us to join in that mission with him. And I think it's so easy for us to think that, I don't know, there's this image somehow, maybe it comes from the pill, the Crusades or something of like, God is a king in a throne room and he called me in one day, maybe this comes from youth group camps or something.
00:32:21
Speaker
He calls you into the throne room and he says, I have a mission for you. He gives you his mission and he stays in the throne room and you go off and do this thing on his behalf, which sounds, I mean, there's kind of a bit of ego in that of like, I am doing God's mission.
00:32:39
Speaker
But then when it gets really impossible, we can resent him and say like, why would you send me out here by myself? You're still back there in the throne room. I'm out here on mission with you. So it can be kind of egoistic of like, I personally am doing God's work for him.
00:32:54
Speaker
And also it can be incredibly lonely and discouraging. But I love instead this image in my head of God is on mission in the world. And he's the kind of parrot who comes in early in the morning and wakes you up and says, we're going on an adventure. I want you to be there with me. Why don't you come? Grab a few things. I've got a lunch pack. It's going to be hard sometimes, but I'll be there with you. And we're going to see so many amazing things and make things together.
00:33:22
Speaker
And that feels great. Like, I love that. And then when it gets difficult, we can ask for a piggyback, you know? Like, we're not alone in this. And it's just our job to say yes to the things he asks us to do and to not force outcomes. Yeah, I am often
00:33:49
Speaker
guilty of God asking me, just give this thing to that person. And I think God said, just give this thing to that person so that they'll come to my church, or so that I'll get them out of homelessness, or whatever. And so when that thing doesn't happen, I've been like, God, why did you ask me to give that thing to that person? And he'll be like, I never asked you to do it so that. I just asked you to do it. And sometimes we get to see outcomes.
00:34:18
Speaker
That's such a beautiful moment. And I actually think that's what heaven will be, is God like pulling back the curtain and being like, look at all the things that were possible because of all of the faithfulness. And look at all the ways that your faithfulness interacted with your faithfulness and we created this thing together. So can't wait to see that. Sometimes we get glimpses of that.
00:34:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, we were talking before we got on the podcast about just the last couple of years with convergence. And really, I did have this moment of what I felt was kind of jumping off a cliff. And I had this just time with God where I really felt like Jesus was saying, be reckless with me.
00:35:01
Speaker
just be reckless with me. And it was like, are you serious? Yeah, what does that mean? But realizing what felt reckless to me was, you know, God's like, this is not a big deal. But to have that kind of freedom and abandon to just, you know,
00:35:19
Speaker
like you're hanging with the guy it's gonna be okay and there's a lot of enjoyment scary like i'm glad that he acknowledges it's scary and you might lose something you might get injured in the process you know he doesn't promise us it's going to be easy or obvious and it's funny that you say that because um
00:35:38
Speaker
When so during COVID, we actually moved to the US to the no, we were in the US, we moved to Australia. And that sentence sounds so smooth and pleasant. But you know, I would not short version, I would not recommend an international move in the middle of a global crisis. And then there was some personal crises happening as well. So in the middle of all these crises, and I'm packing up my whole house, I'm living my whole life that I've been there for 20 years.
00:36:08
Speaker
And I watched a show on Netflix, I think it's called We Are The Champions, and they have an episode about the cheese chasing competition in Britain once a year in this little village. They have this tradition, which is not actually like there's all kinds of warning signs everywhere. This is not an official approved event, but they have a tradition that's centuries old, I guess.
00:36:31
Speaker
of taking a huge round of cheese and rolling it down this, I wouldn't even call it a hill, it's almost like a cliff. It's the steepest hill you could ever imagine with rocks everywhere, rolling it down and then having a competition of chasing the cheese. And the first person down is the winner.
00:36:50
Speaker
and there's all kinds of ambulances, you know, it's insane. And the story is told of this woman, her name is Flo Early, I remember, and she's an artist actually. So I went to find her website after it. She was the cheese, I think she's just been recently post from her reign, but she was the standing cheese chasing champion. And she's an absolute, oh my goodness, she just launches herself down this mountain
00:37:17
Speaker
And she spins, and she tumbles, and she gets up running. She's rolling and tumbling, and as she's coming back up, she's already running. And I just watched this. It was an absolute work of art to watch the way she threw herself down this mountain. And she's got permanent dislocations of things. That's commitment. I know. But I don't think it's a...
00:37:44
Speaker
a coincidence that she's an artist because she knows how to do that. And as I was hesitantly packing up my whole life, saying goodbye to everybody I knew, I felt the Lord say, if you're going to die anyway, why not do it with flair?
00:38:02
Speaker
You know, why not do it with abandon, as you said, abandon? Yeah. And so something changed in my packing up from that point on. You know, then I started like one of the empty rooms in my house became this kind of big quest room where like as I was sorting through things, I was thinking of people that I wanted to give things to. And this whole this whole like collection started of this is for this person, this is for that person. And they were kind of precious gifts to give to people, you know.
00:38:33
Speaker
And just very I cooked up everything in my kitchen and made food to people and So like it just became a very different thing and it was an incredibly scary risky move We didn't really know what we were moving to we still it was just There were deaths in the middle of the process. Like I'm not saying that that was that made it easier, right? But in some ways the abandon brought a joy to also because you know, it's gonna be scary and hard and painful. Yeah Why not?
00:39:03
Speaker
Yeah.
Embracing Challenges with Flair: Lessons from Jesus
00:39:04
Speaker
And then of course I'm thinking, you know, when Jesus says, take up your cross, if you're going to take up your cross anyway.
00:39:10
Speaker
Why not do it with flair? I actually am really thankful that Jesus uses language, like you just said, Jesus uses language of how we feel at the time, that it feels like death. He knows it's going to be life for us. Like he says, those who lose their life will gain it. He knows. If he just said, come and find life in me, but you have to die first, it would be kind of dismissive of
00:39:40
Speaker
of the very real way that it feels like death. And the fact that he says it feels like taking up your cross resonates with the people who think they're going to die. And you have to have that language in the beginning to say, thank you for naming that. Yes, this is really painful.
00:39:56
Speaker
to be able to step into this new place where you're like, wow, that thing I thought was going to kill me didn't kill me. And I'm actually somehow crazily stronger than I thought I'd ever be. After this thing that I thought would make me weaker or do me in entirely, you know, so in some way, in order to free us to say like, I've already died, you know, yeah, I've already died. So, um,
00:40:22
Speaker
Yeah, there's a really helpful possibility in that. And I think artists often are really brave to confront some of those deaths in ways that other people may not. And so that's a gift that we can bring to the world. And it's been really meaningful for me to understand why did Jesus have to die on the cross? Like what difference does that actually make and how does his resurrection actually
00:40:46
Speaker
Beyond like I don't want it to just be what gets me into heaven one day Like what does it mean? Do I feel saved now before I ever die? Is that actually good news to me now that makes a difference in my life because it made real it was actual good news to the people who met Jesus and who met the disciples It's not just a formula or a doctrinal statement or a list of rules like it was actually saving people from something in their daily life and
00:41:16
Speaker
I remember, I think it's the way that Mark tells the story leading up to the crucifixion. He describes many, many deaths that Jesus dies before he ever dies physically. And I think we're in such a materialistic culture that we just think of physical death. And of course, that was significant, major.
00:41:36
Speaker
But Jesus dies social deaths and relational deaths, and he's betrayed, he's forsaken, he's lied about, he dies existential deaths and Gethsemane. There's so many kinds of death that he dies, and he could at any moment have said, nah, it's not whether I'm giving up. I'd rather keep this friendship, or I'd rather feel safe with these authorities, or I'd rather not have this moment of crisis in the garden, or whatever.
00:42:06
Speaker
But he just keeps letting himself be embarrassed, letting himself be in places that would seem shameful, letting himself be rejected, and because he's just got his eyes on something. And that really ministers to me to realize
00:42:22
Speaker
Those little places of personal shame or embarrassment or discomfort are also places Jesus went and also places Jesus died. And life resurrection comes in those places too. It's not just for when we physically die one day. It's little bits of good news every single day as we say, I can't do this. The thing you've asked me to do, I just can't do it. Or I'm too embarrassed to do it. Or I'm worried about failing.
00:42:49
Speaker
Jesus' good news brings resurrection to those moments too. Yeah. And that's not nothing. Yeah. Well, I think about the incarnation and just the reality that as soon as Jesus was born, he was beginning to die, you know, I mean, because that's, you know, and that limitation, even experiencing the physical limitations of being in a human body,
00:43:16
Speaker
As much as I'm sure there were also wonderful sensations that he got to enjoy, yeah, there's a sense of that humiliation and that death to self from the very beginning just by entering into embodied existence. Right. Yeah, and I think that when he was having the temptations in the wilderness,
00:43:39
Speaker
I love the fact, the way I understand it now is that Satan was saying, just go back to being God. You can do magic. So you don't have to deal with these limitations. You've been given this huge mission to spread to the whole world and you've only got one pair of small feet, one little voice. How are you going to meet all that need? How are you going to respond to all those people and share the good news with them all?
00:44:03
Speaker
you could just go back to being God. You could just do it quick, snap your fingers, it's all good. And every single time Jesus refused to be ashamed of his humanness and his limitation and his need for the Father. And I think we can really relate to those temptations on a daily basis. And I'm just so thankful that Jesus was not ashamed of his humanness because it makes him not ashamed of our humanness.
00:44:28
Speaker
Yeah, I love the way you put that of not being ashamed of his humanness and his need for God. That's really powerful. Yeah, but I think we can be more ashamed about humanness than he was. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and I think I just really get that, you know. Yeah. I just really have a real sensitivity to that. So to know that even though the world and often the church will tell us, like, no, it's just our job to
00:44:52
Speaker
to hide the humanness, to hide the limitations, to hide the ways we don't understand and we can't fix and we can't control. That's our job, to just pretend we don't feel that and everyone else seems to manage it and we'll just be like the duck with the legs under the water, you know. But what if there's something really powerful in sharing what we find in those places?
00:45:14
Speaker
Yeah, because I actually I think this is so important for us to wrestle with those those moments when we're in in the creative process whether whatever we're making and this includes the creative process of creating a family or making a home or
00:45:32
Speaker
making a garden or whatever, like of even just figuring out who we
Artistic Creativity: Divine Likeness and Spiritual Warfare
00:45:39
Speaker
are. That's a creative process of figuring out what it means to make a person. We have those moments of just like, I can't do this. Who am I to say this thing? Why is my voice anything?
00:45:53
Speaker
And I actually think that forces of darkness are specifically tasked with undermining human creativity because it's a place where we're like God. And I don't think that those dark forces are very creative. I think they're jealous of our creativity and the way that we get to be like God. And so in a way that's encouraging that they're not creative because it means they try the same old
00:46:21
Speaker
Tricks over and over again. They can't come up with new tricks. They're just trying the same tricks, but they're kind of good tricks. They do work on us if we're not careful. And they're usually those lies of like, you have nothing to say. Nobody will get it. Why would you bother? It's just going to hurt. You're going to be embarrassed. You're going to fail.
00:46:43
Speaker
Like we all know those voices, right? And it can just crush us and turn us inwards and make us fail and give up. But to name that a spiritual warfare,
00:46:57
Speaker
somehow makes me feel more like, how dare you speak against the creative spark that God has placed in me. Who are you to say that I can't do these things? And it's just good for us to remember this is the pattern over and over again.
00:47:15
Speaker
And in a weird way, you know, we read like C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, you know, this backwards way of thinking of like, well, if the darkness is threatened by that, then that must be something that's really significant.
00:47:31
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Like if they spend that much energy trying to keep an ordinary little human from writing a song or writing a poem or sharing a story or making a piece of art, like those things that in the world's eyes actually feel kind of eh, whatever. They're not really that important. They're just vague and abstract and touchy feely or whatever. Artsy fartsy.
00:47:56
Speaker
I don't believe that. These are the things that transform the world and that live on when all the things that we think are important, all the corporations and governments and all the things that seem important are gone, the art lives on. I love that. I mean, that's really powerful in those moments to be able to think like that, to overcome those blocks or whatever you want to call it. I really, really love that.
00:48:26
Speaker
Well, I just feel like there's so many things that you've said that are so much wisdom. I can't wait to kind of just dig through everything that you've said. I feel really encouraged that you are where you are and that you're doing the work that you are and have been doing for so
Artistry in Leadership: Imagination and Community
00:48:44
Speaker
long. I think
00:48:45
Speaker
being able to have people in leadership who are paying attention to those pieces of yourself and creating that space for the imagination to thrive, but also you seem to be really gifted in being able to share that with other people and open other leaders' eyes in that space, which I think is really so wonderful. It takes an awful lot of work to figure out
00:49:13
Speaker
What on earth is God doing in my life? How on earth can I make sense of this? And what part of this is just for me? And what part of this is for me to share with other people? And how can I do that? Like that's my whole life. And that's probably why I need to go to bed early and on the beach and time to myself. And it's a lot. But if it helps somebody else, that blesses me to hear.
00:49:46
Speaker
Wow, I just I feel like there was so much meat in that conversation. There was so much depth. I want to go back and listen again and again. I think that's one of the things that really I appreciate about Mandy is that she's this incredible artistic person and she has this really inviting way of engaging other people and what she's interested and excited about. But there's just I feel permission when I listen to her
00:50:16
Speaker
to just slow down and to really trust myself and to trust God and to pay attention to the important things. It just was such a great conversation. Yeah, I want to read her books, but I want to listen to them with her narrating. I love her voice. It's so calm and soothing. Yeah. Yeah. I wish my voice was calm and soothing. I have to think it is calm and soothing.
00:50:41
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like there's so many things to take away from that. I was definitely moved by... I love the way she talks about understanding and owning her skills as a leader and understanding her artistic sensibility as a legitimate way of
00:51:01
Speaker
kind of the tools to be able to make decisions and to be a leader in a new way. And I think that that can really be revolutionary for a lot of artists to understand you don't need to use your art in ministry. You don't need to use your art to do something else. Making art and the artistic sensibility and the way you create is leadership, is ministry, all on its own. So I really hope that that message, that freedom and encouragement got through.
00:51:28
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I was encouraged by when she was speaking with you about giving in or allowing herself to give in to those childlike fascination actions. And we were talking about that in the previous episode on becoming who you're created to be, where that changes. And so as an adult, you have to
00:51:54
Speaker
you have to be dedicated like that and you have to set your goals. And I'm sure it was incredibly hard for her to do, but once she was able to do it, I just thought that was so awe-inspiring. And it just made me think about when I drum with my band Flower Bomb, there's so many times where I'll get compliments, but not on my plane. I get compliments on my drum face.
00:52:19
Speaker
And it's because I'm able to give in to that child. Like, I just feel so free and I don't care what I look like. And I mean, it's the only opportunities when I'm performing to do that. And you want to see a picture? Yeah. Yeah. Check this out. I'm going to put this on the Instagram of Dan ABH. That is a free picture.
00:52:40
Speaker
Yeah, Danny BH and childlike giving into those childlike are just being and this is me being Absolutely. Yeah, and I love that I mean really prompt it when when I heard her say that because I was Recording the the conversation and I was like, oh, yeah, that's what I'm talking about
00:52:58
Speaker
Yeah, and the cool thing is, I've seen that live over the years too, and your freedom in that then invites the audience to that freedom. So it's that playfulness invites other people into play, and that's leadership. Yeah. You don't think about it that way, but that's a big part of what that is.
00:53:15
Speaker
Love it. So cool. Love it. Well, I am so excited to be in the midst of this conversation about becoming who you were created to be. And we're going to move for our next episode into making what you were created to make.
00:53:31
Speaker
Thinking about what if being an artist of faith is more about who you are as we've been talking about and how you create than what you make. So we're going to dive into this conversation the next time with the second part of how we integrate all these many pieces of you.
00:53:52
Speaker
through the threefold way of calling and continue to find clarity, confidence, and freedom to truly become who you were created to be, make what you were created to make, and do what you were created to do. So until next time.
00:54:08
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Be Make Do, a Soul Makers Podcast. If you'd like to help support the podcast, please share with others, post about it, and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. To catch all the latest, you can follow us on Instagram at Soul Makers Podcast, on YouTube at Soul Makers. Links and resources pertaining to this episode can be found in our show notes. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.