(Mike Yaconelli is now dead, tragically killed in a road accident)

I think I’d rather be a messy pastor than above reproach.

Interview with Michael Yaconelli

Michael Yaconelli has been in the ministry for forty-two years, both as a pastor and a minister to students. He is the lay pastor of Grace Community Church, owner and cofounder of Youth Specialties, former editor of “The Door”, and the author of Dangerous Wonder. He lives in Yreka, California.

ZCS: Why do you think that a silent majority of Christians think they’re not very good Christians?

MY: We are bombarded with that message from every direction: books, tapes, seminars, religious television, sermons and videos. Christianity has created its own experts who have discovered the “secrets,” “keys,” principles, formula or steps to a successful life. These “experts,” who come in the shape of ministers, authors, speakers, become the spokespersons for the “successful Christian life.” When we hear these spokespersons or see them or read them, they appear to have life figured out, to have it all together, to have mastered life’s problems. The reality is, however, that we are only witnessing highly edited lives. We end up comparing what we don’t know about them to everything we know about us and we lose every time. We don’t measure up to the experts and therefore we feel inferior.

ZCS: You call yourself a “messy Christian.” What do you mean by that?

MY: I mean I’m a follower of Jesus, but not a very good one. I mean I love God, but I don’t have it all together. I mean I’m a Christian who is trying to live the Christian life and sometimes I’m successful and sometimes I’m not. I mean I know I should pray and I should read the Bible more, but I don’t. I don’t have life all together. I am flawed, broken, incomplete, under construction, unfinished, unfixed, in process. I mean that my life is full of inconsistencies, irregularities. I mean that Christianity is not about getting rid of the mess, it’s about Jesus being present in the midst of my mess.

ZCS: Who are some messy Christians in the Bible?

MY: Are you kidding? The question is, who wasn’t messy? Noah the drunk, Moses the murderer, David the adulterer, Eli the screwed up priest, Samson the lustful hunk. The disciples were not exactly models of discipleship, or should I say they were models of real discipleship. Trouble is, over the centuries we’ve tried to make them something they weren’t. The real disciples were inconsistent, erratic, confused, frustrated, afraid, full of doubt. More often than not they didn’t understand a word Jesus was saying. That’s very encouraging, by the way, because if what I just described is real discipleship, then I can be one.

We can address problems, we can clean up the particular mess we’re in, but we are still a mess, still imperfect and flawed. We can do better, but we’ll never be perfect. That’s the truth. That is reality. And, for some reason, the church doesn’t like to admit it.

ZCS: What are some your ‘unprinciples’ for ‘unspiritual growth’?

MY: Unprinciple #1. Give what you can. I know, I know. There are many who would say, “But aren’t we supposed to give everything? Shouldn’t we give 100%?” The answer to both those questions is yes. Trouble is no one lives like that. No one gives 100%, at least for any length of time. Maybe I can give 100% for a few seconds, but most of the time in real life I’m lucky if I can muster up 57%. I grew up in a church where I was told “God wants 100% and if you don’t give all to God, anything less doesn’t count. Nothing could be further from the truth. Remember the woman who poured perfume over Jesus. His defense of her was this . “she did what she could.” God wants our best, but sometimes our best is 57% and he is thrilled with that because 57% is a hundred per cent of all we can give at that moment.

Unprinciple #2. Getting stuck is a good place to be. Again, I was taught that being stuck was a bad place to be. God did not want us to be stuck; he wanted us to keep moving towards him. You couldn’t grow, I was told, while you were stuck. Again, I was not told the truth. The truth is that being stuck is a great place to be. It means that my current way of doing life, of following God, isn’t working. Being stuck is what happens when we are in a rut, frustrated, burned-out, struggling, and paralyzed by doubt and that’s a good thing because I can’t get unstuck until I realize I am stuck. In other words, I won’t change my behaviour, I won’t do things differently than I’m doing, I won’t question my life until I finally get tired of being stuck. I can’t change (i.e. grow) until I’m ready to grow, willing to grow, desperate to grow. Some of us who are stuck should be celebrating because it’s the process that must take place if I am to move on and get unstuck.

There are other unprinciples, but you’ll have to read the book.

ZCS: What common mistakes do churches make when trying to deal with “messy Christians” like yourself?

MY: They try to fix us instead of helping us meet the Jesus who is present in our unfixedness. Sometimes they try to silence us so they can “protect” the rest of the church from people like us because we might “poison” the rest of the congregation. Mostly, they try to ignore us and hope we’ll go away . and usually we do. We may still attend, but our soul withers and dies because we have decided there is something wrong with us so we silence the very voice of God in our lives.

ZCS: What advice would you give to pastors who know they’re messy Christians but feel pressured to pretend they’re not?

MY: Come out of the closet. Tell the truth. Be real. Admit you are flawed and human.

Let me give you an example: A minister friend of mine decided he had to “come out of the closet.” He was a Presbyterian and his church always did God decently and in order. Everyone expected the pastor to preach a written sermon, from the pulpit, in 25 minutes, and display his theological expertise. He told me he was tired of living like that. Here is what he did: the Sunday morning service was moving along predictably, the pastoral prayer had been give eloquently, the scripture read with dignity and now it was time for the sermon. Instead of standing behind the pulpit he moved to the stairs in front of the pulpit and sat down and he began spontaneously to talk, “When my daughter was nine years old she asked me to go to her school dance. I was delighted to be asked and I said yes. The day of the dance I didn’t show up. I forgot. I was so busy being a successful pastor I forgot a very important day in my daughter’s life.” Silence. He choked up and suddenly dance music began to play in the sanctuary. He stood up and looked at his daughter, now seventeen, who was sitting in the second row and said, “I didn’t dance with you then, will you dance with me now.” Smiling, her eyes filled with tears, she proudly stepped forward to dance with her father and they danced. The dance with his daughter was the sermon that day and there wasn’t a dry eye in the church. He was real, authentic, admitting his flaws as a father, recognizing how ministry can easily harm a family, asking for forgiveness, and being forgiven. What a sermon! You can bet the congregation was never the same again and he was freed from impersonating himself. You can bet there were a lot of fathers and mothers asking their children for forgiveness after church was over.