How does God define success? What about obedience, trust, and significance? Our earthly definitions of these things often conflict with God’s definitions. What does it look like to trust God and let go of our own understanding? In this episode Gina talks with Bruce Smith about his journey from his highly successful life in the corporate world to being a mentor for pastors and leaders across the US.
From Corporate to Kingdom
Gina:
I appreciate you taking the time and I am excited that I got a little window with you down here in Southern California, that we could have a chat. Bruce, I would love for you to share your story of how God brought you here.
Bruce:
I was in corporate life for 25 years. We had walked away in many ways from our relationship and our daughter brought us back to church. She said, “Let’s hang out here.” And we found a place and God grabbed me. I got rebaptized, which started the whole thing, and unleashed the journey. And God said to us, “It’s time to use the gifts that I’ve given you.”
And where I had used in corporate life to help guide people, I was now thrust into the world of walking with pastors. So our church was 2000 and God planted me in front of the senior pastor and then the worship pastor and then the youth pastor, and then the executive elders, and all of these things that I was doing on a part-time basis.
I would take a vacation. I would take evenings. I would take days off. And God, at some point, said, “It’s time to take all those things away. It’s time for you to do this full-time. This is needed in the kingdom. It’s time for you to widen the tent. It’s time for you to move someplace else, where I know what your impact is going to be. It just needs to spread the footprint.”
Gina:
Can you explain, when you say you were in the corporate life, what did you do? What was your job? What was your position? Because you were in a place of influence. What is it that you did before?
Bruce:
I was an executive within the world’s largest privately held company. And I would travel around the world with business and would be at points of influence with businesses across South America, Asia, and Europe. And it was an environment in which identity could have stuck in a very stronghold of saying “You are this. And this is who you are.”
We lost my wife’s father and God reminded me of where identity was. It was that loss that launched and released me from what could have been a spiraling identity in title, in role, in wealth.
Gina:
Because you were very successful and they were trying to pull you in further and deeper and higher.
Bruce:
Everything that I started doing was counter to the culture. It was counter to the earthly definition of success. It was counter to value. These are all earthly definitions that everyone gets tied into with a job. I was coaching across businesses. I was coaching across geographies. I was doing a lot of things while I was an executive, and breaking down walls and barriers and everything else.
It was the thing that everyone would’ve ridden, but God showed me that the journey was to be different. That the gifts that He had given me so preciously, I was not using them, first, to the depth and then not understanding the true impact and why I was given those gifts.
Gina:
Here you are, Theresa’s father passed, you’re reorienting yourself a bit and then God says, “It’s time to leave that life.” How was that? And you’re married to Theresa. I think this is a really good opportunity to say that in marriages, this isn’t just your calling, it’s both of your callings. It isn’t, “Bruce has all these gifts and he’s called to this. And Teresa is getting dragged along for the journey.”
If a marriage is going to be healthy in the kingdom, it’s going to be healthy, serving the Lord, then both parties come together and go, “Is God telling you this?” “Yes”. “Is God telling you this?” “Yes.” We, partnered together, say yes to Him. Because if we’re unified in that, when the enemy does come in and say, “Did God really say?”
Then you have that foundation, understanding, and the solidity that even if your feelings are going up and down, even when things get hard, because they will, you can look at each other and go “We’re in this with Jesus.” How did that go when you were feeling that?
Bruce:
It was beautiful. In that, probably the greatest resistance we got were the people that we knew were established either with our relationships of 20 years or those people that said, “You already have a ministry here. Where are you going?” Or, “You have everything that you’ve built. Why are you going?” And for Theresa and I, when I said, “God is really telling me that we need to do this.”
God planted in our hearts that we needed to be on top of a hill, surrounded by a beautiful vineyard, in which God’s fruit was going to be bountiful. And that we would be pruning and harvesting. So we carried that with us for probably five years. He gave us a little preemptive nugget, a seed that we carried.
And Theresa is the balance point when I don’t listen to God or I resist Him, and we all do. And what He gives me, He gives me messages that may or may not be difficult. And there was a season where the difficult messages I had a tough time sharing, and she was the rock that said, “No, never do that again.” And when I said, “God is telling us that it’s time.” She was there, we’re together on everything. We’re in partnership on everything.
Now, when I said, “And… I need to quit my job. And God is saying, make it accessible to anyone. Don’t charge anyone.” We were debt-free at the time. There were seasons when we doubted. There were times of difficulty when we doubted, but both of us have come back and have said, “We truly believe and know God directed us for us to unroot everything, to restart.” Because there was a greater purpose. Greater than we could ever imagine, or see, or even visualize. As He always does.
Gina:
As you’re walking through with some large ministries, as they explore what it means to have care for pastors and leaders. What does it mean to do ministry in a healthy, sustainable way? What does that look like?
For God to release you and prepare you to lead others in that way, He’s also calling you to this level of dependence that you’ve never really had to walk before. And there’s something really profound about that and has been kind of difficult about that, as well. So you had a picture of a house on the hill, surrounded by a vineyard.
Bruce:
So we started in California, where there were people I was ministering to, including you. And God just said, “No, that’s not where you’re to be.” That would’ve been an easy answer. It would’ve been the logical answer. Then we went to Oregon. And the first time we walked through houses, we knew it wasn’t the time and it wasn’t the place.
The second time we came, we came with an incredible Christian woman, who’s a realtor. And literally we came up the hill, it wasn’t a house for sale, but she knew that it might be for sale. It was raining. The clouds parted, the sun came out.
And Theresa and I literally looked at each other and said, this is what God planted in our hearts. And in the matter of four hours, we put an offer on the house. Which then, now we got two houses. And I’m not going to be working. Earthly feelings put you in a place of doubting, of not relying upon, of questioning. And we all go through that.
Gina:
The two of you see your house on the hill, the clouds parted, the sun shone down. I love how God is so intimately intentional with us that He cares about giving us those moments of confirmation. It’s so significant and profound, if we position ourselves in a place so that we see them.
How often is He doing that and we don’t receive it? That could be a whole another podcast. So you made the decision, you bought the house and you moved out to Oregon. So what’s God doing? How’s that been?
Bruce:
So the first six months my wife could not find a job. She’s a pharmacist, of course she’ll be able to find a job. The first six months for me was that I stepped into, earthly definition of view, why God was bringing us out here. We were going from a church of 2,000 into a church of 8,000. I’m there to walk with more pastors in the larger church.
The first six months we are 600 feet in the clouds, literally, in the fall, in the winter. God had me in the clouds, God was replowing me to be prepared, to be able, to be heard by the west coast and beyond. It was a new place. And God said, “I’m going to replow you. I’m going to show you new things. I’m going to even grow your gifts greater and just be patient.” Which now six months in the clouds. And gloomy clouds, not pretty clouds. It was very difficult.
It took a lot of patience in that I had to just rely and know that God was working on me and that I needed to receive it. That I needed to be retooled. That I needed to be reworked. That He was going to do some supernatural, incredible things with gifts that would be used for those people that need it, out on the west coast, as well as the Midwest, as well as the east coast, as well as Uganda.
Becoming an Expression of His Love
Gina:
It’s so human nature to get a picture or a vision or an idea for something and then map out exactly the way we think that should play out and what it’s supposed to look like or how it’s supposed to manifest. And It’s never the way we imagined. When are we ever going to learn?
But, there’s something so profound about significance. What’s the difference between kingdom significance and significance the way we define it? Here, you’re going from this church of 2,000 where you’ve had influence with pastors and elders and some of them have been dispersed across the country to influence other churches.
You’re like, “Okay, it’s a promotion. It’s an upgrade to the next level.” And it’s seemingly going the other direction, but really it’s God pulling you back into the secret place so that He could get your attention, so that He could deepen and widen you. So He could give you the capacity to stand and speak.
We’ve talked a lot about that, because it’s a very isolating place. When you say in the clouds, I don’t know if people understand that your house is up on a hill and you have a little office with windows and you’re just looking out at gray and you got your phone. For some that could be really hard, even for those that are introverts after a certain amount of time.
Bruce:
It can be. But the beautiful part is that God gave me these gifts that could be used face to face. They could be used on the phone. They could be used through text. They could be used through email. God uses the gifts for that, which is needed. And He’s given the breath of being able to do that by whatever means.
But God has said, “I will allow those gifts to be used. And for My voice to be heard in all that you do.” What I had to loosen up big time is my definition of all those words that I’d carried and believed that I understood. But the reality was, God had His own definition.
And I didn’t realize the breadth of His definition, because I’d always carried an earthly note to everything. There was a season, I called it the week of weeping. God broke me down and showed me some of the depth, not total depth, of His love. And what you see in the expression of how He uses me is that I end up being an expression of His love.
He prepared me to do that, to understand so that I would be in a place to be able to then care and share His love through me. And to understand the depth of what that means. So every time that we get together with different people, the basis, His foundation, is love. His love being expressed and what it looks like is different every time, because everybody needs something different.
Gina:
You really have to be able to figure out how to receive it yourself before you can help unlock that for other people as well. There’s something so profound about the Lord pulling you back. We’re in a day and age, especially in the Western Evangelical church that defines influence and success by position and title. How many followers on social media, what size is the church that you are at, how many books have you written, do you have a podcast?
I get to walk with a lot of young people and mentor a lot of young leaders that are coming up and just to pull them away from those expectations and those false understandings of what that is and to receive and believe. And I’m preaching to myself. We all are. It’s not just age. It’s certainly something I wrestled with a lot for a lot of years.
But, you’ve been on a journey that you can appreciate and receive and trust the deposit and the gifts that God’s giving you and the influence and significance that you have without any title, with most people not knowing your name. Now you’re connected to at least half a dozen people or more who all have ministries in their own and are influencing thousands of people. So your reach is enormous.
And 90% of those people have no clue who you are, or the seeds that you’ve sown, or the process in the tending of that vineyard, or what your hand has been in that. And there’s something significant about the maturity and the ability to be okay with that and to actually be excited about that and trust that.
Stepping into God’s Definitions
Bruce:
It is. And again, it’s a redefinition. I love that you said, “We carry the weight of these words.” And I always say to the people that I’m working with, “How would God define success? How does He define happiness? What does God mean by family? What does God mean by community? What does God mean by love?”
We carry so many things that society in our life tells us what it means. And yet God is sitting there waiting for us to realize, He has His own definition. It’s magnificent, something that we could not even understand. The greatness of what His view is on things. And He patiently waits for us to see it and to understand it.
And I’ve recently walked with a pastor for a year and God showed him what it means to be successful. Man had shown him success and failure by its own definition. Success for him is that he is able to be the person that he is. The gifts that he has been given are being finally released.
He’s impacting as God intended for him in his role. And his role is not a title. His role is that he is there and he’s caring for people. And now he is the champion of care, changing the culture of a church of 8,000 to care, which used to define care in other ways. So the beautiful part for me is to sit back and watch what God does. The magnificence of this incredible journey that He has each of us on realizing that each of us have a hand in, because God has a purpose for all of us.
And if we’ll just let go and quit holding so tight, God will show us what we’re supposed to be doing. I had held on tightly to stay in the Midwest, God would’ve been patient. He was patient with me for a long time. And when, finally, I let go of control, He said, “Hold on tight, because it’s going to be a wild ride, in a beautiful way.” And it has been.
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