In this episode, Niki Rice interviews Gina about her perspective on where the church is going. Jesus is coming back for a purified and unified Bride. In order for this to happen, this requires us to humble ourselves.
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Listen below to follow along starting at 35:10
Where is your Faith Seated?
Gina:
Here’s the other thing, going back to part of our question about the church in the recent years with Covid and all those things. That brought the politics that has infiltrated all those things. This isn’t an accusation at all. This is humanity. This is what we do. But all these things that we’ve constructed church to be in the western evangelical church world over the last 20 years have just become idols, and its culture and personalities.
Then you add the internet and you add social media platforms, and now what was once spiritual community and what was once a place for Jesus to be in the center of an intimate relationship with God, Father, Son, and Spirit and with one another – has turned into, you know, the entirety of my faith is, you know, squarely on the shoulders of my favorite celebrity pastor or my program that I need to go to or my gathering on Sunday or these things, right?
We saw this over the pandemic, and I’ve talked about this on the podcast before, that suddenly things get shut down and all of a sudden, where is your faith? If you can’t go on Sunday, where is your faith? If you can’t hear your favorite pastor, where is your faith actually seated? Where is your relationship with the Lord actually rooted?
I think a lot of things were exposed. The idols that we had hidden and constructed were exposed. I think it’s His loving kindness that brings the exposing of those things. He wants to bring us back. So I am in the church, right now I’m technically consulting for a church, but I’m functioning as a staff member at a church.
The collective question on that team is, “Lord, what do you have for us in this next season?” What is church? What is spiritual community? What is Your church supposed to look like? Not what I think it should look like. Not what it looked like 10 years ago. Not the cultural things that I’ve created into these idols, but what does it look like to actually be spiritual community?
As a quote unquote leader, that puts a lot of fear of the Lord in me, that I don’t build something or contribute to something or lead something that is just going to make another version of the thing that we feel like God’s tearing down. So I think as humans, as leaders, we tend to overcorrect, right?
Unity in Diversity
Gina:
So the church can be barreling down a road that’s amazing, but maybe it goes a little too far. Then out of fear or control, we hightail it to the farthest opposite place. It’s like the Jesus movement and the supernatural move of God. There’s a lot of gifts of the Spirit flowing, a lot of that kind of stuff.
When that supernatural wave recedes a little bit, then people are trying to perpetuate it in their own strength. Then things start getting weird. Then everyone’s like, “Ha, gifts aren’t for today.” They throw the baby out with the bath water. We just go so far the other direction and we can go both ways.
So the worst thing we can do is, “We’re not gonna do that, we’re gonna do this.” We go over here and the whole purpose is to rebel against what was over here. The whole purpose of what I’m building here is in judgment of that. If that’s the foundation I’m building this new thing on or this new movement on, oh God, help me.
No, that is not a foundation. Where is the fruit of the spirit? I don’t ever want to posture myself in that way. I want to lock eyes with Jesus. I want to be on my face before Him. I want to ask Him, and then I actually want to wait to hear what He has to say, and then do my best be obedient to what I’m hearing.
Also to then recognize that I’m doing that in a community that’s diverse, that has people that are in different places in their journey with Jesus. What moves me and what feels to me like, “Oh, this is what God wants.” could be different for someone else. The diversity of the body is necessary.
The book of Romans and Corinthians talks so much about the diversity of the body and the multitude of gifts and we’re all uniquely made. No one can stand exactly where I’m standing, exactly how I can stand there. No one sees things the way I see them.
And you get twelve other people in a room that all love Jesus, and if we can lay down our preference and we can all pull into the essentials, like the non-negotiables of who Jesus is, and then lovingly collaborate on the non-essentials and trust Him with it. Then that collaboration and that joining is going to be something beautiful.
We’re not in a healthy body if I’m surrounded with people who think exactly like me. I need to be in a room with people who have experienced Jesus totally different than I have. I need to be in a room with people who have the gift of healing and have the gift of X, Y, and Z, because those aren’t my gifts. I have other gifts.
I need to be in a room with people who are theologically deep, who can go deep and wide. I need to be in the room with people who have the gift of evangelism, because I don’t have the gift of evangelism and I admire people who do. I want to know what they have to say.
If we can learn to be spiritual community and decentralize and not make it about a person. That’s the Moses model leadership, which was abolished when Jesus died on the cross. No longer is their one man who hears from the Lord. We need the multitude of gifts that mean we don’t have one form of leadership.
Plural Leadership
Gina:
Of course leadership is important, but plural leadership is more healthy. We’ve seen the collateral damage over the last 25 years of pastors burning out, and of all these documentaries and podcasts of these implosions of organizations. What does it look like to humbly submit ourselves to the Lord and to one another? It’s mutual submission in love.
The minute I think I know something, Oh Lord, help me. I shouldn’t be in leadership anymore. I need to be teachable. I need to be humble. I need to not be the smartest person in the room. I need to be, as much as I can be, obedient, I need to be listening, asking, and actively pursuing God’s voice. I need to be accountable to people.
I need to have people that will say hard things to me that will tell me the truth no matter how painful it is and hold my feet to the fire. I need people in my life to challenge me, to not let me take the easy way out. I need to be unified with my husband.
I can’t stand where I’m standing without him, and he can’t stand where he’s standing without me. We don’t make any decisions apart from each other. I don’t say yes to anything that we haven’t talked about and we say yes together, and vice versa. That’s what actual spiritual partnership is.
Niki:
I love that! Just to add onto that, I loved what you were saying about having a pure foundation. That’s something God’s been talking to me a lot about too. We can’t build our foundation on a leader, it has to be on Jesus.
The person on my right and left, well they get to be my inspiration, but they don’t get to be my idol and they’re also not my competition. We get to inspire each other and love each other into that unity. I just love your perspective on that and what you shared.
Into a Season of Purification
Niki:
So I think my last question for you is: as a mother in the church, and as somebody in my opinion who is mothering a church movement, and who is a prophetic voice in this generation, where do you see the church going and what hope do you see for the next generation in the church?
Gina:
I think we’re going to enter a season of purification. I don’t say that lightly, and I don’t say that condescendingly. I think a lot of people are going to make presumptions as to what that means. I can say purity and there’s probably a lot of people who in their mind are thinking of all sorts of people. “Yes. They need to be purified.” You know what I mean?
So when Covid first hit, and the lockdowns first happened, churches were shut down. I was leading worship at a church. At that moment, I was asked to lead worship every week. We went online and then I don’t remember what the timing was, maybe, three weeks of full on lockdown, then churches could open.
You had to take temperatures and wear masks and be six feet apart. There was crazy division in the church. People were like, “If you make us gather, I’m not coming anymore.” Or, “If you don’t let us gather, I’m not coming.” “If you make us wear a mask, I’m not coming.” It was just all so many agendas.
I remember I was leading worship that morning and it was a long drive. I was driving and I had this like righteous indignation over these agendas that people had. I was taking authority over agendas and praying out of the Bible, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face, I will hear from heaven. I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land.” Lord, You need to heal our land, but we need to be humbled first.
I’m kind of going into this whole thing, and I get down there and I’m doing sound check, and while I’m sound checking, the Lord kind of just taps me on my shoulder and it’s like, “Um, Gina, you have an agenda right now.” And I was like, “Dang it!” And it was true.
We have got to start to humble ourselves as individuals. It has to start with me. I need to humble myself. I need to fall on my face before Jesus, and I need to let Him purify me. So when I say purification is coming, it’s not this grand accusatory thing or pointing the finger out there. It’s a self-examining.
Like, “Oh Lord, what have I made of your bride or your church or ministry? Lord, what have I made of it?” Because here’s the thing again, it’s His kindness that leads us to repentance. He is a kind father who is lovingly inviting us back. So when you ask, “What is in store for the church?” I don’t know.
I don’t know what it’s going to look like. What I do know is that He is in furious pursuit of His people and of all people. In order for all people, it needs to start with His house.
Check out the rest of this conversation: Pursued by The Trinity & Mothering the Messy Church
Check out the Dwell Meditations
