Monthly Archives: August 2025

Leading Through the Distractions

One Another Project church health, church leadership distractions, focus, Nehemiah

Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies found out that I had finished rebuilding the wall and that no gaps remained—though we had not yet set up the doors in the gates. ²So Sanballat and Geshem sent a message asking me to meet them at one of the villages in the plain of Ono. But I realized they were plotting to harm me, ³so I replied by sending this message to them: “I am engaged in a great work, so I can’t come. Why should I stop working to come and meet with you?” Nehemiah 6:1-3

Distractions? We’ve Got Plenty.

By pretty much any measure, these are troubling times. We have the swirling winds of politics, social/moral issues, and the breakdown of the family. We also have a faltering higher education system, massively shifting job markets, and scary new technologies like quantum computers and artificial intelligence. Then, of course, we have larger global issues like wars, famine, climate change, and human trafficking. These are the things on the minds of Christ followers today. And in the midst of all those distractions, church leaders are somehow expected to effectively shepherd five utterly distinct and wildly varied adult generations. And then there are the children. We are to be shepherding them as well.

In terms of our ministry’s work in the area of congregational conflict, one of the common “themes” is the reality that our people are being catechized much more by social media and cable news than by the church. The ideologies of our secular culture are more prominent in our hearts and minds than the truths of scripture. In short, we’ve got distractions.

In this age when we have access to more information via our mobile phones than anyone in the world previously, it seems that we are more lacking in wisdom and discernment than ever before. Our daily struggles against the distractions of doom scrolling and anxiety are real. And, as church leaders, our calling is to effectively lead people to navigate through those distractions and to find shalom. How exactly are we to do that?

Am I Engaged in a Great Work?

Nehemiah and the people he led were able to complete the enormous task of rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem in miraculous time and with miraculous results. And they did this even in the midst of formidable distractions and threats from neighboring enemies. But where did that focus come from? What gave Nehemiah the wisdom and moral inertia to say to his distractors, “I am engaged in a great work, so I can’t come. Why should I stop working to come and meet with you?”

Nehemiah had a clear sense of God’s assignment. He led the people to strive for an outcome which seemed (both to those people and to a watching world) unattainable. It was a task which could only happen if God Himself showed up. It was a city wall which had laid in ruins for 170 years. And many of these same people had spent most of their lives waking up every day to the sight of those crumbled pieces laying all around the city of Jerusalem. They had never undertaken to repair the wall because, frankly, it was an insurmountable job.

It seems to me that one of the preliminary reasons we (the church) so often struggle with the distractions of this world is that we are not really taking on genuine God-given assignments. I don’t mean the broad, universal assignments like the Great Commission. I mean the very specific tasks God has in mind for specific local churches. It seems to me that we often do not seem to even be attempting anything God-sized. How often are we casting a vision for our people that only God can fulfill? How many of our goals are achievable by the best thinking and quality efforts of people as opposed to goals which only God Himself can bring about? When our churches begin taking on God-sized tasks, we might just find a level of focus we never knew we could have.

Where Discernment Comes From

Nehemiah faced a particularly insidious group of enemies. They were shrewd and they were deceptive. They “bought” themselves a prophet to entice Nehemiah away from his work. Like Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, this enticement was that he should save himself. It was about choosing self-preservation over his assignment. It was about cutting corners in order to pursue a safer, surer outcome. Nehemiah saw right through the deception. He was spiritually discerning.

As church leaders, our spiritual discernment comes from the same place as Nehemiah’s discernment came from: an ongoing intimacy with God. When we do God’s work in God’s ways and in constant prayer and meditation around him and His Word, we can expect discernment to follow. In our culture today, there are plenty of voices all around us purporting to be speaking for God. Many of those voices are false prophets or false teachers or, at the least, wrong voices for us. Our ability to spot the false ones does not come from studying them and their ways. It comes from spending plenty of time in the presence of the one true Voice. The more I understand God and His voice, the easier it is to recognize that which is NOT God. And we can teach those we lead this same truth.

God-sized Outcomes

“So on October 2 the wall was finished—just fifty-two days after we had begun. When our enemies and the surrounding nations heard about it, they were frightened and humiliated. They realized this work had been done with the help of our God.” Nehemiah 6:15-16. Our world is literally dying to see God. If they wanted to see the very best that man can accomplish, why would they look to the church for that? No, we should be showing them something they cannot see anywhere else. We should be showing them God. When they do look to the church, that is what they are looking for.

Don’t get me wrong. I love celebrating human achievement. I love having a pat on my back when I perform well. Who wouldn’t? But ultimately, human achievement in the church is not what will change our world. And it is not what writes God’s story across time. If we, the church, want to impact this world as God has called us to do, it will only be by God’s hand. And when we get that right, the world notices.

So, how do we help our people navigate the distractions of this world? We help them hear from God. We help them take on the assignments only He can fulfill through them. Along the way, we help them discern between truth and false voices. And, at the end of the day, we help them celebrate what God has done.

© One Another Project

Permissions: We permit and encourage you to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, we prefer a link to this document on this website. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by One Another Project. Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © One Another Project. Website: oneanotherproject.com.

God’s Work in God’s Ways

One Another Project church health, church leadership church, democracy, injustice, Nehemiah

When I heard their complaints, I was very angry. After thinking it over, I spoke out against these nobles and officials. I told them, “You are hurting your own relatives by charging interest when they borrow money!” Then I called a public meeting to deal with the problem. At the meeting I said to them, “We are doing all we can to redeem our Jewish relatives who have had to sell themselves to pagan foreigners, but you are selling them back into slavery again. How often must we redeem them?” And they had nothing to say in their defense. Nehemiah 5:7-8

Some Forms of Injustice are Worse than Others

All injustice is bad. Let’s get that straight right here at the outset. It is always harmful and should always be pushed back against. But not all injustice is unexpected. There are some places and some circumstances where we just know there is going to be rampant injustice on a regular basis. In some scenarios, it is the norm. That doesn’t make it good; it just makes it predictable.

Some governments and communities, through their specific leaders, have proven themselves to be without any compassion, without any moral compass. From them, we have just come to expect injustice. But there are some places where the very presence of injustice is surprising. In some settings, we just expect justice to be the prevailing wind, the normal outcome. Indeed, in many of those places, injustice is by definition contrary to their “brand”, i.e., the opposite of their stated mission and purpose.

Gatherings of Christ followers (what we might call local congregations) are such places. When we run into injustice in those places it catches us off guard (at least it used to). It is especially painful, because we often did not anticipate it. It is the last thing we expected to see in those settings. At least in that particular way, injustice in the church is worse than injustice in the world.

The Heart of Injustice

Of course, situations involving abuse (spiritual, sexual, and any other form) are the easy examples to cite. If we are looking for forms of injustice that will fan the flame of outrage against the church, those are the low hanging fruit. Every decent person agrees those forms of injustice have no place in our society, let alone among God’s people. But injustice, as a concept, rarely begins with an overt need to abuse someone. It begins with the very counter-Christian attitude of “I get what I want at the expense of what you need.”

And, more times than not, it involves a power imbalance. Those with power take advantage of those without power. Again, there are easy, clear examples and then there are the more insidious, harder-to-see instances. In Nehemiah’s case, it was economic power. Those with money were loaning money to their less fortunate brethren at usurious interest rates (think, payday loan services) and then sending them into debt slavery when they could not repay the loans. Nehemiah’s outrage was on target: “after all this time and energy getting our people OUT of slavery, now you are putting them right back in!”

It happens within the church today as well, though perhaps not so overtly. Again, remember the heart of injustice: “I get what I want at the expense of what you need.” When those carrying power in the church, whether economic or social or political (or any other of the world’s forms of power), use that power to get what they want, we risk injustice. When we take from others (whether or not they know we have taken from them) solely to further our own selfish desires, we risk injustice.

Nothing Fuels our Culture Wars like a Good Tragedy

At the time I am writing this, communities around me are still recovering from devastating floods. I happen to live in a “red” state. So, many of my Christian brothers and sisters who fight the culture wars from the left have taken advantage of this tragedy to score points against the “heartless conservative government” who is surely to blame for this tragedy. Not many weeks ago, there were horrendous forest fires destroying huge swaths of communities in a “blue state”. Many of my Christian brothers and sisters who fight the culture wars from the right took advantage in order to score points against the “incompetent progressive government” who was surely to blame.

Is this not the very heart of injustice? If I choose to use YOUR tragic circumstances in order to score points in MY culture war, am I not taking from you in order to get what I want? What if, in the immediate aftermath of a natural (or even manmade) disaster, Christ followers just quietly pitched in to help in the recovery rather than participate in a social media campaign to destroy the “other side”?

The nobles and financial leaders of Nehemiah’s community surely had no sense at all that they were doing anything wrong. They were merely taking advantage of a business opportunity. Indeed, they probably convinced themselves they were actually DOING GOOD by lending money to their less fortunate neighbors. Indeed. Helping.

My Church/God’s Church

If the heart of injustice is getting what I want at the expense of what someone else needs, then perhaps a good place to start working is in my own heart. After all, why is what I want even relevant to the work of the church? If it is God’s church, then the only question that ever really matters is, “what does God want?” But we live in an age of democracy. Did you know there are only six countries in the entire world who do not at least claim some form of democracy as government? The vast majority of people agree that democracy is a moral good and should be pursued.

And therein lies the problem for the Christian church. It is not a democracy. It never was. You see, in a democracy, the highest value (the deciding factor) is the will of the people. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address captures it best: “a government of the people, for the people, by the people.” But that is not the church. Among God’s people, the highest value is not the will of the people. God’s story is replete with horrible outcomes of that thinking. In the church, the highest value is the will of God, i.e., “what does God want?” As Christ followers, we spend our entire lives exploring that reality. Some of us take longer to learn it than others.

When it comes to doing God’s work. i.e., the work of the church, it is never about what I want. It only matters what God wants. The more I learn the difference, the less likely I am to promote injustice among us. This is because I am learning the mind/heart process of discerning between what I want and what God wants. As I learn that, I stop using my power to get what I want. As with the leaders around Nehemiah, stopping injustice among us doesn’t begin with confronting “those people”. It begins with addressing my own heart.

© One Another Project

Permissions: We permit and encourage you to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, we prefer a link to this document on this website. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by One Another Project. Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © One Another Project. Website: oneanotherproject.com.

Facing External Opposition

One Another Project church health, church leadership church, conflict, Nehemiah, opposition

Sanballat was very angry when he learned that we were rebuilding the wall. He flew into a rage and mocked the Jews, saying in front of his friends and the Samarian army officers, “What does this bunch of poor, feeble Jews think they’re doing? Do they think they can build the wall in a single day by just offering a few sacrifices? Do they actually think they can make something of stones from a rubbish heap—and charred ones at that?” Nehemiah 4:1-2

Two Distinct Categories of Opposition

As a congregational mediator, the simple reason I have always had plenty of work to do is that there is no shortage of conflict among people…even in the church. But more than that, we (as the church) are not doing a very good job of equipping our leaders to deal with conflict. Thus, plenty of work for me.

Conflict comes from a variety of places for church leaders. There are lots of ways to categorize it. But perhaps the easiest and clearest general distinction is between inner conflict (from within the church) and external conflict (from the outside). Even as I begin discussing external opposition–the topic of this post–many church leaders will want to stop me and say: “but it is the INTERNAL conflict with which I struggle the most.” I get it. I see it. And I agree. But bear with me as I take up the external first, because that is the order we find it in Nehemiah. I promise, the discussion of internal conflict will be next.

There is a significant distinction between internal opposition and external opposition. The internal hurts us way more, because it is coming from our own “family”. Likewise, in terms of how (and, indeed, WHETHER) we engage any particular opposition, we have a much higher duty and responsibility to engage opposition from within than we do external opposition. They are different, and it is important to recognize that from the outset.

Our Revolution is Counter-cultural

Any student of this revolution we call Christianity will immediately recognize that facing external opposition is pretty much baked into our DNA. Over the course of God’s story throughout human history, there has always been opposition to God’s people. Always. Surely we should start by recognizing that reality. Jesus said it himself: “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.” John 15:18-19.

Indeed, over the course of history, in every circumstance where the church became aligned with the social and political powers of this world, it has died just a little bit more. On the other hand, where it has been persecuted and working against the mainstream culture, it has thrived. So, opposition from the outside is to be expected if we are making the impact we are called to make.

Nehemiah’s experience informs our understanding here. When he arrived on the scene of Jerusalem with plans of fortifying the city against neighboring factions by rebuilding its wall, he immediately felt the opposition of those outside forces. It would not have surprised him. Cities in those days were simply not safe without a wall. And, to those who have thrived by taking advantage of the weakness of a city, building a wall would have been seen as an act of aggression. Nehemiah represented a threat to the existing power dynamics in the area.

Likewise, the upside down values of God’s kingdom often make no sense to this world and even present a threat to the world’s existing power dynamics. When that happens, we can expect opposition. Indeed, when it comes to being the church, if there is no tension at all as we engage our communities, if all our ways and our worldviews blend seamlessly with the world around us, then we are probably not doing it right.

Looking for a Fight

This, of course, does not mean we should go looking for fights for the sake of fighting. In some ways, church leaders are like any other leaders. There are some who seem to thrive on conflict. If they can’t find any, they will create some, because it gives them a sense of importance. In other words, it gives them a sense of power. If these leaders can’t find a good fight in their own communities, they can always go online and join a fight against someone somewhere in the world. They become keyboard warriors, fighting fights against people they have never met in places they have never been. Not to belabor this point, but some of our pastors and leaders probably need to spend less time on social media and YouTube and more time in the homes of their own people.

Jesus did not warn us about being hated by the world so that we would make that a measure of our effectiveness. In Jesus’ case, there was only the occasional case of him intentionally engaging opposition in a premeditated way. In those cases, it was only after hours and hours of agonizing prayer. And even then, it came from a place of absolute knowledge of the hearts of those he opposed. So, for the church leader who uses Jesus’ angry outburst against the moneychangers in the temple as his/her excuse for starting fights online, maybe he/she should take a beat and refrain from claiming our Lord’s sinless righteousness for himself/herself.

So, as leaders of Christ followers, we do not go looking for fights. Rather, we go looking to love others in ways that befuddle the watching world. In that way, we make an impact that often ends up challenging the power dynamics of our communities. When that happens, we can expect to face opposition.

Pray First

When faced with external opposition, Nehemiah demonstrated how to respond: he prayed. And we have come to expect that from him. No less than nine different times in his short story in scripture, we see Nehemiah using prayer as his first and foremost response to pretty much everything. And so it should be with us as church leaders.

And, wow, what a prayer he prayed! “Hear us, our God, for we are being mocked. May their scoffing fall back on their own heads, and may they themselves become captives in a foreign land!Do not ignore their guilt. Do not blot out their sins, for they have provoked you to anger here in front of the builders.” Nehemiah 4:4-5. It is what we might call a desperate prayer for God’s justice, not unlike David’s imprecatory psalms.

Also, Nehemiah’s choice to pray rather than engage in his enemies’ war of words show us something important. His enemies’ tactics were mockery and ridicule as a means of using social or political power against Nehemiah. Mind you, Nehemiah was not without political power himself. His tight relationship with (and blessings from) King Artaxerxes would have made it easy to destroy these enemies with his own political power. But his calling, like ours, was not one of social or political power. It was one of spiritual power. And that was the only power he was interested in engaging. As church leaders, may it be so for us as well.

Then Get Back to Work

After that prayer, Nehemiah demonstrates the second step in engaging this external opposition: At last the wall was completed to half its height around the entire city, for the people had worked with enthusiasm. Nehemiah 4:6. Nehemiah led the people to get back to work doing what God had called them to do. They did not retaliate. There were no social media campaigns. No public protests railing against the unjust power dynamics of the region. There were no press releases. No strategizing in back rooms about how to organize political forces against them. It is actually pretty instructive about how NOT to respond.

This is the point where having cast our vision correctly makes a big difference to our people. When we cast a vision that says the work is all up to us, then our people will mobilize against every opponent. But when we cast a vision that says we are merely joining God in work He is already doing, then our people feel permission to just get back to work and leave the fighting to God. Once we have prayed and led our people to do likewise, then we lead them to get back to work doing the last thing we know God called us to do.

The truth is, with most “external opposition”, the engaging of the enemies is the Lord’s work. A little later in Nehemiah’s story, he replies to the continued nagging of these enemies in this way: “I am engaged in a great work, so I can’t come. Why should I stop working to come and meet with you?” Nehemiah 6:3. What if this were our attitude as well?

In my next post, we will talk about engaging opposition from WITHIN the church. It is a lot of work. And you will see then that you really have precious little time to be fighting battles outside the church.

Permissions: We permit and encourage you to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, we prefer a link to this document on this website. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by One Another Project. Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © One Another Project. Website: oneanotherproject.com.