From Receiving to Responding: Leading from the Good News — An Interview with Michelle Odinma

Best Practices for Adventist Worship (BP): For pastors and worship leaders, it can be surprisingly easy to spend so much time communicating the gospel that we stop experiencing it as good news ourselves. What does it look like for a leader to be continually refreshed by the gospel in their own life?

Michelle Odinma (MO): This is such a great question, because it’s very easy to become so consumed with serving others that we neglect to make sure we’re being fed ourselves. It’s like the Mary and Martha scenario: Martha is working tirelessly to serve the company in the house, while Mary is soaking up the words of Jesus from a front-row seat.

I’m definitely inclined to be a “gospel busybody” like Martha. But to combat that, my girlfriends and I started praying together over the phone a couple of nights a week. I cannot tell you how much of a game-changer that has been in my life. I’m seeing God move in so many ways in each of our lives, and more specifically in my own heart. God has been giving me such a shift in perspective. I started thanking God for the opportunity to serve and surrendering the burdens that come with it to him.

I don’t think there’s a “new answer” to how we continually become refreshed by the gospel. We can start by doing the things we already know help us connect with God—and being intentional about doing them. In the service we offer to God and others, the good news of Jesus is communicated not only through the actions themselves but also through the heart posture that accompanies them.

If you watch Jesus’ patterns in the Gospels, you’ll find that before significant moments—like choosing the disciples —or long stretches of healing and teaching, Jesus spent time in prayer, refreshing himself through connection with his Father. I know it’s been said many times before, but pastors and worship leaders absolutely have to carve out time to intentionally connect with God if we want to experience a continual gospel refresh in our own lives. In the schedules some of us have, it may not be a lot of time, but it has to be quality time. The way God refreshes us is a gift we don’t have to earn, but God also doesn’t force renewal on us unless we choose to make space for it.

BP: What practices help you return to the gospel—not simply as a set of beliefs you affirm, but as the reality from which you actually live, worship, and lead?

MO: Another great question! I have to continually return to the story of Jesus. Most recently, that has meant spending time in the Gospel of Matthew. I also have to be honest with myself and with God about what is actually happening in my heart when I’m carrying issues or burdens.

I’ve also surrounded myself with people I can share the truth of my life with—people who will be honest with me and tell me when I’m going off the rails. There’s both a personal and a communal aspect to staying in tune with God and ensuring the good news of Jesus is consistently reflected in my public and private life.

I’ve found that this has worked tremendously for me, so I return to it over and over: continually studying the life of Jesus, being honest about my own experience, and surrounding myself with people who can help me see things differently.

BP: How does being personally grounded in grace change the way we preach and lead worship? What becomes different when we’re leading from what God has already done in Christ rather than from pressure to produce a particular spiritual experience?

MO: Being grounded in grace brings authenticity and vulnerability to your service. Whether you’re singing or preaching, you’re sharing from the heart and from your own experience with God, and that translates differently than if you were simply performing.

In fact, you cease to “perform,” and you start responding to the grace you’ve received. The posture is completely different.

People will feel that coming from you, and you, as a leader, will feel it in your own heart too. It’s very freeing. Instead of carrying the pressure to manufacture a particular spiritual experience, you’re responding to what God has already done. And I believe that is the space from which the Spirit of God does the most transformative work in the hearts of people.

BP: How can pastors and worship leaders help congregations experience the gospel as more than the message we explain or preach—as something that actually shapes the way a community worships, relates, and lives together?

As many are, I’m a big believer in small groups. We have to provide, facilitate, or create opportunities for our congregants to build smaller communities within the larger community—places where people are spending time connecting with God and with one another.

Often, people come to worship as strangers, worshipping in the midst of strangers. But what if we could cultivate spaces where strangers come to worship and discover that they’re in the midst of friends—and then become a friend as well? That feels completely different.

We want to find ways for our congregants to spend time connecting with one another and also connecting with God together. First John 1:3 says, “we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”

The gospel doesn’t just reconcile us to God; it draws us into fellowship with one another. We begin worshipping as people known to each other, and known to God.

BP: You’re also working on a forthcoming book that explores some of these themes. Without giving too much away, what are you discovering or articulating there that you think church leaders especially need to hear right now?

MO: Yes! The devotional is called The Way of the Kingdom: A Journey of Reflection and Prayer in the Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew repeatedly returns to the idea of the kingdom: the kingdom of heaven is like... the kingdom is in the midst of you... the kingdom has come near... It became very clear to me that Jesus was teaching people the mentality and perspective of God’s kingdom—the kingdom they were all planning on being part of.

Through parables, life lessons, and the way he lived his daily life, Jesus was showing people the way of the kingdom: how God operates, how God thinks, and what life under God’s reign actually looks like. And it is completely different from the way we live our daily lives today.

Jesus was showing us that the kingdom of heaven—God’s domain—is not only something we wait for. It is something we begin to live, experience, and participate in today.

For church leaders, I believe this devotional will do a couple of things. It will hopefully remind us of our “why” behind our service, and I believe it can also help bring greater harmony between our public and private lives.

Those of us who are church leaders need to sweep the inside of the house clean just like everyone else!

Ultimately, we need those quiet, deeply personal, quality moments with God—not to prove anything or become better leaders, but to be reminded again of who God is, what God has done for us, and the grace we’ve already received. Before our service becomes something we offer to others, it has to keep flowing from what we ourselves are receiving from God.