Seamless: A Conversation on Spiritual Gifts, Co-vocational Pastors, and Multi-Ethnic Church Planting with Chase Rashad

How does your view of spiritual gifts - and what they're really for - impact your health and longevity as a pastor, especially if you're co-vocational, and help your church become more sustainable in accomplishing the mission God has given it? We'll talk about that with special guest Chase Rashad in this episode of the More Than a Pastor Show.

Links for Today's Show

• Chase Rashad's Book: Seamless: What Your Spiritual Gifts are Really For
• Chase Rashad's Website: www.UnisonGR.com
  
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Introducing Chase Rashad

I'm so excited to have my friend Chase Rashad on the show today. Chase and I served together back about 10 years ago with Kentwood Community Church, a large multi-ethnic church located in suburban Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 2013 we had the privilege of launching the church's first multi-site campus.

Two years later, in 2015, Chase went on to launch Unison Christian Church, a multi-ethnic church in urban Grand Rapids. In addition to serving as lead pastor at Unison, Chase is a gifted musician as well as a racial equity coach for many schools, churches, and businesses. You can find Chase online at www.unisongr.org.

In this conversation...

• Chase and I talk about planting churches in a multi-ethnic context.
• I ask Chase about his journey as a co-vocational pastor, including a question he's never been asked or thought about before.
• And we discuss his new book, Seamless: What Your Spiritual Gifts are Really For, exploring the background on why he wrote the book (his answer may surprise you), what the church has often gotten wrong about spiritual gifts, and how a proper understanding of spiritual gifts is needed today more than ever amidst a rapidly changing church landscape.
  
• And lots more!

And now let's get to our conversation with Chase Rashad.

Highlights From the Full Interview

The Inspiration Behind Chase's book Seamless: Unity and Interdependence

When I asked Chase to describe the inspiration behind his new book, Seamless, I was surprised by his answer. He said the inspiration didn't come from thinking about spiritual gifts themselves. It actually came from reading Jesus' prayer in John 17, where he prays that the church would be one.

Jesus prays that the church would be one. He specifically prays for us, those of us who would come to faith in the Father through the message of the disciples, specifically praying that we would be one and that our unity would demonstrate that the Father sent Christ and the Father loves us. So that's an important little moment of prayer, because Jesus could have prayed for literally anything about the church and he specifically prays that we would be one. And so there's a burden that I have in that that we ask for so much in Jesus name and the one thing that Jesus asked for we don't actually live out well. So that's a part of why the title is 'Seamless'.

And how are we to live out this unity? Chase looks to what the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians.

When you read Paul's messages about spiritual gifts, it's really never about you having a special power or you being able to have this or do that. In 1 Corinthians, he's always teaching about the believers preserving their unity and that their functions in ministry really serves to bolster their interdependence upon one another to complete the mission of Christ. So the subtitle, What Your Spiritual Gifts are Really For, speaks to that aspect of our individual giftings and how they actually make us interdependent. They make us close to one another and need one another, because that's really why the Spirit divvied them out the way that the Spirit does. So that's really what the premise of the book is.

Valuing Interdependence in a Culture Steeped in Independence

Doesn't it seem like this message of interdependence gets lost in our highly independent culture?

Yes, absolutely. I think we are a hyper-independent people, particularly Western Christians, and some of that's cultural, right? So it's not necessarily a negative thing. It's a neutral reality that we are very just driven toward independence. But that neutral reality, as it sinks into the church, is not a biblical reality at all. The scriptures, from Genesis all the way through Revelation, continue to affirm our need for one another and our dependence upon the Spirit in our relationship of interdependence upon each other, and so they're just as much as like we should be praying for a new heart. We should also be allowing our minds to be renewed out of this pattern of this world that we live in. I need you, like. I need you to function well in my area of ministry. You need me, and so it flies in the face of our kind of culture of independence and in many ways requires quite a bit of humility and relearning how to be mature adults and believers in that. So, yes, we have to do a lot of work there.

The Beauty and Challenges of Different Cultures and Faith Traditions Coming Together

At Unison, they've discovering that different cultures bring diverse worship styles and experiences with the Holy Spirit, and they're learning that they can't fully experience God together if people are holding back, not being themselves, or afraid to trust others in worship.

One of the most poignant moments for us was when the Holy Spirit led me, in the middle of a sermon, to invite people who come from a more charismatic or Pentecostal worship background to stand up, because at that time they were honestly feeling like they had to like stifle that in themselves. And so the point was really that they needed to see each other, but also that those who were not charismatic or Pentecostal in their worship should pray for, affirm, and unleash those who are. They're not supposed to be silenced, they're supposed to be embraced in this kind of community.

It is much easier for me to gather in a room full of people who look like smell, like sound, like worship, like pray, like preach, like sing, like me, because that I don't have to think very much. But when I'm intentionally engaged in all of the beauty of the diversity of the body of Christ, then I also have to slow down and I have to think about what serves my sister and my brother well, while they think about what serves me well. It's not me being a martyr, because I'm being considered as well. But I'm intentionally looking to make sure that my sister and my brother is feeling like they have a place of home here just as much as I do. And that requires much more discipline and humility than it does if I just gather with people like me.

Born to be a Co-vocational Pastor

I asked Chase about his co-vocational journey, whether he started out co-vocational from the beginning of launching Unison, or if it was something he decided he needed to do later. He said he had never been asked that question, and he hadn't really thought of it before.

Looking back on his childhood, growing up in a Black Pentecostal church context, Chase said all the pastors were bi-vo or co-vo. And thinking about the pastors he's known personally over the years, most of them have always had another job outside the church.

So it was funny when I was 14, I knew that I was called to being a pastor and my mom actually asked me one day like, 'So what is it that you want to do when you grow up?' I said, 'Oh I'm going to be a pastor.' And she said, 'Yeah, I know, but what are you going to do for a job? So she planted those (co-vocational ministry) seeds early in my life.

Eventually Chase decided he'd be a teacher, along with being a pastor, so he went to college for special education. And then he was offered a part-time role in a church, and he discovered the joy of getting paid for for his ministry in the church.

Ten years ago as he began to think and pray about the launch of Unison, Chase had always known he would work co-vocationally, because it seemed so normal to him that in order to serve urban communities, he'd need to have some other form of income outside the church, and it would seem strange to him if he did not do that.

More Than a Pastor: A Co-Vocational Racial Equity Consultant

When I ran into Chase a couple of months ago at the airport in Grand Rapids, and we talked about having him as a guest on the More Than a Pastor show, he was jetting off to work with clients on the East Coast.

I love how Chase's co-vocational life is seamless - as his consulting work and pastoral ministry easily complement each other, utilizing his gifts and passions for teaching and equipping others, while also producing income to meet his family's needs.

I think that that's actually what gives us longevity in co-vocational ministry and life is that we do get to utilize those natural skills and even natural passions right, like there's so many ways to turn our passions into income, and so sometimes we have to be entrepreneurial about that right.

And sometimes we do have to work the networks that we have and really process how can I? But I think that if we are intentional about how do I utilize these skills and even allow these skills to kind of right like allow ministry and my co-vocational kind of job to feed one another right synergistically, then I am constantly fulfilled in what I'm doing, right.

But I think, if I'm, you know, there is absolutely nothing wrong with working in restaurants and working in retail as pastors. But I know that if I were in that context, it wouldn't be the thing that allowed me to stay fulfilled and vibrant in ministry, because every time I go to that place I would in some ways resent that I have to go to that place. I would in some ways resent that I have to go to that place Right.

And so I think the key for us is being intentional, and sometimes that means even like like I make some sacrifices so I can have what I need financially but also be fulfilled in that process for the longevity sake.

Reimagining the Pastor's Calling

I appreciate the kind words Chase shared about our mission here at More Than a Pastor to help pastors, missionaries, and other ministry leaders leverage their ministry know-how into income outside the church.

I think that's also one of the values of something like this platform, like you doing this podcast, giving us, as pastors, an imagination for something more than perhaps what we have been exposed to or what we've even been taught to think, because, just as many of us didn't have the imagination that we could be in ministry full-time, there are some of us who have no imagination that it would be anything but that.

So when the Spirit calls them to a place that cannot afford to pay them full-time, they don't know what to do, and they find themselves living a kind of bare bones existence, simply because they don't know that the Spirit might also utilize those skills in the broader community.

And one of the joys that I have about being co-vocational is that I'm not always engaged with current believers. It allows me to still have an evangelistic witness outside of this church, so I'm still relating to people who my congregation will also be relating to, and it feeds that ability to equip them to reach them too. That's powerful.

The Church of the Future Requires a Greater (and Biblical) Dependence on Equipping around Gifting

I asked Chase what advice he'd give to pastors whose churches are experiencing significant financial declines, where the church may no longer be able to pay the pastor their regular salary, something that more churches will face during this season called "The Great De-Churching of America.".

I'd say it starts off with a healthy understanding of how we're supposed to do this together. I think you'll be spinning your wheels and really like shouting into the void of your congregation If you are the only one in your congregation that believes that we're all supposed to make disciples, if you're the only one who believes that they will not participate. So we do have to decide to disciple in that way, we have to teach, we have to preach that, we have to encourage and challenge that, and and sometimes that comes in a season, right, there's a season of really embedding that seed and caring for it and watching, you know, it, grow into some early fruits, and so that's, I would say, advice one.

But then I would also say, at some point you have to have the courage to say no and live in the fallout of the no, because at the end of the day, if we teach and we preach that pastors aren't supposed to do all the things, but then we do all the things, then really we've just undone our teaching. We actually have to say I'm not called to do all those things, but I am called to equip you into it. So what is it that you need from me to courageously and confidently live into that.

You've got this skill, so there's a part of our job that has to be an encourager, right. We have to come to someone and say, hey, I see this skill in you, I see this gifting in you. I'd love for you to consider, pray about and let's spend some time cultivating that, and for you to actually carry that for our community, because I think you would really do great in that. And we have to then release it Like let it go right, which means it's going to look different than when we were doing it. We have to let them fail at it, because we learn way more in failing than we do in succeeding. It feels good to succeed, but failure is what we learn and also we press into the spirit when we're failing more than when we're succeeding. So let it happen, wow.

Right, let it happen and I think that you start to find momentum. I think that takes time if that's not your current culture, but once it becomes a part of the culture, then you actually have other people doing it. Here's another little pro tip. I would say there are other shepherds in your congregation.

You may be the only one who is a staff pastor, but there are other teachers, there are other apostles, there are other evangelists, there are other, like there are other shepherds in your congregation. Find them, partner with them and deploy them to also do that thing that is developing these people that are part of the congregation. Some of them are small group leaders. Don't let them just lead a conversation and encourage them to call out gifts in other people and let them also be a part of the deployment strategy of the church.

Connecting with Chase

I recommend you listen to the full interview to get all of Chase's wisdom. And don't forget to share it with your friends!

If this episode impacted you in some way, please let us know! You can connect with Chase at www.unisongr.org and with me at [email protected].