The Attraction of Performance

I heard Dani Johnson preach at the 1pm service at Hillsong London today. I could not help but be blown away by Dani Johnson’s testimony. I felt empowered as a Christian when she related that there were many entrepreneurs in the Bible and that Christians should be in prominent roles in society.

Her testimony was that she was homeless at the age of 21 and a millionaire by the age of 23. She seemed totally genuine and down-to-earth and was very inspiring during her sermon. I could not help but think to myself that this is the kind of person that I always wanted to be: confident, independent, successful and financially secure.

You can read more about Dani Johnson on her official website.

I suppose there is also the added “celebrity” factor as well: I have felt drawn towards the concept of being able to stand on a stage in front of a crowd of over a thousand people and have them applauding me and laughing and cheering with me. This was something that deeply appealed to me as a Christian for several years. But I now realise that this is a completely impractical expectation as not every Christian can expect to make it into a successful full-time ministry.

How Do You Process This?

I have been attending Hillsong London church for about five years now; I have been a Christian for around 15 years; so this kind of sermon has not been entirely new to me. I have been through the Pentecostal, praying-for-revival and miracles scene at Kensington Temple and I have been through the grace movement as taught by the likes of Joseph Prince. I am now going through a phase of so-called anti-IC (Institutional Church) conversations, courtesy of The God Journey and the grittier The Free Believers Network. I now feel that I am not as gullible as I used to be and that I am much more likely to question what I hear from the pulpit.

One of the latest podcasts from The Free Believers Network is entitled The Lust of Sensationalism. I feel that this long-awaited podcast picks-up from Darin's blog on Spiritual Porn Addiction. In this podcast episode, Darin and Aimee talk about how Christians who leave the excitement of the church-world, often feel enticed back by church services and teaching that give the impression of incredible spiritual occurrences. In “the wild”, the Christian space outside of church, you don’t have all of those incredible spiritual experiences and testimonies. It can be tempting for Christians, disillusioned by the church world, to be drawn back in by the seemingly miraculous. I felt rather bewildered as to how I reconcile this amazing testimony of Dani Johnson, against what the Free Believers team were saying.

It was also in another podcast by The Free Believers Network, I think it was the one entitled Moving On, in which the hosts discuss the fact that people who leave the church in a state of disillusionment, might come back to the church, but not because they feel they have to, not because they’ll be cursed if they don’t, but because of reasons such as friendship. This is the case I find myself in: I stopped going to church just at the start of the year. This coincided with my listening to the The Free Believers Network podcasts. These podcasts may appear to be anti-IC – but they are actually focused on a genuine relationship with God through Christ. Leaving the church seems to be a natural consequence of coming into the revelation of God’s love for you. I recently started attending Hillsong London Church again – but only because I wanted to meet up with some people and enjoy fellowship with them.

So I am left feeling rather bewildered as to how I am meant to process the message delivered by Dani Johnson. Was it wrong of me to feel wooed by this woman’s powerful message? How was this message applicable to my own life?

I know that at one time, when I was particularly insecure and naïve; I would have taken this to mean that I can also become a millionaire, with God’s help. I once thought that this was the only way that I could gain the respect of others and “win them for Christ”. That has been a particularly painful, frustrating and disappointing road that I have travelled for a number of years. But now, I find that I have arrived at a different place. I am now inclined to value what I have, to make the most of my life as it appears now, and to not wish that I was somewhere else doing something that I don’t do at this moment in time.

So how are we to process this inspiring message of success? Are all Christians meant to be successful entrepreneurs? I think the whole message of grace, righteousness in Christ, is all about knowing that you are okay just the way you are. I think that is a great place to start. Where you are supposed to go from there – I don’t really know. It might be a successful businessman or businesswoman, or it might just be a humble, everyday, nine-to-five job – I don’t know. Whatever it might be – I believe that you can trust in God to meet all of your needs, regardless of your salary and job-title.

It is true that we do hear of great and inspiring things happening in the lives of other Christians, the Old Testament is filled with testimonies of incredible miracles wrought in the lives of godly people. I feel that these stories serve to take our limits off God. But I feel that we can get off-course if we take these stories to mean that God is obligated to perform a similarly spectacular miracle in our own lives. At the end of the day, it all comes down to conveying a sense of trust in God – not in establishing a comprehensive set of formulas and principles which we can use in order to make God bless us how we want and when we want.

Caught Between Two Worlds

For years I felt as if I was caught between two worlds: the office workplace and the church. Both of these “worlds” emphasised one thing: performance. In the office workplace here seemed to be a strong work-hard ethic and a sense that you were respected according to your grade and your ability. This inevitably led me to believe that I needed to somehow make an effort to be better than everybody else and to show them that I had what it takes and was someone who could be trusted and respected. The “currency” of this workplace respect seemed to be vested in wisdom and favour – both being concepts strongly rooted in Biblical principles: Daniel and Joseph being the chief exponents.

In the church there was always a sense of wanting, needing, grasping for something outside of yourself; there was always the sense of inadequacy, that you are not right with God, not where you want to be and that you have to spend a lot of time and effort doing something in order to be somebody of worth and value. This often equated to rather daft church related endeavours and rule keeping.

I could not help but feel that the people in my workplace were clearly the winners in this battle of wits: they seemed to be the most intelligent, successful and appealing between the two. When I was part of the Pentecostal movement, I could not help but feel that there was something rather off-putting with the church crowd: they always seemed to be rather desperate, weak-willed, naive and quirky.

For me, I desperately wanted the promises of wealth and success that I got from the church world, to be brought to bear in the outside world: especially in the office workplace. I felt as if it was a competition, us against them, sinner versus saint, believer verses unbeliever.

But I felt that time and again my hopes were dashed as I found that I could not quite cut it with the office workplace crowd. I was up against Oxford and Cambridge graduates and I felt that the only thing that I had that would persuade them and win them to my way of thinking, and to Christ, was performance, ability and achievement. But it seemed that none of the formulas and principles that I gleaned from the church world ever seemed to work for me.

It was only when I started attending Hillsong London that I found myself around a group of Christians who seemed to be a lot more solid, genuine and balanced – fun people to hang out with.

It’s Not All about Performance

I found that the whole focus on performance just wore me out. I was convinced that I needed to impress people with what I did and what I had – as if love just was not enough. I suppose I just looked at how utterly ridiculous I felt the church was at the time and how utterly pathetic Christians seemed to be – I just thought that I needed to compete on the same level as the world in order to show that that there was something genuine, relevant, powerful and attractive about Christianity.

What I did not admit to myself at the time was that underlying these noble motives to bring Christ to the world, was a whole lot of insecurity and a deep-rooted want for approval. It was these unmet needs that were really cursing all of my efforts to do the right thing and to achieve success. I suppose this is what the Bible refers to as “selfish motives”.

My drive towards performance and achievement made me no different than the staunchest atheist whose trust I sought to win. I was drawn into the “rat-race” with all of its allure and all of its demands and all of its disappointment.

What Do People Really Want?

What I have found that people are drawn to, and I myself have been drawn to, are people who are honest, humble, secure and happy. I know of people in the workplace who have impressive job-titles and salary figures – but their personality, character and lifestyle leave little to be admired. It is not just what a person has or does that attract you – it is who they are and how you feel about them deep-down on the inside. There is often no logic, no formula to it – you just feel the way you feel about someone. The whole work-hard ethic has produced a lot of performance-driven people who quite often lack humility and integrity. Such people, I find, often live very shallow and dissatisfying lives. I find that such people are often unpleasant to be around.

I feel that we really need to stop chasing after formulas, miracles, job-titles and salary figures. We need to rediscover what is truly authentic in life: love, relationships, hobbies and interests.

Those people who become enamoured with job-titles and salary figures, I believe, are atheists – they trust in their ability to perform in order to make it in this world. Christianity is all about a relationship with God through Christ – it is not all about performance and about proving that Christians are more successful than people in the world. We need to leave room for those wonderful, serendipitous when we encounter God’s awesome grace and provision, in ways we did not expect and did not merit.

You will notice from the stories of Daniel and Joseph in the Bible, that they both were given favour by God, before they were blessed with wisdom and ability. There is significance in that. No matter what you do and how you perform in this life – nothing impresses people more than the favour that God gives a person. Favour is something that affects people on a spiritual level and requires no performance or human intervention whatsoever in order to make it effective.