70 | Zac Hicks: Why Does Recovery Feel More Like Church Than Church Does?

Why do people often feel more "churched" and cared for in recovery meetings than they do in their actual churches? What is present at those meetings, and/or missing from those churches? And what can we do about it?

Zac Hicks thinks these are important questions to consider. Zac is the lead pastor of Church of the Cross, a church plant in Birmingham AL. Over the past 20+ years, his extensive ministry experience has also included worship leading, songwriting, seminary teaching, and authoring books.

Zac is a contemplative thinker and it was really fulfilling to have a deep dive conversation that delved into multiple topics, including pastoral vulnerability, empathy, how we scrutinize song lyrics in worship, Family Systems theory, you name it and we talked about it. 

Whether you're a pastor/ministry leader, someone in recovery, or just anyone interested in being a safe person for others, there's a lot of helpful stuff here. We hope you enjoy the conversation!

#zachicks #zachicksmusic #churchofthecross #pastor #empathy #traumainformed #pain #suffering #connection #vulnerability #recovery #grace #gospel #transformation #healing

Zac's personal website
Church of the Cross (Birmingham AL)
Zac's books (Amazon)
Zac on Instagram

Transcript

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Introduction, Getting Older...

Zac Hicks 0:00

The folks I know who are in recovery have the same refrain. And the refrain is, why does my recovery community feel more like church than church does? And I think that's a really important question to ask. And I think that a lot of that has to do with the honesty with which one names the human problem and condition. And that's met with a bunch of people who hear that honest word and don't go anywhere.

Announcer 0:24

Welcome to What We Really Want Conversations about Connection. Settle in and get ready for a great conversation. Let's talk about what we really want.

Greg 0:37

Hello, friends. Welcome to another episode of What We Really Want. Today is episode 70. Can you believe it? Our guest is Zac Hicks, and this episode is called Why Does Recovery Feel More Like Church Than Church Does? I think that title wins the gold medal for longest title of any of our episodes. And there's a reason why I went with that one. That was a question that Zac asked during our conversation, and it was a very important one. Zac is the pastor of a church plant in Birmingham, Alabama called Church of the Cross. He's been doing that for about three and a half years. There are a lot of people in his congregation who have experience with addiction and recovery. And that question came as a result of many conversations that he's had where people have shared that they feel safer and more churched and shepherded in their recovery communities than they have historically in the places where they've gone to church. And Zac's paid attention. He is a fascinating guy. I've been wanting to get to spend some time with him for a while. As I said a minute ago, he's pastor of Church of the Cross, and he has been pastoring and leading worship for more than 20 years, churches all over the United States, just about anywhere that's got an ocean nearby. He was born and grew up in Hawaii and lived in California, lived in Colorado, no oceans there, but then in Florida, and then now lives here in Birmingham, Alabama. I mentioned for a long time he served as a worship pastor, and he actually wrote three books on that, one called The Worship Pastor, one called Worship by Faith Alone, and a third called Before We Gather. He is a songwriter, he's a producer, a musician. He's just a very, he's a very diversified person in ministry. And it was so much fun getting to talk to him. He's a deep, deep thinker. He does not swim in the shallow end of the pool. And I really enjoyed our time talking. He is seeking to make his church a place that offers the same type of safety that many have only found in recovery meetings. And this conversation reflects that. We talked about so many things though. It jumped from topic to topic. We discussed empathy. We discussed biblical scrutiny of song lyrics. Do we approach that rigidly or do we let them be somewhat poetic? We even talked about family systems theory. I think you're going to get a huge blessing and hopefully a kick out of our conversation. I sure did have a good time. My guest is Zac Hicks. This is episode 70. It's called Why Does Recovery Feel More Like Church than Church Does? And the conversation starts right now. About 10 years ago, my eyes quit working. I mean, I already wear contacts because I have really serious nearsightedness. But now gathering it's yeah, it's sad.

Zac Hicks 3:19

I feel grateful. I've never had glasses ever or contacts and have good distance, but like, no, this is sad. I mean, I was doing some wiring of a ceiling fan. Yeah. And I was up on a ladder and looking at the wires as close. I'm like, I cannot focus. This is like really hard.

Greg 3:35

So anything that has instructions, yeah. It's like I gotta, yeah, I gotta keep the readers on the whole time. It's getting though to where I don't really have to move them that much because yeah, they're getting that bad.

Zac Hicks 3:49

We're all slowly dying. I did say to my congregation yesterday, as a line in my sermon, I said, we're all gonna die. So I do think that Christians are given the tools to stare that in the face. Yeah. It doesn't make it pleasant, but makes it holdable.

Greg 4:05

Well, hey, we just kind of dove right in. I'm talking with Zac Hicks, and I've been looking forward to this for, I guess, since since we decided to do it. And so we're gonna just talk about, I'm I'm sure we're gonna talk a lot about the church and just how those contexts are beautiful ways for people to go deeper into true connection. That's that's what I hope for. But I'm I'm curious, what do you want out of our conversation?

Zac Hicks 4:28

Yeah, you asked that question or asked me to reflect on it. I've got two basic, maybe boring answers. One of them is just that I could be of use to whoever's listening to this, that God would use me to offer people a good word. And also just, I mean, Greg, your your ministry in our city, even with my sample size of people in my local church who are impacted by that ministry, is is pretty profound. And I don't think many cities have this kind of ministry, stylized and created in the kind of way that it is. And I just uh want to get a chance to dialogue with you so I can glean wisdom and hear your heart. So those two things. Thanks for saying that.

Greg 5:13

That means a lot. And I think you're right that the kind of community that we've been building with Awaken for the last 10 years doesn't exist in that this way in very many places. Yeah. Thankfully, in more than it used to. Yeah. But a lot of the people who are doing the kind of work that we're doing started it because they couldn't find anybody else doing it. And now it's cool because we've found each other, you know, kind of all over the world. And a lot of the guests on this show have been people who are doing similar things in other places. And it's just it's good to know each other, even if we don't talk very often, to just have those connections and those lifelines sometimes with people that get it. Yeah.

Zac Hicks 5:52

You know, but thank you.

Why Recovery Feels Safer than Church...

Zac Hicks 5:53

Well, one of the things that seems unique is that as you're going about the ministry of recovery, which in a sense ancestrally always finds its way back to to AA, you know, and the principles that are that were born in that, I guess, church basement in New York, you know. AA is not necessarily Christian, but it's inherently a Christian way of understanding the human problem and understanding the need for divine intervention.

Greg 6:21

Right.

Zac Hicks 6:22

And it has such a radical way of understanding that that conundrum, the absolute need of the human, absolute reliance on all the work being done by God. And I what I find you all doing in Awakened that feels unique to me is that you you all are making that explicit and but keeping that absolute way of thinking about uh the need being total and the provision being total, yeah, and the reliance of God. And just to unveil that, it's it's gospel, it's gospel work that I don't see always uh enacted in church communities. It's often a little bit more easy to find, at least in its feeling, if not its articulation in recovery communities, but you all make it explicit in its articulation. And I think that's really important for ministry and for people's growth, change, and life.

Greg 7:15

You know, you talked about how AA is not necessarily explicitly Christian, which is true. And all of the anonymous communities, that's kind of a benchmark that higher power. Higher power, right? And and you get to decide as a as a part of that fellowship.

Zac Hicks 7:30

God is I define him as a Christian.

Greg 7:32

Yeah, God of my own understanding. And and yet you read the 12 steps, and those aren't very covert and biblical. You know, they're pretty overtly biblical if you know your Bible. That's right. And so Bill W and Dr. Bob, though they were men who read and understood their Bibles, yeah, and they knew that these were going to be principles that were going to help people, even if they were not yet at a place of having a personal faith in God. Uh-huh. And, you know, living biblical principles is healthier than not, you know, even if you haven't entered that relationship yet. And hopefully, and I know that over the last now almost hundred years since AA was founded, a lot of people have come to know Jesus through those basements and those back rooms.

Zac Hicks 8:16

So I meant yesterday, our lectionary, which is how we sort of determine our preaching passages, took us into Matthew 9 and Jesus' statement that gets translated a variety of ways, but only the sick need a physician. I didn't come for the well, but I came for the sick. I didn't come for the righteous, but I came for sinners. That naturally dovetailed so well for me in talking about how the folks I know who are in recovery have the same refrain. And the refrain is why does my recovery community feel more like church than church does? And I think that's a really important question to ask. And I think that a lot of that has to do with the honesty with which one names the human problem and condition. Right. And that's met with a bunch of people who hear that honest word and don't go anywhere, which is what grace and God does is He hears our pain and hears our actual state of affairs, our actual sin. Yeah. And says, I love that you we experience that love in the form of listening of others all the time. And I think recovery communities have nailed that, and the church can learn a lot from those communities.

Greg 9:30

I'm glad you said that because that's something that comes up, as you can imagine, a pretty decent amount in our meetings when people will say, not too many people have said it this explicitly, but some have said this, these meetings are my church.

Zac Hicks 9:43

Uh-huh.

Greg 9:44

And when they say that, if they say it in front of me, I say, Well, actually it's not. Yeah. I know what you mean. I appreciate that. And I'm glad that you feel that level of safety and connection at our meetings.

Zac Hicks 9:59

Yeah.

Greg 10:00

But this isn't your church.

Zac Hicks 10:02

Yeah.

Greg 10:02

And like you said, it they're good questions to ask. If people feel safer or feel like recovery meetings are more like what they think the church should be, I think there are good questions for church leaders, but I also think there's good questions for people in recovery communities. Because one of the questions for church leaders is are you going out of your way to make sure that you've set a table where people know that you can be a broken person out in the open here? And I think a lot of them would say, well, as soon as I hear about something like they're going to see how gracious I am, but you're never going to hear about it if you haven't told them over and over again. So that's part of it. And then some churches just make it unsafe.

Zac Hicks 10:41

Uh-huh.

Greg 10:41

But then the question I think for the person in recovery is are you showing up differently at church than you are in this recovery meeting? Yeah. And the answer is often yes. I'm showing up less honest at church and more honest here. And listen, I get it.

Zac Hicks 10:56

Yeah.

Greg 10:56

Because some of them have been burned. Some of them have been silent while they watched other people get burned. And so, like, well, I won't make that same mistake of letting my dirty laundry out. And so there's a lot of complicated layers going on. I was in church ministry for 15 years, church pastoral ministry while I was, you know, nurturing this unwanted sex addiction. And I know how miserable it is to be a congregation member, but I also know how miserable it is to be a leader who can't tell anybody.

Zac Hicks 11:26

Yeah.

Greg 11:27

You know, because not only your reputation, but now your livelihood and your career and what feels like your calling depends on riding the line. And, you know, granted, we get to the point, well, I got to the point where I crossed the lines where, yeah, the toothpaste is out of the tube. You know, this needs to be known, and there are going to be consequences, but I don't think that we've done nearly what we could do to remove pedestals from our churches, to allow our leaders to be broken people, you know, without pink slipping. So yeah, you can tell that's a big, a big deal to me.

Building A Culture Of Vulnerability

Zac Hicks 12:03

Well, I mean, I'm three and a half years into a church plant where that is the great divine experiment. Like, will this kind of culture last? And I I'm learning that it really does have to be a two-way street between pastor and congregation. Both have to kind of agree to be open and agree to foreground repentance and forgiveness a lot. And so I know I have to model that by being being open and vulnerable in ways that are appropriate and uh yet disclosed enough that it's gonna be a little bit risky. And that risk has to be met by a congregation that has enough confidence in the grace of God not to put someone like me on a pedestal, but also enough confidence in the spirit to say he can walk us through this. And and then by virtue of that modeling and other things, hopefully just mutuality and the presence of the spirit, others are able to do that. And what I find is when you cultivate that culture, it starts to make the folks that are unwilling to be that disclosed a little bit uncomfortable and they end up not wanting to be there. Yeah. And so they self-select out. And so it's a it's a weird thing, but the culture, when it starts to really sink in, does its own triage work of isolating and pushing out folks who are are going to not be ready or willing for that kind of that kind of depth and vulnerability. That doesn't mean everyone's there, but it does mean when someone walks in, they feel, oh, this is a place where people are a little bit more willing to lay it out there. Um, and I've got to decide whether I want to participate in that kind of honesty because it it comes with its own cost and its own pain and its own risks and vulnerability.

Greg 13:46

Because at some point in the conversation, the eyes are going to turn to me and give me the invitation of jumping in with that.

Zac Hicks 13:53

And you've got to decide whether you're ready for that.

Greg 13:55

Yeah. Stacy and I co-lead a community group at our church with another couple that's been leading it for longer than we've been in it. That guy often says when people come in and he's trying to describe what our group is like, he says, you don't have to be vulnerable, but you have to be comfortable with vulnerability. Yeah. And that's kind of a good place, I think, to start because we know there's a learning curve there. And there's a skill to be developed, there's a muscle to be worked. Yeah. We don't just go from being guarded to being fully vulnerable quickly.

Zac Hicks 14:25

Yeah, that's well put. I would, yeah. And that's that's the way that I'd see it sort of working itself out at my local church right now.

Greg 16:02

Okay, I want to take a step back for a second because what we've been doing is exactly why I wanted to talk to you. Up until today, like right now, we have already probably talked three times as long as the sum total of our conversations before today. We've we've known each other, we've known who each other was. We've had a couple of times. I remember one time at Workplay and one time at Beeson. We just, hey, how are you doing? We talked for a couple minutes, but we've never really talked at length until today. But every time we have had one of those brief conversations, I don't know about you, but I feel like I can tell when I'm talking with a person who is interested in getting under the surface as quickly as possible. Yeah. Getting away from the surfacey stuff. Like you and I can both talk about small talk, but that's not what we really want to talk about. And I could tell that about you. And those short conversations have made me, have made you a kind of the kind of person I want to get to know better. And so that's kind of one of my bigger hopes, and it's already happening. But I was looking online just at a couple of things just to get some notes. And you have a website with a bio that talks about all the places where you have pastured-led worship, yeah, and including Hawaii, California, Colorado, Florida, now Alabama. Tell me a little bit about kind of your trajectory. I mean, yeah, I'd love to, I'd love to know more about kind of where you've been because I'm meeting you with where you are now.

Zac Hicks 17:32

I think growing up as someone from a minority culture in a majority other culture, which is what Hawaii was, Hawaii's a lot of different

Zac’s Journey and Welcoming Sadness

Zac Hicks 17:42

Asian Pacific cultures, but it definitely has an ethos that makes someone who's white or we call them howlies, feel uh a little bit othered is how the the language I'd use now. And it wasn't, I mean, for me, it wasn't an oppressive othering. For the most part, there were certain surf spots that I couldn't go to without, you know, being threatened that I physical harm would come my my way. But really, for the most part, what what I in hindsight realized that I learned growing up was what it meant to culturally adapt. And I didn't know I was gaining those tools as I was exposed to a lot of different cultures in Hawaii and exposed to always, in a sense, being raised maybe with a certain culture in my home, which I now recognize as southern and white a little bit. Yeah. Um, because my mom's from Alabama and my dad's from Oklahoma. But and then having that interface with uh the other cultures at my school and with my friends. And so I I think what I realized is that I've I've got my own makeup and design that God's given me, my own unique cultural background with its blessings and curses. And as I step into places, I need to listen well. And in order to communicate and connect well, there are going to be some things that without sacrificing maybe the core of who I am, have to adapt. Yeah. And so I even learned that going to LA, where I was in a college of, and it was kind of shocking to me to be around a mostly like California white people and upper class people for the most part. That was new and different for me and felt weird at first. And then moving, marrying my wife, moving to Colorado, same kind of adaptation. Okay, so real quick, yeah.

Greg 19:33

Before we get off of Hawaii and California, so what were the age range of when you were in Hawaii? How old were you when you moved to California?

Zac Hicks 19:42

Hawaii was birthed till graduated high school. So you were born in Hawaii. Yeah. Okay. So what island? Oahu, right in the middle of Honolulu on the south side. You know, the big big university there is University of Hawaii, that's in Manoa, and that's right where I grew up. So people who come to Hawaii and then hit Honolulu are like kind of shell-shocked because there's interstates, which how does that work? Uh, and traffic, and like just uh there's poverty and so much homelessness. Yeah, you don't feel like you don't you don't recognize that as being what the postcards show you. Yeah. But if you're looking for the beautiful postcard Hawaii, you can find it on Oahu. You just have to know where to go, and you can definitely find it on the neighbor islands as well. So I always find watching people experience Hawaii, depending on where they go, a fun little thing to sit back with my popcorn and see how they how they encounter all that stuff.

Greg 20:33

So you moved to California.

Zac Hicks 20:36

California was just college. To go to school. So I studied music there, and that was like 18 to 22, married my wife, and we moved back to near where she lived. She grew up in Colorado Springs, so we ended up in Denver. We were there for 10 years, thought we'd be there forever, had our four kids there, and then a ministry opportunity in the tip of the United States and the total other side in Fort Lauderdale, near Miami, came up, ended up being called out by a church there. Was there for three amazing, fast, tumultuous, crazy years, learned a lot about ministry, gospel, church. I didn't realize I was gaining a lot of tools that were going to be part of what characterizes the church plant that I'm a part of right now. Yeah. And then out of the kind of embers of that, but in the middle of that, I got connected with a church out here in Birmingham, in downtown Birmingham, that called me out to be their associate pastor. So I ended up in the American South, right in the middle of Birmingham and its rich story. And so in all these places, I do find that I'm adapting to culture and learning how to listen well, how to connect well. And it it kind of feels like the story maybe of a military family. And I when I've ministered to military families, they they're always saying they have one of two choices when they move to a new place, which is either the protective instinct of I don't want to make myself connected because when I have to disconnect, yes, I will feel so so much pain. Um, and that the vulnerability of making deep friendships and having to cut them off is too much. So some families choose to just sort of like we're gonna we're gonna make our intimacy all within our family unit and really hold other people at bay. And I just didn't find that possible as a pastor, at least as the kind of pastor I wanted to be. It's a lot to hold and carry, but I also wouldn't change it for the world.

Greg 22:25

So yeah, that sounds unusually healthy way to look at sadness. Sadness is the experience when something that you love or someone that you love or value, it's either gone or changed. Yeah. Every single relationship that we have on planet Earth is going to end sadly. Yeah. Either someone is going to die or someone is going to leave. Yeah. You know, if we don't feel sad, then what does that say about the closeness of the relationship? So you would say you're leaving your blood in all these places where you've lived and leaving a piece of yourself. I mean, what that tells me is that you were you were engaged and connected and not just floating through for fear what it would how it would feel when you had to leave.

Zac Hicks 23:09

Yep. I think that I've learned that to experience that woundedness is worth the depth of the love. So like the whole correlation between I love the connection between sadness and and love. I I think it's there. And if we are loving deeply, we are we are exposing ourselves to inevitable sadness. This side of eternity. And that's worth just staring in the face. And I think that the Christian tradition and the scriptures give us robust tools to live into, not away from that.

Greg 23:43

And also Pixar.

Zac Hicks 23:45

Yes and amen. Oh man, totally. Yeah. Inside out, man, that'll make you well that'll make you weep.

Greg 23:51

And the way that joy acted through 90% of the movie is the way that you were describing the people who didn't who wanted to just keep it all close to the best because it's too risky. And then ultimately realizing that joy's not really joy if it isn't blended with sadness, because the contrast lets you know how wonderful joy is. Yeah. And the joy is what keeps sadness from being overwhelming.

Zac Hicks 24:15

So may I I kind of want to ask you a question?

Greg 24:18

Yeah, go for it.

Zac Hicks 24:19

We're at this cultural moment now, and I'm experiencing this kind of in real time at our church

What About Empathy?

Zac Hicks 24:24

where we're trying to create an open place for emotional health and vulnerability. And one of the critiques that I hear sort of looming in culture is that's making us soft, number one. And that, you know, the conversation is about toxic empathy. You know, we're getting so empathetic towards one another that we either, number one, don't have grit anymore, or whether, you know, we're being honest with each other about the things that we need honesty about. I'm just curious to know, as you lead men, maybe who historically, at least culturally, in our in our climates, have been often told that part of manhood is really the kind of stifling of and minimizing of emotions. And now that that life is is opening up and flowering, what do you make of the critiques that this is going to soften us or that this is going to create unhealthy, sort of overly feeling-based realities in our communities and churches and things like that? You know, what yeah. Have you reflected on that? Oh, yeah.

Greg 25:31

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think if you want to drill it down to a lowest common denominator, you know, the phrase that's been around forever, we mock what we do not understand is is a part of it. It's unfamiliar. You know, people have trouble trusting things that they've never heard before. And when there's a new teaching, you know, there's probably a healthy skepticism that is appropriate, but a complete and utter closed offness is not helpful. I think that, boy, there's so many different ways I can answer your question. I think that the critique that I often hear of coming to identify, bless, accept, be with your emotions, that's soft, and that's, you know, we're losing our grit, or it's not biblical even. And some of the newhetic biblical counseling community are writing books with like, you know, empathy is not biblical, you know, in the the titles, which I couldn't disagree with more. I think there's actually a lot of emotion that's going on in the critiques, and it's primarily fear. I think fear is a powerful emotion of what if this takes me to a place that I don't know what to do? What if some of the stock answers that I cognitively assent to but have never permeated my heart get threatened? And I have to, I have to chip away at some of my concrete thinking, where will I be? And I think that there's a lot of view of God in all of this as a kind of this really vague, nebulous figurehead that I don't really experience as a loving, present father. So I think that there's a lot of fear in upsetting the apple cart and where will that leave me, and an unwillingness to go there. Most of the people that I have found who have gone there, despite their skepticism, have been glad that they did because they realized that they actually didn't have to compromise anything that that was that was godly or biblical in order to do that. Now, is there the chance that we could go too far? There's always the chance that we can go too far. You know, there's a chance that we can appropriate a healthy look into our emotions and we can let it feed our desire to be a snowflake, you know, if you want to use that pejorative term. We could do that with it, but not everybody's gonna do that. And that's what I always hear, well, you know, is we're gonna turn into a bunch of softies and we're not gonna love the word of God. Well, that's not my experience, and that's not the experience I've seen a lot of people. So, what if we approached it with more curiosity? How does that resonate with how you've been looking at it?

Zac Hicks 28:15

Yeah, I mean, our church is sort of an experiment in that kind of openness, and particularly from my lane being a man and a male pastor, encouraging the men just through my own relationships with them, to explore and think about their emotional life as a viable component, you know. So I'm I'm pro that and I'm definitely pro-empathy. I've got theological convictions on why I think empathy mirrors and is derivative of the kind of love that God loves the world with, you know? So the incarnation is exhibit A of the empathy of God, if you want to put it that way.

Greg 28:56

I feel well, and even the even the the scripture that we know is the golden rule. Yeah, do unto others as you would have done unto you. I mean, that is you could make an argument that that is a description of empathy, putting yourself in another person's shoes and asking that that be done for you. You know, I would want you to understand and be kind to me, so I'm gonna be kind to you.

Zac Hicks 29:17

Yeah, yeah. So I I feel similarly, it's like I I don't see it derailing our community or getting us into unhealthy places. I don't see it being something that is softening our ability to be truth bearers and truthful, unable to say or do hard things when they need to be done. I I don't know that those things have to be at odds with one another, that it's a sliding scale, and the more empathetic you are, the less able you are to tell the truth or to be strong on truth or whatever it is that the fear is that we can't come to hard definitions because we're afraid of hurting one another.

Greg 29:53

I do think that's a tough part of it though. I mean, because if you are known as someone who is genu generally and genuinely empathetic, then when you do say, no, there's actually the Bible does draw a line here. Yeah. Then, oh, wait a second, I thought you cared. Well, I do care, you know, and and there is a tendency to kind of assume that empathetic is gonna mean everything that would fall kind of in the progressive column. And and it takes more work to not just lump in and you know vote theological party lines, but to say, no, I'm I'm going by what I believe to be the biblical way, the Jesus way.

Zac Hicks 30:32

Yeah.

Greg 30:33

And it's not gonna fully align with anybody who's taken an easy way.

Zac Hicks 30:37

That's where I've been helped with the psychological field of family systems theory, which I've spent now a lot of time in, both informally and formally, with friends who are experts in in that way of thinking. And I think what you've just described is the way the theory would describe the duality that's necessary for the healthiest communities, which is communities are at their best when anxiety is shared openly among the community, not bottlenecked in any one individual. And that happens as each individual, in a sense, takes responsibility for themselves. And that mature behavior is are these two factors connected and differentiated. Connected meaning like I'm not going to run from you, yeah, but I am going to be, in their language, a well-defined self. And I think from the Bible perspective, that is to be saying, I'm going to be convicted by what the word of God encourages me to uh hold and to follow and to submit my life to. And I'm not going anywhere. So I'm committed to somehow living in that truth in a way that is loving and understanding and refuses the easy, anxious answers of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, you know. So that's what I find is the workout of our community is as we are empathetic, as we are suffering long, to listen well to one another, to not succumb to the anxious desire to be absorbed into another such that I can't maintain my convictions. But I don't need to bludgeon someone else with them. But I can hold them and say, this is what I believe. This is what I hold to be true. And that doesn't jeopardize our relationship.

Greg 32:22

Yeah.

Zac Hicks 32:23

That's on I think that is just increasingly uncommon to be able to do that because our society is so out of whack. There is like if we don't align in our beliefs, not only can we not be friends, we are enemies. And I must fight and annihilate you, you know.

Greg 32:38

Well, that that brings up a question I want to ask you. You know, as a pastor who has done a lot of personal study and research into

Preaching With Landmines And Trust

Greg 32:46

family systems, to have understood it to be of value enough to spend that amount of time with it. Yeah, when you're in a teaching context, do you ever experience anxiety or worry about the way you say things?

Zac Hicks 33:02

All the time. In a community where you're trying to hold everybody's stories and pain and trauma well, I am acutely aware of about a hundred landmines that are just like right in front of my toes every time I stand up to say anything. And there's one side of my anxiety that can, because I'm an Enneagram three and a people pleaser, I could just totally immediately get sucked into the vortex of worrying about hurting someone. And so, number one, I have to constantly repent of that and kind of be open. And and I even say, like part of my way of public repentance is often to apologize or or at least to confess at the beginning of something, I'm concerned that I might, by saying this a little wrongly, hurt someone here. And that's not my intention because I know the stories in this room and I know that this topic is sensitive, you know. Even yesterday, there was actually a thing, uh a kind of theological issue that I was addressing that was in the passage. And I knew that that theological issue had been handled poorly by other ministers in my tradition and had done real damage to people's lives. And so, because of that landmine, I knew I needed to talk about it, kind of in extension in the middle of my sermon. And I do find I'm constantly aware, and the work that I always need to do is never caving to not being able to say the hard thing, but knowing enough of the stories and the ways that people could hear wrongly to be sensitive enough to address those things well, knowing that I could overly give myself over to worry about that. And there is an ultimate kind of duality of I've got to do my homework and say things well, and I've got to trust the Holy Spirit to hold our community and to hold them. And part of that trust is also the relational, the relational atmosphere that has created the earning of trust with individuals because I'm a pastor that really tries to be in relationship with my people and not just someone who's standing in front of people and prophetically declaring the word of God. I think that trust and the preaching go together.

Greg 35:15

And if you are, if you really are not just saying you want to be in relationship, but you're showing it, then there is some responsibility that's shared. It's not all yours. That's right. The congregation has a responsibility where if they hear something that makes them go, hey, wait a minute, don't go and just get mad and leave, like ask you about it. Because I would imagine you would welcome that.

Zac Hicks 35:38

I would. And there really is shared. I do view that as part of a mature community, is that there is shared responsibility for the offended one to have their own maturity of such a level that as they're experiencing the anxiety of their offense, that their instinct or at least their discipline is to move toward, not away. Given that the relationship is a relationship of trust. And that's where I do feel like the onus is on me as a pastor in the power dynamic there to take the initiative in moving towards to help build that relationship of trust. So it's like a really uh my sense of like my internal unwritten job description, one of those is to try to be connected with people relationally to build trust so that I can be the preacher and teacher that I want to be. But at the same time, it really is true that when that trust is built, there still is responsibility of the other party to listen well, actually, and to listen with their own sense of trust. That, oh, I'm hearing something that kind of tweaks my head a little bit, but I know Zac. So uh, whether we call it giving the benefit of the doubt, or really we use the Pauline language of love hopes all things, yeah, yeah, we're going to, because of that trust and because of the mutuality in the spirit, move toward not away and assume the best, not the worst.

Greg 37:03

I'm curious, have you, in your time of being a teaching pastor, have you ever had an experience where you kind of

Making Sure It's Biblical, not just Cultural...

Greg 37:11

on your own came to realize, oh, wait, like the way I've been experiencing this passage and even teaching it has actually been more attached to other things I've been taught or cultural things that I've heard than what the what the passage was actually saying.

Zac Hicks 37:28

Yes.

Greg 37:29

Yeah.

Zac Hicks 37:29

I have learned that especially through people's testimonies.

Greg 37:33

I'd love to hear more about that.

Zac Hicks 37:34

Yeah, I don't know how deep to get into it, but I'll speak of my own tradition. So I'm a Presbyterian and we're in the Reformed tradition. And down here in the South, the presence of the Reformed tradition is strong enough to have an impact, maybe especially in like campus ministries. And what I found when we set out to plant our church and said, we're praying that the Lord would make us open and available for people who have big questions about God, who have big struggles with the church, who have found themselves hurt at the hand of pastors, churches, or other Christians. And as a result of that, are kind of reeling about who Jesus is, whether God is good, whether I can trust him, the Bible, the church, any of this stuff. I expected a certain kind of person to come to our church. I didn't expect that some of the stories I hear would hear would be from my own traditions, distortions, my own traditions, vulnerabilities there. And what I've found is things that even I have said, I recognize are heard in a unique way. An example would be stuff that I was talking about yesterday. Reform people love to talk about total depravity and just how sinful we are. Yeah. And what I've discovered is that some have either said or some have heard through certain filters because of the way it's been taught, total depravity kind of mutate into what I described as like utter depravity. So the difference between total depravity and utter depravity being total depravity is the idea that there is no one part of me that's left untouched or uncorrupted or unaffected by the fall and sin. So it's total in that respect. My will, my emotions, categorically, yeah, all over the place. And when it mutates into utter depravity, it turns into there is absolutely nothing good affirmable about me. You know, I am I'm scum, I'm a worm, I should hate myself. And it begins to give way to unhealthy, unfruitful spirituality of self-loathing and self-hatred. And I didn't realize that some ways that we reformed folks have articulated total depravity have been heard like that. And as a result of my own people giving me like real-time feedback about their stories of being in reformed campus ministries, I learned over the last two years I need to develop a total different set of sensitivities to the language that is native to our tradition that often just gets pedaled in our pulpits pretty easily and unthoughtfully. And I need to be far more nuanced and specific in this cultural moment when there's been so much damage and baggage.

Greg 40:15

Can I tell you a phrase that falls right into what you've been talking about? Dieda self.

“Die To Self” And Other Misunderstood Things

Zac Hicks 40:24

Yeah, that's interesting. Uh-huh.

Greg 40:26

That's one of my hot buttons. It's one of my soapboxes. Yeah. Because I think, you know, I've been a Christian for 50 years. I've been in church for 55 years. Probably every pastor that I've ever sat under, every lesson, every sermon, at some point, every teacher that I've consistently sat under has at some point said that the Bible tell teaches us to die to self. And it's only in the last 15 years or so that I've realized the Bible never says die to self, not in one place. Now, the Bible does say put to death the works of the flesh, that we are not to live self-centered or self-ish lives, that we're not to consider our interests as more important. And then really just from a practical standpoint, if I believe that myself now as a believer has been raised up with Christ, seated with him in the heavenly places, that I the old has gone, the new has come. Why would I want that guy to die or love your neighbor as you love yourself?

Zac Hicks 41:28

Yeah.

Greg 41:28

If you have nothing to love, then how can you love your neighbor? So I think there's a lot of unintentional damage when what we mean to say is die to the old self.

Zac Hicks 41:39

Yeah.

Greg 41:39

Die to self-centered living. Yes. But we think that, and I'm including myself because I can do the wide, you know, ranging statements because I know what I mean when I say it. I assume everybody knows what I mean when I say it.

Zac Hicks 41:52

Uh-huh.

Greg 41:52

And that's not a safe assumption.

Zac Hicks 41:54

No, it's not. Yeah, especially in our climate where we have evidence now that's been misunderstood, and those distortions have led to really horrible things, uh, self-hatred, those kinds of things. I mean, I have the best example of a song lyric that I wrote that as a result of this very thing, we changed.

Greg 42:12

Okay.

Zac Hicks 42:13

A song that I wrote called Take My Heart with Altar Fire. It has a bridge that goes like this, and I'll try to remember the original. And I know what I mean, but I recognize that the hearing matters. So it's it the bridge is fire of God, consume my heart, and burn it down to only faith, till all that's left of me is only you. Christ my glory, Christ my praise. I know what I mean by that.

Greg 42:39

And of course probably some version of Christ in me, the hope of glory.

Zac Hicks 42:44

And it definitely is riffing poetically on Galatians 2 20. Not I, but Christ who lives within me. I have died, and my life is now, I live by faith. And though I can stomach that line as it was written, it was actually a few congregants, yeah, a few really wise folks who are saying, I know how I hear that, and that hears like God doesn't like me, and he's just in a project to make Jesus, you know, and that's a distortion that gets into like ways of talking about salvation that are clothed in Christ to such an extent that the the me that God loves is actually just Jesus and not me. And that's not true, right? So, like she, being a poet herself who was responding to me to this, her name's Laura, incredible theologian and thoughtful persons, had a wonderful proposal for a beautiful lyric that fit really well. So let me say it in a way that's absolutely better. And this is what we sing now, even though my album has the old lyric on it. Okay, fire of God, consume my heart and burn it down to only faith, till all that's left of me is home to you. Christ my glory, Christ my praise. And I'm like, that's why it takes a village, and that's why songs should always have the opportunity to be rewritten if they need to.

Greg 44:08

Yeah. Is I mean, I I don't want to, I don't want to assume that people who would push back against those types of feedback are inherently not humble, but it's very, I mean, you write a song, that's very personal.

Zac Hicks 44:22

It's your artistic baby, man. Yeah. And once it's out there, somebody's telling you your baby's ugly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'm like, get out of my face.

Greg 44:31

Yeah. So there's a there's probably just this inherent defensiveness there was I went through that to be overcome.

Zac Hicks 44:38

I I went through all my like, hey, here's my theological justification why to what's left of me is only you is a worthy phrase. And I even thought about, you know, Galatians 2.20, other things, other places where we are encouraged to lay down some former fashion self, you know, in that regard. But we have to ask the question of what I is being vaporized here.

Greg 45:01

So the thing that I like about what we're talking about now is we could overanalyze every single

Why Poetry Needs Breathing Room

Greg 45:09

thing that's ever said or sung and just become insufferable.

Zac Hicks 45:13

Yes. Right. Yeah. I used to be that way. My blog was filled with theological analysis of Hillsong. Yeah. You know, and just I felt so like proud of myself that I knew my Bible so well that I could pick apart anything and go, that's not biblical.

Greg 45:26

Yeah. Right.

Zac Hicks 45:27

Yeah.

Greg 45:27

And we can do that in a way that's helpful or That is unhelpful. We can be, and but even if you have, like I feel like one of the things God's given me is a passion for being sensitive to people that I believe have been harmed spiritually by careless or wrong teaching. And I want, and I'm very, very hypersensitive to things that could be misunderstood. Okay, I could become what a friend of mine calls the word police. I definitely could become that, but also I don't want to be yayed or marginalized or ignored because it could be that when it's not necessarily that. So, like, how do we engage with the healthy version of scrutiny without it just becoming this pit that we fall into and never get out of?

Zac Hicks 46:19

Well, I think maybe the contribution I want to add to this discussion right now is genre matters. You know, I am of the camp and I'm on record as saying the theology and theological framework and communication in our songs matters and it needs to align with the scriptures. And in our songs, the genre is poetry. And sometimes I think we kill the artistry when we insist that everything be so verbally tight that it is not prone to error of interpretation. And I think that just s smacks headlong into exactly what poetry is not. Poetry as a high art form is inherently multivalent and inherently open to possible interpretations. And the Lord has said, praise me with poetry. He's written books of Psalm. This sounds strange, and somebody's gonna roast me for saying this. But there's one way that the poetic language of the Psalms could be interpreted as bad theology. Here's a good example. In the Psalms, you have this existential, I can't remember which Psalm it is, but the Psalm begins by praising God for his steadfastness in keeping his covenant. And then after that half, the psalmist then has a very pregnant but and immediately accuses God with unequivocal language in saying, but you have broken your covenant. You know, if I just take that line, that's bad theology. God is incapable of being a covenant breaker. And yet God gives the permission to a poet to say the thing poetically that's being experienced. And he's not necessarily interested in correcting that poet's theology. He's interested in letting it play out in dialogue with him in all times. And I'm not giving permission to careless theology, but I am saying that poetry opens up a vista of interpretive possibilities that seems to allow for the variance of interpretation that we need other genres of communication to step in and offer boundaries for. And whether that aids and abets aberrance or fidelity, you know? So that's that tends to be where I stand because I'm I've come around now to really value the poets and the way that they offer less clear but deep ways of talking to the Lord that I find mirrored in the Psalms and present for us to engage in when we wrestle in praise and sung prayer in a way that maybe the genre of preaching doesn't allow us that much flexibility understandably.

Greg 49:38

And the example from the Psalms that you used, where the one line in there is, but you've broken your covenant. Okay. You and I would sit here and say, Well, that's not true. Right. But you know what was true? That was a true expression of how the psalmist was feeling in that moment.

Zac Hicks 49:57

Yeah.

Greg 49:57

And we know one thing that's true about God is that he invites us to come into his presence. He's a thing. What that tells me is that the wrestle that is part of the beauty. Yeah. You know, we see it in Jacob and we see it experientially, and how some of the closest we get with God is on the other side of I don't trust you. You know, and I I think that God is secure enough to be able to withstand my distrust for a season and say, okay, yeah, wrestle with that.

Zac Hicks 50:28

Yeah. And I even think in unless like that this the example we've been entertaining is kind of an extreme one of accusing God of something that he's not, right? But there's tons of poetic devices that are anthropomorphic in the Psalms that if if we wanted to be like a hyper theologian, we say that's not true of God. He doesn't have hands or wings. Right. You know, apart from Christ, he doesn't have a body. Jesus isn't the door. Yeah, exactly. And but yet we're kind of instinctually recognize how to engage that poetic device. Yeah. And I think that word police could use a little bit more of that instinct with our worship songs when we've got good poets who are deeply thinking about and saying rich things. Right. It's not a pass for everything. No. But I think it is a widening of the interpretive field for us taking a cue from the Psalms.

Greg 51:21

I liked how you you talked about it. It these are these are elements that go along with other elements in a local church setting. And if, you know, sometimes it's not the church, the big C church, shouldn't sing this song. Sometimes it's like, you know, considering our local church culture, this is probably not a song that's gonna work for us. But thank God that it works and blesses and calls people, you know, into the presence of Jesus in other places, or vice versa, you know?

Zac Hicks 51:51

Yeah, I feel a little bit of repentance for the ways that I used to pontificate online so universally about certain songs and their lyrics. And I've come to really believe that, like you're saying, these are often more local pastoral questions that are best answered by the pastor theologians who help lead their local churches. Not everything is so black and white as being this song is bad or this song is good, this song is theologically incorrect, or this song is theologically precise. Sometimes the poetics leave it open, and I think it's most important for a worship pastor or pastor who best knows their flock to answer that question. And maybe we shouldn't put universal no's or yeses on on songs for everybody in all times and in all places.

Greg 52:41

So if you are listening as a worship leader, worship pastor, whatever your job title is, maybe because you heard

Final Thoughts & Suggested Resources

Greg 52:49

that Zac has written some things about that. You have, you've written three specific books: The Worship Pastor, Worship by Faith Alone, and Before We Gather, which I'm looking at my copy of right here, because our team went through this at our church. There are some good, I mean, you feel passionately about the job of a worship leader is not just to pick cool songs that sound good, yeah, that you know, gonna make people feel emotional things. That cool songs that sound good that make people feel emotional things, that's there's not that's not wrong, but there's a whole lot more to what the Bible says. That's right, that's right. It's incomplete. So if you're looking for resources that are going to stoke some deeper thinking and planning and stewardship of that area of service, I would really recommend that you look those up. We're gonna put those links in the show notes. Just as far as like a takeaway of people who hey, I like what y'all are talking about. And, you know, maybe I work in the church and I want to just be more conscientious about how I do my part in it. You know, you've you've put some good resources out there. What are some other things you would consider, uh, ask people to consider?

Zac Hicks 54:00

I think the things that we've danced through on in our conversations that have really affected my pastoral ministry, besides being a deep, prolonged, and perpetual student of the word of God, our family systems theory and the just the concepts of being a non-anxious presence and differentiation with connection and understanding how anxiety works, that that has changed the way I operate, you know, focusing on process, not outcome. And it's really affected the culture of our church. So I think a good dive into the main resources and even the Christian resources on family systems is helpful. And then I've learned a lot about the art, the the lost art of listening, which I think is the crown jewel of ministry in this era is listening, not talking from a lot of the story work materials that what you're talking about. So Adam Young, and we've got a couple now more uh story work-trained therapists in our church who just by virtue of the way they do what they do and the podcasts they've sent my way and the resources and books that they've sent my way, has really affected how I think about ministry and how I try to equip others for ministry. So those two things would be the things I would encourage people to explore if they found the ethos of what we're talking about, something that they resonate with.

Greg 55:25

Zac, thanks so much. This has been great for me just to get to sit and be, you know, in this space with you. And I just I really am praying already now, not sure exactly when this episode's gonna go out there, but that the people who are gonna hear it are gonna feel drawn in, like they're sitting in the room with us and just being encouraged to slow it down and to think about some of the things that we might let pass by. So, yeah, thanks for helping to steer it in that direction. This has been great. Thank you. Thanks for having me.