Intimacy, Authenticity, Simplicity

In May 2021, I sat alone in my favorite place on earth: a hermitage crafted for spiritual refuge on a lake in the Minnesota northwoods. I’d just kicked off a three-month sabbatical—my first since planting CityVision Church (now Park Community Church, EFCA) in St. Louis Park, Minnesota in 2012—and this seemed like a good enough place to start. 

I had a problem, and sabbatical gave me a chance to fix it—or, for God to fix me—before it was too late. 

Alright God, I prayed from the dock of the lake. It’s time to get serious. I’m going to do this holy, silent retreat for three days. I’ll fast, read, journal and pray. You can deal with all my sin patterns, and I’ll come back a holy, better man.  

For an hour, I sat on the dock and waited. Surrounded by the fragrance of the Minnesota pines, serenaded by the gentle ripples of the water, I felt…nothing. 

God, I’m here to give myself to you. I’m here to do what You want me to do. Fix me, so I can continue to serve You. 

As I tried to will myself to holiness, all I felt was restlessness. No transformative realizations, no spiritual breakthroughs, just the fruit of all the sin patterns I carried with me. My mind drifted to the water. 

I wonder if the crappies are biting, I thought. I haven’t caught crappies here for years.

As a kid, I’d come to this same spot—the hermitage shared a property with a camp I grew up attending—and on multiple occasions, my dad and I had caught a ton of crappies. Those were some of my best childhood memories. As an adult, I’d tried to recreate those early fishing experiences, but I always came too late into the season. The crappies were never biting. 

Man, I want to go fishing. 

But I hadn’t come to the lake to fish. Sure, I’d packed my pole, but that was only as a (potential) reward after all the fasting and praying. After God had fixed me. Gritting my teeth, I shoved aside the nostalgia and walked back to the hermitage to start a fire. As I aimlessly prodded at the logs, I turned my mind back to prayer. 

Alright God, now what? What do you want from me? 

Expecting to hear more of what I’d been telling myself—”pray, fast, read, repent, journal”—the answer that came back surprised me. 

“What do you want, Andrew?” 

Burning out 

I was supposed to go on sabbatical in Summer 2020, but it seemed like the wrong time. 

Beyond the pandemic—and all the complex church decisions that came with it—unrest dominated our city following the death of George Floyd just six miles from our church building. Unanswered questions filled my inbox as I attempted to balance the church’s expectations (“Where do we stand on this? What are we going to do about this?”) with my own inadequacies. 

I grew up as a baseball-loving pastor’s kid in Grand Marais, Minnesota. I didn’t know the first thing about wrestling through my own racial biases or navigating a pandemic in a local church—but I couldn’t say that from the pulpit. I had to be better than that.  

To add to the stress, my father-in-law—who was also a personal hero and pastoral mentor to me—had just passed away following an out-of-the-blue cancer diagnosis. In a span of four months, he’d gone from “perfectly healthy” to just…gone. I officiated his funeral the day before COVID lockdowns started.  

I tried to stay positive as I pastored through the pandemic, but my heart was consumed with personal grief and the weight of trying to support my wife and three kids. I postponed my sabbatical until 2021. 

A year later, it still felt like the wrong time. Our church was still trying to figure out our identity post-pandemic. On top of that, we were in the middle of sending out one of our pastors to revitalize a dying congregation in northern Minnesota, and we needed to backfill his position. I couldn’t leave for three months. 

In between services on a Sunday morning in March 2021, I ran into Linda Gunderson, one of our members, long-time ReachGlobal missionary, and—unfortunately for me—one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met.  

“Hey Andrew,” she said. “How are you?” 

Dang it, I thought. 

For anyone who knows her, you know that lying to Linda Gunderson is like trying to outsmart Tim Keller. I couldn’t fake it with someone so genuine.  

“Honestly,” I said. “I just feel really apathetic.” 

Linda’s eyes lit up. “I just attended a seminar on burnout, and apathy was one of the key giveaways. Can I send you the PowerPoint?” 

“Sure,” I said.  

“You know, if you’re feeling apathetic, there’s probably a level of burnout,” Linda said. “I think you might need to take your sabbatical.” 

After reading through Linda’s PowerPoint (“Oh my word, I feel all of that”), I reluctantly passed it along to the elders of the church, still wrestling through the guilt of asking for time away. 

“Linda thinks I should take my sabbatical,” I told them. “What do you think?” 

After scanning the PowerPoint, the elders came to a quick consensus.

Back to the lake 

Back at my “holy campfire” in the northwoods, I struggled to understand what I’d just heard from God—or, at least, what I thought I’d heard. 

That can’t be Your question, God, I prayed. “What do I want?” It doesn’t matter what I want! 

Again, I sensed a response from God—not an audible voice, per se, but a distinct impression. 

“Don’t you care what your kids want?” He said. “Wouldn’t you be a bad father if you never considered their desires? I’m your dad, Andrew. Don’t you think that I care?” 

I hesitated. I reached for the “Sunday school answer,” then stopped myself. 

No, I prayed honestly. I don’t think You care. I think this is a one-sided relationship where I’m here to serve You, period, and You couldn’t care less about what makes me happy. 

The words almost felt wrong as they flooded my mind. 

“So, what do you want, Andrew?” 

Well, if I’m honest with You, I don’t want to fast and pray. I want to fish and eat.  

“OK then,” I sensed God saying. “Go get some brats. Hop in the canoe with your fishing rod and go see what happens.”

So, that’s what I did. I drove to town, bought some brats, loaded up the canoe and caught some crappies. They were biting! It was awesome. Sitting in the middle of the lake, I could tangibly feel God’s presence with me. I could see Jesus sitting in the front of my canoe—smiling at me, catching crappies with me, enjoying the moment with me. Like a friend. 

After paddling back to shore, I started another fire and sunk my teeth into a juicy brat—and Jesus stayed with me. Sitting there, instead of feeling a need to “bow down in worship,” the Holy Spirit reminded of Jesus’ words in John 15: 

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends.” (John 15:15a) 

Jesus is my Friend, I thought. I can be real with Him. I can be “normal” with Him.  

God is my Father. He delights in me. He enjoys spending time with me. 

The Holy Spirit is my companion. He’s not just there to convict me of sin. He has my back. 

And all of them are here with me, enjoying this moment, having fun. 

For three days, I enjoyed God as Father in the same way I enjoy time with my kids. I still read and prayed like I’d planned, but it was so much more than that. It was intimate. It was relational. My “holy, silent retreat” transformed from a spiritual discipline into a relational experience. Or maybe, relational awareness was the discipline.  

Instead of fasting like I’d planned, I feasted on the presence and pleasure of God, in a spirit of authentic friendship and intimacy. I read when I wanted to read. I ate when I wanted to eat. I fished when I wanted to fish. And it all felt…good. For the first time in what seemed like years, I felt free. 

God loves me. He enjoys being with me. 

In this newfound freedom, I felt my guilt wash away along with the pressure to perform. I opened my journal and wrote, more authentically this time: 

“Will I discover that I actually love God—His Word, His ways, His people—while I’m on sabbatical? I know I used to, but I’m not sure anymore. I’ve neglected my spiritual life and substituted it for church work. With church work now on pause for three months, will I discover I still believe this stuff, or has it just become a job to provide a living? Have I used God? Have I used the Bible and Jesus’ people to achieve a new American dream that I abandoned when I first felt called into ministry? If God has become a means to an end—if I’m using Him, His Word and His people to get a paycheck or feed my ego, or as a platform for attention or perceived importance—I must quit.” 

Fearfully and wonderfully made? 

Before I’d left for my retreat in the northwoods, I met with a pastoral counselor. After he spent (more than) a few minutes listening to me share my soul—my comparison to other pastors, the weight of expectations, my sense of shortcoming—he had a suggestion. 

“I want you to read Psalm 139,” he said.  

Well, that’s lame, I thought. 

I grew up in the church. I already knew Psalm 139. It was the passage used for women’s ministry, children’s ministry and the Pro-Life Movement. I didn’t have a problem with any of that, except that none of it applied to my current situation. 

I’m not a woman. I’m not a kid anymore. I don’t need a refresher on the sanctity of human life. Why should I read this passage?  

“I want you to make a list of all the ways God has made you uniquely you,” the counselor said. “And then think about the ways you’ve been violating that by trying to be someone you’re not.” 

Reluctantly, I’d agreed to the assignment (“I’ll do it, but it won’t mean anything to me”), and then forgot about it—that is, until I was sitting around the campfire, belly full of brat, feasting on relational intimacy with Jesus.  

As the sun set and stars filled the clear spring sky, I pulled out my headlamp and opened my Bible to Psalm 139: 

Reading that passage at the campfire, immersed in the presence of God, a new thought hit me: I’ve never actually read this passage for myself. For decades, I’d heard that passage read over and over, taking it for granted, but not once did I ever apply it to my own life. 

Did I actually believe that? Did I actually think I was “fearfully and wonderfully made”? Could God actually love me as I was? Did He love the person He created? At the time, I didn’t think so. I thought God loved the holy, cleaned-up version of Pastor Andrew I was trying to be—for Him and others—not the broken, burnt-out person I actually was.  

Maybe I am violating myself, I thought. 

As I reflected more on the psalm, God made it clear He actually liked me. He loved me as I was. He created me the way He did for a specific reason, for His glory. I didn’t need to be like other pastors. I didn’t need to keep believing I’d be a better person if I was more like John Piper or Matt Chandler or John Mark Comer. Because in doing that, I was telling God that His creation wasn’t good. 

Intimacy, authenticity, simplicity 

I left my retreat in the northwoods with three words (well, technically four, but I narrowed it down because it was easier to remember): intimacy, authenticity and simplicity. 

Intimacy. For so long, I viewed God not as my Father or Friend, but as my employer—and who wants to spend time with their boss when they’re off the clock? I wanted to take vacation from God, not with Him. Thankfully, He wanted something more. He wanted to spend time in intimate relationship with me, experiencing joy, freedom and presence together as Father and son. He wanted to fish and eat with me, as my Friend—and it’s exactly what my soul needed. 

Authenticity. Intimacy with God, self and others released me to be my authentic self—to live and pastor as the “Andrew” that God fearfully and wonderfully made. I began asking questions like, “What is unique about me? How did God design me? What does it look like to be a sanctified version of myself?” and through that, began to embrace who I am: Adventure over study. Questions over answers. Curiosity over conviction. Journey over destination.  

Simplicity. It took authenticity to ask, “Who am I?” and simplicity to say, “No, I can’t do that. That’s not how God has wired me.” Life is so complex. I don’t have the capacity to take an informed stance on every debate, and that’s OK. If my authentic self, my God-given wiring, is not to be the most intellectual or convicted person, I probably shouldn’t be writing statements about our church’s stance on “x, y and z.” Someone should—there’s certainly a time and place for that—but it probably shouldn’t be me. I tried, and it wasn’t pretty. 

I wasn’t doing myself any favors by trying to be John Mark Comer or Tim Keller. I was violating God’s creation! I needed to simply—in the freedom of relational intimacy—accept and embrace who God created me to be. 

Back to the pulpit 

When I returned from my sabbatical in August 2021, I stood in front of our congregation and read Psalm 139. By the grace of God, I shared about the burnout I’d felt and how it pushed me away from God. I told the “brat story” and the freedom I found in God’s presence and love. In Fall 2022, I led our church through a series called, “Soul Work: Moving towards greater intimacy, authenticity and simplicity with God, self and others.” 

Today, our church is a lot more hungry and honest than we used to be. We’re also a lot messier—but I think the mess is allowing us to actually be seen, known and loved by God, ourselves and others. There’s a lot less “faking it” and a lot more authentic hunger for the righteousness of Jesus rather than the false righteousness of religion. 

Although I’m far from perfect—and still regularly affected by comparison and expectations—I pastor with much more joy and freedom. I operate more from a place of deep confidence in God’s love. I’m more ready to give grace to myself and others on the messy, non-linear journey of following Jesus.  

God wants His sons and His daughters to live with security. Eternal security, yes, but also to know that we are in His presence, in His arms—that we have His love and don’t earn it by what we do or lose it by what we don’t do. 

To live securely in an age of insecurity—created by a culture of soul-sucking comparison, expectation, deconstruction and accusation—we must embrace who God created us to be, and resist violating ourselves and God by trying to be someone we’re not. 

My appeal to you, fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow pastors and ministry leaders, is this: Trust God’s unique and personal love for you. He cares about you. He delights in you. He enjoys just being with you, regardless of what you’re doing—or not doing—for Him. As you pursue deeper intimacy with Him, you might just hear Him say, “My son, my daughter, my friend, what do you want?”