Someone once said that when we become preoccupied with simply knowing things about God, our spiritual lives begin to resemble trying to view the galaxies through a pair of $5 binoculars—everything vast reduced to something small and manageable. We gravitate toward teaching that shows us what to look for instead of how to look—methods that fill our ears rather than train them to hear, and screens that show us finished stories instead of handing us a camera and inviting us to create our own.
The modern church structure is often content to feed us this way. The motives are good, shaped by a hierarchical instinct to pass on knowledge and experience—something like the father/son model. And most of us are comfortable with it. There is a certain safety in having someone in leadership provide the answers. It steadies us. It simplifies things. We are drawn to the clarity of good versus evil, to black-and-white theology, to the sense of controlled order.
Yet the Gospels tell a different story. Jesus seemed remarkably at ease with disruption—his mission untidy, unpredictable, and often unsettling. And then comes the Holy Spirit, and whatever sense of control we were clinging to begins to slip. The prophetic opens up futures that don’t always appear ordered, or even sensible. And yet—there is something alive in it, something strangely compelling. It’s unsettling, yes—but also, somehow, deeply enjoyable.
“For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 1 Cor 4:15 ESV”
Fathers, then, hold a vital place in this landscape—not merely to instruct and direct, but to encourage, to listen, and to call things out of others. Scripture suggests this kind of father is rare. It takes an unusual father to step back and allow a son to leave the well-worn path, to push into the unknown and carve out something new.
A good father doesn’t stand at the edge shouting directions; he walks nearby—encouraging, steadying, wiping the sweat from a weary brow. He knows when to celebrate, throwing a party when the harvest comes, and when to quietly prepare a place of return, making up the spare room for the day his son needs to come home
Lord make us mothers and fathers like that. Not holding on to our pride or possessions but giving all generations the green light to be pioneers of the new.