“If you want to hold up the Apostle Paul as a model for supporting yourself and doing ministry at the same time, then please remember that Paul wasn’t married.”

Excellent point, and thanks for the reminder. Something I never understood was this, which most seem to have forgotten in ubf: SB is single. She never married. Why then are all ubf sheep required to go through the arranged marriage process?

“I have never seen a person who can actually support himself and plant a church and be a good spouse and parent at the same time.”

This is true. This is why church planting (or loosely “pioneering” in ubf terms) really has to be done by the whole local church body. Our church just went through that about a year ago. I was impressed with the open communication and community involvement in the effort. It was amazing how it all came together. Working together in that instance was beautiful because no one was in charge of it, dictating the outcome. Clearly the Spirit was leading, bringing about His renewal for many people.

Activity like this is SO refreshing and edifying. I experienced a lot of things in ubf, good and bad, but I cannot recall ever being refreshed and edified. In ubf I felt so drained and empty, but I feel so full now!

“Brian, the recurrent theme in all of the UBF spiritual heritage point is this: UBF is not really about doing these things, but about manipulating and forcing others to do these things and making them feel guilty if they don’t.”

Correct. The higher up the “spiritual order” you go, the less you have to do. I experienced that the invisible guilt-trip increases however. As I did less and less (as I become a shepherd, then fellowship leader, then director) the gap between my reality and my perception of myself grew larger and larger. I claimed to be doing so much ubf activity, but the reality was that I was just pretending. My reports back to ubf were glory stories, which did not honestly tell the story of what we were doing.

I was told not to worry about this, but continue to be a “good example” and find ways to fluff up my numbers. I was told to have “one to one” with stuffed animals, for example, to avoid the shame of reporting “0” 1:1’s back to HQUBF. (btw I was so bad at manipulating other people that even my stuffed animals “ran away” :)

And so, yes, you were correct back in 2004 Chris, when you told me that I was living a special kind of ubf life as a director, a lifestyle that did not match the hamster wheel activity that most sheep and shepherds experienced. I denied it at the time, but that disconnect is one reason why I could so passionately defend the ubf heritage at that time. I claimed in 2004 that ubf was the best, and that I was free. In some sense, I was free form the daily magnifying glass that I had expereinced in Toledo for 16 years. It was foolish of me to claim my director life in Detroit had any resemblence to my sheep life back in Toledo.

The seminary conducted an in depth study and found that most of the seminarians were able to do two of these things pretty well, but no one could actually do all three. One of the three areas of life was sacrificed. In many cases it was the family.

If you want to hold up the Apostle Paul as a model for supporting yourself and doing ministry at the same time, then please remember that Paul wasn’t married.

I have never seen a person who can actually support himself and plant a church and be a good spouse and parent at the same time. Perhaps they can make it appear that they are doing all three pretty well for a while. But if you look at them closely, over time you will see a great deal of stress and unresolved conflict and relational problems taking their toll. It’s a recipe for disaster.