"What comes to your mind when you hear the name Steven Furtick?" the interviewer asked the renowned theologian. Hey, they''re talking about me! I sprinted back into the room where the video was playing, secretly excited to be the center of attention. I had read this guy''s book about ministry in seminary, so I was rather flattered he knew my name. We had never even met. I had found this particular interview the way you discover most YouTube videos--by free-falling into the abyss that is the "recommended for you" sidebar. After I''d clicked it, I''d walked away to get dressed for church. I could still hear the interview in the background, but I wasn''t really listening. Until, out of nowhere, I heard that sweetest sound of all: my own name.
It''s always great to be recognized. Except when it''s not. "What comes to your mind when you hear the name Steven Furtick?" The theologian sighed and dropped his head, signifying that the mere consideration of my name was wearisome. That got the crowd chuckling. Apparently they knew he wasn''t a fan. Long, pained pause. Agonized grimace. Bone-chilling stare.
Then the verdict. "Unqualified." He delivered the four syllables with a disgust that underscored the gravity and finality of his pronouncement. Only the gavel sound effect was missing. No elaboration. No explanation. No qualifiers. My whole life and ministry summed up with a single word.
And abruptly the interview moved on. Unqualified? That word started the wheels spinning in my head. It was strange because part of me wanted to come to my defense (against YouTube?), but the other part was thinking, Friend, you don''t know the half of it. Yes, I struggle--with my temper, with my focus, with my motives, with my eating habits, with my prayer life, with my state of mind. And that list doesn''t even scratch the surface. I know my weaknesses and faults better than anyone. I don''t need to listen to an online interview to feel disqualified. Hardly a day goes by that I''m not seized by the sensation that I have no business doing what I''m doing.
That I''m in over my head. That I don''t deserve any of my blessings or opportunities. Am I unqualified? This book is the answer to that question. I''m not writing it in reaction to that random interview on YouTube. I''ve been asking myself that question my whole life. And maybe you have too. When I started the journey that lies behind this book, I wanted to finally figure out how to respond to that question within myself. I wanted to know if that theologian was correct.
If the whispers of doubt that regularly rattle through my head are inner demons to be ignored--or warning bells to be heeded. If I should shoulder my responsibilities with confidence in my calling--or panic and hide before I mess everything up. At one point or another, you''ve probably felt unqualified. Maybe you didn''t have the dubious privilege of being informed of the fact via YouTube, but you knew it was true nonetheless. I think we all secretly fight feelings of inadequacy, insufficiency, and incompetence. We wonder whether we really measure up. We fear we are not "enough"--whatever that means in our particular situations. Maybe it''s in your character.
There is a flaw, a crack, a deficiency that you try your hardest to hide. It could be lust. It could be anger. It could be addiction. Even if it''s in the past, you may live in secret fear that one day it will come back in fury and destroy everything you are building. Maybe it''s in your role as a parent. At the workplace you have everything under control. You can buy and sell and trade with the best of them.
But your home life is another story. You have no idea how to raise your teenager, and you are feeling dangerously unprepared. Or maybe you know something deep in your soul is propelling you into ministry. Not necessarily full-time but definitely something significant. You are supposed to be a leader, a decision maker, a risktaker. But your track record is far from spotless. And the thought of putting yourself out there is petrifying. What if you fail? And what if your failures shipwreck others along the way? Many people live their entire lives fighting these contradictions.
They deal constantly with voices in their heads telling them that they don''t qualify, that they will never qualify, that they are totally, epically disqualified. I wrote a book called Crash the Chatterbox about how to sort through negative thoughts. But this book isn''t about just changing what rattles around in our minds or what comes out of our mouths. It''s about understanding who we really are now in order to be who we are capable of becoming. It''s about ruthlessly peeling back the prejudices and assumptions we''ve made about ourselves. It''s about letting God be our source of sufficiency. I have good news. If you look at the great men and women of Scripture, you find one common denominator: they were all unqualified.
God has a habit of picking people who have been passed over. Pass or Fail Have you ever thought about who--or what--truly has the ability to qualify you? Who has the ultimate right to determine if you are a success or a failure? It''s not as simple as it sounds. For example, think about the first qualification system most of us experience in life: grades. Schools invest huge amounts of money and manpower into developing standards and tests. They attempt to summarize students'' academic progress with a universal system of numbers or letters. Maybe you''ve been out of school for a while, but do you remember when your universe revolved around grades? Or maybe it didn''t but your parents thought it should, in which case report-card day was probably terrifying. It was basically a preview of Judgment Day minus the cherubs and big white throne. How did you feel when you got a passing grade? Probably relieved.
Your parents were happy. Life was good again. But think about it. Did that grade mean you learned the material? Or just that you were good at taking tests--or maybe cheating on them? Even more important, did your grade mean you actually knew how to apply what you had learned? Or maybe you got a failing grade. Did that mean you would fail in life? Did the fact that you dated the American Revolution before Columbus or forgot the quadratic equation or thought the periodic table had something to do with punctuation really doom you to an inferior existence? Most of us have been around long enough to know that that little letter or number is important, but it''s not the final word. Not even close. History is filled with successful academic dropouts, from Abraham Lincoln to Walt Disney to Bill Gates. This whole business of judging and assessing and qualifying one another doesn''t stop with school.
It is deeply ingrained in our culture and psyche. Just look at our clichés. Pass the test. Make the cut. Fall short. Measure up. Make the grade. Earn your stripes.
Pay your dues. We constantly analyze and summarize each other. We compare people to our standards--spoken or unspoken--to see how they measure up. Then we accept them or reject them; we praise them or criticize them; we revere them or ridicule them. We all secretly administer exams in the university of our own opinions. But just like grades in school, our evaluations don''t usually tell the whole story. They are artificial, limited attempts to quantify something that can''t really be reduced to a number, a letter, or a word. But we keep trying.
Because we''re human, and that''s what we do. Basically, we tend to qualify people based on character and competency. Character refers to who we are. Not just our names or nationalities, but our personalities, our morals, our values, our emotional makeup, our likes and dislikes, our tastes, our manners--the list goes on. Competency refers to what we do. It''s the complex sum of our training, achievements, talents, activities, and potential. It''s about how good we are at what we do and about how much we accomplish. Our competency is usually much more at the forefront than our character.
What we do makes headlines. It fills the pages of our résumés. It is so intricately connected to our identity that we often think it is our identity. Sooner or later, though, our character gets the last laugh. People might hire us and use us for what we do, but they accept us and like us for who we are. And ultimately, of course, who we are determine.