Maybe you Find yourself like Rapunzel, God has given you a dream. But rather than going around singing about it, sometimes it's better to keep that dream close to the chest. Let's learn why coming up right now on the 3v Today Show. You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I'm Ryan Hill. I'm John Galantis. Thanks for joining us for the Clearview Today Show. We've got a great conversation here with our host, Dr. Abadan Shah.
If you're listening for the very first time today, we want to let you know Dr. Shah is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show. Dr. Shah, welcome. Did you really begin with Rapunzel?
Yeah, Tangled. I got a dream. That was a deep. But somewhere, Mandy Moore is very proud of you. Did Mandy Moore voice Rapunzel?
Rapunzel? Entangled? Yeah. I didn't know that. Really?
No, I didn't know that. Yeah, she's both the speaking and singing voice of Rapunzel. I'm glad by the way to let our listeners and viewers know I have no idea what they're talking about. You don't remember Mandy Moore from the 90s? She was like, I don't even know what she, I mean, she was an actor.
Probably not. I mean, I mean, I'm sure she was in that Nickelodeon era.
Okay, but the kids probably watched that. Yeah, your kids. Did you ever watch The Princess Diaries with the girls? Yes. That's Ann Hathaway, right?
Well, the you remember the mean cheerleader?
Okay. That that got ice creamed on the cheerleading uniform. That was Mandy. That was Mandy. I forgot about that.
Well, listen, I'm glad her career picked back up. Good for you, Mandy. Thanks for watching the Clearview Today. You know, Mandy, we would hate to ruin your dreams, right? And we're talking about that today, our dreams.
Unlike Rapunzel, who goes singing it from the rooftops, right? Just telling everybody they just want to see what is it, the flowing the glowing lanterns. Yes. You know, sometimes God, sometimes, Dr. Shah, God will give you a dream.
And instead of going out and telling everybody about it, what he wants you to do is sit with it for a little while. Tell us why. You got to play it close to the chest.
Well, you need to realize that when you step into a vision, whatever that vision is, just know everybody's not on the same page with you. In fact, you may have some people who are deeply, deeply opposed to what you're trying to do. I don't care if it's a church, a small business, a big business. If you are just a corporate person trying to do something good, or you are a pastor trying to revitalize a church, a ministry, you will have opposition.
So be careful. How much And how quickly you share your vision with people. Yeah. I mean, Nehemiah was given this dream, this goal, right? To rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
And so you would think that the first thing that you would want to do is go into the city and start saying, hey guys, I'm here. The walls are coming back up. Project commence. Project Nehemiah, project rebuilding. Who's with me?
Hip, hip. Yeah. And it doesn't work. It doesn't work like that. In fact, we have now began the journey.
Nehemiah leaves Persia, headed to Jerusalem. That's about a 700-mile journey. Yeah. That's a lot. We're not talking about driving.
This is not a bus or a train. This is. Going probably horseback, camelback. I don't know. The other day when we were, I think by the time we were recording this, it might have been a week ago.
We. Hiked four miles together as a team. Yeah. Right. I.
It was a long walk. I couldn't handle it. My legs were about to fall off after four miles. I can't imagine 700. My legs, my chest.
It was like my heart was beating out of my done. You know what's funny is, Dr. Shaw, we went to the gym the night before. Yes, we did. And I hit legs.
Yeah. And I remember when I was doing it, I was like, this probably wasn't smart. And then Thomas, Dr. Shaw's youngest son, walks up to me and goes, Legs, leg day before a hike is crazy. Yeah.
Especially, you know, we're hiking in the mountains. But I mean, it was good. But the time it took to do that four-mile. Hike. And granted, it was not just a straight walking down a road or a path.
This was up and down and then zigzag. If those of you who have been to Zion, I'm sorry, well, Zion National Park is very close to Bryce Canyon National Park. We went to Zion one day, Bryce the other day, and the Bryce Canyon Park, we went down the Navajo Loop and it begins with the zigzag pattern. It's crazy. And you're going down.
Yeah. I'm going to there were places in this journey.
So if you do the math. It took us, what, three and a half hours? About that, yeah. For four miles, correct? Yeah.
By the time we ended it, it was closer to five.
Okay, file. Because we were going to get off here, but then we made a wrong turn and ended up adding about a. Half a mile to what was already about four and a half. Yeah, you were closer to five miles.
So, five miles, and it took us how many hours? Four hours, right? That's about that, yeah. Yeah, so imagine that. But this guy, Nehemiah, with his entourage of people, is traveling 700 miles from Jerusalem.
I mean, you're tired, you're exhausted, you want a good bath. And I'm sure he took a bath here and there in a river, probably the Euphrates, and made his way into Jerusalem. He is stiff. He is tired. He heard.
But after three days of rest, that's it. three days of getting himself Ready again. he arose in the middle of the night. With a few men. and went to survey the destruction.
In the middle of the night, why? Because This was not a time to make the grand announcement. This was not a time to say, guess what we're going to do? By God on our side, this is where we're going. He did not do that.
Mm-hmm. Under the cover of darkness, with just a handful of people, he goes out. Why? Because he did not know at this point who to trust. Great point.
Because here's the principle: when God gives you a dream, be careful who you share it with. Because if you share it with the wrong person, they will try to quench it or they will try to sabotage it. Wow. Was that a hard lesson for you to learn? Or did you kind of grow up seeing that like in your dad's church?
No, I had to learn that lesson. Really? Yeah. See, growing up. I was not going in the ministry.
I was not going in some kind of leadership, although I was always a leader in the school setting, in the church. I was not a leader on that level. And so it was not the same. But You know, when we began this journey, even at Clearview Church. I had to learn.
That sometimes when you share certain things with certain people. You may think they're on your side, but they're not. You always want to believe that everybody's on your side, right? Right. Especially when it has to do with the things of God.
This is my church family. I'm doing something that is objectively good. It's for God's kingdom. And yet there are people who are against me. When it could be inconceivable to think that anyone would ever be against you, but there, you know, time has proven that not everybody will be your cheerleader.
Not everybody will side with you. Not everybody will be happy for you. Dr. Shaw, that's a difficult pill to swallow. Why is that the case?
Why do we encounter opposition when we're doing the things of God? Because there are some people who are very happy with the status quo because it benefits them.
Some way it is benefiting them. You take a. Company, for example, you come up with some great ideas to grow this business, this company, whether it's your company or you are in some kind of a managerial or leadership role. But when you begin to bring those changes to make things better, this person down here is looking at it going, oh, that means I'm not going to get that promotion. Oh, wait, that means.
I'm going to have to work more. or actually start working. No, I don't like this. Yeah. So you have the old guard dogs.
You know, the old guard will stand up and try to stop you. In a church setting, it happens differently. Why? Because it's changing my church. You're changing things up.
And why is that a big deal? Because it's about control. Because I'm losing control. I no longer have control over this organization. I may not have any control anywhere else in my life.
But here in this church This small church, I have control, but you coming in and shaking things up. And trying out this new vision of yours is going to take control away from me, and I cannot have that. Have you had ideas or even plans of yours quenched because you announced something too early? Oh, yes, absolutely. Really?
It happened right here in this church because this has been my only, first and only church. And now I'm coming up on 30 years, 28 right now. Two more years, it'll be 30. And when I first came as the pastor, I was very naive. Although I had great Mentors.
My dad was a pastor. Nicole's dad was a pastor. I couldn't ask for better mentors in my life at that point. Nicole's dad had unfortunately died the year before I came as a pastor. In fact, maybe eight months before I came as a pastor.
Wow. But I had never been in that driver's seat. No matter how much you can, you grew up in a. Sure situation. Or You have watched somebody, it's different when you are in the driver's seat.
Again, learn from your mentors, learn from your parents, learn from other people. But when you are in the driver's seat, it is different. And so when I got in the driver's seat and began to lay out the plan, this is where this bus is headed. It was shot down. It was shot down the same night that I revealed the plan.
How did it feel? It felt. Shocking? It I was hurt, I was angry. I was humiliated.
And the people I thought were with me We're really not with me. And the people I saw didn't care. Mm-hmm. So I was thinking, okay, this church is struggling. They don't seem to be growing.
They've hired me to help it get going. And then to realize, wait. You don't want this? Yeah. Yeah, the thing that I'm doing, I'm doing for you, I'm doing for this church so that we can all do this together.
It seems like to me or to you, it seems like a no-brainer that this is the way that we go. We should all be on the board. And yet. It seems like you're content to let this church die? You to let this church kind of go under after you're gone?
And that's whether they wanted it to die or not, I'm not sure, but they were. Pretty content with But The status quo and the eventual demise of the church. Wow. Wow. And it hurt.
It was very painful. This concept is, I feel like, difficult for a lot of listeners because most of us, when we feel called to do something or when we have a vision or we have a dream, we want to share it with people around us. But, you know, like you've said, Dr. Shah, it's not, you don't always know who's with you. You don't always know who's for you and who you can trust with the vision.
How do you know when the right time to share? is or even if there is a right time to share. There will never be the right time to share everything. Because some things are still in the process of being clarified and So you don't want to share things that may not be God's will.
So sharing everything that you think is God's vision is never realistic. Yeah, a lot of times, like we do it on this show all the time where we say, hey, guys, there's a big announcement coming. Stay tuned. We can't give you all the details right now, but just know there's something exciting in the pipeline.
Well, we've got like six or seven things in the pipeline at one time. Like I think at one time before we announced anything, we had the judges, the 30 Days Through Judges. We had the original play that we were writing. We had the Greek New Testament. We had the single great and awesome.
So if one of those things were to fall through and not happen, we could always be like, hey, guys, so we're finally ready to announce it. It's the single or it's this original play. It's something that we're doing. But never do we just say, hey, here's this big announcement that, you know, because what happens when either something doesn't work or when something, something else happens unforeseen? You always want to play things close to the chest, but in a strategic way that also keeps the excitement up.
And that's not an easy thing to do. It's not. me was uh painful hurtful and i almost quit. Like, quit in the sense of leave this church, maybe go find employment somewhere else, consider going into being like an assistant instructor because I didn't have a PhD at that point. I was in the PhD program.
No, I was not quite in the PhD program. I was applying for the PhD program.
So it would have been very easy for me to sort of. belief. And it was my dad who told me Because I shared with him and asked him to keep us in prayer because we were contemplating moving on. And I remember him telling me, you know, if you would listen to me. Would you listen to me?
And I knew when he said that, when he prefaced that with, Would you listen to me? He knew what it's going to be.
Something's coming which I may not like. And Here we go. I said, okay. It said, don't leave. Don't run.
Because if you run today, you're going to run all your life. you're going to keep bouncing. When things get tough, you're going to move. And I know pastors who've done that. Things got tough and they changed.
Things got tough and they moved along.
Now, there are some benefits to that. If truly God is calling you to do a different church, a bigger church, or a church that suits you better. To build God's kingdom in a bigger way. Of course, people get upset about the bigger, and I'm like, why? But aren't we supposed to make the biggest impact possible before we leave this world?
So, nothing wrong with that. But I don't think that's always the case. Many times people quit because the vision they had got sabotaged, or the people they trusted. turned against them or somebody who called them To that very task when they started implementing that task. They turned on them and said, No, we don't need that.
We just want you to do this.
Well, wait, didn't you hire me to do this? Yeah, but We're not interested in that. This is where you stay.
So you lied to me. No, we didn't lie to you. We just, we just, you know, and then all of a sudden, all the relationships go down the tube. The spirit is gone. The entire morale of the place just goes downhill.
It's, it's not the same.
So, for the pastor, for the ministry leader, for the Christian who's trying to avoid that, right? I've got this dream. I just had this great idea, and I genuinely think it's going to help my church, my ministry, my life, my whatu. What do I do? I.
Just keep it to myself for a little while. I'm guessing I pray, but then how do I Eventually, unveil this thing that I think is going to be good for my church. Depends on the kind of ministry that you are going into.
Okay. If it's a ministry or a An organization or a business or an institution that people are ready for that. And it seems like, and if you do not have. And you can Literally walk away and be like, okay, fine, I tried. You didn't want it.
I'm gone. If you can do that, by all means, you can jump in and say, here's the vision, here's where we're going. Maybe not the full vision, but start immediately. But if it's not there, if you do not have a fallback plan, if you do not have the vision clarified in your mind, then it's better that you don't share everything. It's better that you keep it close to your heart, not just so that you can hide it, but so that you can clarify it.
so that you can be made ready by God. To implement that vision when it's coming. I remember very vividly, I don't know if you remember this, Dr. Shaw, but one of the very first, it might have been the second or third, like worship workshop that we did. We started doing these like annual workshops.
And here lately, we've been doing twice to a year. I had this idea, and we had talked about it, and we had, we had. Kind of crafted out this vision that the worship team was going to raise the standard of excellence. And so one of the things that we talked about that I genuinely thought everyone was going to be on board with was: hey, guys, we're going to lose the music stands. We're getting rid of the music stands.
We're going to expect. excellence from each other, and we're going to memorize this music. And boy, that didn't go the way I thought. It was one person. It was one person.
But the wave that person made. It impacted everybody. It impacted everybody. And that one person was not. Not even a critical pillar of that group.
No. He was just a big noisemaker. Yes. And he made the biggest noise. He had done that before in other places.
But he made the biggest noise, and you didn't expect that. No, I didn't expect that. But I learned a valuable lesson that day, which is, you know, that vision, that even though it was a good thing, and since then, it has helped us. The music stands on stage, I think, are the bane of every worship leader's existence. Nobody likes the music stands except for the people who don't know the music.
But. Even though it was a good thing. It was a shot out of a cannon that that one person, the wrong person, was not prepared for. And they ruined the morale for everyone. Right.
And that's why you learned a lesson. You need to make sure that when you are implementing a vision like this, for one, you know. With good certainty that some of your people are ready so they can defend you.
Now, we're kind of jumping ahead here, so we're going to come back to these points later on. But just so we can. Close out at least this conversation, you need to make sure that there are other people there who actually agree with that.
So that when this person begins to shout about, but you don't realize I have I have a difficulty memorizing or I can't see, I understand, and you're you're asking me that somebody else can say, Hey, look, here's what John is saying. But you didn't have any, no, no, no, I didn't tell anybody. It was a for, I decided to surprise everyone on the day, and boy, that did not work out. Oh, yeah, it's not a pleasant surprise. I mean, there were social media posts and things like that.
I didn't remember that. And I told you, I said, You shouldn't have done that. Yeah. Am I right? That's exactly right.
That was a lesson learned. You said, you don't, one of the lessons was you don't, some this really only applied to that person. Everybody else was pretty much on board, but they didn't know it was coming. Everybody else was willing, was a person who was willing to step up to that challenge, who would have been on my side had I taken a little time to prep, had I taken a little time to pray, had I taken a little time to. Craft out how we were going to accomplish this as a team rather than, hey, everybody, guess what?
I just decided we're losing the music stands. Isn't that great? Yeah. So, you know, Nehemiah did not know who to trust.
So he does not share the vision. But he makes the trip. It says in Nehemiah chapter 2:13. And I went out by night through the valley gate to the serpent well and the refuse gate, and viewed the walls of Jerusalem which were broken down, and its gates which were burned with fire. Wow.
So he went. to inspect the damage. Just to kind of see get a lay of the land and see how bad it truly was. And you have to do that as a leader. Whether it's a in a business or an institution or a church, you have to first investigate what's happening, what's going on, what's the situation, what is the financial problem.
Why are we in the mess that we are? There needs to be some investigation. If you don't understand that, You're going to jump ahead and shoot from the hip, and more than likely you will be shot. Yeah. Yeah.
And he does not do that. He investigates. By the way, just to let you know. The walls that you see around the city of Jerusalem are not those walls. They're not the walls that David or Solomon or Nehemiah built.
The walls that we see in images and videos, and you, Ryan, and Elizabeth, went with us to Israel, and John, you, and Ellie, have gone with us. And David, our sound engineer in the back, has also gone with us. The walls that are around the city of Jerusalem now were built by the Ottoman Emperor Suleiman in the 1530s. Not Nehemiah's walls. Those are not Nehemiah's walls, but we did go by Nehemiah's walls.
Yes, we did. Yeah, that's Temple Zero, right? No, that was when we. We're walking towards The Western Wall. There were a couple of places we stopped, and I said, Get those pictures.
It was almost like a bridge that we walked over. That's right. A very small bridge. Yeah, the bridge. I remember.
Down there, you see this, looks like a path. Mm-hmm. But it's really the remnants of the wall. Yeah, you see them, and you can tell that they are ancient. Yes.
They are much older than the walls that you're surrounded by up on the surface. And they're right in the middle of the city. Yeah. The old Jerusalem, and you can see the walls. Those are the old walls going back to the time of Nehemiah.
That's incredible. Yeah. Very incredible. And so. After Nehemiah had surveyed the wall, he revealed the reason for his coming and challenged the people to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
You got to do that. Once you know this is What's going on? You may not share the whole vision. But you have to say, This is what we're going to do. We're going to try to make Christ visible.
I think that's so wise: calling the people to action. You know, even if the whole vision isn't revealed, even if you don't lay out all the specifics for every single person, there's a time to act. Yeah, right. There's a time to rally the people and say, Hey, here's where we're headed. This is big picture destination.
Let's get some buy-in. Let's go. Yeah, and the more you absolutely, and the more you grow in your leadership, the more that your people will come to trust you. I always thought that people would rebel against me if I didn't have every single little thing planned out because someone's going to ask a question: well, what do we do with this? Or what do we do about this?
And I'm going to be stumped.
So after a while, I just stopped moving forward. I can't do that.
Well, that actually happens to a lot of leaders. Pastors, managers, supervisors, business owners, it happens to them, CEOs. It happens because somewhere in the past, maybe years ago or recent past, they were shut down, they were slapped down. If somebody popped their hand, so what happens?
Now you are scared to move forward, scared to say anything. I tell our team, so don't do that. I may have stopped you here does not mean that you're stopped for good. Right. If you do something that may be a problem or a bad decision, I'll tell you, but don't stop, don't get paralyzed.
That's right. Nehemiah did not do that. He steps out. And he shares the vision. No matter what your bad experience has been, or a negative experience, or that one thing, it may not be negative as an evil negative, but it was just like, oh, I made a bad decision.
Yeah, I shouldn't have done that. I was called out for that. I'm just going to play it safe. Don't do that. Step out.
It's okay. It's okay. If whoever is your supervisor or person you're answerable to, if they feel like that was not a good one, they'll tell you. But more than likely, it's not as bad. You are just now sort of intimidated.
Yeah. And you feel like I may get in trouble again. No, not necessarily. More than likely, I would say you will not get in trouble. I would say 99% of the you won't get in trouble.
So step out. That's right. Step out. Don't let some fear. Of a past rejection or a past.
You know. Negative keep you from Making a positive today, a positive move today. That's right. Don't you show there's somebody listening to this right now, some pastor, some ministry leader, and they say, Listen, I have a dream. And I really genuinely believe God has given it to me.
And I think I know the people that I can trust. Is it safe to bring them in? Is it safe? Should I keep it to one or two people? Should I announce it to my church?
Should I do my research? What would you do if you were so convinced that this is the right way to do it? How do I go about revealing the plan safely? Having prayed, the great. Fasted, hopefully, if you can.
If you're physically able to do that, great.
Now, always start small. Start small, start with one person. And that person may not end up being the person in your close circle. Just be prepared for that. Because sometimes the person who is really close to you when you get there may not remain close to you.
When they find out what you're trying to do in a good way, you're trying to do something good, but this person who initially is very close, you know, they used to joke about this. Be careful of the person who hugs you when you first get there. They're usually checking for some soft spot.
Soft spot. Yeah. Great point. So don't do that. But slowly share and see what the reaction is.
Again, this is all based on your context. That's right. And then. See if there's another person, another person. You always work.
From from The smaller circle to a bigger circle. You always try to gain people who are the real power brokers. to understand and get the vision. You're not trying to manipulate people because they can always tell you no. And that happens.
Then you move on and go to somebody else and see who else is here. And begin to Share your vision. Yeah. But start small. Let the circle be small and then let it grow.
Amen. There's such a great trajectory for us as leaders to think about how to share and when to share and when not to share. And it's okay to have things still being clarified in your mind. It's okay to still parse out the vision as you're headed toward these goals. But move forward.
That's right. Don't get paralyzed. Don't get stuck. Continue to move forward and actualize the vision that God has given you. That's right.
A dream is a beautiful thing. And God gives people who have good, healthy, godly ambition these dreams because it's going to turn into something. A dream will turn into a vision, which will turn into reality if you do it God's way.
Well, think about Jesus. You know, he had a multitude following him. But then he had 12, and then he had three, and then he had one. He was Simon Peter.
So just know: even Jesus did that, the Son of God who came to save us. Also Did not share everything. In fact, he would often tell them, Don't tell this to anybody. Don't tell this to anybody. Can you imagine Jesus doing that?
Don't tell this to anybody. It is hard. It is hard to imagine Jesus doing that, but it's there. Yeah, scripture. But they went and blurted everything.
Yeah, they did. They listened to him. The disciples had a hard time with that. That's right. Guys, make sure you join us tomorrow.
Same time, same station. We're going to continue our conversation about leadership principles from the book of Nehemiah.
So helpful for us. Whether you're in a ministry context or if you're in the secular world, these principles will benefit you as you chart a course forward. Make sure that you're following us online on any one of our podcasting platforms and you're sharing this content with people whose life it will make a difference. And you can always support us financially at Abadanshah.com forward slash give. That's right.
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