Rare Privileges (contrib by Terry Mitchell)

Sometimes a man gets rare privileges, and I have had several. A couple of years ago a friend had two of us join him for dinner, for we were parting company after years of working together. We had a great time talking over the past and the enjoyment we had experienced in our labors as colleagues. We had gone “all out” with the meal that included French truffles and a fine French wine. The centerpiece of our evening, though, was a glass of sherry for each of us.

My friend’s uncle, who had lived in Paris in the 50’s and 60’s, had left his nephew with some bottles from his cellar that he had cultivated from his life in Paris. After years of slowly tasting the cellar, two bottles of sherry remained, and my friend decided to share one of the bottles with us.

The label on the bottle was handwritten and described when the sherry had been decanted into its current bottle. The date on the bottle was 1913, and the sherry at that date was already 75 years old. My friend was opening a sherry that had been first bottled in 1838.

In the candlelight of the dinner table, the three of us sat in awe with our glasses, looking through the amber liquid in the candle’s flicker. Each of us sat in a sense of reverence as we looked and sniffed and finally tasted.

For the next hour as we slowly sipped together, we laughed and talked about what a privilege it was to taste history. Taste the history in our lives around the history of the sherry.

Being a part of Wellspring Group has been a similar privilege. Each of our individual histories in Christ is rich and full. There is something of a privilege to walk with Jesus for most of a man’s life. And yet there is the more full privilege of walking together as friends with Him. Those who experience us as Wellspring Group, like the aged sherry, look and sniff and taste. From this small glass, the beauty and awe of the life of Christ is experienced like the three old friends enjoying the richness of life in a glass of sherry in the candlelight.

True Humility

Throughout my life I had what I now call, “delusions of grandeur.” Those delusions evaporated in a crisis of confidence in my chapter of brokenness from 2000 to 2004. I realized that, as a strong, dominant leader, I often swung between arrogance and self-doubt.

In the spring of 2003, while we were still seeking the Lord about what to do vocationally I spent 12 days in prayer and fasting in the North Georgia Mountains. In the midst of doubts and questions about my life, gifts, and ministry, God began to reveal his heart and something of his plans for my life. I was overwhelmed by how he met me. Out of the winter of my life he was bringing forth spring. Out of the darkness he was bringing forth light. In those twelve days, I received the foundational stones in the vision and mission that is now Wellspring Group.

There was still much work to be done in my heart for the foundation to be laid well and the building to begin. Through repentance, forgiveness and grace, God exposed the pain and lies that drove the arrogance and the self-doubt. I began to more clearly hear his voice of love and validation for me as his son regardless of my performance. Out of knowing his love, my desire to obey grew. I began to move more fully and with greater trust into my part of his Story. At key points men whom I respected spoke strongly and deeply into my life, affirming what God had put into me and was bringing forth through me. The swings between arrogance and self-doubt continued to narrow.

From my own life and the experience of working with many leaders like me, I long to see leaders and leadership teams live in the freedom of true humility. This comes from deeply knowing, in our whole heart, who we truly are as men and women created in the image of God, redeemed by Christ, and being restored to the part we’ve been given to play in God’s Larger Story. When we live from that place of knowing, there is little room for arrogance or self-doubt, only a deep sense of gratitude and awe of who God is and who he is making us to be. We fall to our knees in humility and worship.

As I look back on the last seven years since we began Wellspring Group, I am often in tears as I see God doing far more than I could ever have imagined during my crisis of confidence. We are seeing many men and women come into the beauty and strength of knowing who they truly are and living in the parts they have been given to play in God’s Larger Story.

This is far more satisfying than any of “delusions of grandeur” ever could have been. I am once again in awe of his grace.

Wellspring Group

Seven years ago this summer I was beginning my graduate school program in Christian Counseling at Philadelphia Biblical University. Looking back I was in a critical phase of what I now call my chapter of brokenness from the summer of 2000 through the summer of 2004.  It was a painfully profitable experience out of which came much of who we are and what we do as Wellspring Group. I will be forever grateful to the students and faculty that loved me well during those two intensive summers.