Beyond the Church Facade: Sam Allberry

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Beyond the Church Facade

Guest:Sam Allberry

From the series:Gospel Sanity for a Weary World (Day 2 of 3)

Air date:February 11, 2025

Sam:In our culture right now, I honor myself; and I confess your sins. I try to come across as virtuous and impressive, and I call out and accuse everybody else who’s doing something wrong; and that’s why we’re so miserable. The Bible is flipping that around, and saying: “Now, don’t worry about whether you’re being honored; worry about whether other people are being honored,” and “Don’t confess their sins; be most concerned about your own.” It creates such a different environment when we do that.

Ann:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave:And I’m Dave Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave:Let’s confess our sins to one another. You go first, Sam.

Sam:Okay; how long have we got? How long is this show?

Dave:No, we’re not going to do that. But it is something we’re going to talk about with you, Sam, because you talk about that in your book, You’re Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Weary Churches. We had a great discussion yesterday, talking about: “What does gospel culture even look like in a church?” We should be the most welcoming and inviting—

Ann:—even your definition of gospel—say what that is again.

Sam:Four words—it’s Paul’s definition; Romans 15:7—

Dave:I like that Ann was trying to give it to you though; that’s great.

Sam:The world doesn’t need my definition of the gospel; but Paul says, “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you.” Paul has spent all those chapters in Romans unpacking our sinfulness, the justification by faith alone that we have in Christ; but he can compress all of that into: “Christ has welcomed you.”

Ann:That’s the gospel:—

Sam:That is the gospel.

Ann: — “Christ has welcomed you.” That’s good.

Dave:In some ways, we’re afraid—that if Christ saw; or especially, a church member or somebody, even our family—really saw the darkness in us, He wouldn’t welcome us. Obviously, that’s the gospel: He does see, and He welcomes us. But I think that’s one of the reasons we sort of hide our sin—we put on a mask; we pretend—and yet, in your book, you start talking about honesty and honor. Take us there.

Sam:The you that Christ has welcomed is the real you—not the finessed Instagram-version you—but the real you. He sees it all; and He’s welcomed you with all of your mess, and need, and sin. He’s welcomed that you into Himself.

Ann:Not the cleaned-up version, at all!

Sam:Not the cleaned-up; no, actually the cleaned-up version He’s not interested in because that’s fakery anyway. We need a real Jesus for real sin.

Dave:You say—I love this quote—I don’t if you remember writing this; I don’t know how long ago you wrote it—you said, “Church should be the place we sprint to when things are at their worst.” What a great phrase: “sprint to.” It’s usually: “sprint away”—not walk away—”run as fast as I can from those holy people over there, because I will not fit in there.”

Ann:I’m thinking of your brother, who was not a believer, always saying—and people have said this—“Oh, the roof would cave in if I walked in; because there’s so much sin.” You’re saying, “No, the welcome mat would be out.”

Sam:Yeah; referring back to another conversation we had for a different episode: “You’re not that special. We’ve got some professional sinners in here. You’re an amateur, mate; so come on in.” Jesus has welcomed the real us. And so it is the real us that needs to show up to church each week to re-receive that welcome.

Therefore, what we’re trying to encourage is for all of us to be open with the Lord and honest with Him; and therefore, open with each other and honest with each other about what’s actually going on in our hearts. That is a biblical command James says in James 5:16: “Confess your sins to one another”—not just confess your sins to God, but to one another too—that’s a bit scarier.

Dave:Oh, yeah.

Sam:God knows all the worst things about me already; you don’t.

Dave:And I can do it in private [confessing sins to God].

Sam:Yeah, I can actually fool you guys—I can’t fool Him—but I can lose face with you people.

Ann:I think the next part’s so fascinating: “…so that…”

Sam:“Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another—so there’s two parts to this—I confess my sins to you; you pray for me. You don’t try to fix me; you pray for me that [I] may be healed. In other words, God wants to crack open our hearts to receive more of His healing presence; and that won’t happen if we’re not honest with each other.And the reason is this—I’m fairly sure this is the reason this happens—when I confess my sins to you, several things are going on at the same time:

One is: I’m not pretending. I’m trusting you with the reality of what’s going on in my life: “Actually, this is what I’m dealing with right now in my heart.” As I confess my sin, I’m putting my sin into words before you, which means I’m naming them. I’m seeing them in the cold light of day; I’m not euphemizing what I’ve done. I’m seeing sin in its starkest true-light-of-day form; and I’m going, “When I put it that way, why do I get drawn to that? It’s actually an ugly thing.”

It helps our relationship with our own sin to confess it. It’s a way of taking responsibility for it. In the Bible, naming something is a way of putting it in its proper place; exercising some responsibility for it. Just the act of putting my sin into words before you is significant.

If you are a mature Christian, you hear my confession; and your heart is one of wanting to reassure me of the truth of the gospel. You’re wanting to say, “Thank you for being honest with me. You didn’t have to trust me with that, but you did. That means a lot, and I admire you for your honesty. And I want to remind you there’s no condemnation in Christ, which means there’s no condemnation from me. I can’t condemn you for a sin if Christ isn’t condemning you for it.”

One of the reasons that is so healing is because your response to my confession makes the gospel a bit more real to me, because I’m now seeing it embodied in the way that you are treating me. You not condemning me makes it slightly easier for me now to believe that God isn’t condemning of me.

John makes the same point in 1 John 1:7. This is a verse that has been so defining for our church; it says: “If we walk in the light”—which in the context is: coming clean, being honest—“If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sins.” If I’m honest with you, two things happen:

One is we have fellowship with one another. Fellowship only really kicks in when we’re honest. Fellowship is not just two or three Christians in the presence of coffee. Fellowship happens when we actually open up to one another, and trust one another; because that’s when we feel like, “Oh, man, he’s just confessed this sin to me. I matter to him; he now matters more to me.” We have a stake in each other; now, that’s fellowship.

The second thing that happens is the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. In other words, the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus is more of a felt reality to me when I’m confessing my sin to you.

Ann:Dave, have you done that with other men where you have experienced that?

Dave:Oh, I’ve almost said it a thousand times; because I’ve sinned a thousand times in the last two weeks. No, I mean you [Ann] have, too, with women, I’m guessing. We have, even with couples.

Ann:—and with each other.

Dave:I think the fear is, when you hear that, you’re like, “Who wouldn’t do that?”—it’s like, “I’d run into that,”—but we don’t. No, we are afraid of that.

Sam:So one of the things we need to do is to think, “Okay, what can I do to be the kind of person that makes it easy for someone else to confess their sins to?”

Dave:Yeah, good question.

Sam:One of the ways is to think, “Well, no one’s going to confess anything to me that is beneath me. They may be confessing a sin I’ve never been tempted by, but I know my own heart. I’m not going to be someone who looks down. I’m not going to be shockable, because I know my own heart’s capacity for sin.” Paul calls himself: “the chief of all sinners”; “the worst of all sinners.” If we each have that posture, we become quite safe to other people. Let’s just assume we’re always the biggest sinner at the table—whatever the table is—that, I think, will make us easier people for others to be honest with.

Ann:Why don’t we, as people, do that?

Sam:Because I think we’re in protective/defensive mode, which again means that we’re taking our eyes off the welcome of Jesus.

The other thing we can do is we can be the person who goes first.

Dave:I think that’s huge.

Sam:It is; and we need to do it with wisdom. What I’m not saying is every Christian needs to confess everything to everyone else; but all of us need, at least, one person in our life who knows what’s really going on in our hearts, what we’re actually wrestling with.

And it may not be wise with someone just to start at the deep end. You may want to start at the shallow end and kind of test the waters a bit. I might say to catch them after the service: “How’s your week?” [Their response]: “How’s your week?”—I may not spill all the beans; but I may just say, “Oh, my week’s actually been a bit up and down.” Now, I’m putting a little bit on the table for them; and they have the freedom to take it or not to take it. They could turn, and say, “What’s been going on? What’s happened this week? What hasn’t been great?”; or they may choose not to take it at all, but that’s fine.

I haven’t dumped anything on them that they don’t know what to do with; but I’m giving them an opportunity, if they want, to ask more. And then, I might be honest, and say: “I’ve just felt like I’ve been very impatient this week,” or “I’ve seen my own irritability. I’d love your prayers for that.” That’s an on-ramp—I’m not telling someone my deepest darkest secret temptation or sin—but I’m starting to put the conversation/our relationship onto a more honest footing.

Ann:If someone did that with me at church, and they confessed that, I would admire that person so much.

Sam:—because they’re doing something that is Christian.

Ann:Yes, and it’s gutsy. It’s bold; it’s courageous; and it’s biblical.

Sam:Yeah; the Christian thing isn’t pretending we haven’t sinned to keep up appearances. The Christian thing is admitting we have sinned. I say this to myself, because I need to hear it so often: “Growth in the Christian life/maturity in the Christian life is needing Jesus more, not needing Jesus less.”

I don’t need to hide the fact from other people my own ongoing need for Jesus; because otherwise, I’m pretending. There’s appropriate ways for pastors to help set that tone—not by using the pulpit as my personal confessional and spilling all my darkest beans to the whole congregation—but to have a posture and tone that invites that/that finds appropriate ways of communicating my ongoing need for Christ.

This coming Sunday, as we’re recording, I’ll be preaching on

James 3 and the use of the tongue. I’m already thinking of ways I’m feeling convicted. I will find some way of sharing, in the past, in the sermon how this text has landed on me—made me more aware of flippant things I’ve said that have had an impact I didn’t intend them to have, but need to take responsibility for and be more careful with what comes out of my mouth—or my thumbs, given doing this today. So there are appropriate ways for pastors to kind of set the table for that kind of conversation.

Ann:You did that today with me, Sam—it wasn’t confessing a sin—but you shared with me how—I can’t remember what book and how you said it—but you were pondering and wondering, “Is this any good?”—even any doubts that you could have. And you’ve written multiple books.

That in my soul—that confession that you made to me—was such a life-giving breath of air; because I’ve just finished a manuscript—Dave and I have—that’s coming out in May. I’m petrified that it’s: one, terrible; and two, that I was too honest. Again, I’m afraid of what people will think of me. And so by you just making that admonition, it’s a confession of: “Here’s what I can think after a book’s done…” I was like, “Me too! That’s exactly what I’m feeling.” And I haven’t really shared that with many people; but because of your—you took the first step and just opened up some vulnerability—that allowed me to share my own. And it’s exactly what can happen at church.

Sam:It’s a unique, if not always easy, privilege that a pastor has to try to set that tone and make it to go first. We meet on Wednesday nights as well at our church—and have some teaching, and Q&A, and discussion—and sometimes, depending on the topic—the teaching theme, whatever it is—1 John calls it “walking in the light”; coming clean. We use that terminology at church.

That verse has been so defining; we will say, “Let’s have a time of walking in the light. Microphones are available.” When we do that,

the unwritten rule is: “The pastor goes first.” I was teaching on a passage in Acts, where in that particular passage—I forget which chapter it was—now, the apostles had been particularly bold in sharing the gospel. I said, “I’ve got a situation that happened recently, where I had an opportunity to share something in the gospel; and I bottled it because I was nervous of what people would think of me. I’ve come away from this text, thinking, ‘I need to pray for boldness. Paul asked people to pray he would be bold. Even Paul needed other people to pray for that. I’m realizing how much I need you, my church family, to pray for me so that next time that kind of situation comes up, I might be bold. Would you pray for me in that?’”

Again, there’s appropriate and inappropriate ways for pastors to do that. There’s certain things a pastor shouldn’t just blurt out in front of the congregation; but it’s good for pastors to show the church: “We’re not here because we’ve got our lives together. We’re here because we’re trusting in Jesus, and we need Him too.”

Ann:Dave, you’ve always been a master of that, leading the way.

Dave:That’s because I have a lot of things to confess.

Sam:But it gives other people a sense of relief.

Dave:It does.

Sam:It means other people are going, “Oh, whew! Okay, this is that kind of place.”

Dave:The fact that you didn’t share a victory—you shared sort of a defeat—is so welcoming. It’s like, “Okay, there’s victories in my life; but I’ve done that, too; I’ve shrunk back when I should have had boldness. If my pastor does that, I’m not the only one.” I mean, that’s beautiful.

Ann:You guys have microphones set up so men can come up to confess, and do they?

Sam:Yeah, so we will do—again, we call it “walking in the light”—that’s the language John is using. Sometimes, we’ll even do that on a Sunday morning if it’s appropriate to the text. We don’t do it often on a Sunday, because it’s less of an easy context with the number of people we have.

We try and make it a regular part of our small groups. We do it in our elders meeting; we start our elders meeting—we look at Scripture and pray—and then, we have a moment, where we say, “Joys and sorrows—anything in your lives going on that you want to share with the rest of us?—a joy or a sorrow?” Sometimes, the sorrow will be someone confessing a sin or sharing a burden that they’re carrying. It’s part of our small groups that you spend time walking in the light together and praying for each other. We try and make sure that it’s there, at every layer of our church life together; because honesty is the basis for relating to each other in a healthy way.

Ann:What would that look like at the dinner table with families? I know that when our kids were little, we would do: “What are your highs and your lows?” It’s the same kind of thing:—

Sam:It really is.

Ann:—”What was great today?” “What was good?” “What was hard?”

Sam:I think you shared in the previous episode about examples of

parents saying, “You know what? I handled that situation badly with

you”; and repenting to their kids. I think that is so powerful.

Dave:I’ve found—and I’m sure you have as well—when I’m leading a small group, or being a participant in a small group; it could be the leader—but if anyone in that group gets super real, and brings it into the light, the whole group changes. It’s like, “Now, we’re going to go somewhere.” It could be weeks if it doesn’t happen the first week; but once somebody leads—usually it isn’t; although, I’ve been in a group—I was in a group one time, where I was trying to find men to do life with.

I just moved to Michigan—and long story short—I didn’t know any of these guys. They say, “Go to this group.” I went a couple weeks; and then, the third week, I said, “Guys, I blew it this week. I looked at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue,” which I had never done; she would get it before it came to the mailbox. I just said, “I blew it.” I’ll never forget—the guys looked at me, and said, “That is detestable”; I’m like, “I know; but nobody here has ever…” “No; nobody/everybody.” I was basically kicked out; I was like, “Okay, these aren’t my guys.”

Ann:You didn’t get kicked out; you left.

Dave:No, I chose; I’m like, “I need a group where we can be real—not that we’re going to [endorse to] do that—I need people that know.” I remember I found my guys, and I’ve been with them 30 years; and it’s a beautiful relationship.

Sam:When you find that environment, where you can all be honest—and you’re not affirming one another in your sin; you’re encouraging each other in repentance—but you’re making sure people know the no condemnation in Christ. When you’ve tasted that, you don’t ever want to go back from it. You don’t want to go back into the superficial nice—“Everything’s fine,”—pretense world; because again, you’ve discovered: “We have fellowship now with one another.”

Dave:It’s the gospel!

Sam:Yeah; we have a stake in each other.

Ann:One of the things that you talk about, too, is how you honor one

another at this men’s night. I’m sure you do it all throughout your

church; but even in the men’s group, I thought that was fascinating.

Sam:Again, none of this is our strategizing. We just have stumbled into certain verses of Scripture that have become defining—that have detonated something in our church life—and one of them was Romans 12:10, where Paul says, “Outdo one another in showing honor.” This all happened before I arrived at our church; but at some point, the church stumbled into that verse; and it just detonated.

We took the verse seriously; and our pastor said, “This, I think, is the only time in the Bible we’re told to be competitive: ‘Outdo one another’—so don’t just honor to one another but outdo one another in showing honor—so if you’re showing honor to me, I need to outdo that in the honor I show to you.” It’s the counterpart of confession; because confession is saying, “I’m happy for you to know the worst things about me, and I’m not trying to hide that.” Honoring is: “I want everyone to know the best things about you and where I am mostly seeing Christ at work in you.”

It means, then, we’re not having to try to—again, the cultural pressure is to present a very carefully-created image of our lives to the rest of the world—that’s what we do on social media. If we have a culture of both honesty and honor, I’m not having to worry: “Are people going to appreciate me?” “Do I have to pitch myself as someone who needs to be appreciated?” “Do I have to impress you?” I can actually be released to be honest with you; because I know that I’m in a culture, where you’re not going to let the good things slide either.

And honoring isn’t just flattery; it’s not just, “Oh, you’re great.” Paul gives us one example of this in Philippians 2 with Epaphroditus: honoring someone is showing the evidence of the presence of Christ in that person’s life; it’s specific. So when someone confesses his sin to me, I’ll pray for them; and then, I will honor them, and say, “You’ve just been honest about something that was hard to say, and you did it to me,”—to us; whoever’s around—”I want to honor you for that. That took some gospel courage, so way to go. I admire you for that.”

Or if I see someone who is being patient with a difficult relationship, or a difficult family situation, I just want to honor them and for them to know—they may not realize how much they are showing evidence of Christ’s grace—but I want them to be encouraged. Hebrews 10:25—“Encouraged one another,”—we need to assume the Christian people around us are probably under-encouraged.

Ann:I think that’s one of the reasons we’re weary.

Sam:Yeah; however, buoyant someone looks, assume they are less encouraged than they seem to be. No one ever died because they were too encouraged, but people have died because they weren’t encouraged enough. So let’s do all we can to encourage one another.

And again, a lot of us walk through this life, thinking: “Is Christ doing anything in me?” “Am I getting anywhere in my Christian life? All I can see is where I trip up and mess up.” Sometimes, we need someone to come alongside us, and say: “I’ve been watching you for a while now, and I see this aspect of the fruit of the Spirit,” “I see this aspect of the character of Jesus,” “I see the way you just handled that person over there.”

I did this with one of my housemates two days ago. He’d invited a group of guys he had run into at church. He said, “Hey, let’s come around this evening. I’ll grill some food.” He’d never grilled food in his life; but he thought, “This is a thing to do with guys. So I’ll scoop up a bunch of guys; throw some meat on the grill, half poison everyone.” As we were clearing up, he thanked me for helping clearing up. I was happy to help clear up; and I wanted to honor him, and say, “I just want to honor the way you just scooped up a bunch of guys, brought them into the house, helped them get to know each other, created a real environment where everyone felt like they were of interest to the other people.” He just showed really great hospitality; I wanted to honor him for that. He hadn’t realized how big a thing that was he just did.

Ann:Yeah; I would do that with a lot of the small groups that I’ve led over the years. One of them was the Detroit Lion’s wives. Many of them were brand-new in their faith; some of them not believers; but on the last day, we would go around—and those are the words I would use—”I want to honor one another,”—just to—

Dave:There’s no one better than her.

Ann:No; no, I’m not; no.

Dave:She speaks words of honor to strangers in airports. I mean, it’s beautiful.

Sam: You just honored her; that’s beautiful.

Ann:Yeah, he did; and he does that over and over with me.

But as we went around—and there’s a group of 15 to 20—and it would take the entire time. As words were spoken to each individual—we’d go one at a time and honor her—these women, most of them have never ever had anything like that done to them. They would just weep the entire time. Women who had come, and been there to prior seasons, knew; they bring a box of tissues because they know they’ll be crying the entire time.

I think we cannot only do that in our workplace, in our church, but as a family.

Sam:Well, let me give you an example from the workplace. There’s a guy at our church, we have—again, we call it “honor time”—

Ann:Oh, “honor time.”

Sam:”We’re going to have some honor time now.” People would—again, open mic—come up and honor someone.

One of the guys was running a department for some secular corporation; he was head of some department. He decided to bring that into his team at work. Every Friday lunchtime, they would get together—these are secular people—so he didn’t make it: “Hey, we’re doing this thing from the Bible.” He just said, “I want us to gather on Fridays; I want the focus of the time to be something you’re seeing one of the other guys doing really well.” They were doing this; they were honoring one another without realizing that’s what they were doing.

After a few months, the CEO/the leadership of the whole company, brought him in, and said, “Your department just feels like it’s got a much healthier vibe. What are you doing that the others aren’t?” “Actually, here’s one of the things that might be: we do this thing where we…” It shifts the dynamic because what we’re describing is the photo negative—that word [honor] may need explaining to a few people—it’s the opposite of what we see in our culture right now.

In our culture right now: I honor myself; and I confess your sins. I try to come across as virtuous and impressive, and I call out and accuse everybody else who’s doing something wrong; and that’s why we’re so miserable. The Bible is flipping that around, and saying: “Now, don’t worry about whether you’re being honored; worry about whether other people are being honored,” and “Don’t confess their sins; be most concerned about your own.” It creates such a different environment when we do that.

Dave:Wow; that’d be a great conversation tonight at dinner.

Ann:That’s what I was thinking. Of all you who are listening: “How cool

would it be to change your home atmosphere by being the first to

confess; but also, honor one another in your work situation, in your

small groups? This isn’t something somebody else could do. This

could be something we do that we start as something. It’s biblical—everything you’re saying—“This is not our idea; it comes right out of the Scriptures.”

Dave:And by the way, it’s all in this book.

Ann:Sam, this book is amazing; it’s called You’re Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Weary Churches. And this is our gift to you just by giving any amount to FamilyLife, and we would love to send it to you.

Dave:Yeah, just go to FamilyLifeToday.com; and we’ll send you the book. Or you can call this number that my beautiful wife’s going to give you.

Ann:It’s 800-358-6329. That’s 800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word, TODAY.

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