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Jeff Foote, one of the Pastors from season 1 episode 20, looks back on his journey as someone who was formerly open but skeptical about the work of the Spirit and how his Pray Through It session has not only freed him to better lead as a Pastor and teach his people about the Spirit’s role today, but also has reawakened his musical creativity.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Jeff Foote: I’m a pastor’s kid. I’ve known the scripture. I’m a Timothy award winner in Awana. I’ve grown up with it all. I have good little boy syndrome sometimes, but similar to you, I was studying the scriptures and realizing there are things here, both implicit and explicit that say I should be experiencing more of a conversational relationship with the Holy Spirit. When it comes to the theology of the Holy Spirit in the tradition I come from, the phrase is open, but cautious. I’ve never been open, but cautious about Christology. Was Jesus fully God fully, man, I don’t know I’m going to be open, but cautious. Like, no, you, you discern what the scripture teaches and then you live there. And I was on this journey of saying, you know, I’m a word centered guy, authority of scripture alone, Sola scriptura. But if it teaches a theology of the Spirit that I’m not living, then I have bad theology. .
[00:01:23] Don Love: If you have been following us since last season, you’ll remember the testimony from Jeff foot. One of the pastors that we pray through things with three years ago, here’s a clip of his testimony from last season to jog your memory.
[00:01:38] Jeff Foote: I’m not a cessationist but I am skeptical. I’ve been a pastor over 20 years. I’ve been in a lot of counseling sessions. I’ve been trained in biblical counseling. This was the best counseling I’ve ever had. And he never asked me any counseling questions. This weird family story came back to me. And I thought this is weird. I didn’t want it to be like throwing in. Tell me about your mom telling you about your dad. Like daddy wounds because I don’t have those. I was raised in a very godly home. But it kind of threw this story out and immediately he said, okay, Jesus help them understand this story, why is this significant? Why did it come to mind now? And I’m like, well, I’m thinking to myself, he came to my now because I had to say something. But in that exact moment, it was like a tidal wave, like a tsunami from the bottom of my soul. I finally had words for what my soul had been struggling with for 43 years. And I couldn’t even get that next sentence out without just coming completely unglued. Because I knew that’s the sentence. That was the phrase. So for me, again, I was suspicious, but open. I played along and then the Spirit gave my soul language. And that was my experience. And so. I immediately, I got to figure out how to do this and it was just a phenomenal thing. So, that’s my story.
[00:03:06] Don Love: After Jeff and I prayed through things together, Jeff was open with his congregation about his struggles. He recounted how this prayer session helped and shaped the way that he ministered. And since then he has taken intentional steps to prepare his congregation, to be expectant in prayer. He used the term expectant prayer to describe the back and forth conversation with God, rather than listening prayer, because in his area, the term listening, prayer carried a connotation that was not at all what we mean when we talk about listening and inner healing, prayer, and even when, as far as to design and teach a course on the Holy Spirit, to help them better understand what the Bible has to say about the role of the Holy Spirit today. And so now as Jen and I come out three years later, his church had an unquenchable thirst to learn and grow and conversational prayer with the Lord. And now let’s get to the interview.
[00:03:56] Jeff, if you’ll tell everyone a little bit about how we met and how our relationship has kind of developed over time.
[00:04:03] Jeff Foote: Yeah. I was struggling with some anxiety after 25 years of being a pastor. And the Lord connected a bunch of dots for me throughout that and got to a point where there was a clear sentence that he put in my heart, that we were able to diagnose was a lie. And He replaced a misplaced sense of responsibility with creativity. And it was exactly what I needed for kind of the next phase of my life and of ministry. And it was just a wonderful time. I had never done anything like this. And so you were asking me if I saw anything and I wasn’t seeing anything. And then you were asking the Lord, why isn’t he seeing anything? And I still wasn’t seeing anything. For me, it felt like it was probably 5 to 10 minutes, but in reality, maybe 90 seconds, I don’t know what it was for you, but I got to the point where I almost felt pity for you. And the most ridiculous thing kept coming to my mind and it was a broom. And when I said it to you. You know, you didn’t react as if it was ridiculous, but you just prayed that that would connect dots with me, which caused me to remember a story with my mom. And the sentence that all of these dots created as we prayed through it was, “If I am not responsible, people get hurt.” And that, that was a lie that I believed most of my life. I don’t know if it was particularly from that scenario with my mom or if that’s just a memory that the Lord used to bring it back. But that concept of, I need to be the one in charge of the room and it wasn’t, I didn’t, I never interpreted that as a thing of control of my own. Because it’s not like I was upset that other people weren’t taking responsibility. In fact, I felt like I was serving them by not making them take responsibility, but in the end, if I’m not responsible, other people get hurt is one of those things that I think helped me in life and helped me in ministry. But as we pulled it apart, realized that’s not true at all. And so then you had me envision handing the broom the symbol of that misplaced responsibility over to Jesus. And then what would he give me in return? Right. And I had a very, very vivid picture of standing in my basement with him, with one arm around me and the other one kind of playing keep away with the broom. And the concept of creativity came in very, very strongly. And of course that now. It’s where the music studio is in our house where I get to be creative and he absolutely fulfilled that promise in that conversation.
[00:06:38] Don Love: Looking back on that day, when you gave that broom over, you were a pastor that had this branch campus that was running really well. It was a very successful ministry in the one were in. Very successful in the branch campus. You had a great system where you were sharing the sermons back and forth with this pastor, and you’re actually training up a pastor here as well. But there was a sense in which if something needed to be done, it needed to be done by you or someone else would get hurt. You wanted to make sure people weren’t going to get hurt. So you’re holding onto this broom. So you give away that broom, you come out with a cool album that you wrote, you know, doing all your own music and got healing is Lord brought this creativity back into you. And now you have this motto. Well, that’s not my broom. Well, it’s interesting now because you have this viewpoint where you’re trying to encourage folks to walk out their giftedness in Christ. And I’m wondering, do you see a connection between letting go of the broom. And getting this healing yourself and now being able to let them find and walk out their gifts. Do you see something growing in that?
[00:07:42] Jeff Foote: I’m sure there is a connection. It’s weird because I’d never thought of myself as a controlling senior pastor. I didn’t micromanage. I’m a pretty easygoing guy, but in my heart, I was riding every quote, unquote, success and failure. I haven’t really thought about it in terms of my journey affecting how I pastor or lead. And I never really saw my thought of myself as a controller. I’m pretty easy going. I don’t micromanage. And so I guess I didn’t think of the broom scenario is kind of a referendum on me as a pastor. That was just my journey. But I think there is something to the freedom I feel now to be creative and that that maybe subconsciously is affecting the church of. Modeling of modeling kind of that you too can pursue this in an authentic way and whatever the Lord does in you and through you is going to be good for the church. And for me, I definitely feel joy where there’s creativity. And the ability to say that’s not, my broom helps me sleep at night, but as far as the impact on the church, I’m not sure I’m the best person to say that.
[00:09:10] Don Love: Cool. So I’ve spent the week with you out here. And one of the things that you’ll say sometimes when something comes up is that’s not my broom, you know, I don’t have to sweep of that anymore.
[00:09:20] Jeff Foote: That is shorthand for sure. Yeah. There are some things that are my broom, you know, it’s not like we avoid responsibility forever just because we had a prayer breakthrough. But it is very much selective broom. To be able to process through, okay, Lord, is this responsibility something you want me to take? Or is that not my broom and you want me to hand it over again or let somebody else pick it up and yeah, that certainly become shorthand in our family. Oh, that’s not my broom.
[00:09:46] Don Love: So tell a little bit about why you invited us out here. We spent this whole week out here working with your church. Where were you hoping to get out of that as we came out?
[00:09:54] Jeff Foote: Yeah. Well, I’ve been on this journey, I think, similar to yours for about seven, eight years of. I’m a pastor’s kid. I’ve known the scripture. I’m a Timothy award winner in Awana. I’ve grown up with it all. I have good little boy syndrome sometimes, but similar to you, I was studying the scriptures and realizing there are things here, both implicit and explicit that say I should be experiencing more of a conversational relationship with the Holy Spirit Just more of that experiential piece. And in particular, that idea of when Jesus tells the apostles it’s better for you that I go and just realizing, well, I could write a paper on that. I could teach theology of that and why it’s better for the world to have millions of people with the indwelling Spirit on its surface, influencing the world with the kingdom of God. But how’s that better for me? And that kind of started the journey of trying to find, like, when we talk about any other point of theology, whether it’s the theology of Christ, the theology of the church, the theology of sin, the theology of theology, proper God, the father, we look at what scripture says, and then we live there. We believe it. But in my experience, when it comes to the theology of the Holy Spirit. Even in the tradition I come from, the phrase is open, but cautious I’ve never been open, but cautious about Christology. Yeah. Was Jesus fully God fully, man, I don’t know I’m going to be open, but cautious, like, no, you, you discern what the scripture teaches and then you live there and I was on this journey of saying, you know, I’m a word centered guy, authority of scripture alone, Sola scriptura. But if it teaches. A theology of the Spirit that I’m not living, then I have bad theology. And so I wanted to really dive in and pour over the scriptures to see what is legit in terms of expecting him to move and what is not. And I think we’ve been so scared as evangelicals because we haven’t really seen, at least I haven’t a consistent biblical example. At least not often. And so I really wanted to roll up my sleeves and do the diligence to get that right before I started teaching it. And I feel like I got there at least as much as I can. I’m sure I’m just the tip of the iceberg, but enough to feel comfortable teaching it to the church. So I did a 12 week, Holy Spirit class. Our elders adopted a statement on pneumatology for the church. I’ve done a sermon series on the Holy Spirit before, but this was more diving in with a classroom of people into the experiential expectations. And so while that was happening, I thought I really wanted you and Jen to come out and show people that this isn’t a carnival trick. This isn’t a unique thing for just a few people in the church. The ability to pray and hear from the Spirit for yourself is an expectation that the new Testament teaches and then to train people, to pray for other people. So they can hear the Spirit for themselves. Just thought it’s time, it’s time for a church to test those waters. And to hear again, that this is scriptural, this is normal Christianity. And we’ve been living at kind of a subnormal Christianity, at least again, I have, I don’t want to cast aspersions on anyone else, but I think we were just ready as a church after my journey. And there’s definitely an anticipation. I don’t know if you sensed it. One of our core values is expectant prayer, and I think people are used to this expectancy, but now to have some doctrine to back that up and then to say, okay, we have the doctrine, we have the expectancy. What does it actually look like? Yeah. So it’s been great to have you and Jen walk us through that and give us some examples and some nuts and bolts.
[00:13:47] Don Love: Well, the neat thing I appreciated is that we came in and we didn’t feel like we were just twiddling our thumbs here. You brought us in and we met with your elders and your deacons. And we met with your staff. We spoke on Sunday. We had a workshop with your prayer team, and then you did something we weren’t expecting. You set us up with half-hour prayer sessions and we ended up filling up 19 of those prayer sessions in just two days. And I was very surprised just to see what God could do and just a half an hour with each of those people.
[00:14:14] Jeff Foote: Yeah. Those are long days for you guys there’s hopping from one to the next, but as you were doing those sessions, I realized why can’t our elders just do this. Why can’t I just do this? Yeah. You know, set aside a couple of days a month, have the congregation sign up, and whether it’s me or another pastor on our staff or an elder, just do this with people. One of the things I was telling some of our leaders from the Thursday night presentation you gave. We were conversing about it. And I said, you know, it’s, it’s weird. This isn’t rocket science. This is just taking Jesus at his word and actually asking him a different set of questions and we’re used to. And then one of the ladies I was talking to in that conversation had a breakthrough on the drive home. And another friend who was in that conversation texted in the group text. We were talking about the breakthrough. She said, yeah, Jeff’s right. It’s not rocket science. We can do this. And so obviously you guys are skilled at what you do, but watching you do it certainly gave me the sense and a lot of people in our church to sense that, oh, this is something we can do. And I think that was one of the great takeaways of you guys being here is just modeling the simplicity of it.
[00:15:24] Don Love: Do you think she would mind if you shared a little bit about what a breakthrough is, what that looks like? Is that okay? What do you think
[00:15:29] Jeff Foote: Yeah, there’s a family in our church and the two adult kids are very far from the Lord. And she was commenting on how, because of that, she’s felt guilt and shame, and really can’t even enjoy the memories of them as kids look at their baby pictures or anything without feeling this overwhelming sense of shame or failure, or what have you. And as she was driving home from that session on Thursday, somebody in the car made a reference to something that made her think of her oldest when he was a child. And just had this immediate sense of Satan has been lying to you all this time and trying to steal your joy as a mom. And it just kind of melted all of that. And she said, she’s been crying, happy tears, happy, crying off and on ever since just feeling free from again, that burden and being able to release her children back to the Lord, but also to, to basically punch the enemy in the mouth and say, that’s just not true. And I’m done letting you affect me.
[00:16:26] Don Love: Well, I can say it’s been pretty impressive as I have talked to your members, prayed through things with your members, just seeing how quickly they were able to understand and move forward on things. And it was very evident that they have been spending some time thinking about these things before we got here. And so I just appreciate you tilling the ground and planting and in some ways I’m just coming here to water. That’s all I’m doing.
[00:16:47] Jeff Foote: I don’t want to take too much credit. It might be that they were ready long before I was, you know, this could have happened seven years ago if I had my head on straight. So yeah, I think it’s just part of the journey that we all go through. And I think the church is going through that at least here at Longmont, and obviously I’ve been going through it. And it’s interesting too. I’ve been surprised. To have such limited pushback, as I’ve tried to lead through this at the leadership level, at the elder level, you know, even when you got to preach last Sunday on dreams, cause we’re doing the life of Joseph.
[00:17:19] Don Love: Dream interpretation could be very controversial.
[00:17:21] Jeff Foote: That’s, that’s a big step forward. And we really only got one phone call and even that wasn’t really antagonistic, it was just asking questions. So I’ve been surprised. I know that’s not going to be everybody’s experience. But I think when the Lord is behind it and the timing is right and you’ve put in the theological work, it doesn’t need to be so intimidating.
[00:17:41] Don Love: Yeah. And I think that’s key is to put in that theological framework to be able to show them from the scriptures, It’s here! What do we do with it? And I think once that’s done, it helps so much. I think so many pastors get an idea that might be very biblical and they try to run with it. And it’s not just that they’re running too quickly, they’re running in a way that doesn’t show it from scripture. You know, it’s like, it’s like in math showing your work, how you got here from that. And so that people can be able to trust you as the pastor that you’re leading them biblically, not just from your heart, but from a heart that’s renewed and from a heart that is coming out of the teachings of scripture.
[00:18:15] Jeff Foote: Well, it, even some of these conferences we’ve been at. Taking the time to watch and see where, people, we trust, people we love… I might disagree with them. Point a to point B, even though 95% of what we’re looking into, we agree on. That helped me too, to arrive at okay. I feel confident doing X. I’m not quite sure I feel confident doing Y just yet. And maybe ever. And if I just jump into that right away and make a sweeping theological statement, that’s not helpful. That’s kind of lazy. So to take the time, to absorb it, to pray into where my conscience lies and theological convictions can be found, then there’s more of a freedom when it does come out of me that I’ve put in dirty work on this. And I think with things of the Spirit sometimes we don’t do that. We have a breakthrough mountain top experience. We want everybody to have that experience. And so we just run and maybe, maybe I could have done that five years ago and would work. But the journey I’ve been on, I think has been helpful to have more confidence in presenting this. And I think the congregation responds to that confidence and says, okay, he’s letting me test him on this. And in that 12 week class on the Holy Spirit they’re being bombarded with scripture because for most of my life, I’ve been bombarded with stories that I’ve been doubtful about. Whereas now it’s kind of like, you don’t have to agree with the conclusions necessarily, but you can’t say it’s not in there.
[00:19:49] Don Love: So one of the things that was interesting was talking to the people who took the course. You actually had a syllabus and a schedule. And they noticed there were labs there and they’re like, wait a minute, we’re going to be doing this? So can you speak on that a little bit about the doing of it? Not just the teaching of it, but the doing of it in that class.
[00:20:05] Jeff Foote: Yeah. It was just the thought of if the point of this is to experience more of the Spirit or to experience biblically what we should have the Spirit then simply teaching on the Spirit or prayer- again, it goes back to my personal situation of, I could write a paper on it, but that doesn’t mean I’m experiencing it. That doesn’t mean it’s better for me- and so to teach on hearing the Lord, when we pray. I mean, I’ve been doing those sermons my whole life, but then to get to a point where we’re going to try this, we’re going to try train up those muscles. We’re going to try to actually connect relationally with our maker, so that we can start to recognize his voice. Yeah. That was a again for our church. And maybe for other communities that would be, is that a, is that a bridge too far? I mean in evangelicalism, generally in the west, our theory is, well, if I learn something new, I’ve grown. And that’s true for a lot of things. But just learning something new doesn’t necessarily mean we have changed or that we’re experiencing anything new. And in a lot of cultures, if there’s a new piece of, oh, I learned something new about God. It pretty much becomes, well, now I now have to live differently. Now I have to incorporate that into my life. So I don’t know what it is about kind of my upbringing, but that was never really part of my discipleship. It was more, just learn more and you’ll grow. What if, what I’m learning actually changes me? And changes my behavior from the inside out? And I start to bear fruit and I start to deepen in my experiential relationship with God? Why hasn’t that happened more often? And so that’s why we really lean into the core value of our church of expectant prayer, because it’s not just prayer because we’re told we should pray and then maybe God will respond. It’s the, posture that says when we pray, God is going to do stuff. How we define stuff, you know, that’s a longer answer. But at least a start there to say it is better for us that the Holy Spirit is here and not just conceptually, but practically and experientially unexpectedly,
[00:22:30] Don Love: I’ve been in a lot of these life groups where they give you a book, you read the book. And think, this is amazing! And then before it’s even applied, you got the next book out and you’re reading another book. And I just get weary of that. It’s like, it was enough work to read one book and think about these new concepts to not apply them. And then you do that two or three times after a while. I just kind of think, no, thanks. I don’t know that I want to be a part of this. If we’re not gonna apply it. James says not to just be hearers as the word, but doers. And so as a elder on our teaching team, one of the things that I’m trying to implement it with us as well, Is thinking about this lab aspect. If we can be able to think about what’s a kind of event, like a service event that we could do together, we have a sermon series and then we say, okay, well now let’s apply it. Not just come and think it was really good. Let’s have a real opportunity to apply that and build it into the system. And this might be something we never do again, but we’re going to go do this one thing to apply this a little bit, and that might help not just being hearers has, but doers. And I just appreciate that within your Holy Spirit class.
[00:23:34] Jeff Foote: We have a lot of mottos and axioms at our place. And maybe that’s just because that’s the way I think. And but one of them is. We don’t study the written word to master the written word. We study the written word to meet The Living Word. And then we have a pretty biblically educated, biblically literate congregation. But I heard a pastor say one time, most Christians are educated far beyond their level of effectiveness. And I don’t want to slow down the education, but my heart is: can we be effective? And are we just learning more scripture or are we deepening our connection to our Lord? And if that’s the goal, how did he tell us we can do that? You know, and we talked a little bit about John 14, being all about the Holy Spirit, John 16, being all about the Holy Spirit. So my conclusion is John 15 is about the Holy Spirit as well, which is the vine and the branches passage. And just thinking about the book of Galatians as well. Not only we justified by faith, but we’re sanctified by faith. We’re not sanctified by the law as if that saved us in the first place. Why would you go back to the law when the Spirit is there? So the, the concept that theology that our sanctification and justification, all of our salvation is by faith from first to last, like it says in Romans one. But the idea of, what does it mean to be sanctified by the Spirit? What does it mean in Romans eight where Paul says, don’t set your mind on the flesh, set your mind on the Spirit. What does that mean? And to really unpack, okay. If I’m going to bide in Christ, if I’m going to grow in my sanctification and it’s going to be his power, not my human effort, my flesh, what does that actually feel like? What does that look like? And if we don’t ask some of these questions about the experience of the Spirit or the voice of the Spirit are we really growing in our abiding in the vine to bear much fruit? Are we really living out this concept of my Spiritual development? My discipleship is Spirit-led not works-led not flesh-led. It continues and needs to be the internal manifesting itself externally not more tweaks to the external. And it certainly seems to me that scripturally, the method of that is the Holy Spirit. So those are some of the questions that have gone around my mind and then trying to pass it on to the congregation. It means, well, we got to try something. We have to find ways to learn His voice better. We have to find ways to be expectant that He will move and He will affect us and affect our lives in a way we can… Maybe not understand at the time, but at least identify, oh, I walked by faith, not by sight. I’m transformed by the power of the Spirit, not by moralism or religiosity. Or in my case, the good little boy syndrome. And what does that feel like? What does that look like? And it’s not crazy. It’s what the Bible kind of teaches is normal Christianity.
[00:26:33] Don Love: Well, all right. So what other topics do you think we’d want to talk about? Is there anything else you want to bring up?
[00:26:39] Jeff Foote: Yeah, I, I just want to pass along to the listeners, the two things that repeatedly while you two have been here. And they’re very simple and subtle that have really changed a lot. One is something Jen mentioned at one of the group teachings, group sessions, about how in a prayer gathering, instead of just immediately diving into the list of prayers to start with the question, Lord, how do you want us to pray for this person? Instead of just assuming. And even that queue, that little thought, I think has already worked to help a lot of the people who’ve been in our seminars, because it communicates right off. I’m going to listen before I speak, and that really helps the posture. And, and then the other thing I noticed in all the times, you are praying with someone and you did this with me as well is just how quickly and consistently you’re saying, Lord, would you help? Lord, would you help? Lord, would you help? Again instead of Lord, here’s what I think about it. Or here’s what I’m feeling is just the posture of praying for someone else with that kind of, uh, again, expectancy and simplicity. Of Lord, would you help them understand would you help them see? Would you help me see? Would you help me understand? Instead of a jumping to conclusions and assumptions? And I, I know for you, really sound doctrine, it’s still is the conversation’s going to drive it. Not me.
[00:28:14] Don Love: Yeah. Well, I’ve appreciated getting to know any of this time and I’m excited about all that’s going on in church, and I’m sure we’ll hear back from you again, at some point as we come back later on into Colorado,
[00:28:24] Jeff Foote: Anytime.
[00:28:25] Don Love: Thanks Jeff!
[00:28:26] I suppose the most memorable thing about my visit with Jeff was to learn that our prayer session was a catalyst for the renewal of creativity. For when he surrendered over his overdeveloped sense of responsibility, the Lord, re-ignited a musical creativity in him that has led him to blossom into the producer of the 10 minute Bible hour podcast and most recently to produce an album called Sea of Tranquility, a progressive rock album that tells the story of a man who is sick of this world. So he goes on a galactic journey to find peace. Here as a little taste of sea of tranquility.
You can access Jeff’s Album Sea of Tranquility HERE.
