Spiritual Hoarding and Discpleship and What We Can Do About It

Chapters

• 0:29 Warm Welcome And Icebreaker
• 1:16 Small-Town Life And Connection
• 2:17 Sarah’s Interfaith Upbringing
• 3:59 Near-Death Accident And Faith
• 6:29 Call To Ministry And Transition
• 7:55 Defining Spiritual Hoarding
• 9:53 Why Christians Don’t Share
• 13:17 Stories From The Oil Boom Town
• 16:23 Bridge-Building Without Pressure
• 18:22 One-On-One Discipleship Works
• 21:24 Discovery Over Download
• 23:09 Pastors Leading By Example
• 25:24 Multiplication Mindset In Practice
• 27:18 Hope For Inward-Focused Churches

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:15

Hello everyone, thank you again for joining me on another episode of the Doors Tours. Today we have a special guest with us. Her name is Sarah Dinkerfield. She is a lead pastor with her husband in North Dakota. She is passionate about evangelism and discipleship. Embarrassing her cakes and supporting worldwide makings. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

SPEAKER_01: 0:48

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 0:51

Well, I always like to open up with a icebreaker question. And today's icebreaker question is what is your favorite TV show and why?

SPEAKER_01: 1:02

Oh, my favorite TV show. Well, I have to admit this out loud, huh? My favorite TV show is Gilmore Girls. I love it. I love the idea of living in a quaint town where everybody knows everybody. And I know sometimes that can have its negative connotations as well, but I just love the idea of my grocer and the guy at the coffee shop and the teachers at the school. Everybody knows me and my family. And I have all those extra people looking out for my kids. I just love that idea, but I also love the banter. The writing in that show is fantastic.

SPEAKER_00: 1:42

Yeah. And I'm sure you're probably living out that, you know, real life Gilmour living in uh Nocht.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51

A little bit. Yeah, we do have a little bit of that. Our town is a little bit bigger than what's represented in the show, but yes, it does not uh phase me when I stop at the store and I always run into somebody that I know.

SPEAKER_00: 2:03

Can you tell us about your life growing up? And you know, how did you become, you know, how did you, you know, get into the faith and how did you get to come to a relationship with Christ?

SPEAKER_01: 2:17

Yeah, I would love to share that. So I grew up in Minnesota, right in central Minnesota, and I grew up with a single mom and a younger sister. When I was four years old, my parents uh discovered that it was not quite working out for their marriage, and so they ended up splitting when I was four. But the largest tension that was between the two of them was their religious differences. Um, my mom was born and raised in Minnesota, grew up in a Christian home, and my dad, on the other hand, was born and raised in the Middle East and was raised in an Islamic home. And so there's definitely not just like religious differences, but with that religious difference also came how we raise our kids different, the expectations of how we treat family members and things like that. And so that was kind of the start of my faith journey. Uh, I learned a lot about a different religion, much younger than probably most children find out about, whether they grow up in a religious home or not, uh, learning that there are different religions and different faiths. And it put me in this position where I needed to figure out what I wanted, even though I didn't live with my dad. Every child wants to please their parents. And here I have parents that are on two opposite sides of the spectrum. And so as a kid, I had to figure out like, where do I stand? And so uh over a period of years, but then also because of certain events that had happened in my life, one of those being a near-death experience, God really began to show himself to me. Uh, Jesus became real. He was not just words on a page, but how he provided for my healing, how he provided for my family financially, and then also the needs that we just had, like needing to put food on the table because medical bills were just wild. Uh, just watching as Jesus, especially using the church, came around our family and was helpful in that area. I just started to discover that Jesus is like real. He is not just a story. And so I began to dig into that more in middle school and high school. I fell in love with the Bible, fell in love with the scriptures and the stories of Jesus and the stories of the Old Testament. And um, thankfully, I was already able to start making those connections with the New Testament and Old Testament because it can be easy, especially as a student, to not realize that there's a connection between the two. Um, and so that's really what catapulted me in my faith. But then I took it another step further and watching how the church impacted my family and impacted my life, I wanted to do that. I wanted to impact people's lives for the better when it came to their faith and their relationship with Jesus and helping them see that it is life transforming. And so that's what kind of pushed me, moved me into the area of ministry. And now my husband and I have been serving as pastors for over 20 years.

SPEAKER_00: 5:30

What was that near life experience that you mentioned? What was that like?

SPEAKER_01: 5:34

Yeah, so I was very young, I was almost five years old, and uh, due to situation, I ended up falling off a moped without a helmet on. And um, I hit my head and had lacerations all over my body. And um, because I had hit my head, obviously head injuries, there's a lot of blood involved with that. And the ER doctors ended up telling my mother, if I had made it even a minute later, I would have bled to death because I was that low on blood by the time I got to the hospital. And so the healing process obviously was very long, but very traumatic as well. And the Holy Spirit didn't just help me heal physically, but helped me heal emotionally from that trauma as well.

SPEAKER_00: 6:23

You mentioned that you're a league pastor now with your husband, but you also were doing good and gooding ministry at one point. Yeah. What led you to that shift of going from good and ministry to league pastor?

SPEAKER_01: 6:38

God. It was not, it was not something that my husband and were pursuing. We actually joked that we wanted to be lifers with kids' ministry. We wanted to be kids' pastors our entire life. We loved it. We loved serving the church in this way and coming alongside parents. And it's just so life-giving for us. So we had no desire to leave it. And uh the Lord began to knock on our door. I was like, oh, maybe we're gonna be doing missions. We could do kids ministry in another country. Like that would be great. And God was like, No, I got something else for you. So uh we took a lead pastor position just two hours down the road from where we were living, and and it is bad journey, a journey I never expected to take, but it's been really good, and God's been faithful, and I can't believe I'm saying it, but I I love it.

SPEAKER_00: 7:40

So, yeah. We're getting this is a lead into you know, um question about your book, but you have a concept called spiritual hoarding, and what is the how did that first resonate with you?

SPEAKER_01: 7:56

Yeah, so I I do have a book that's coming out actually on April 8th, and it's called Leading Spiritual Hoarders. And it's this concept of we have people within our churches who are hoarding the gospel. And that can sound a little confusing at first, so let's just look at what a hoarder is. And we know that a hoarder is someone who holds on to things and has a hard time letting go. Obviously, hoarding also can, it's a mental health conversation as well. And there's a lot of pieces to it, but getting down to the nitty-gritty of we're holding on to things, whether we need them or not, whether they're beneficial or not, holding on to things and not getting rid of it. And uh, we have people in our churches who are holding on to the gospel message and are not sharing it, but that is something that Jesus asked his disciples that when he leaves, he needs us to be the ones who continue to share and spread the message of the gospel. And so if we have Christians in our churches who are not sharing the gospel, then they are hoarding it and they are not allowing it to be a benefit to those around them because they're holding it to themselves. And uh it's it's really an epidemic in the church, especially the American church, I've seen not just in the churches we've served in, but as a whole. The Big C church definitely had a problem with holding on to a message that desperately needs to be shared.

SPEAKER_00: 9:28

Do you have any like specific number, specific, you know, centi or whatnot of who is holding the gospel message?

SPEAKER_01: 9:39

There are a couple different um statistics out there, and so I'm just gonna kind of average it out. But the average is 75% of people who consider themselves to be Christians will never share the gospel ever. They will hold it to themselves and to the grave. And so some studies show larger numbers, some show smaller numbers, but 75 is about the average. And so if we have people who call themselves Christians and will never share, that's an issue.

SPEAKER_00: 11:07

What makes you think that, you know, why do you think that is?

SPEAKER_01: 11:13

I think there's a a couple different reasons. One might be fear. There might be a fear of what people are gonna think of them, fear of a relationship that might be strained because of it, especially if you have a family member or a friend who is very touchy when it comes to conversation of religion. Uh, so there can be that fear for sure. Maybe they've watched other people's relationships disintegrate because of faith conversations. But I also think there's another piece that we have a lot, I've noticed even just in our church, we have a lot of people who, once they come to know Christ, they unless we tell them, because unfortunately, a lot of people aren't reading their Bibles either. So if we are not telling them that it is an expectation from Jesus that we're sharing this message, then they don't even know they're supposed to. And then if they don't know that they're supposed to, because in our culture, American culture, we like to say, you do you, I'll do me, and we'll live in harmony and it'll be fine. And so we keep our beliefs on anything, like even politics. We'll keep that to ourselves and not share because we're afraid of you know what might happen. And so this is just one of those things that we hold on to ourselves. Um so they might not know that they're supposed to, and once they figure out they're supposed to, they're going, Well, how? How do I do that? I don't even know everything yet. And it's like, well, we don't need to know everything in order to share what Jesus has done in our life. We can continue to grow, and hopefully, people are growing with us. That is the hope.

SPEAKER_00: 12:51

And it could be also the fact that people don't want to, you know, be labeled as, you know, the Christian knock up that, you know, goes around telling everybody about Christ. You know, we don't we don't want to, you know, be the type of person that's always hitting somebody with the Bible or with the scripture either. We need to come out and, you know, be the ones that show love and through that we can tell others about Christ.

SPEAKER_01: 13:27

Most definitely. And I'm sure because people have probably had that experience with somebody who's, you know, maybe not actually hit them over the head with the Bible, but metaphorically have. And yeah, you don't want to be labeled as that. I I understand why people would feel that way for sure. Um, but we have to remember the church, unfortunately, is filled with a bunch of imperfect people. We're all trying to figure out how to do this. And unfortunately, because we're human, sometimes we don't do a very good job of it. But um, yeah, I I think that would also be a reason for sure.

SPEAKER_00: 14:03

What made you come to this conclusion of a spiritual hoarding? What made you decide to write your book?

SPEAKER_01: 14:12

Yeah, it so as a Christian, especially as someone who has family members who are very much not living a life uh that is centered on Christ. This has always been on my mind, but seeing it from within the church, I noticed it in um our last community that we lived in before moving where we're at now. I was raising really little kids, baby up to four or five years old. Uh, they were very young at the time. And I was meeting with this mom, and so for a backstory, we lived in Williston, North Dakota for seven years. And while we lived there, that's when it was the big oil boom, the big Bakken oil boom, epicenter, wild crazy cities growing like nobody, like it's growing so fast that the water treatment plant couldn't keep up. Like that's the it was just a boom town. And so we have people coming from all over the place, all over the states, all over the world. And I'm getting to know a lot of these young moms because that's the season of life that I was in at the time. And I was meeting with this young mom, and she it was interesting. She had grown up in the church, and she was in her 20s at this point, and um wasn't really interested in church, and whatever the story was for that, I'm not sure. But I was just kind of hearing her back life story. She had grown up in the church, and she did not know most of the stories, she didn't know the gospel message, she didn't, I mean, she knew Jesus died on a cross and rose again, but that was about the extent. And I remember thinking for a girl who grew up in the church and that's all that she knows and remembers, like that's kind of concerning. And so I was like, okay, so if she grew up in the church and doesn't know, how many people in my community who maybe didn't grow up in the church they don't know? And if they're not willing to walk into a church, how are they going to ever hear the story? And so I I was very bold in my faith. I mean, I'm in ministry anyway, so I'm like, I'll talk about Jesus all day long. I have no problem with it. But I started asking some women from church that I knew, like, hey, had have you um gotten to know some of your new neighbors? I knew they came to work for this oil company, gotten to know them and asking those questions, and then asking, have you ever had an opportunity to have a faith conversation with them? And they're like, I was like, oh, wouldn't that be fun to be able to do that? And then you could invite them to church or invite their kids to come to our summer programming or or whatever. And I was trying to use that just to kind of see what they have talked about, and there were so many people that weren't talking. So then I got to myself thinking, well, if the people in the church aren't telling anybody, we really have a problem. And it was heightened for me because a lot of the people that were moving to Williston at the time, not everybody, but a lot of them that were coming were coming because it was a last resort. Nobody wishes upon themselves to move to Podunkville, North Dakota. You know, like this is a last resort. I can get a job, can make some money, I can help our family get out of debt. Um, but what we were finding is these families were already hurting significantly before they even got there. Lots of divorce or on the brink of divorce, lots of broken homes, lots of hurting people. Um and then you get, especially you get these young guys moving to the oil field and they're making big money. And what are they doing with that money? So now they're getting into drugs and other things. And it was just this ball of pain. And I'm sitting here thinking, we the church have the solution to their pain. But is the church sharing the solution? And it really broke my heart for my community and for the people that live there. And it was like, okay, this has to change. And if it has to change starting with me, then it has to change starting with me. And so that's where it really began to stir. But then becoming lead pastors opens your eyes to even more because now I'm seeing the church as a whole and not just families. And so that has really just been what continues to stir the fire in me for sure. And and discipleship in general, multiplication has become quite a hot topic in the church over the last couple of years. And so I just happened to jump on the train, I guess, at just the right time. But yeah, I I look at my community now that I live in, and there are so many people who are hurting, and I have the solution. And why wouldn't I share that? Why wouldn't I share that?

SPEAKER_00: 19:27

You mentioned earlier that you had your mother who was a Christian, but your father who was Middle Eastern, you know, more than a Muslim. Have you and they separated, have you stayed in contact with him? And how have you shared um the gospel mixes with him?

SPEAKER_01: 19:46

Yeah, it's a great question. With I don't have a very good answer. So, as a young kid in elementary school, middle school, I was very, very zealous about my faith because I was very aware of the spiritual state of my father. He still calls himself a Muslim to this day. And burned a lot of bridges. And um, and so we have never really recovered. On top of that, when when you have a relationship that hasn't recovered from hurtful things that were said, even if forgiveness has been brought to the table, there's also a cultural difference with us, especially in the country that he grew up in. Being the man and being the dad of the family automatically deserves respect. And because of other things that happened in our family that I'm not going to mention, um I didn't feel he earned that respect. And so there's also that piece to us as well. And so we have not been able to really reconcile like I would like for us to be able to. I hope one day we can, but um we just haven't gotten there yet.

SPEAKER_00: 21:11

I wonder if that, you know, you just mentioned there about burning business, you know, with people, with family members, with friends, you know, co-workers, whoever it might be that we know don't know Christ or don't have that personal relationship with him, you know, could that be one of the barriers that, you know, stopping us from telling others about him because we don't want to burn the bridges of that friendship or that relationship, you know, with that person.

SPEAKER_01: 21:47

Yeah, definitely, definitely. And I think that's why um one-on-one discipleship especially is a wonderful approach because it is getting to know someone because you care about them. It is sitting down for coffee, having a meal, um, you know, maybe it's even sitting at the park because your kids are playing and just getting to know one another, looking for open opportunities to share about Christ as you're having a conversation, as you're building a relationship, a friendship with somebody, and not because you're trying to use them as a project or sneak in some conversation, but you're just looking for opportunities because oftentimes opportunities come up, either because they're looking for more friends, maybe they just move to the community and they're lonely. Well, the church can provide friendships, whether they believe what the church is preaching or not, like it can provide friendships. So there's that piece, but then there's the uh we have a lot of people in our community who just feel like uh a lack of purpose. And so that's a great opportunity because Jesus gives us purpose, right? And so there's all these ways to be able to just crack open the door, stick our foot in there a little bit, say what Jesus has done in our life based on what they're talking about, and just seeing are they open for a conversation or not? And if they're not, then we just leave it and we continue to pray for more opportunities, but we do it because we love them. We care about them, we care about their family, their children, we care about their relationships with their parents or their marriage or their coworkers or their boss. And because we care about those things, hopefully when we have those conversations, we won't burn bridges because that person knows this person cares about me. That's the number one priority for them. It's not to convert me, it's because they care about me. And and I think that definitely helps with that.

SPEAKER_00: 23:53

When did you become interested in discipleship and why are you passionate about Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 24:00

Since becoming lead pastors, being able to see how the church offers discipleship, whether that's small groups, Sunday school, those things, they're all really good things. But if those groups get too large, there is a good group of people who will not speak. And um, I mean, for me, even as a person who I talk for a living, I once a group gets past a certain number, I don't want to talk because it's just it's too many people to be vulnerable with, and not that we need to be vulnerable about everything, but our relationship with Jesus is an emotional thing, and I don't necessarily want to share with the world all of that, but I can do that with a one-on-one or with two or three people, and so watching as the church does their best to provide discipleship tools. Um, I just saw a lack of uh opportunity for those who shut down in larger groups. And so even being able to take those larger groups, if we can help our small group leaders say, hey, this is a great opportunity. You're gonna be meeting with them for this many weeks. Let's see if you could try to meet with each of them at least once during this quarter, one-on-one, because they may have questions that they're not asking in the group. And so, yeah, that kind of got me started. And then I thought, well, why does it have to just be in a small group setting? Why can't I just ask the girl that I see at the coffee shop every Monday if she wants to meet with me a half an hour before because we've gotten to know each other, because we keep running into each other and just getting to know each other and sharing what we love and what we're passionate about. And for me, I love and am passionate about Jesus. And so yeah, I just I saw that need, and I think that's what really kind of pushed and drove that desire to see more of that.

SPEAKER_00: 26:00

Yeah. My pastor's very passionate about discipleship because he has the, you know, even tonight, I mean I I help out at the youth group now, but they used to have the, you know, well, they still do have small groups, you know, sometimes they'll have men and women, you know, separate, sometimes they'll have them together. And, you know, like you said, with the size of the group, uh, you even sent out a letter or email this week saying, hey, let's have, you know, a smaller group, uh three or four people, you know, not six or seven. And like you even said, you know, allow each of them to speak, give them time to speak and to talk. And even though I, you know, I don't do as much anymore, but uh but I used to travel and speak and share my story. I'm even a ordained uh minus self. And but even sitting when I was in those groups, I would be very quiet. You know, I'd be very, you know, maybe because my I'm an introvert, I was very quiet, I wouldn't speak up, you know, I'd probably be afraid of what am I gonna say? You know, will I say the wrong thing? You know, will people look at me and say, don't think a pastor, what is he talking about? But yeah, I can I, you know, just just a little insight as to what I've been through and, you know, similar similar story to what you were talking about there.

SPEAKER_01: 27:36

Yeah, and I think a lot of part, a big part of discipleship is discovery. We can't just regurgitate information. We need to allow those that we're studying with or discipling to discover the truths of scripture for themselves. And if they're not interacting, then that discovery piece is not happening. And I think it that discovery piece is what helps solidify our faith because we're digging through the word and we're bouncing off of each other the things that we're learning and growing and um what we're processing, and that really helps solidify our faith and helps us to be able to stand for it, becomes that firm foundation because we've discovered. And so if we're not allowing that time of discovery, or we're not adapting so that people can have that discovery piece, then we're definitely missing something.

SPEAKER_00: 28:39

What practical steps can pastors take to lead by example in discipleship?

SPEAKER_01: 28:46

Yeah, so the book is written mostly for pastors and people in ministry, but it can be for anybody. And so you may notice that there's some verbiage in there that you can tell I'm talking pastor to pastor. But um in my life as a person in ministry, I can sit there and tell all my people in my church, this is what Jesus expects you to do as a believer. If I'm not also doing that, I cannot expect the people in my church to do that. Just like as a parent, if I one big thing in our house right now that we're all like pulling our hair out is when someone doesn't refill the ice cube trays. Okay. So if I expect my children to fill those darn ice cube trays when they empty them, I have to be willing to fill them as well, right? I need them to see that I am doing what I'm also asking them to do. And so it's the same in the church. It's not just something that the people in my church have been called to do. It is something we all, including me, anyone who considers themselves to be a follower of Jesus, this is what we are called to do. And so we need to do it. And so that's where it starts is living the life that we ask our people to also live. Um, but also another thing is uh I talk about it in my book a couple of times with different stories, but when I'm meeting one-on-one with someone, I have the expectation that it doesn't end with us. That after a period of time, when we both feel like this person is growing and excited and they are like ready. And this could, for one person, could be one month. For another person, this could be six months. It depends on where they started in their journey when we were meeting. But the expectation is they start meeting with somebody at some point as well. Um, and that's where that multiplication factor comes in. Because if I, as a pastor, just meet with one person and then I meet with another person and then I meet with another person, we're growing by one, it's growth. But if I'm meeting with someone and then eventually the two of us each start meeting with someone, and then eventually Eventually, the four of us each start meeting with someone. That multiplication factor comes in, and all of a sudden we are uh helping each other grow in our walk with Jesus together as a body, but also as a process of that, we're sharing the gospel with people who may have never even heard of it before. Because yes, we have people in the United States who know nothing about Jesus. And so we got work to do.

SPEAKER_00: 31:37

What encouragement would you give to a pastor who is questioning if their circle ever changed its culture?

SPEAKER_01: 31:47

Yeah, um, I would say anything is possible. And and I say that because we do have pastors in churches who are feeling lost, who are feeling defeated, who are feeling as if there's no hope, because they have tried everything that they know to try. Um usually those feelings are because a church over time, whether under that pastor or not, that church over time has become inward focused. And so they're very concerned about their own little group and the health of their own little group. And they are forgetting that God is asking them to also care for those outside of the church. And so it can be very hard, especially for smaller churches, rural churches where there's only one pastor. They can feel very discouraged if they are leading a church that is inward focused. And so I would say anything is possible. The Lord can do anything, He can heal anyone, He can change perspectives, He can bring hope in places that felt hopeless. And so I would just say, hey, Pastor, don't be discouraged. Start by leading by example and not parading it around and saying in your sermons the next Sunday, I met with three people this week, you know, but just living it because they're gonna see you. They're gonna.