Soar Like the Eagle

As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the LORD alone did lead him. DEUTERONOMY 32:11–12

Evans has watched eagles on the islands off Vancouver Island riding the rising air with hardly a movement of their wings, and the sight has become the governing image of his book Soar Like the Eagle and of several sermons. It is God’s desire, he says, that His people should soar. Yet many believers are more like farmyard chickens, pecking contentedly at the grain of church programmes, while others have tried to fly by their own effort and crashed. The book asks why, and what can be done.

Why so few fly

Evans gives several reasons. Some believers are carrying wounds of the soul that have never been healed, the subject of the last chapter. Some have made decisions contrary to God’s principles, and he names debt and marriage to an unbeliever as examples. Some have simply never been taught that they should fly; they have settled for being fed each Sunday. And some have had their wings clipped by leaders who run the church like a business or a fiefdom, with power flowing from the top down, and who discourage any initiative that might disturb the comfortable order of things.

He is especially grieved by the last. Jesus told His disciples that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over their people, but it was not to be so among them.

But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. LUKE 22:26

The pastor’s calling, Evans insists, is not to sit at the top of a pyramid but to serve from beneath it, equipping the saints for the work of ministry. His task is to teach them to fly, not to build ever larger nests to keep them in.

From burden to anointing

Evans draws a pattern from the story of the prophet’s widow in 2 Kings 4, whose creditors were about to take her two sons as slaves. He uses the story, he says openly, as a parable rather than an exposition. The widow could see nothing but darkness, and Evans begins with how we see: ourselves, the world and God. He is as concerned with the false humility that insists it is nothing as with pride; in a child of God, he suggests, such talk comes close to denying what God has done.

The widow also carried a heavy burden, and Evans believes God lays on each believer a particular concern that will not go away: for young people, for prisoners, for the poor, for prayer. He tells how, as a young teacher in Germany, he asked God for a burden for youth, and how years later he found himself leading a youth work that grew beyond anything he had imagined. The burden God gives is light, because it is carried in His yoke. A burden someone else lays on us is heavy.

Then the prophet asked what she had in the house.

And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? tell me, what hast thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil. 2 KINGS 4:2

Every believer, Evans says, has been given the Holy Spirit and gifts by which to carry his burden, as well as natural abilities God can use: Moses had a staff, David a sling, Peter a net, Paul his Roman citizenship. The burden is something each believer must name for himself; the gift is best recognised and confirmed by others. The prophet then gave the widow a task that seemed absurd, to borrow every empty vessel and pour, and Evans believes church leaders should likewise help each member find a ministry that fits burden and gift. As she obeyed, the oil kept flowing. That, for him, is anointing: God setting His seal on obedient service, so that it bears fruit far beyond human ability, and the believer begins to soar.

Releasing the eagles

Much of the book is addressed to pastors and elders, and its counsel is practical. Evans suggests that every elders’ meeting should include two things: prayer to seek the mind of God, and a time to ask who in the congregation is ready to be released into ministry. Leaders should listen to people’s burdens, help them put them into words, seek confirmation of their gifts, and then give them room to serve, with clear authority, responsibility and accountability.

As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. 1 PETER 4:10

His stories include a man with a burden for prayer who, once released to teach it, helped a small congregation learn to wait on God and grow. Evans insists that releasing others is risky. They may fail and embarrass us; they may succeed and surpass us. Only leaders secure in their own calling can do it freely.

God’s work in God’s way

Evans returns often to the story of David bringing the ark to Jerusalem. The first attempt, on a new cart drawn by oxen, copied the method the Philistines had used, and ended in death. Only when David searched the law and had the Levites carry the ark on their shoulders, as Moses had commanded, did the presence of God come home with rejoicing.

For because ye did it not at the first, the LORD our God made a breach upon us, for that we sought him not after the due order. 1 CHRONICLES 15:13

The lesson, Evans says, is plain: if you want to do God’s work, do it God’s way. Much of the church, he fears, has borrowed the world’s methods of management, marketing and control, and wonders why the anointing is absent.

Weighing the teaching

Evans’s picture of the church as a place where every member is equipped and released is thoroughly biblical, and his warnings against controlling leadership are timely. Some of his applications may be weighed. His strong words about debt and about marriage to an unbeliever are pastoral warnings, not verdicts; he himself distinguishes a sensible mortgage from reckless borrowing, and Scripture is clear that God can greatly use a believer whose spouse does not yet believe. His belief that apostles and prophets are still given to the church today is held by many and questioned by others. And his confidence that God will anoint whatever is done in the right way should be held together with his own teaching that anointing is always God’s sovereign gift.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. What burden has God laid on your heart? Try to describe it in a single clear sentence.

2. Ask two mature believers what gifts they see in you, and listen carefully.

3. Consider whether you have been waiting for someone else to carry a burden God has given to you. Take one step to begin.

4. If you lead in any way, think of one person you could release into ministry this year. Talk with them about their burden.

5. Look at one area of your church’s life and ask honestly whether it is being done God’s way or the world’s.

A PRAYER

Lord, You have not made me to sit in the nest for ever. Stir me up, as the eagle stirs her nest, and teach me to fly.

Show me the burden You have given me, the gift You have put in my hand, and the ministry You have prepared for me.

Make our leaders servants who release rather than restrain, and make me a servant who can be trusted with freedom.

Let us do Your work in Your way, and pour out Your oil on all that we offer You. Amen.