May 26, 2025 • 38 mins
Voices in the Muck: When the Spirit Won’t Stay Silent
When Don arrived to take up a leadership position at his new church, the Holy Spirit gave him a dream. He saw a group of men dressed in white hazmat suits. They were cleaning out piles of horrible muck from a culvert and moving it to the roadside nearby. Don woke up thinking how horrid it was that the muck was being exposed to all those driving by. Two days later, the nature and depth of the “muck” became clear as one by one, six different women came to Don to confess an affair with the former senior pastor.
This episode of the God Conversations podcast is a heavy but important one. Our guest is a pastor from New Zealand who has decades of experience in ministry but has also been privy to some God conversations he’d rather not have. Along with his wife Karen, he led Gateway Church in Hamilton, New Zealand for 20 years. During this season, they watched God restore a church that had been torn apart by the sexual failure of its senior leadership to become a thriving congregation of over 1200 people.
Don Barry is a gifted teacher whose ministry has been appreciated throughout New Zealand and many other nations. You’ll learn so much from his wisdom born of experience walking with the Spirit.
On the show you’ll hear about:
- Don’s spiritual journey and pathway into ministry leadership, beginning with a startling God conversation that led Don and Karen from their church in Cambridge to a church in Hamilton. Don reflects on how the Spirit used a feeling of being unsettled and then spoke through three different people to speak the same message. God may speak clearly but doesn’t always give the details!
- Don’s dream that God gave him twice when he arrived to take up a leadership position at his new church and the events that occurred almost immediately after, with six different people confessing affairs all independently of one another.
- A second vivid dream that showed how God was bringing sin to light so that it could be cleaned up. Instead Don faced pressure to cover it up.
“I knew it was the Lord and we needed to know it was the Lord because a couple of voices from our executive said to me that this is the devil’s attempt to destroy a good man’s ministry. You should keep this covered…”
- Don reflects on the reasons why sin cannot be hidden. The only way God can transform our hearts and set us free is to convict and expose our sin. Transformation requires truth – you cannot receive grace without first confronting truth, ugly as that may be.
Covering up is the worst thing we can do. There are rotten apples in any barrel. The test is what leadership do with them. The answer is not to put the lid on and hope they go away. People felt safe confessing it to you. Perhaps there was safety and integrity in your heart.
Uncovering sin is painful. There’s no such thing as “Dr Painless the dentist.” We must confront the ugliness of of our lives. It’s not to condemn but to deliver, but it does require the drill!
- The need for safe and trusted spaces so that sin can be exposed and people can be restored. Don reflects: “If could be our turn next week.”
- The role of conscience in relation to God’s voice. For Don, the longer we walk with Jesus, the more our conscience and God’s voice close ranks!
- God’s purpose in exposure is always redemption. There is no shame or condemnation.
God has incredible love for his church. If we don’t discipline our children, we hate them. Truth-telling is an act of love – not a thing to be feared, but to be welcomed.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
God Conversations with Tanya Harris.
I think it was Mother. Teresa and someone asked her.
When does God speak to you? And she said whenever he wants.
How? Could I know?
If God was speaking to me and how?
Could I know that that was actually just me thinking about
I? Just had some bad pizza.
I. Just thought it was normal to
dream and have experiences and she said to me.
I actually have a. Relationship with Jesus and he
(00:23):
talks to me. And it just.
Blew my mind. And then hearing the Lord speak
again very clearly and just say this, this is where I've called
you to love yourself. Jesus said we'd recognise his
voice. It was never meant to be a one
way conversation. What does God speak about?
Some say God only ever speaks about positive things, but if
(00:47):
the Holy Spirit speaks as the continuing voice of Jesus, then
we might expect God to speak to us about the areas of our lives
we may not want to talk about. That is, God may speak to warn
us and expose our wrongdoing, those dark areas of our hearts
that we want to hide. God is the ultimate truth
(01:07):
teller, but His purpose is always to protect the innocent
and to set the guilty free. Hi and welcome to the God
Conversations podcast. My name is Tanya Harris and I'm
a pastor, practical theologian, author and founding director of
God Conversations, a ministry that equips you to recognise and
(01:27):
respond to God's voice. Welcome to the show everyone.
And you know, today's episode isa rather heavy one.
I have to say it all began when I was having a conversation
actually with a pastor in New Zealand earlier in the year in
2024. He was a man who had decades of
(01:48):
experience in ministry but tragically had also been Privy
to some God conversations that he'd rather not have heard.
Along with his wife Karen, for 20 years he led Gateway Church
in Hamilton, New Zealand and during the season they watched
God restore a church that was broken and bruised by the sexual
(02:08):
failure of leadership and it became a thriving congregation
of over 1200 people. The man is a gifted teacher
whose ministry has been appreciated throughout New
Zealand and in many nations. And he is a man who I believe
has a lot of wisdom and comes from a real place of integrity
(02:28):
and the perfect person to talk about what is a somewhat
difficult topic. So welcome to the show, Pastor
Don Barry. Hi, Tanya, nice to be with you.
It's wonderful to be with you, Don.
I had such a great time at your church along with Pastor Chris
Jones. And you know, one of the things
I noticed I visit many differentchurches, but your church just
(02:52):
had this strong, strong feeling of being very safe.
And I I realised that came from a place of great integrity and I
think that you are very qualified to speak about this
particular topic. So perhaps you can introduce
yourself to the God Conversations audience from all
over the world. We've picked up a lot of new
(03:12):
subscribers recently from the UKas I've been over there.
But perhaps you can introduce yourself.
How did you come to be doing what you are doing now?
I've been in ministry nearly 5 decades now.
Tanya. I was raised in a non Christian
home. I became a Catholic in my teen
years. Long story I won't go into, but
(03:36):
my wife, my fiance at that time,Karen, and I got well and truly
converted in the midst of what was what we called the Jesus
Revolution, the charismatic era.And after a few years of school
teaching, I felt a real call to ministry.
So 1977 I went full time. I spent seven years in the first
(04:00):
church that I was involved with,a little Pentecostal church in
my hometown. And then I came up into the
Waikato region of New Zealand toa beautiful town called
Cambridge, where Karen and I pastored for 11 1/2 years.
And then through some quite dramatic circumstances, we came
to the city of Hamilton. It was our intention to stay two
(04:23):
years and it's been 30 years this month and and a long a long
journey that we've been pastoring what is now Gateway
Church here in Hamilton. And A and a beautiful church at
that dawn. And such faithfulness in
ministry over so many years, I think really marks your who you
are and what you've done. We are all about God
(04:46):
conversations. You're a man who knows how to
hear God's voice. Perhaps in your journey, do you
have a God conversation that youcould share, that maybe shaped
your life, that you could tell us about?
Oh. A very significant one actually
from from our time in Cambridge,Tanya.
We were in Cambridge 11 1/2 years.
Absolutely loved the town, lovedthe church, had no intention of
(05:11):
moving, but over a series of months a number of things
happened, all of which, you know, God was significantly
involved in that. That got us uprooted and and
moved from Cambridge. It really started with a sense
of being deeply unsettled, whichis really unusual for me.
(05:31):
I'm a a very settled person. I think Karen might have called
me boring in those days, but I went through a long season of
being very unsettled. So I called a friend of mine and
and said, my goodness, I don't quite know what's happening to
me. Any insight?
And quite weirdly for me, he he said God's not thinking or do
(05:53):
you think God might be planning to move you?
And my first, my first response was going to get behind me,
Satan. I'm not planning on moving here
from here. We love it, but it, but he gave
me an illustration actually, which hit home because my wife
Karen was a gardener. She loved gardening.
And and he said to me, Don, whenyou when you move a larger tree
(06:16):
or a larger Bush, you can't justdig it up and move it because
the shark will kill it. He said what you do is you dig
around it, move it, you know, backwards and forwards, then
come back to it. And he said, I just kind of
wonder if maybe God's unsettlingyou.
Well, I, you know, my initial response was interesting, but I
don't think so. But within the next month,
(06:37):
Tanya, I had at least 4 invitations to pass to other
churches. And that that had never, that
had never happened to me before.So that, that, you know, really
alerted me. So Karen and I said ourselves
to, you know, after conversations, we thought we'd
better pray and, and we did. But at the end of that period,
we weren't really any clearer, except that I went to our
(06:59):
denominational conference that year.
And after a ministry time, I wasjust, I was standing quietly.
The the meeting had finished andpeople were going in all
directions. And I, I was kind of pondering,
you know, Lord, is this you? And somebody tapped me on my
right shoulder. I turned around and I looked at
this guy and I didn't know him. And he said to me, Don, you
don't know me. But I really feel like the Lord
(07:22):
wanted me to tell you, you're supposed to move to from
Cambridge. You're going to go to a city.
And he turned around and walked away.
And I, I was kind of shocked andI was looking at this guy
thinking, you know, this is kindof like The Lone Ranger.
There must be a silver bullet somewhere around here, This
masked man. And and he went away.
And while I was watching him, I got a tap on my left shoulder
(07:44):
and it was another guy. And he said, hey, Don, this is
going to sound really weird, butI, I feel to tell you, you're
supposed to leave Cambridge and you're going to go to a city.
Wow. He did not hear the first guy
because, you know, the, the, everyone was talking.
And he just quietly said it to me.
A week later, I was in another meeting with an American speaker
And he looked at me and he said,Hey, are you thinking about
(08:05):
leaving your, your, your church?And I said, I'm really trying
hard not to, But he said, no, no, he said, God's in this.
And he said you're supposed to leave your church and you're
going to go to a city. Oh my gosh, John.
John, you got it in triplicate. Yeah, I did.
I probably needed it in triplicate because to be to be
fair, Tanya, I'm probably not the brightest bulb in the
(08:27):
chandelier. And, and I really didn't want to
go from Cambridge. And, and we grieved because we
loved the church. The, the really funny thing
about that is it was so clear that we were supposed to go and
we were going to go to a city, but we had no idea what city.
And God didn't say and he kept, he kept us kind of on the hook
(08:47):
in a way. We checked a couple of cities
out and then a missions organisation came to us and
said, hey, would you be interested in coming to
Singapore? We'd really like you to head up
a Bible college as a sort of a finishing school for, for
missionaries going out on the field.
Well, Karen and I have always loved Singapore.
And the thought that we might gothere was wow.
We'd love to, you know. And so they said, look, it's
(09:10):
going to take us two years to toput this in, in place.
We know that you're leaving Cambridge.
What will you do for the two years?
Well, a church nearby. Had they, they, they were one of
the churches that had asked us would we be interested in
pastoring? And then I said, no, basically
without even thinking about it, to be fair, looking back,
(09:31):
because they were such a different church, so different
in their DNA and culture, and I knew that it would be a massive
shift for us to come. But they came back to us and
said, hey, would you be interested in coming and taking
our Bible college? And so I said to them, look,
we've got a two year hiatus before we go to Singapore.
If you are prepared to have us for two years, we'll do it.
(09:53):
So they said, Yep, we'd love to have you.
So we moved to Hamilton, to whatwas then an Assemblies of God
church, and for two. Years long.
Long story short, you ended up staying for longer than two
years. 3030 years, 30 years later do.
You know, what I like about yourstory is that you see the beauty
(10:15):
of the clarity when God speaks in the way that God does.
But then you still go on this journey.
That's quite human, isn't it? You get this interplay and I he,
he, God can get the message through very clearly as he did
for you, but then he still engages our human self in the
process it. Was a real journey of faith.
We, we left, you know, sort of Cambridge knowing that we were
(10:38):
supposed to go, having set it up, ready to go, but not knowing
where we were going. And you?
That you came to faith for us. You came to Gateway New Church.
Now this is the church I visitedat the beginning of the year and
a beautiful, strong church had awonderful time there, incredible
facility and team that you've got.
(10:59):
But that's not it's not how it started for you.
We're we're talking on this episode about God conversations
that warn expose sin and wrongdoing.
And I I, you know, I'm guessing this is a topic you never wanted
to be equipped to speak on. Perhaps you can tell us how this
(11:21):
started for you. Yep, sure.
I'd been in the church a couple of months, Tanya, as I said,
Karen and I had taken the Bible college.
So we were, we were involved in the Bible college, but not not
so much the church. I mean, obviously we attended
the church, but I wasn't on the leadership team or anything like
that. In fact, we we deliberately
asked not to be considered in that sense.
(11:44):
I think the first hint I got that probably something wasn't
as I anticipated was I remember coming home and talking to Karen
and saying all of these people are coming to talk to me and
it's all about sexual brokenness.
And I've never experienced so many people confessing sexual
brokenness ever before. And I, I guess I put it down to
(12:06):
the fact that it was a much bigger church than than I'd come
from. Cambridge was probably 150 to
200 people. This church was well over 1000
and probably was one of the flagship churches of our
movement. But but I thought, golly,
there's something wrong about 3-4 months into it, I had this
(12:27):
I, I had a dream and in the dream I was, we lived just out
of town or out of the city. And in the dream, I was driving
into work and I came around a corner and there was there was a
sort of a bank on the side of the road that had a culvert
going into the bank. And a lot of men in white suits
(12:48):
who who looked like they were cleaning up a chemical spill,
were going into the culvert and raking out onto the roadside,
all of this incredibly unclean, horrible muck.
And I remember driving by and going, oh, that's horrible.
Fancy exposing that to everybodydriving by.
Well, I woke up and I'd had, I guess I'd had enough experiences
(13:09):
with dreams to take notice. And I, I, it registered with me.
I went back to sleep and I dreamt the same dream exactly
like a video replay. And that, that had never
happened to me. Never.
Happened. To me, well, it's never happened
to me since either. I woke thinking, Oh my goodness,
(13:29):
something's, something's happening here.
And I immediately thought of Joseph when he said to Pharaoh,
the dream has been doubled because it's going to happen
quickly. So I was very aware that God
seemed to be saying that he was going to expose something that
was unclean. And to be fair, Tanya, I, I, I
was probably saying, you know, for the first day, 24 hours,
(13:53):
Lord, is there something in me? Is there something wrong?
I'm not aware of something, but I'm, I know.
I don't know my own heart. Are you trying to tell me
something you know? And can I just say that's a
really wise thing to do when youhave a dream is to it's
probably, you know, to check yourself first before you start,
you know, applying it to something else.
(14:13):
I think that's. Really.
Absolutely. You know, and as I say, I wasn't
aware of anything. But like Paul said, you know,
I'm don't you don't know your own heart and you're waiting for
the Lord's directions, you know,in terms of his comment on your
attitudes or behaviour or. But within probably 48 hours, I
was in my office. I had a knock on the door and a
(14:34):
staff member came in. She was pale and she said, Oh my
God, Don, I've just had a woman in my office and she's confessed
to an affair with the guy who had planted the church was the
Superintendent of our movement was on, you know,
internationally known speaker and Tanya, the only way I can
(14:56):
explain this is a series of dominoes that just went one
after another after another because because within two weeks
we had five other woman all unconnected.
They hadn't been talking to eachother, but all just impressed or
pressured by the by the Lord to confess.
And so at least five had come inover this very short period
(15:19):
saying I had an affair with him.This happened to me and again in
the midst of that Daniel I had, I had another dream.
And in the dream I was there wasa, a very old, old dilapidated
house up on a hill. And in my dream, in very short
steps, I was really up close to it and I could see this window
(15:40):
that was peppered with boreholes.
And and then suddenly a disembodied hand with a flame
came and went up round the window sill.
And as it was going by the holes, these little insects and
things were coming out of the hole, pressured by the heat.
And I thought, oh, my goodness, what's this?
(16:01):
Well, the next day, another staff member came in, sat down
and said, Don, we have just had another woman come and confess
this stuff is coming out of the woodwork.
And it was like, oh wow. Literally.
Yeah, and I probably, we knew itwas the Lord and I needed to
know it was the Lord because when I took that information to
(16:25):
our, to our executive, I think they sort of viewed me, Tanya,
like the cat that brought in thenight queue and laid it on the
couch, you know, like, oh, this is really inconvenient, you
know, And a couple of voices said to me, this is the devil's
attempt to destroy a good man's ministry.
(16:45):
You should try and keep this covered.
You shouldn't do anything with this.
We're going to quieten this downto add insult to injury or
vinegar to the wound, whichever you like.
In the midst of all that, another man came to me and said,
hey, Don, since you are dealing with this, this was a man in
their congregation. He said, since you're dealing
(17:07):
with this, you also need to know.
And he named an internationally known figure who had been to the
church and said while he was here, he molested my boys.
And it was like, Oh my goodness,what am I going to do?
So again, I went to the leaders of the movement and by this
stage, I really was the cat thathad brought in the night kill.
(17:29):
And one of them said to me, you know, do you think you're a
Ghostbuster or something? What are you, you know, what are
you trying to do? Destroy people's lives and
ministries? And I just said, look, we've,
you know, if we're going to learn one thing from the history
of our church, of church, we, wecannot hide this.
We have to, we have to address it.
(17:50):
Well, we went through a probablya period of about 18 months, two
years going backwards and forwards.
They, the both, both men acknowledged what they had done.
The first they stood down for a 12 month period.
The second they came back to us and said look, he's old and he
(18:11):
has, he's got the first signs ofdementia.
So we're just going to retire him and say that he's retired
because he's sick. At that point in time, Tanya, I
dug my toes in and said, no, youcan't do that.
I will not allow you to do that.If we're going to learn one
thing from history, it is that you cannot hide these things.
(18:32):
We've got to be open. We've got to be vulnerable.
The response was, this is not good for our movement.
It won't. You know, we really need to keep
this undercover. It's not good for the movement.
I, I remember saying to them, oh, the, the spirit of Caiaphas
is alive and well. You know, that's what he said
about Jesus. We've got to get rid of this man
(18:53):
for the sake of the movement andfor the temple.
On our Anyway, we carried on imagine.
I have a million questions to ask you about this whole
scenario because I think that wecan learn a lot from it, both
from the heart of God and what is appropriate in our response.
But we're just going to take a short break and then we're going
(19:14):
to come back and explore some ofthe insights that have come out
of these God conversations that expose and warn.
Did you know that God's most common way of speaking in
biblical history is in dreams and visions?
God still speaks in this creative and powerful way today,
but we don't always recognise it.
(19:34):
But not every dream is from God.So how do we know when it is?
And how do we understand the strange symbolism and imagery
that appears in our dream visions?
The God Dreams Online course answers these questions and
more. It includes 7 streamable videos,
digital study guide and bonus resources.
Join with a small group from your church or study on your
(19:55):
own. Be equipped to recognise God's
voice in dreams and visions, as Jesus said.
We can all recognise His voice and follow.
Available now at godconversations.com/courses.
Welcome back to God conversations.
We are talking to Don Barry who is a pastor, a long standing
(20:17):
pastor over in beautiful New Zealand.
Been a pastor of one church for 30 years but been in ministry
much longer, but has also seen and heard some things about the
work of God in people's lives toexpose sin.
Don, that's just, that's just a horrific story.
My first thought is, you know, God gave you 2 prophetic dreams.
(20:39):
So he was cleaning out. He was exposing.
You have to expose to clean, don't you?
Why do you think God spoke thosethings to you?
Oh, good question, Tanya. I, I don't know, To be fair, I
was, you know, not the senior pastor of the church at the
time. I would, I would like to think
(21:05):
that he knew that I was probablybloody minded enough and
stubborn enough to not, not justlet it lie and to not be
willing. I mean, I'd come out of the
Catholic Church, Tanya. And you know, it's not news to
anybody that the Catholic Churchhas struggled massively with
(21:27):
immorality among priests, have tried have tried to hide it,
move priests around and and it'sbeen probably one of the most
drastically wrong decisions thatthe Catholic Church has made in
many a decade. You, I often say there are
(21:47):
rotten apples in, in any barrel.You know, whether it's a,
whether it's gymnastic coaches or swimming coaches or you name
it, you'll find rotten apples inthe barrel.
The problem is not rotten applesin the barrel, Tanya.
The problem is what leadership does with rotten apples.
And the answer is not to put thelid on and hope they'll go away.
(22:09):
We'll try and cover them becauseyou can't do it that way.
I find it interesting, Don, thatGod spoke to you about it, but
then people came and spoke to you about it too.
Perhaps they detected that therewas safety and integrity in your
heart and that you were able to walk walk things through in a
way that was honouring to God. I think because.
(22:33):
Because we know that sin is in all of our hearts and that the
only way for God to transform our hearts and set us free has
to be exposing, doesn't it? It all starts with exposing and
conviction and truth telling. You cannot receive grace without
first confronting truth, as uglyas it may be.
(22:55):
But perhaps, perhaps you were the one that God could trust to
to walk through this muck and mire.
Perhaps God was using you as oneof those white men in in suits.
No, that one of those men in white suits.
Yeah, yeah, it didn't feel like I had a suit on for a lot of
that. Tanya.
It was, it was pretty ragged forher.
But there, especially when the, you know, key people in the
(23:18):
movement were saying you're doing the wrong thing.
You're, you're doing the devil'swork of condemnation.
And, and so I think one of the reasons the Lord was so specific
to me is I needed to know it washim because I could have been
shaped or influenced or silenced, you know, and, and
thought maybe, maybe I am. But it, it felt so strongly that
(23:41):
it was the Lord and the way the dominoes fell.
It just, it had his touch on it.And although, as you say,
although it was messy and you know, I always remember Tanya
many, many years ago seeing an advert or hearing about an
advert from a dentist who advertised himself as Doctor
Painless. And the reason he was Doctor
(24:02):
Painless was it turned out, was that he didn't dig out the
decay. He just filled over the top of
it. There was there was no drilling
except for the problem that several months down the line,
the teeth had to be extracted because the decay had had been
covered. And although we hate the
drilling procedure, without removing the decay, there is no
(24:28):
chance of health. You are, you're putting a band
aid on cancer. And so while, while it's
difficult, while it's painful, nobody wants to go through that.
That's that's the essence of repentance.
It's the confrontation with the broken parts of our lives.
And as you say, we're all broken.
And when the Lord puts his finger, it's not to, it's not to
(24:49):
condemn, it's it's to deliver. But it does require sometimes
the drilling process. And as difficult as that is and
as painful as it is, we have to go through it.
So you've seen God expose sin ona, on A, at a leadership, at a
corporate scale, on a corporate scale, perhaps if we can drill
back into a micro level, becauseI think the work of the Spirit.
(25:12):
So we talk about the Spirit speaks as the continuing voice
of Jesus. And we know that Jesus was very
concerned about the state of ourhearts and certainly with the
disciples, he was always pointing to the heart.
So the Spirit speaks likewise. And when the Spirit speaks to
us, we shouldn't be surprised that the Spirit uncovers sin,
(25:33):
exposes things, gives us a mirror, first of all, perhaps in
our own lives, and then at at a wider level.
How do we respond to that? Perhaps first of all, as an
individual, if God's putting hisfinger on something in my heart
or exposing some addiction or some wrong behaviour, and I have
(25:56):
the courage to go and confess it, or gets exposed, how, as
brothers and sisters in the journey of God, how do we
respond to that? What do we do?
Well, I think if if you're the one confessing, you find
somebody safe, somebody that youcan trust, somebody that you
(26:18):
feel will will handle you well and and if necessary, go and and
unburden yourself to them. If you're at the other on the
other side of the table, Galatians says you do you know
Galatians 6. I think it just talks about the
fact that you restore people with a degree of humility,
knowing that it well could be your turn next week.
(26:41):
You don't do it from a place of superiority or, you know,
Pharasaic or self righteousness.We're broken and we get to help
one another in the process. So it's, it's kind of that
process of give and take down here.
One of the things I think, you know, on that micro level that
we so often don't associate withGod's voice is our conscience.
(27:02):
And you know, I, I know, you know, when you get saved, your
conscience can be, you know, it's battered and bruised and it
needs restoration. But the longer we walk with
Jesus, I think the more our conscience and the voice of the
Holy Spirit close ranks. And so Paul says in Romans
Chapter 9, you know, bearing my conscience, bearing witness with
(27:25):
me, you know, and, and there is that joining of the Spirit's
voice with your conscience. And so you'll be involved in a
conversation sometimes, you know, and you'll say something
that's probably inappropriate. And immediately there's a sense
I should not have said that. And the conscience draws your
attention to something that should not have been said or an
(27:48):
attitude that shouldn't have been manifest in the
conversation. And it's important what you do
with that. You know, you can either say,
oh, well, you know that they'll understand or they said that or,
or you know, that the person deserved that.
Actually, I, I think it's reallyimportant in those settings that
you find yourself a quiet place and just say, Lord, I shouldn't
(28:11):
have said that, should I? And in those moments you can
sometimes, sometimes there's a requirement or the sense that
you know what, I need to go and put that right.
And there have been times, Tony,where I've gone and said, Hey,
you know, in that conversation where I said thus and so I
should not have said that. And I'm really sorry.
Other times it might just be, please don't do that again.
(28:32):
You know, I often, one of the things that I often talk to a
congregation about is, you know,Karen passed away in January.
But but one of the things that Ioften would do to with Karen is,
you know, if I sensed that therewas something between US or
something and I didn't know, maybe I didn't know what it was,
(28:53):
but I felt like, oh golly, I think maybe I've offended Karen.
I would go to her and say, hey, Hun, are we OK?
Are we OK? And sometimes she'd say, yeah,
sure, fine. Why other times?
Other times she might say fine and I knew it wasn't fine and we
needed to dig into it. You know, I I do the same with
(29:16):
the Lord and I think it's probably a paraphrase of Psalm
139. You know where David said,
search me. I got, I often say to her
complication, you know that the old prayer I've examined the the
the night time prayer that the ancients used to pray, Lord, are
we OK? How's the day been?
(29:36):
Are we OK? And listen for his commentary on
attitudes, ambitions, motivations, words that have
been spoken. Just keeping really short
accounts, Tanya. And I think, I think that's so
true, Don. And, and just to get good at
that, it's like a reflex you canpractise, isn't it?
(29:57):
And when other people do it to us, it's easier for us to do it
with them so we can create a culture where we keep short
accounts. I love that.
I'm thinking, what happened in your story as those things were
exposed? God exposes things for a reason,
doesn't do it just to air our dirty laundry, doesn't do it to
(30:20):
humiliate or to take us down. God's purpose is always
redemptive, to set us free. Did you see that process in the
situation that you found yourself in the church?
How did it end up for you going through?
That it it was very difficult inthe church.
The senior leader at that time essentially had a breakdown and
(30:46):
decided that he was going to step away from the church.
That was the point in time wherethe leaders came and said, hey,
would you and Karen take the church?
And I said to them, we're only here for two years.
And we've by that stage, a year had gone by and I said, I'll
look after the church for a yearwhile you find some other
victim, I mean pastor. And but it was so I said yes,
(31:09):
temporarily. And then just after that, only
only weeks after that, the missions organisation that were
calling us to Singapore called me and said, hey Don, the
college is not going to happen. We can't get it up and running.
We don't have the, the funding. So I'm really sorry, but
Singapore's off the off the agenda.
And I remember saying you're nothalf as sorry as I am.
(31:31):
And the church went through a terrible time.
Tanya, it, it went from probably1200 to bottom out at about I, I
suspect around 3. There were those who were angry
with us because enough hadn't been done to get these men out
of ministry. They felt we'd been too light on
them. The other half of the church
(31:53):
thought we were terrible and haddestroyed these men of God.
And it swirled for months. So we went through a very
difficult time. However, God, it was incredible,
has been incredible and has, youknow, I mean, we're, we're a
normal church, Daniel. We're good, bad and ugly,
depending on what day you ask me.
(32:14):
But but mostly it's a healthy church now.
It's it's normal. Whereas before the waters felt
very muddy and very swirly. And I kind of wrote, I wrote my
story and I called it Water under the bridge and a whole lot
of other stuff too, which was taken from a Dylan line.
(32:34):
I'm, I'm a bit of a Bob Dylan fan.
And but it felt like that, you know, ultimately, yes, I have
seen the redemptive grace of Godin the life of the church.
It has been wonderful, but it didn't happen overnight.
Kind of reminds me of that. And you know, here, here at it,
it will, it will happen. You know, it might just, it
(32:55):
might just take a little bit of time and it's not going to
happen overnight. And but, but God has been
incredibly faithful. The path of integrity is a tough
one, isn't it? Well, it can be.
I, I, I guess we live in a culture down here where we look
for immediate rewards. You know, and I often say to
people, you can get immediate rewards by doing steroids, but
(33:17):
the ultimate, the ultimate end of steroids is probably cancer
or some kind of tumour. You can't keep doing that.
And you just got to, you want tobuild body mass.
You, you do the hard work. You lift iron, you know, you
pump, you pump iron. And it takes a while and some
days it's really painful and you're wondering if this is
really working. But I think that's why it's a
(33:38):
journey. You know, there's just that
faithfulness in the journey. Often people say to me, how you
doing? And my favourite answer down
here is, yeah, I'm plotting, I'mplodding on.
And I think it was William Careyonce who said I'm not a genius,
I plod. But it's amazing how far you can
go if you keep plodding. And I think the life of
(33:58):
integrity is a bit like that. You know, if you're looking for
instantaneous rewards, then there are other ways to get it.
You can cut corners. You can be ethically, you know,
a bit shadowy and, and you, you can, you can make gains by doing
it fast. But there's an old saying when
you want to go fast, go slow. And, and I just think the, the
(34:22):
way of integrity, while it mightnot give you immediate rewards,
is the way that you have to walk.
And it's interesting, you know, the end of Psalm 78, it says of
David that he walked and he led Israel in the integrity of his
heart and the skillfulness of his hands.
And I think sometimes in the church we've elevated the
skillfulness of hands over the integrity of heart.
(34:45):
I think the order is significant.
And I think the second without the first actually has probably
LED us to this place where we'veseen so many significant
ministries, incredibly skillful and hands come crashing down.
Yeah, so true. Looking back, Don, you, you've
(35:06):
had these God conversations, you've walked them out, you've
seen them manifest. To sum up, what have you learnt
about God in that journey? Oh, wow.
I think just the incredible lovethat he has for his church and
the willingness to confront the church.
(35:27):
You know, it says in the book Proverbs that if we don't
discipline our children, we hatethem.
And if we really love them, we'll shape them.
And I, I think for a lot of us parents, you know, we always
say, oh, discipline is so hard. And I love them so much.
I just can't bring myself to cross them.
And I, I think the love of God is so faithful, so passionate
(35:53):
that he's willing for us to misunderstand him, to be angry
with them to, you know, he's secure enough to take us through
his disciplines. You know, it says in Hebrews,
doesn't it, if he, if you're notbeing disciplined, you're not a
child, you're not his child, because we are his children.
He loves us enough to be really,really faithful and, and
(36:16):
disciplining us. And, and it's not always
discipline either, Tanya, you know, sometimes it's absolutely
passionate, joyful, walking the walk and you'd never have it any
other way. It's just that when we portray
the life as that's all it is. It's that's not truthful.
You know, you only have to. Yeah, yeah.
(36:38):
You only have to read the Psalmsto see it's up, down, lament,
rejoicing. And over the 30 years we've had
all of that and I, I'm awed, Tania, at the unbelievable
passionate love of God for his people, for his church.
I love that truth telling is inspired by love and it's, it's,
(37:01):
it's not a thing to be feared, it's a thing to be welcomed.
And I think as leaders we have to be constantly willing to
allow God to shine the spotlighton our hearts and expose and
warn. It is a gift, isn't it, 'cause
it leads us into freedom, Don. I've just been so blessed by
getting to know you and your church and seeing the fruit of
(37:23):
that pathway of integrity. And in these times, I just think
your story, your example is such, such a help to people
around. I did read your book.
In fact, I remember reading the book Water Under the Bridge and
going, oh, that explains a lot. So perhaps someone might be
interested in getting a hold of that book.
Where would they find it, Don? It's on Amazon, Tanya, or they
(37:47):
could contact us. If they prefer hard copy, they
could contact us just at GatewayChurch, Hamilton, New Zealand,
and we'd be happy to send them acopy.
Tanya. Beautiful.
Well, thank you again, Don, for your time and your wisdom, but
mostly for the walk that you've walked.
And if God has trusted you to beable to carry that well, then I
(38:07):
know that we can also learn fromyour example.
So bless your heaps and thanks again for coming.
On thanks, Tanya. Thanks and we've so appreciated
God conversation. We loved having you in Hamilton.
Look forward to having you back again.
Cheers. Thanks for listening to God
Conversations with Tanya Harris.Don't miss the next episode by
subscribing to the show and yourfavourite podcast.
(38:29):
And remember, the Holy Spirit was given so we could all hear
God's voice. It was never meant to be a one
way conversation.
God Conversations with Tanya Harris.
I think it was Mother. Teresa and someone asked her.
When does God speak to you? And she said whenever he wants.
How? Could I know?
If God was speaking to me and how?
Could I know that that was actually just me thinking about
I? Just had some bad pizza.
I. Just thought it was normal to
dream and have experiences and she said to me.
I actually have a. Relationship with Jesus and he
(00:23):
talks to me. And it just.
Blew my mind. And then hearing the Lord speak
again very clearly and just say this, this is where I've called
you to love yourself. Jesus said we'd recognise his
voice. It was never meant to be a one
way conversation. What does God speak about?
Some say God only ever speaks about positive things, but if
(00:47):
the Holy Spirit speaks as the continuing voice of Jesus, then
we might expect God to speak to us about the areas of our lives
we may not want to talk about. That is, God may speak to warn
us and expose our wrongdoing, those dark areas of our hearts
that we want to hide. God is the ultimate truth
(01:07):
teller, but His purpose is always to protect the innocent
and to set the guilty free. Hi and welcome to the God
Conversations podcast. My name is Tanya Harris and I'm
a pastor, practical theologian, author and founding director of
God Conversations, a ministry that equips you to recognise and
(01:27):
respond to God's voice. Welcome to the show everyone.
And you know, today's episode isa rather heavy one.
I have to say it all began when I was having a conversation
actually with a pastor in New Zealand earlier in the year in
2024. He was a man who had decades of
(01:48):
experience in ministry but tragically had also been Privy
to some God conversations that he'd rather not have heard.
Along with his wife Karen, for 20 years he led Gateway Church
in Hamilton, New Zealand and during the season they watched
God restore a church that was broken and bruised by the sexual
(02:08):
failure of leadership and it became a thriving congregation
of over 1200 people. The man is a gifted teacher
whose ministry has been appreciated throughout New
Zealand and in many nations. And he is a man who I believe
has a lot of wisdom and comes from a real place of integrity
(02:28):
and the perfect person to talk about what is a somewhat
difficult topic. So welcome to the show, Pastor
Don Barry. Hi, Tanya, nice to be with you.
It's wonderful to be with you, Don.
I had such a great time at your church along with Pastor Chris
Jones. And you know, one of the things
I noticed I visit many differentchurches, but your church just
(02:52):
had this strong, strong feeling of being very safe.
And I I realised that came from a place of great integrity and I
think that you are very qualified to speak about this
particular topic. So perhaps you can introduce
yourself to the God Conversations audience from all
over the world. We've picked up a lot of new
(03:12):
subscribers recently from the UKas I've been over there.
But perhaps you can introduce yourself.
How did you come to be doing what you are doing now?
I've been in ministry nearly 5 decades now.
Tanya. I was raised in a non Christian
home. I became a Catholic in my teen
years. Long story I won't go into, but
(03:36):
my wife, my fiance at that time,Karen, and I got well and truly
converted in the midst of what was what we called the Jesus
Revolution, the charismatic era.And after a few years of school
teaching, I felt a real call to ministry.
So 1977 I went full time. I spent seven years in the first
(04:00):
church that I was involved with,a little Pentecostal church in
my hometown. And then I came up into the
Waikato region of New Zealand toa beautiful town called
Cambridge, where Karen and I pastored for 11 1/2 years.
And then through some quite dramatic circumstances, we came
to the city of Hamilton. It was our intention to stay two
(04:23):
years and it's been 30 years this month and and a long a long
journey that we've been pastoring what is now Gateway
Church here in Hamilton. And A and a beautiful church at
that dawn. And such faithfulness in
ministry over so many years, I think really marks your who you
are and what you've done. We are all about God
(04:46):
conversations. You're a man who knows how to
hear God's voice. Perhaps in your journey, do you
have a God conversation that youcould share, that maybe shaped
your life, that you could tell us about?
Oh. A very significant one actually
from from our time in Cambridge,Tanya.
We were in Cambridge 11 1/2 years.
Absolutely loved the town, lovedthe church, had no intention of
(05:11):
moving, but over a series of months a number of things
happened, all of which, you know, God was significantly
involved in that. That got us uprooted and and
moved from Cambridge. It really started with a sense
of being deeply unsettled, whichis really unusual for me.
(05:31):
I'm a a very settled person. I think Karen might have called
me boring in those days, but I went through a long season of
being very unsettled. So I called a friend of mine and
and said, my goodness, I don't quite know what's happening to
me. Any insight?
And quite weirdly for me, he he said God's not thinking or do
(05:53):
you think God might be planning to move you?
And my first, my first response was going to get behind me,
Satan. I'm not planning on moving here
from here. We love it, but it, but he gave
me an illustration actually, which hit home because my wife
Karen was a gardener. She loved gardening.
And and he said to me, Don, whenyou when you move a larger tree
(06:16):
or a larger Bush, you can't justdig it up and move it because
the shark will kill it. He said what you do is you dig
around it, move it, you know, backwards and forwards, then
come back to it. And he said, I just kind of
wonder if maybe God's unsettlingyou.
Well, I, you know, my initial response was interesting, but I
don't think so. But within the next month,
(06:37):
Tanya, I had at least 4 invitations to pass to other
churches. And that that had never, that
had never happened to me before.So that, that, you know, really
alerted me. So Karen and I said ourselves
to, you know, after conversations, we thought we'd
better pray and, and we did. But at the end of that period,
we weren't really any clearer, except that I went to our
(06:59):
denominational conference that year.
And after a ministry time, I wasjust, I was standing quietly.
The the meeting had finished andpeople were going in all
directions. And I, I was kind of pondering,
you know, Lord, is this you? And somebody tapped me on my
right shoulder. I turned around and I looked at
this guy and I didn't know him. And he said to me, Don, you
don't know me. But I really feel like the Lord
(07:22):
wanted me to tell you, you're supposed to move to from
Cambridge. You're going to go to a city.
And he turned around and walked away.
And I, I was kind of shocked andI was looking at this guy
thinking, you know, this is kindof like The Lone Ranger.
There must be a silver bullet somewhere around here, This
masked man. And and he went away.
And while I was watching him, I got a tap on my left shoulder
(07:44):
and it was another guy. And he said, hey, Don, this is
going to sound really weird, butI, I feel to tell you, you're
supposed to leave Cambridge and you're going to go to a city.
Wow. He did not hear the first guy
because, you know, the, the, everyone was talking.
And he just quietly said it to me.
A week later, I was in another meeting with an American speaker
And he looked at me and he said,Hey, are you thinking about
(08:05):
leaving your, your, your church?And I said, I'm really trying
hard not to, But he said, no, no, he said, God's in this.
And he said you're supposed to leave your church and you're
going to go to a city. Oh my gosh, John.
John, you got it in triplicate. Yeah, I did.
I probably needed it in triplicate because to be to be
fair, Tanya, I'm probably not the brightest bulb in the
(08:27):
chandelier. And, and I really didn't want to
go from Cambridge. And, and we grieved because we
loved the church. The, the really funny thing
about that is it was so clear that we were supposed to go and
we were going to go to a city, but we had no idea what city.
And God didn't say and he kept, he kept us kind of on the hook
(08:47):
in a way. We checked a couple of cities
out and then a missions organisation came to us and
said, hey, would you be interested in coming to
Singapore? We'd really like you to head up
a Bible college as a sort of a finishing school for, for
missionaries going out on the field.
Well, Karen and I have always loved Singapore.
And the thought that we might gothere was wow.
We'd love to, you know. And so they said, look, it's
(09:10):
going to take us two years to toput this in, in place.
We know that you're leaving Cambridge.
What will you do for the two years?
Well, a church nearby. Had they, they, they were one of
the churches that had asked us would we be interested in
pastoring? And then I said, no, basically
without even thinking about it, to be fair, looking back,
(09:31):
because they were such a different church, so different
in their DNA and culture, and I knew that it would be a massive
shift for us to come. But they came back to us and
said, hey, would you be interested in coming and taking
our Bible college? And so I said to them, look,
we've got a two year hiatus before we go to Singapore.
If you are prepared to have us for two years, we'll do it.
(09:53):
So they said, Yep, we'd love to have you.
So we moved to Hamilton, to whatwas then an Assemblies of God
church, and for two. Years long.
Long story short, you ended up staying for longer than two
years. 3030 years, 30 years later do.
You know, what I like about yourstory is that you see the beauty
(10:15):
of the clarity when God speaks in the way that God does.
But then you still go on this journey.
That's quite human, isn't it? You get this interplay and I he,
he, God can get the message through very clearly as he did
for you, but then he still engages our human self in the
process it. Was a real journey of faith.
We, we left, you know, sort of Cambridge knowing that we were
(10:38):
supposed to go, having set it up, ready to go, but not knowing
where we were going. And you?
That you came to faith for us. You came to Gateway New Church.
Now this is the church I visitedat the beginning of the year and
a beautiful, strong church had awonderful time there, incredible
facility and team that you've got.
(10:59):
But that's not it's not how it started for you.
We're we're talking on this episode about God conversations
that warn expose sin and wrongdoing.
And I I, you know, I'm guessing this is a topic you never wanted
to be equipped to speak on. Perhaps you can tell us how this
(11:21):
started for you. Yep, sure.
I'd been in the church a couple of months, Tanya, as I said,
Karen and I had taken the Bible college.
So we were, we were involved in the Bible college, but not not
so much the church. I mean, obviously we attended
the church, but I wasn't on the leadership team or anything like
that. In fact, we we deliberately
asked not to be considered in that sense.
(11:44):
I think the first hint I got that probably something wasn't
as I anticipated was I remember coming home and talking to Karen
and saying all of these people are coming to talk to me and
it's all about sexual brokenness.
And I've never experienced so many people confessing sexual
brokenness ever before. And I, I guess I put it down to
(12:06):
the fact that it was a much bigger church than than I'd come
from. Cambridge was probably 150 to
200 people. This church was well over 1000
and probably was one of the flagship churches of our
movement. But but I thought, golly,
there's something wrong about 3-4 months into it, I had this
(12:27):
I, I had a dream and in the dream I was, we lived just out
of town or out of the city. And in the dream, I was driving
into work and I came around a corner and there was there was a
sort of a bank on the side of the road that had a culvert
going into the bank. And a lot of men in white suits
(12:48):
who who looked like they were cleaning up a chemical spill,
were going into the culvert and raking out onto the roadside,
all of this incredibly unclean, horrible muck.
And I remember driving by and going, oh, that's horrible.
Fancy exposing that to everybodydriving by.
Well, I woke up and I'd had, I guess I'd had enough experiences
(13:09):
with dreams to take notice. And I, I, it registered with me.
I went back to sleep and I dreamt the same dream exactly
like a video replay. And that, that had never
happened to me. Never.
Happened. To me, well, it's never happened
to me since either. I woke thinking, Oh my goodness,
(13:29):
something's, something's happening here.
And I immediately thought of Joseph when he said to Pharaoh,
the dream has been doubled because it's going to happen
quickly. So I was very aware that God
seemed to be saying that he was going to expose something that
was unclean. And to be fair, Tanya, I, I, I
was probably saying, you know, for the first day, 24 hours,
(13:53):
Lord, is there something in me? Is there something wrong?
I'm not aware of something, but I'm, I know.
I don't know my own heart. Are you trying to tell me
something you know? And can I just say that's a
really wise thing to do when youhave a dream is to it's
probably, you know, to check yourself first before you start,
you know, applying it to something else.
(14:13):
I think that's. Really.
Absolutely. You know, and as I say, I wasn't
aware of anything. But like Paul said, you know,
I'm don't you don't know your own heart and you're waiting for
the Lord's directions, you know,in terms of his comment on your
attitudes or behaviour or. But within probably 48 hours, I
was in my office. I had a knock on the door and a
(14:34):
staff member came in. She was pale and she said, Oh my
God, Don, I've just had a woman in my office and she's confessed
to an affair with the guy who had planted the church was the
Superintendent of our movement was on, you know,
internationally known speaker and Tanya, the only way I can
(14:56):
explain this is a series of dominoes that just went one
after another after another because because within two weeks
we had five other woman all unconnected.
They hadn't been talking to eachother, but all just impressed or
pressured by the by the Lord to confess.
And so at least five had come inover this very short period
(15:19):
saying I had an affair with him.This happened to me and again in
the midst of that Daniel I had, I had another dream.
And in the dream I was there wasa, a very old, old dilapidated
house up on a hill. And in my dream, in very short
steps, I was really up close to it and I could see this window
(15:40):
that was peppered with boreholes.
And and then suddenly a disembodied hand with a flame
came and went up round the window sill.
And as it was going by the holes, these little insects and
things were coming out of the hole, pressured by the heat.
And I thought, oh, my goodness, what's this?
(16:01):
Well, the next day, another staff member came in, sat down
and said, Don, we have just had another woman come and confess
this stuff is coming out of the woodwork.
And it was like, oh wow. Literally.
Yeah, and I probably, we knew itwas the Lord and I needed to
know it was the Lord because when I took that information to
(16:25):
our, to our executive, I think they sort of viewed me, Tanya,
like the cat that brought in thenight queue and laid it on the
couch, you know, like, oh, this is really inconvenient, you
know, And a couple of voices said to me, this is the devil's
attempt to destroy a good man's ministry.
(16:45):
You should try and keep this covered.
You shouldn't do anything with this.
We're going to quieten this downto add insult to injury or
vinegar to the wound, whichever you like.
In the midst of all that, another man came to me and said,
hey, Don, since you are dealing with this, this was a man in
their congregation. He said, since you're dealing
(17:07):
with this, you also need to know.
And he named an internationally known figure who had been to the
church and said while he was here, he molested my boys.
And it was like, Oh my goodness,what am I going to do?
So again, I went to the leaders of the movement and by this
stage, I really was the cat thathad brought in the night kill.
(17:29):
And one of them said to me, you know, do you think you're a
Ghostbuster or something? What are you, you know, what are
you trying to do? Destroy people's lives and
ministries? And I just said, look, we've,
you know, if we're going to learn one thing from the history
of our church, of church, we, wecannot hide this.
We have to, we have to address it.
(17:50):
Well, we went through a probablya period of about 18 months, two
years going backwards and forwards.
They, the both, both men acknowledged what they had done.
The first they stood down for a 12 month period.
The second they came back to us and said look, he's old and he
(18:11):
has, he's got the first signs ofdementia.
So we're just going to retire him and say that he's retired
because he's sick. At that point in time, Tanya, I
dug my toes in and said, no, youcan't do that.
I will not allow you to do that.If we're going to learn one
thing from history, it is that you cannot hide these things.
(18:32):
We've got to be open. We've got to be vulnerable.
The response was, this is not good for our movement.
It won't. You know, we really need to keep
this undercover. It's not good for the movement.
I, I remember saying to them, oh, the, the spirit of Caiaphas
is alive and well. You know, that's what he said
about Jesus. We've got to get rid of this man
(18:53):
for the sake of the movement andfor the temple.
On our Anyway, we carried on imagine.
I have a million questions to ask you about this whole
scenario because I think that wecan learn a lot from it, both
from the heart of God and what is appropriate in our response.
But we're just going to take a short break and then we're going
(19:14):
to come back and explore some ofthe insights that have come out
of these God conversations that expose and warn.
Did you know that God's most common way of speaking in
biblical history is in dreams and visions?
God still speaks in this creative and powerful way today,
but we don't always recognise it.
(19:34):
But not every dream is from God.So how do we know when it is?
And how do we understand the strange symbolism and imagery
that appears in our dream visions?
The God Dreams Online course answers these questions and
more. It includes 7 streamable videos,
digital study guide and bonus resources.
Join with a small group from your church or study on your
(19:55):
own. Be equipped to recognise God's
voice in dreams and visions, as Jesus said.
We can all recognise His voice and follow.
Available now at godconversations.com/courses.
Welcome back to God conversations.
We are talking to Don Barry who is a pastor, a long standing
(20:17):
pastor over in beautiful New Zealand.
Been a pastor of one church for 30 years but been in ministry
much longer, but has also seen and heard some things about the
work of God in people's lives toexpose sin.
Don, that's just, that's just a horrific story.
My first thought is, you know, God gave you 2 prophetic dreams.
(20:39):
So he was cleaning out. He was exposing.
You have to expose to clean, don't you?
Why do you think God spoke thosethings to you?
Oh, good question, Tanya. I, I don't know, To be fair, I
was, you know, not the senior pastor of the church at the
time. I would, I would like to think
(21:05):
that he knew that I was probablybloody minded enough and
stubborn enough to not, not justlet it lie and to not be
willing. I mean, I'd come out of the
Catholic Church, Tanya. And you know, it's not news to
anybody that the Catholic Churchhas struggled massively with
(21:27):
immorality among priests, have tried have tried to hide it,
move priests around and and it'sbeen probably one of the most
drastically wrong decisions thatthe Catholic Church has made in
many a decade. You, I often say there are
(21:47):
rotten apples in, in any barrel.You know, whether it's a,
whether it's gymnastic coaches or swimming coaches or you name
it, you'll find rotten apples inthe barrel.
The problem is not rotten applesin the barrel, Tanya.
The problem is what leadership does with rotten apples.
And the answer is not to put thelid on and hope they'll go away.
(22:09):
We'll try and cover them becauseyou can't do it that way.
I find it interesting, Don, thatGod spoke to you about it, but
then people came and spoke to you about it too.
Perhaps they detected that therewas safety and integrity in your
heart and that you were able to walk walk things through in a
way that was honouring to God. I think because.
(22:33):
Because we know that sin is in all of our hearts and that the
only way for God to transform our hearts and set us free has
to be exposing, doesn't it? It all starts with exposing and
conviction and truth telling. You cannot receive grace without
first confronting truth, as uglyas it may be.
(22:55):
But perhaps, perhaps you were the one that God could trust to
to walk through this muck and mire.
Perhaps God was using you as oneof those white men in in suits.
No, that one of those men in white suits.
Yeah, yeah, it didn't feel like I had a suit on for a lot of
that. Tanya.
It was, it was pretty ragged forher.
But there, especially when the, you know, key people in the
(23:18):
movement were saying you're doing the wrong thing.
You're, you're doing the devil'swork of condemnation.
And, and so I think one of the reasons the Lord was so specific
to me is I needed to know it washim because I could have been
shaped or influenced or silenced, you know, and, and
thought maybe, maybe I am. But it, it felt so strongly that
(23:41):
it was the Lord and the way the dominoes fell.
It just, it had his touch on it.And although, as you say,
although it was messy and you know, I always remember Tanya
many, many years ago seeing an advert or hearing about an
advert from a dentist who advertised himself as Doctor
Painless. And the reason he was Doctor
(24:02):
Painless was it turned out, was that he didn't dig out the
decay. He just filled over the top of
it. There was there was no drilling
except for the problem that several months down the line,
the teeth had to be extracted because the decay had had been
covered. And although we hate the
drilling procedure, without removing the decay, there is no
(24:28):
chance of health. You are, you're putting a band
aid on cancer. And so while, while it's
difficult, while it's painful, nobody wants to go through that.
That's that's the essence of repentance.
It's the confrontation with the broken parts of our lives.
And as you say, we're all broken.
And when the Lord puts his finger, it's not to, it's not to
(24:49):
condemn, it's it's to deliver. But it does require sometimes
the drilling process. And as difficult as that is and
as painful as it is, we have to go through it.
So you've seen God expose sin ona, on A, at a leadership, at a
corporate scale, on a corporate scale, perhaps if we can drill
back into a micro level, becauseI think the work of the Spirit.
(25:12):
So we talk about the Spirit speaks as the continuing voice
of Jesus. And we know that Jesus was very
concerned about the state of ourhearts and certainly with the
disciples, he was always pointing to the heart.
So the Spirit speaks likewise. And when the Spirit speaks to
us, we shouldn't be surprised that the Spirit uncovers sin,
(25:33):
exposes things, gives us a mirror, first of all, perhaps in
our own lives, and then at at a wider level.
How do we respond to that? Perhaps first of all, as an
individual, if God's putting hisfinger on something in my heart
or exposing some addiction or some wrong behaviour, and I have
(25:56):
the courage to go and confess it, or gets exposed, how, as
brothers and sisters in the journey of God, how do we
respond to that? What do we do?
Well, I think if if you're the one confessing, you find
somebody safe, somebody that youcan trust, somebody that you
(26:18):
feel will will handle you well and and if necessary, go and and
unburden yourself to them. If you're at the other on the
other side of the table, Galatians says you do you know
Galatians 6. I think it just talks about the
fact that you restore people with a degree of humility,
knowing that it well could be your turn next week.
(26:41):
You don't do it from a place of superiority or, you know,
Pharasaic or self righteousness.We're broken and we get to help
one another in the process. So it's, it's kind of that
process of give and take down here.
One of the things I think, you know, on that micro level that
we so often don't associate withGod's voice is our conscience.
(27:02):
And you know, I, I know, you know, when you get saved, your
conscience can be, you know, it's battered and bruised and it
needs restoration. But the longer we walk with
Jesus, I think the more our conscience and the voice of the
Holy Spirit close ranks. And so Paul says in Romans
Chapter 9, you know, bearing my conscience, bearing witness with
(27:25):
me, you know, and, and there is that joining of the Spirit's
voice with your conscience. And so you'll be involved in a
conversation sometimes, you know, and you'll say something
that's probably inappropriate. And immediately there's a sense
I should not have said that. And the conscience draws your
attention to something that should not have been said or an
(27:48):
attitude that shouldn't have been manifest in the
conversation. And it's important what you do
with that. You know, you can either say,
oh, well, you know that they'll understand or they said that or,
or you know, that the person deserved that.
Actually, I, I think it's reallyimportant in those settings that
you find yourself a quiet place and just say, Lord, I shouldn't
(28:11):
have said that, should I? And in those moments you can
sometimes, sometimes there's a requirement or the sense that
you know what, I need to go and put that right.
And there have been times, Tony,where I've gone and said, Hey,
you know, in that conversation where I said thus and so I
should not have said that. And I'm really sorry.
Other times it might just be, please don't do that again.
(28:32):
You know, I often, one of the things that I often talk to a
congregation about is, you know,Karen passed away in January.
But but one of the things that Ioften would do to with Karen is,
you know, if I sensed that therewas something between US or
something and I didn't know, maybe I didn't know what it was,
(28:53):
but I felt like, oh golly, I think maybe I've offended Karen.
I would go to her and say, hey, Hun, are we OK?
Are we OK? And sometimes she'd say, yeah,
sure, fine. Why other times?
Other times she might say fine and I knew it wasn't fine and we
needed to dig into it. You know, I I do the same with
(29:16):
the Lord and I think it's probably a paraphrase of Psalm
139. You know where David said,
search me. I got, I often say to her
complication, you know that the old prayer I've examined the the
the night time prayer that the ancients used to pray, Lord, are
we OK? How's the day been?
(29:36):
Are we OK? And listen for his commentary on
attitudes, ambitions, motivations, words that have
been spoken. Just keeping really short
accounts, Tanya. And I think, I think that's so
true, Don. And, and just to get good at
that, it's like a reflex you canpractise, isn't it?
(29:57):
And when other people do it to us, it's easier for us to do it
with them so we can create a culture where we keep short
accounts. I love that.
I'm thinking, what happened in your story as those things were
exposed? God exposes things for a reason,
doesn't do it just to air our dirty laundry, doesn't do it to
(30:20):
humiliate or to take us down. God's purpose is always
redemptive, to set us free. Did you see that process in the
situation that you found yourself in the church?
How did it end up for you going through?
That it it was very difficult inthe church.
The senior leader at that time essentially had a breakdown and
(30:46):
decided that he was going to step away from the church.
That was the point in time wherethe leaders came and said, hey,
would you and Karen take the church?
And I said to them, we're only here for two years.
And we've by that stage, a year had gone by and I said, I'll
look after the church for a yearwhile you find some other
victim, I mean pastor. And but it was so I said yes,
(31:09):
temporarily. And then just after that, only
only weeks after that, the missions organisation that were
calling us to Singapore called me and said, hey Don, the
college is not going to happen. We can't get it up and running.
We don't have the, the funding. So I'm really sorry, but
Singapore's off the off the agenda.
And I remember saying you're nothalf as sorry as I am.
(31:31):
And the church went through a terrible time.
Tanya, it, it went from probably1200 to bottom out at about I, I
suspect around 3. There were those who were angry
with us because enough hadn't been done to get these men out
of ministry. They felt we'd been too light on
them. The other half of the church
(31:53):
thought we were terrible and haddestroyed these men of God.
And it swirled for months. So we went through a very
difficult time. However, God, it was incredible,
has been incredible and has, youknow, I mean, we're, we're a
normal church, Daniel. We're good, bad and ugly,
depending on what day you ask me.
(32:14):
But but mostly it's a healthy church now.
It's it's normal. Whereas before the waters felt
very muddy and very swirly. And I kind of wrote, I wrote my
story and I called it Water under the bridge and a whole lot
of other stuff too, which was taken from a Dylan line.
(32:34):
I'm, I'm a bit of a Bob Dylan fan.
And but it felt like that, you know, ultimately, yes, I have
seen the redemptive grace of Godin the life of the church.
It has been wonderful, but it didn't happen overnight.
Kind of reminds me of that. And you know, here, here at it,
it will, it will happen. You know, it might just, it
(32:55):
might just take a little bit of time and it's not going to
happen overnight. And but, but God has been
incredibly faithful. The path of integrity is a tough
one, isn't it? Well, it can be.
I, I, I guess we live in a culture down here where we look
for immediate rewards. You know, and I often say to
people, you can get immediate rewards by doing steroids, but
(33:17):
the ultimate, the ultimate end of steroids is probably cancer
or some kind of tumour. You can't keep doing that.
And you just got to, you want tobuild body mass.
You, you do the hard work. You lift iron, you know, you
pump, you pump iron. And it takes a while and some
days it's really painful and you're wondering if this is
really working. But I think that's why it's a
(33:38):
journey. You know, there's just that
faithfulness in the journey. Often people say to me, how you
doing? And my favourite answer down
here is, yeah, I'm plotting, I'mplodding on.
And I think it was William Careyonce who said I'm not a genius,
I plod. But it's amazing how far you can
go if you keep plodding. And I think the life of
(33:58):
integrity is a bit like that. You know, if you're looking for
instantaneous rewards, then there are other ways to get it.
You can cut corners. You can be ethically, you know,
a bit shadowy and, and you, you can, you can make gains by doing
it fast. But there's an old saying when
you want to go fast, go slow. And, and I just think the, the
(34:22):
way of integrity, while it mightnot give you immediate rewards,
is the way that you have to walk.
And it's interesting, you know, the end of Psalm 78, it says of
David that he walked and he led Israel in the integrity of his
heart and the skillfulness of his hands.
And I think sometimes in the church we've elevated the
skillfulness of hands over the integrity of heart.
(34:45):
I think the order is significant.
And I think the second without the first actually has probably
LED us to this place where we'veseen so many significant
ministries, incredibly skillful and hands come crashing down.
Yeah, so true. Looking back, Don, you, you've
(35:06):
had these God conversations, you've walked them out, you've
seen them manifest. To sum up, what have you learnt
about God in that journey? Oh, wow.
I think just the incredible lovethat he has for his church and
the willingness to confront the church.
(35:27):
You know, it says in the book Proverbs that if we don't
discipline our children, we hatethem.
And if we really love them, we'll shape them.
And I, I think for a lot of us parents, you know, we always
say, oh, discipline is so hard. And I love them so much.
I just can't bring myself to cross them.
And I, I think the love of God is so faithful, so passionate
(35:53):
that he's willing for us to misunderstand him, to be angry
with them to, you know, he's secure enough to take us through
his disciplines. You know, it says in Hebrews,
doesn't it, if he, if you're notbeing disciplined, you're not a
child, you're not his child, because we are his children.
He loves us enough to be really,really faithful and, and
(36:16):
disciplining us. And, and it's not always
discipline either, Tanya, you know, sometimes it's absolutely
passionate, joyful, walking the walk and you'd never have it any
other way. It's just that when we portray
the life as that's all it is. It's that's not truthful.
You know, you only have to. Yeah, yeah.
(36:38):
You only have to read the Psalmsto see it's up, down, lament,
rejoicing. And over the 30 years we've had
all of that and I, I'm awed, Tania, at the unbelievable
passionate love of God for his people, for his church.
I love that truth telling is inspired by love and it's, it's,
(37:01):
it's not a thing to be feared, it's a thing to be welcomed.
And I think as leaders we have to be constantly willing to
allow God to shine the spotlighton our hearts and expose and
warn. It is a gift, isn't it, 'cause
it leads us into freedom, Don. I've just been so blessed by
getting to know you and your church and seeing the fruit of
(37:23):
that pathway of integrity. And in these times, I just think
your story, your example is such, such a help to people
around. I did read your book.
In fact, I remember reading the book Water Under the Bridge and
going, oh, that explains a lot. So perhaps someone might be
interested in getting a hold of that book.
Where would they find it, Don? It's on Amazon, Tanya, or they
(37:47):
could contact us. If they prefer hard copy, they
could contact us just at GatewayChurch, Hamilton, New Zealand,
and we'd be happy to send them acopy.
Tanya. Beautiful.
Well, thank you again, Don, for your time and your wisdom, but
mostly for the walk that you've walked.
And if God has trusted you to beable to carry that well, then I
(38:07):
know that we can also learn fromyour example.
So bless your heaps and thanks again for coming.
On thanks, Tanya. Thanks and we've so appreciated
God conversation. We loved having you in Hamilton.
Look forward to having you back again.
Cheers. Thanks for listening to God
Conversations with Tanya Harris.Don't miss the next episode by
subscribing to the show and yourfavourite podcast.
(38:29):
And remember, the Holy Spirit was given so we could all hear
God's voice. It was never meant to be a one
way conversation.
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