Tim Ross on Getting Canceled, Vulnerability and Being Anointed

Key takeaways

• Preach to the back row. Tim Ross says he speaks as if no one in the room already knows the story, because that is where he was when he came to Jesus.
• Integration is worth fighting for. He believes church culture pulls leaders to be one person in public and another in private, and he tells pastors to resist it.
• Nobody has to lead alone. Jesus took three friends into Gethsemane, and Ross says the people closest to you need to be present, not to understand your job.
• Vulnerability is risky and still worth it. If someone hurt you, he says, the answer is to find the right person, not to stop trusting everyone.
• The anointing is God's approval. You find yours by noticing what feels easy and what people compliment, not by begging for it.

A back-row beginning

Tim Ross, founding pastor of Embassy City, best-selling author and host of a global podcast, sat down with hosts Will and Sammy for this episode of Beyond the Letter. Adam Mesa was traveling, and the hosts closed by sending him a greeting. Ross now spends much of his time pastoring pastors.

He told the hosts he was saved on January 14, 1996, on the back row of his parents' church. There was no altar call and no sermon. He says the Holy Spirit convicted him and led him to Jesus.

In 1997, while he was praying, he heard the Holy Spirit tell him to buy a one-way ticket to Dallas. His parents' church raised a four hundred dollar offering, and he rode a Greyhound bus for two and a half days, arriving on his twenty-first birthday. California raised him, he says, and Texas saved him.

Ross says he hears God's direction as a word. He argued that if God is the God of beginnings and endings, we should not celebrate starts and then lament stops. He also warned against copying his path. He is wired for change, he said, and he does not have a formula for anyone else.

Preaching to the person on the back row

Ross told the hosts that pastors who spend all their time among Christians forget how to talk to people who are not. He said they preach as if everyone already knows the context. His own habit is different: "I always preach like nobody in the room knows what I'm talking about."

He described a live call-in show where a woman said she smoked weed when her anxiety got high. Ross asked whether she would commit to stopping, with accountability, and she agreed. He says she has not smoked since. His point was that God does not wait for people to clean up first. In his words, "he's willing to take you where you are. With the guarantee that he will not leave you as you are."

He also criticized what he called a gospel without a passport, one so full of cotton candy that it could not be preached in another country. He asked what that message would say to someone who has not eaten in eight days.

Why the church pulls leaders apart

Ross spoke of integration, living as the same person everywhere. "The institution of the church intrinsically makes you disintegrate," he said, because leaders feel they cannot bring their whole selves into the room. He pointed to Jesus, who kept a man on his team who would deny him, one who would betray him, and one who would not believe until he saw. Jesus, Ross said, could hold tension, and the church has not taught people to do the same.

He told his own story from 2019. His church had doubled that year, and eight people he loved died, including a close executive assistant and a fifteen-year-old girl with a brain tumor. He was worn down, and one Saturday night he bought spray paint at Home Depot and painted the church's culture codes on the walls himself. He repented the next week.

Afterward he told an elder he could not be the kind of leader the staff wanted and also preach. If they wanted him to preach, he said, they would need to find a different version of leadership, and the elders asked him to stay. He took a three-month sabbatical. When he returned, the staff was down to four people, himself included. Then COVID emptied the room. "When that room emptied out and I just had that camera to look at, Tim came back," he said.

Three friends in the garden

Ross called it a lie that it is lonely at the top. He turned to Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration and in Gethsemane, where he had the same three disciples with him on his highest and lowest days. Ross said they could not change what was coming, and Jesus simply did not want to be alone.

He told of taking two friends to see the movie 1917 while he was on sabbatical. Neither was a pastor, and he said he had never felt so seen, heard, known and loved. They did not need to understand his work. "You need somebody present with you," he said, and he tied it to the line about walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

(Psalm 23:4, WEB)

Will then told his own story. After a mental health breakdown in 2020, he said, a recent Saturday of panic and discouragement led him to text his elders. Two of them came to his house. One lay across him and stayed there, saying, as Will remembered it, that sometimes you just need to feel you are not alone. Another sent money for dinner. Will said they fixed nothing, and that was the gift. He added that vulnerability is only real when you share it in the middle of the struggle, not afterward.

Getting canceled and the risk of being known

Ross said the best thing that ever happened to him was getting canceled. His podcast cost him invitations to preach in places he used to preach regularly. He says it showed him who his real audience was, and he is glad no one has to guess who he is. He summed it up this way: "It just clarifies who I'm called to."

He also talked about the cracked back of his phone. People ask about it constantly, and it has led to conversations and sermons. For him it pictures how brokenness can draw people in. Jesus came for those who know they are sick, he said, and Ross wants to be safe enough that others can be fully seen, fully heard, fully known and fully loved, even where people disagree.

When a host asked about people whose vulnerability has been used against them, Ross did not dodge the risk. He said there is a real chance of being hurt, "But freedom is worth it." His advice was to stop assuming that everyone will hurt you, to start with one person, and to pay a therapist if you can afford one.

What the anointing is, and how to find yours

The hosts asked about the anointing, and Ross wanted to simplify it. "The anointing is god's approval on the thing he has called you to do," he said. He pointed to King Saul, who kept his position after disobeying but lost God's approval. He pointed to Jesus, who did only the things he said he was anointed to do. For himself, Ross said, the work is to stand up and preach and to sit down and talk.

He shared a Spanish example. In 2008 he felt the Holy Spirit tell him that if he learned Spanish, God would open Latin America. He began learning when he stepped back from daily ministry, and last year he read a full sermon in Spanish in Mexico City before he was fluent. "Ain't no sense in begging for an anointing," he said. He added that you should ask God where his oil is already on your life and avoid gift jealousy.

To spot your own gifting, he named two signs. One is that the work feels easy and fulfilling. The other is what people compliment, and he said most people ignore that: "I pay attention to my compliments." He also connected this to being affirmed first. At the transfiguration the Father spoke over Jesus, and Ross read the passage to show that Jesus worked from that affirmation.

While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them. Behold, a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.”

(Matthew 17:5, WEB)

Weakness came up as well. Ross pointed to Paul's thorn in the flesh and argued that leaders would humanize themselves by naming theirs. He admitted his own tendency to be petty and to go too far with words.

He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Most gladly therefore I will rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest on me.

(2 Corinthians 12:9, WEB)

What this means for you

This conversation asks you to look at the gap between who you are in public and who you are at home. If you lead anyone, whether in a church, a business or a family, you might ask whether there is a person who knows the whole of you. If the answer is no, Ross's counsel is to begin with one person.

It also invites you to stop comparing your calling to someone else's. You might ask what comes easily to you and what people keep thanking you for. Those are places to look, and the rest is a matter of trusting that God's approval on your life does not have to be earned.