Dan Sheed is the founding co-pastor of Central Vineyard Church in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. He recently released a new book, Drift No More: An Exploration of Tethered Faith. This punchy, beautiful read urges followers of Jesus to pursue a life that is tethered—anchored—able to resist the kind of drift that has badly affected the Church over recent decades. You can find the second chapter of Dan’s book reprinted in this edition of Common Ground with the author’s permission. In this short interview, Dan shares about how he came to write this book, what he means by “Drift”, and his sense of what God’s invitation to the Church is—Ed.
Dan, at the heart of this book is the call to be tethered to Jesus Christ—the anchor. Sometimes when we talk about Christ, the conversation can remain at arm’s length. And so, I’m interested in your story. How did you come to be someone who is tethered to Jesus?
I am a pastor’s son. I grew up in the family of a church plant and watching my parents do ministry. What I saw modelled through my parents was a deep commitment to keeping Jesus as the central piece. I think what I saw in them was people who lived out the parable of the pearl of great price—they were just utterly convinced that Jesus was the pearl, and that as a result everything else was up for grabs. So, I watched that as I grew up; I was formed in that story. When I was 14, my Mum took me to a little worship conference up in Auckland. A couple of worship leaders from California grabbed two acoustic guitars, and they just got up and said: Why don’t we just do what we’re here to do? Why don’t we come and adore Jesus? And what then commences is the altar-call moment of my life. They led this simple song—not many people are probably going to even know the song—it’s this little sort of back-blocks Vineyard song called “Never Looking Back”. And it has this chorus: it says, “I will follow you. Give my life for you. I will follow you, Never looking back.” I’m singing this, and I have this clear kind of dialogue moment in my mind: Either I believe this or I don’t—like, Either this is true, or it’s not, you know? And that was my moment of starting to say Yes to Jesus. That’s where it all hinges for me—this phrase of a song, this sung prayer, I will follow you. Give my life for you. I will follow you, never looking back. And I think I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to live from that prayer; like, in all honesty, John, I think that was where it all began. Those were my entry words. That was my starting point.
In the wake of what my parents showed me, I just have tried to keep Jesus as that pearl, that at-all-costs thing, never looking back, never looking to the side. In my 20s, as I started to do ministry and was a youth pastor and an assistant pastor and those kinds of things, I had this realisation: I know Jesus as the truth and I know Jesus as life, but I don’t know Jesus as a way. Eugene Peterson speaks about this a lot—about how many Christians know of him as truth and know of him as life but they have not lived in his way. Those words rocked me in my 20s. It started to get built into me over my 20s and 30s that Jesus was not just an idea or a truth to say yes to, not just the promise of some life to live in an abundant kind of way, but he was one to follow. Following takes proximity, and proximity brings you close, and in that closeness, you have relationship. And as I’ve encountered that, and as I’ve experienced that, and as I’ve tasted that, I can truly say: Taste and see—the Lord is good. Like, not just as an ideal, but he has helped me to be a better Dan. He has called me to flourishing. He has helped my marriage to flourish. He has helped my church to flourish. He has helped all aspects of my life to be shaped into his way. Mmm, those would be some things that come to mind.
Beautiful. Tell us about this book Drift No More that you’ve written: where’s it come from? Why did you write it? Who do you have in mind?
As we were discerning the year ahead at the start of 2024 in our co-leadership group of our church, one of the things that came to the surface was: There’s a drift happening. Maybe it was the post-COVID stuff, maybe it was just pastoral observation, but we landed together as a co-leadership group going: There’s a drift that’s happening. And surely this drift is not how this is meant to be; this is not what a flourishing life as a community with Jesus is meant to be marked by! And I picked up a book that was really significant, a book of research. In that research, it just spoke about how of 40 million Christians in the US over the last 30 years three quarters of them, 30 million, had walked away from faith and church in a drifting way. I found that interesting, because we often think of crisis as being the reason people leave. You know, most stories are: I got hurt, or I suffered trauma. Now, those are very real stories—I’m not belittling that. But what this research showed was, actually that’s only one quarter of the story; three quarters of the story is: people just drifted away. They just didn’t realise it, but unintentionally, they were leaving all of this.
Something pastorally in me was like: Oh, I want to try and figure that out a bit for Lent. We found ourselves in the book of Hebrews, and especially in Chapter 2:1, “So we must consider the message we’ve received, or we may drift away from it”. As I sat with commentary work on that and the rest of Hebrews, I kind of found myself realising: Hebrews is trying to essentially answer that. The argument being made throughout the rest of Hebrews is trying to show us what it looks like to not drift. This is the message we are to consider, so we don’t drift away from it. We made that our Lent journey for five or so weeks; the series was just called Drift No More.
Lent is gnarly, right? In Lent you can talk about some serious stuff. So, we talked about how for us to not drift we need to tether. What do we tether to? We tether to Christ, the Church, to tradition, and the story of the gospel. And with that tethering, we’re not meant to stay still—we’re meant to move. And the messages just landed with people. I had an unusual number of people who were emailing me or messaging me or pulling me aside after church, saying: “That thing you said a few weeks ago, man, that was helpful.” Or, “I’ve just immediately thought of ten friends that this relates to”. It was resonating massively, and was really encouraging to know there was actually something going on that we were identifying.
After the series finished, the idea kind of was planted by some pastoral friends who really believe in me. They just said, Dan, you’ve got a book in you. You gotta write some stuff. I was like, Well, this Drift No More thing seems to be resonating. Maybe that’s the thing I should try and put into a book. Let’s see if we can help this live a little more than just as a series for our church. And so that’s where it started.
The title makes me think about times when, as a kid, I’d be swimming at the beach. There’d be a slight current; but it’s a beach, not a river, so you don’t think about it. But then you look up at the shore and you realise you’re miles along from where you began—and you weren’t even thinking about it. It just carried you along…
Yeah, what is drift? Drift is to leave an intended place unintentionally. I intended to be there, and I’ve ended up over here—I’m not between the flags anymore, you know. I want to be there, but I’m over here.
It’s one of those dynamics that exposes the lie at work in contemporary stories about being human. You know, “I make my own meaning; I’m the captain of my fate, the master of my soul,” etc. But you speak about being tethered to Christ, being tethered to community in Christ, being tethered to tradition, tethered a life-shaping understanding of the gospel. All of these tethers reflect what it means to be human: to be in relationship with God, with others, with what is handed on to us, and to live out of a true revelation of things. Do you think this challenge of drift has to do with false ideas about being human?
One of the things you bump into quite often as a pastor is people who are living the reality of a counterfeit story—the counterfeit story is showing up and they’re shocked by the results, right? Like, “I thought this was what the brochure said, and it turns out it’s not true”. Sadly, I also think so many people live with a counterfeit gospel—that the gospel that they’re trying to live with has not been the big, beautiful story that we actually see. And that’s the point of Hebrews. Hebrews is trying to say: God has kept his promise. He did it. He kept his promise. Yet so many of us have been sold a counterfeit gospel, a counterfeit story that isn’t even pointing us to that reality.
You’ve just turned 40. You’ve been on the road for two decades or more in ministry. You conclude the book with an image from the American War of Independence with the British, the story of the USS Constitution and how it escaped from danger by “kedging”, using its anchor to haul itself to open waters. What would you say to someone in their 20s, who’s like, Yeah, I hear what you’re saying about being tethered. But is there more to it if I do this anchor thing? What’s it going to mean for my life?
The reason I ended the book with that image is because it’s speaking about how we find movement. To go back to my 20s, I found faith that was stable and faithful, but I didn’t necessarily think that it was how I was going to be moving through my life. I thought I had to cling to it at all costs and not lose it. Dallas Willard calls that the gospel of sin management—you know, a I’ve-got-to-keep-my-ticket kind of thing. But what you see in Hebrews is, if Christ can truly become the great central figure of your life to emulate and be with, if the Church can become this great community of the saints around you who are cheering you on and showing how to do this faithfully, and if the tradition can shape your loves and curate the kind of person you’re becoming, and if the story is this great, big gospel of good news that God is making all things new, and he’s kept his promise, then you’re going to find yourself moving. You’re going to be following Jesus, to become like him as you go about life. You’re going to, say, arrive into marriage asking better questions; you’re going to arrive into your workplace, navigate your singleness, raise children, vote…. you’re going to do all of these things differently because these anchors are helping you to move and navigate throughout the world. And you will not do it alone. I think that’s something I would want to say to my 20 year-old self: stop trying to do this yourself.
We typically don’t think of reading as keeping company with friends, but it seems clear that you’ve found good company through reading. You mentioned Eugene Peterson, for example. What does he mean to you, in the family of faith?
I don’t mean it lightly when I say Eugene Peterson has been the leading voice to form what it is for me to pastor. Even though some of it is decades old, his work is still so current at answering some very serious questions that pastors sit with about how to shepherd people in this world and in their lives. As I’ve read his work, it has been like sitting at the feet of a good mentor. You know, just lapping it up, just wanting to ask more questions—and then turning a few more pages and finding, Oh, he answered that question. Wonderful. He, along with some others, have been the people who have given me imagination. That’s how I would say it. They have shown me how to think in ways that I didn’t even know my imagination was capable of. So, as they’ve filled my imagination, I can see what’s possible; I can see what it is to try and do this thing of leading a community. I find sometimes I’ll have an idea of what a certain idea means—and then I’ll pick up a Eugene Peterson book and read a bit about it and be like, Oh, no, that was a very unformed idea! He helps to move me along a fair way. That’s the gift he’s been to me.
Last question: from where you stand, what do you sense is God’s invitation to the Church in Aotearoa?
I think this loops right back to where we started. If I could be so bold, I think the thing that’s being restored in the Church is being people who are on the way of Jesus. Not just an idea of Jesus, or a belief of Jesus, or a cultural Christianity tick-boxing of Jesus, but people who are living out their faith with emulation and apprenticeship and a growth towards being people of the kingdom. I have a community that has a lot of young people in it. And I think there’s a sense among young people that if it doesn’t add up to following Jesus, then, like, what are we doing here? If it’s not actually serious about that, then, you know, why are we bothering? I think the kind of settling after COVID has shown that. This is about making Christ, and the pursuit of him, the prize. Fruitfulness will follow, if we keep ourselves well connected to the vine. And yeah, I think there’s probably a decluttering and a pruning of the stuff that isn’t that. I’m completely okay with that. It can be painful, but pruning lets the light in, and the light helps the things that you want to grow grow. That is what a vine dresser does: they clip away stuff that is blocking the light; it opens the thing up. So, I reckon if you could just prune it back to being about those essentials of following Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life, and let that be where the light is getting to for a while, then there’s going to be some beautiful stuff that comes to the Church as a result.
