Posted on Thursday, July 6, 2017

How to Trust God When Life Hurts (Jonah 2)

by Joshua Reich

Maybe you still struggle with the question, “Can I trust you, God?” After all, when we sin we are telling God we don’t think we can trust him.

It’s a question Jonah wrestled with as he prayed in the belly of the fish in Jonah 2. The disciples wrestled with trusting God in the New Testament.

What is helpful for us is how people in the Bible handled it. When they came to this question, they looked backwards. They looked to their past to see how God worked not only in their life but in the lives of others.

If you’ve grown up in church, you know the story of Abraham, and our knowledge of his story kind of takes away some of the amazingness. In Genesis 12 we have this man named Abram. He all of a sudden appears in the pages of Scripture. He is out in the desert and he hears a voice, a voice he may have heard before, but maybe not. We aren’t told. This voice, God from heaven, tells him to pack up what he has and move “to a land I will show you.”

Now picture this: Abram goes home and tells his wife Sarai that they are to pack up and go to a land that this voice (God) will show them. I always wonder what that was like. If she was like most wives, she probably asked him how long he’d been hearing this voice. Has it said other things? Did it give any directions? Any hints on what lay ahead?

No, Abram would tell her. Only that we are to start walking and stop when he says.

What God does tell Abram is that he will one day be a great nation and that all the people of the world will be blessed through him. The irony of this is that Abram has no children and is 75 years old.

Finally, as he walks to this land, there is a fascinating promise given to Abram in Genesis 15. Time has passed, and Abram and Sarai still do not have a child. From their perspective they are not any closer to being a great nation than when they left their home. So Abram does what we would do. He whines to God. Complains, actually.

God takes it and is incredibly patient with Abram through this entire conversation. As Abram unloads his feelings of despair, lack of faith, anger, and hurt over his desire to be a father, but yet not having this desire met (are you beginning to see the connection between not trusting God and giving in to temptation or other sins?), God tells him to look to the heavens and number the stars. Abram can’t number the stars, as there are too many of them. “So,” God tells him, “shall your offspring be.”

God doesn’t just stop there. He tells Abram what he (God) has done. What is interesting to me is that when God gives commands in Scripture, in particular the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, before giving a command, he reminds the people of what he has done. God is about to make a covenant, a promise with Abram, but before he does he reminds Abram of what he has done so far. He hasn’t just led him to a new place and promised him a son; he has guided, provided, and protected him and his family.

Then and only then does God give commands or make covenants. In Exodus 20, before giving Moses the law, he reminds him, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (20:2) This is the foundation of the commands of God, his promise and the freedom that he provides.

In Genesis 15, after reminding Abram, he makes a covenant with Abram. We aren’t told in Scripture if Abram asked for it, but he was at least doubting and wondering if this was going to happen. He was complaining to God, as we would do. This has always been a comfort to me, that God doesn’t strike down questions in the Bible, but listens and answers them.

God tells Abram to bring him a heifer, a female goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. Abram did and cut them all in half. In this time period when two people made a covenant, they would kill the animals and cut them in half, and then they would walk through the animals, saying, “If I don’t keep my end of the covenant, may I end up like these animals.”

It was getting late and Abram fell asleep. Then God made a covenant with Abram, while he was asleep. As the sun set and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and flaming torch passed between the pieces. Abram never passed through the animals; only God did.

This is the extent to which God goes to keep his promises as our Father. He makes the promise and keeps it, even when we don’t. Even in our moments of failure, doubt, and fear, he is still strong and sure.

The prophet Habakkuk is another one. One of the things that I find most fascinating about Habakkuk chapter 3 is how Habakkuk reminds himself of how God has moved in the past. He recalls how the nation of Israel began, how God brought the nation of Israel out of slavery in the book of Exodus and gave them the 10 Commandments.

What Habakkuk is doing is reminding himself of how God has moved in the past. Often our struggle is with trusting that God will show up. Habakkuk is showing us, “God worked in the past, so I can trust He will work now and in the future.”

This doesn’t mean that God will work in the same way as he did in the past. It doesn’t mean He will work on our timetable, but we do know He is at work.

You may be in a place where you need to remind yourself of how God has worked in the past of your life. Maybe you need to journal or make a list of things he’s done and prayers he has answered. If you are new to faith or maybe your list isn’t very long yet, look at the lives and faiths of others. How has God worked in their lives? How has God worked in Scripture that you can hold on to?

Posted on Monday, March 20, 2017

Two Overlooked Parts of Church Growth

by Joshua Reich

There are many reasons one church grows and another does not.

Some of those reasons are within the control of a church and its leadership; some of those reasons are not.

Two things that are often overlooked by churches, church planters and pastors are context and timing. They are incredibly important to churches but things we often don’t talk about.

First, context. This is a mission question and one that I think a church should ask every few years. It is one that gets asked before a church is planted, but when a church is established these are hard questions to get back to and easy to forget.

Here are some questions to consider:

Who are we best suited to reach as a church?
Are we near those people?
If we are, what are we doing to reach those people?
If we aren’t, do we need to move to reach those people or change what we are doing to reach those around us?

Admittedly these are uncomfortable questions to ask as a pastor, but as a church planter you asked them easily. One of the ways a church grows is by keeping that entrepreneurial, risk taking spirit.

Who are we best suited to reach as a church? Every church and every pastor are best suited to reach someone. The way you preach, the kind of music you have, how much emphasis you put on kids’ ministry, the times of your services and your location all determine many of the people you will reach. Oftentimes you simply have to look at who attends a church, and you will see who that church is best suited to reach, because they are reaching those people.

And who you are best suited to reach as a leader and pastor and where the church you lead should meet are often wrapped up in where you grew up and the kind of environment you grew up in. Not always, but many times.

If you are struggling to figure out the answer to this question, you may simply need to look at who shows up at your church to see who you are best suited to reach.

Are we near those people? Let’s say you are best suited to reach young adults and college students. Are you near those people? Let’s say it is white collar or blue collar. Are you near those people?

The church planter of one of the churches Revolution (the church I lead) helped plant had a heart for the poorest area of the city where he grew up. Many times pastors and churches are not near the people they care the most about, feel the call to reach or want to have an influence on. So they drive past those people to get to where their church meets. That isn’t good mission work.

If we are, what are we doing to reach those people? Let’s say you live and are located as a church near the people you are best suited to reach and have a passion to reach, because you can’t reach everyone. What are you doing to reach those people? Are you reaching out in a way that makes sense to them and is relevant to them?

If we aren’t, do we need to move to reach those people or change what we are doing to reach those around us? This is an easy question before you plant and a hard question after you plant, but I think it is a crucial one to vitality in a church.

The answer to this question does not always mean you move or abandon your vision, but I think a church needs to be willing to ask it. In our area, people do not travel more than 20 minutes for church. This is a reality of traffic patterns and timing with sports and other activities. And you know, the further people get from a church, the less involved they are, the less engaged in mission they are, the less likely they are to invite people and the less likely those people are to come.

Last thing about location, do you meet in the best spot possible for who you are as a church and what you are trying to do? If you are portable, the school or place where you meet is connected to who you are as a church. We think long and hard about this when we plant, but it goes out the window after we get started.

It isn’t just context and location that matter, but timing.

Timing.

This is having an understanding of when you plant, when you grow, how that works in the life of the lead pastor, the church and the city you are in.

I always chuckle when I go to church planting conferences and a megachurch pastor stands on stage and says, “We started with no people and no money. We preached the gospel, and boom! People just showed up.” While they are trying to be inspiring, it isn’t helpful and usually not even close to accurate.

This overlooks how long a pastor has been in an area, if they’re known, if they were part of a larger church before they planted, if they were a traveling camp speaker or a well known youth worker in an organization. Did they work in a large college ministry? All of these factors work into timing.

Many times a church will get planted and not grow, and within a few years it no longer exists. A year or two after that church was planted, a new church is planted nearby, and that church finds stability, grows and becomes self-sufficient. Some of that is timing. The timing of people being ready, the timing of the church. Those are all things out of our control but are important to remember. They are not to be excuses for a church or for a pastor to say, “I was faithful and nothing happened.” But it is a reality to the question of why a church grows or doesn’t grow.

When planting a church, it is not just the call of a pastor and having funding and people, but asking the question, “Is the timing right for this church? Have there been churches planted here before? Have they succeeded or failed?” Many times a church takes off after others have closed down. This is the work of a leader understanding the “soil” in which he is seeking to plant seeds.

Posted on Monday, July 25, 2016

How to Not be so Serious (And Enjoy Summer Vacation)

by Joshua Reich

Most leaders are serious people. We are determined, goal oriented and focused, which means we often don’t know how to let go, have fun and laugh.

Summer is a great time to reorient ourselves as leaders and enjoy life.

So, leader to leader, here are some ways to enjoy life (this summer and into the future):

How to enjoy summer.

Click To Tweet

Do something spontaneous.
Laugh.
Watch a funny movie.
Read a novel that has nothing to do with leadership.
Sleep in.
Stay up late.
Eat ice cream late at night.
Take a last minute road trip.
Take a long walk.
Lie on the couch.
Make paper airplanes.
Build a Lego set with your kids.
Play a game with your kids.
Cook a meal you’ve wanted to try.
Splurge and go to that expensive restaurant.
Lie out in the sun and get a tan.
Collect sea shells at the beach.
Ride a roller coaster.
Take your spouse on a date.
Get a massage.

There are a bunch of ways you can enjoy life, so go do it!

Click To Tweet

Posted on Sunday, June 19, 2016

8 Thoughts on on Being a Dad on Father’s Day

by Joshua Reich

As today is Father’s Day, and now being a dad for over 10 years and a son for a lot longer than that, I thought I’d share some things about being a dad.

8 thoughts on Father’s Day.

Click To Tweet

1. In our culture, being a man is difficult. I know that being a woman is incredibly difficult, and I’m not wading into a historical debate or sexism in our culture (which sadly still exists). The reason I say it is hard is because of a lack of clarity, which is also one reason why being a woman is hard (but that’s a different blog post).

Most people have no idea what a man actually is. Now with people choosing their gender identity, the lines are becoming even more blurry than they already are. This makes success as a father, husband, friend, brother and son that more difficult. Are men supposed to be tough or tender and cry a lot? Should they be hard workers and entrepreneurs or play video games until 4am? All of them at once? Which is it?

Being a man (and a woman) is difficult.

Click To Tweet

2. Purity is really hard. I’m not just talking about sex here, but that’s part of it. Having a pure mind, a pure heart, pure motives as you pursue your dreams, those are all incredibly difficult. Sometimes this is because we are sinning, but other times it is because what we are pursuing is right, but it just doesn’t line up with what people around us think we should do.

3. Parenting is really hard. I know, parenting has always been hard. Throw in now raising kids with social media, exposure to porn at an early age, the gender conversation, and it is really hard. It is hard to keep kids focused on who they are, who God is while everything gets pulled in a different direction. On top of that, everyone has an opinion on every parenting topic: discipline, vaccines, schooling, sports, dating, and you often feel like a failure. I figure my kids will end up in a counselor’s office when they’re adults (I did). I just hope it isn’t that bad. Just writing that makes me feel like a failure of a dad, but you can judge.

4. Being a picture of God as a Father to my kids is scary. Going along with #3, I’m reminded on a daily basis that my kids are forming a picture of not only relationships with others but with God as they interact with me. Here’s a question every dad needs to keep in the front of his mind: What is it like on the other side of me? What emotions and feelings do people (my kids and spouse) have as they interact with me? As your kids grow up, that is what they will often feel from God.

Ask: What is it like on the other side of me?

Click To Tweet

5. Dealing with your wounds is hard work. Depending on your upbringing, your wounds will be different than mine. But you have them, and they make an impact on your life today. I’ve talked before about mine, but if you don’t deal with yours, they will haunt your future. You have wounds, and they are impacting every relationship you have. They are impacting every interaction, everything you hear. But it is hard work. I want to leave what happened when I was 11 back in 1990 with Vanilla Ice. But I can’t, and neither can you.

If your past is not dealt with, it wreaks havoc on your life.

Click To Tweet

6. Having friends is hard work. Let’s be honest, friends for most people are difficult. For men they seem to be a lot harder than I expected. In college hanging out was easy. In your 20’s, really easy. Now with jobs, mortgages, kids, marriage, moving across the country, being friends with people is hard. We expect people to keep up with our lives on social media but never really connect with them. I keep hearing from men in their 50’s and 60’s about how they have no close friends, and that is really scary to me. I asked a room full of young church planters recently how many of them had close friends, and in a room of a 100 just a few hands went up.

Having friends as a man is hard work.

Click To Tweet

7. I’m astounded by my wife. Regularly when people hear we have five kids, the looks are often comical. Sometimes they say what is running through their heads, sometimes not. I always fill in the blanks if they don’t say it out loud, but they always stop in their tracks. They wonder how we ever sleep, have time for ourselves, not lose our minds, and it takes being intentional for all of that to happen. That’s why I’m simply blown away by Katie. Without her I wouldn’t be the father, husband, leader or man that I am. When church planters ask how Revolution got off the ground, my response is, “Besides God, my wife.” The way she rounds me out, holds our house together, pushes me, believes in me, deals with me, deals with our kids, it astounds me.

8. I’m hopeful about it all. We’re about to enter the teenage years in our house, and I’m hopeful. I love the relational beings my kids are becoming, the questions they are asking (even though we’re having the sex talks a lot earlier than I thought we would when I was a young parent), I love playing games with them and experiencing life. I also love that I have the privilege of raising five people who will make an impact on the world one day. That thought shapes my parenting every day. I get to be a part of the legacy they will leave.

As a parent, you’re part of the legacy your kids will leave.

Click To Tweet

Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2016

How we Distort the Gospel & God’s Love for Us

by Joshua Reich

I shared this on Sunday in my sermon on Romans 5:3 – 11 from The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters by Sinclair Ferguson:

Why did Jesus die?

Click To Tweet

This comes to expression when the gospel is preached in these terms: God loves you because Christ died for you!

How do those words distort the gospel? They imply that the death of Christ is the reason for the love of God for me.

By contrast the Scriptures affirm that the love of God for us is the reason for the death of Christ. That is the emphasis of John 3:16. God (i.e. the Father, since here “God” is the antecedent of “his…Son”) so loved the world that he gave his Son for us. The Son does not need to do anything to persuade the Father to love us; he already does!

The subtle danger here should be obvious: if we speak of the cross of Christ as the cause of the love of the Father, we imply that behind the cross and apart from it he may not actually love us at all. He needs to be “paid” a ransom price in order to love us. But if it has required the death of Christ to persuade him to love us (“Father, if I die, will you begin to love them?”), how can we ever be sure the Father himself loves us – “deep down” with an everlasting love? True, the Father does not love us because we are sinners; but he does love us even though we are sinners. He loved us before Christ died for us. It is because he loves us that Christ died for us!

How do I know God loves me?

Click To Tweet

Posted on Saturday, May 7, 2016

10 Ways to Not Grow Your Church & 5 Other Ideas To Help You Grow as a Leader

by Joshua Reich

Here are 6 posts I came across this week that challenged my thinking or helped me as a leader, husband and father. I hope they help you too:

What time should your church meet? by Thom Rainer
6 Podcasts every Pastor Should Listen to by Vanderbloemen
3 Reasons your church Might Not be Ready to Reach Baby Boomers by Hadyn Shaw
8 Ways Pastors can Prevent Burnout by Brian Jones
10 Ways to Not Grow Your Church by Charles Stone
5 Lessons I Learned When Just Starting Out by John Maxwell

Posted on Thursday, October 30, 2014

How to Build a Team

by Joshua Reich

If you are a leader, one of the most important things you will ever do will have to do with the team you build around yourself. It doesn’t matter if you are paid, volunteer, if you work at a church or in a for-profit, your team will determine the success you will have.

Your team will determine the success you will have.

Click To Tweet

The question then becomes, how do you build a team that not only works well with you, that you will work well with, but will also help you accomplish the goals you have as a leader?

Before getting to those things, let me tell you two truths you have to know up front about being on a team:

Being on a team can be and will be one of the most rewarding aspects of ministry and life.
Being on a team can be and will be one of the most painful aspects of ministry and life.

My hope for you is that you will experience the truth of number one. Here’s how:

1. Know yourself first. I’m amazed at how few leaders and pastors are self aware. Most don’t know the gift mix, personality type and how that affects their leadership. One of the most surprising things many leaders do when they build a team is simply filling roles without any thought to who they are as a leader. Are you organized? Creative? Black and White? Extrovert? Introvert? This is basic stuff but if you miss this, you will build the wrong team, you will build a team you don’t need.

2. Build around your strengths and weaknesses. This goes with the first one and if you don’t build around your strengths and weaknesses, but simply fill roles as many pastors do (with volunteers, elders and staff), you will build a great team for someone else. Any time you hire someone, bring on a volunteer, you should ask, “What does my team need?” Recently, the church I lead hired two new staff members that would be on my leadership team. One of the things I set out from the beginning was, they both had to be highly relational. We needed to find someone who was extremely organized and strategic. Why? While we are organized as a church, we don’t have someone whose primary gifts is in that area. Thankfully, we found all that our leadership team needed and roles we had to fill.

Know yourself so you can build the team you need, not the team someone else needs

Click To Tweet

3. Have a clear vision and win (and make sure everyone agrees). This is where teams get off track, when they start building their own empires or reaching for personal goals or visions. Many times, the win for a team or organization is unclear, when that happens, people do and spend their time on what they think they should. You start pulling on the rope in different directions.

4. Be willing for things to not get done. This is crucial to building a team and incredibly difficult. To build the right team, you may need some patience as you wait for those people to come and that means some things might not get done. Now, if they are mission critical, keep the lights on kind of thing, they need to get done. But maybe you don’t attempt something or have music the way you want or kids ministry isn’t as robust as you’d like. It is better to wait for the right person than put the wrong person in charge that you’ll have to remove.

5. Have clear rules for how the team operates. Every team has rules for engagement and how they operate. Many of them are unsaid or simply made up, but have clarity on those rules. I ask each person on my team to agree to three things, three promises I make to them and promises I ask them to make to me and the other members of the team:

Always make everyone on the team look good.
Never surprise anyone on the team.
Always have each other’s backs.

If things are agreed upon at the beginning, it creates accountability and keeps a lot of hurt and frustration from happening. Which leads to the last one…

6. Be accountable. You must have a plan for how you will hold your team accountable. Recently, we began implementing an annual plan. This not only helps me know the vision and goals of everyone on my team, it creates accountability from me, but also with the entire team. Each month, we will go over our plans, see where we are and how things are going.

Posted on Friday, May 9, 2014

How to Handle Someone who is Not on Board with a Change

by jmreich

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak at Exponential on the topic of transitioning a church with small groups to a church with Missional Communities. A few asked for some notes on it and thought I’d do a few blog posts on it.

The first step in this process is to start with why and the win of this transition. The second step is to get essential leaders on board.

The moment you begin to get essential leaders on board with any change or transition is the point of no return for a leader, they have now gone public.

I would say this is one of the most crucial moments of a change because of this. It is also when leaders derail themselves without realizing it and it is because they don’t handle someone who is not on board correctly.

Think of this scenario: a leader has spent weeks, months and some times years thinking about a vision or a dream, a way forward. They begin sharing this dream with leaders and decision makers. Most people are excited because they love the leader or the direction or both.

Then, something happens: they meet someone who is not excited.

They ask questions, give pushback and generally do not seem excited about what the leader is proposing. The leader, because they are the leader starts to get defensive, pushes back even harder and both people sit across the table and dig their heels in.

Who is right in this situation?

Possibly both people.

Leaders will look at this person, whether they met in person or heard through the grapevine that someone isn’t on board and they will see a person who is being divisive or not submitting to authority.

Leaders forget that they have had the opportunity to process a change of direction or new initiative or ministry for a long time, this person just heard about it and has not had as long. It isn’t that they aren’t supportive, wanting to be on mission or not submitting, they are just reacting to a change and almost always are first reaction to a change is to be defensive.

If the leader fails here, most changes get derailed. For the simple reason that the person who seems unsupportive usually wields greater influence than the leader.

As a leader, here are some ways to handle this person:

Stay humble. Do you need this person to make this change? Who knows. But God has placed you as the leader to shepherd this person through this change, so care for them. Stay humble, otherwise, God will oppose you and that will be worse than this person opposing you.
Ask questions. Ask what their fears are, why aren’t they excited about this. Often, it is the loss of something that makes us defensive about a change, not because we don’t love the possibilities of something new, it is that we are mourning what we are losing.
Listen. Don’t get defensive or seek to win.
Have resources for them to listen to or read. Have something to give them. Pick the thing that pushed you over the edge, the most influential piece to give to them and say, “This helped me. Before you decide, would you listen to this or read this and consider the possibilities?”
Ask them to pray about it. They may or may not actually pray about it, but ask them to. If they do, give the Holy Spirit the opportunity to do what only the Holy Spirit can do, change them.

In the end, if God wants whatever change you are making to come to pass, it will. The person who seems the most against something at the beginning can often be the biggest supporter of it by the end if they are led well.

[Image]