Tag Archives: New York

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Thursday Mind Dump…

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  • It’s been a whirlwind of a week in the Reich house.
  • Katie had to be in Phoenix Monday and Tuesday for something and I had to be up there yesterday.
  • Made for a hectic week, but it’s done!
  • It was really excited to be in Phoenix with the other Acts 29 pastors in Arizona and some SBC pastors as we talked and prayed about how to plant more healthy churches in our state.
  • Loved everything about this circle.
  • I also got to spend yesterday doing another interview in the process of hiring a new pastor at Revolution and made 4 reference calls.
  • It is a great (and holy) opportunity to interview people.
  • I love the potential this role has not only for our staff team, but more specifically to help the people entrusted to our church for them to grow.
  • I am also grateful I don’t interview people for a living.
  • Thankful those people share their wisdom in books and blogs though.
  • We’re getting so close to hiring someone, so keep praying for us.
  • Every week our staff team and team leads share celebrations with each other that we are able to share with our teams.
  • I was simply blown away this week.
  • Story after story of people taking next steps.
  • I shared a few of them on Facebook live yesterday.
  • I don’t know about anyone else, but I am ready for June.
  • Ready for a new rhythm for a bit to catch my breath.
  • The other night we showed our kids Remember the Titans for family movie night.
  • The conversations about race were really interesting.
  • Watching our kids process the history of our nation, as they look at the makeup of our family.
  • I’m hopeful they have a deep understanding of the pain of racism but also how to fight against it.
  • Next up in this journey for them is Hidden Figures.
  • Leaders are always asking me what I’m reading.
  • Here’s my list right now for sermon prep.
  • I’m working on a series we’ll start at Revolution on July 23rd called The Bible. 
  • We’ll look at 4 questions: How do we know the Bible is True? What is the main point of the Bible? Why should you read the Bible? and How do you read the Bible?
  • So excited for this series.
  • I’m also pretty excited to jump back into a book of the Bible on May 21st and do a series on Jonah called When God Doesn’t Make Sense. 
  • Anyway, back at it…
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Circles of Relationships

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Breathing-Room

Many of us find meaning in our relationships. They shape so much of our lives. One of the reasons that we end up being tired, overwhelmed and stressed out has to do with relationships and the number of them. We often join groups, teams, committees, or make volunteer commitments without much thought. Slowly our circles of relationships begin growing to the point that we know many people but lack true community.

I want you to think about every relationship you have (serving team at church, small group, PTA, children’s sports teams, work, neighbors) as a circle. You will have multiple people in a circle, but each commitment of community makes up a circle. Even if you think you don’t spend much time with it or you don’t have friends in it, like a child’s sports team, it’s a circle.

The reality is your circles all take up time. Each time you add a new circle or a circle expands because of the commitment that circle requires, you are pulling away from another circle, and you only have so much time to go around. Many times we haphazardly add circles and then lack community. For men, as we grow older, this becomes an enormous problem.

While men don’t do relationships the way women do, we need them just as much. It seems that as men get older, because of the time they give to their career and their children’s activities, they begin pulling away from friends to the point that when a man turns forty, he can’t think of anyone to call for a beer or to go fishing.

If that’s the case for you, it means you have allowed your circles to get out of control.

In our family, when we talk about adding a new circle, we also take one away. This limits the number of circles you are a part of. We believe community is that important. And yes, this means we will miss out on things, disappoint people, and even anger people.

The other reason we run out of space in our lives as it relates to relationships has to do with the ones we choose. While hopefully you start to think through how many friends and circles of relationships you can be in, this will change as you get older and your kids get older.

We often spend time in the wrong relationships.

Ever feel like you have the wrong friends?

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We end up at meetings and gatherings that we don’t want to be. We have coffee or meals with people we’d rather avoid, but for some reason, when we got invited, we said yes.

Why?

It could be fear, a sense of duty, maybe our job demands we say yes. If you can say no, why don’t you?

A few years ago Katie and I made a choice that we would spend our time with people who were life giving. If you stressed us out, ran us down, were not life giving, we didn’t want to spend time with you. That may sound mean, but with a growing family, a growing church, we don’t have a ton of time to “just hang out” with whomever. We have to be intentional about our relationships.

This is something that doesn’t get talked about enough. We talk about being intentional with our schedules, money, careers and our kids, but what about who we spend time with?

The people you spend your time with, do they challenge you, encourage you, breathe life into you, spark you to greater levels in your life? If not, why are you giving them a lot of time and energy?

Do your friends give you energy or take it away?

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The flip side of this is sometimes you become that person for people. You are the spark, the energy giver. That is okay as long as that isn’t the primary source or your relationships.

When it comes to Breathing Room, you only have so much time and space. You only have so much relational energy and time on your calendar. You have to spend it wisely. You have to think through who gets it and prioritize.

*This is an excerpt from my brand new book, Breathing Room: Stressing Less & Living More. Click on the link to purchase it.

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Leaders are Not Whiners

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leaders

“The leader in the system is the one who is not blaming anyone.” -Ed Friedman

If you get a group of pastors together in a room, or leaders of ministry teams, you will often hear complaints. Complaints about working with certain volunteers or staff members, budget cuts, financial difficulties, recruiting or simply the pace and difficulty of ministry and leadership.

This is a good and appropriate place to share those things.

Often, though, I’ll hear pastors or ministry leaders share these same complaints with their churches or people who are not in leadership.

Bottom line, one of the things that separates leaders from non-leaders is leaders are not whiners.

Is leading hard?

Yes.

Did you sign up for it?

Yes.

Did you know leading would be this hard?

No.

Does that matter?

No.

Mainly I’ll hear leaders talk about how difficult their job is. In fact one of our staff members recently visited another church, and the lead pastor spent 20 minutes (20 minutes!) talking about how hard being a pastor was and how hard planting a church was.

Leaders are not whiners.

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Now being a pastor is hard. Starting a church is hard. Recruiting people, managing people, conflict resolution, budgets, family life and ministry life colliding are all hard.

But if you are a pastor, hear this: Your life is not harder than anyone else’s. Your job is not harder than anyone else’s. It’s just different.

Being a pastor is not the hardest job on the planet; it’s just different.

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Think for a minute about most church planters and pastors: they have lots of meetings. The people in their church don’t know if they are at Starbucks working on a message, chatting with a leader, reading a book or a blog (thanks for reading this one), working on fantasy football or taking a nap.

Is pastoring hard? Yes. Is it harder than being a plumber? No.

It’s different.

When you as a leader whine about how hard it is, your people roll their eyes and lose respect.

When you as a leader talk about how hard it is to raise money, gain support for a vision or recruit volunteers, you lose their respect. People are attracted to a vision.

Take kids’ ministry. There is always a shortage of team members in kids’ ministry. You could bemoan that fact, or you could cast a compelling vision to people: Most people begin a relationship with Jesus before they turn 18. In fact, if you think about your life, you are still feeling the effects of the choices you made before you were 18. What if you could make an impact for good in the life of a child or student? Steer them away from the mistakes you made and help them find the life God has called them to? Wouldn’t that be awesome?!

How to vision cast to potential kids’ and students’ volunteers.

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Sign me up.

We’re a portable church, so we have to set up and tear down, and no one likes that job. What if instead of complaining about it, you saw the opportunity to cast a vision: Did you know every week a guest comes to our church, and many of them come because they drove by and saw a sign? Think about how God works. That’s amazing. Not only that, when we set up chairs we don’t just set up chairs. We pray over each of those chairs as we set them up. When I put a Bible on that seat I’m praying for the person who will sit there and maybe for the first time will hear about Jesus and the life he offers. We don’t just set up chairs. We put a chair down so someone can sit down and hear about the life Jesus died and rose from the dead to give them. You can set up chairs anywhere, but we’re part of helping people hear about Jesus. Do you want to do that? I can’t think of a better way to spend my Sunday morning than praying for guests who will hear about Jesus. Can you?

Is it hard? Yes. Do people say yes when you vision cast? Not all the time.

If leadership was easy, everyone would do it.

If leadership was easy, everyone would do it.

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Why Pastors Are Afraid to Preach on Marriage

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preach on marriage

That may seem like a weird blog title, but I think pastors have some genuine fear about preaching on marriage and relationships.

In the past few weeks as I have talked with pastors about our series through the Song of Solomon, many of them have expressed how they would never preach through that book. In fact, I looked at the websites of churches who “preach through books of the Bible verse-by-verse,” and the Song of Solomon is one of the books most pastors skip.

I’ve already detailed why a pastor should preach on marriage, relationships and singleness on a yearly basis, but why don’t they?

Here are a few reasons:

1. Their marriage isn’t what it should be. I think this is the reason pastors don’t talk about marriage, relationships and sex in their sermons. Their marriage is falling apart. They aren’t happy, their wife is miserable, maybe they are having an affair, are addicted to porn. In short, if they preach on marriage they would be a hypocrite. Honestly, I’ve had a number of pastors tell me this is the reason they don’t preach on marriage, and every time I hear it, my heart breaks. Not only for their church and what they are missing, but also for the pastor and his wife.

They are stuck, and they don’t know what to do. They are sad, heartbroken, miserable, angry with each other, fighting off bitterness, maybe considering a divorce (but they don’t know how to support themselves if they get divorced). They may even be considering cheating on their spouse.

If this is you, you shouldn’t preach on marriage, but you also need to not walk through this alone. You need to take a break from ministry, involve your elders, see a Christian counselor. Something. Anything to work on your marriage to get it on the track it needs to be.

Most pastors don’t preach on marriage because their marriage isn’t what it should be.

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2. Marriage, being single, divorce are all private matters, and many pastors fear private matters. Many pastors, believe it or not, are fearful of diving into the personal matters of your life. Money and sex are topics pastors are afraid to talk about, often because they think their church doesn’t want to hear about those things. Honestly, what the Bible says about these two topics is probably something everyone in your church wants to know.

Money & sex are 2 topics everyone in your church wants to hear about.

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It is difficult to wade into the waters of porn and sexual addiction, divorce, unhappy marriages, and brokenness. It is uncomfortable and not very fun. But as a pastor, that is where your people live and need your help.

3. They don’t want to exclude anyone. This is a real reason why many pastors don’t preach on marriage and relationships, and I understand it. It is hard when you talk about roles in marriage knowing that a single person is sitting there who finds this completely irrelevant, or a divorced person who begins feeling guilty about their failure. It is hard to talk about being single and purity as your married couples sit there and think, “What does this have to do with me?”

Those are all true.

At the same time, part of teaching your church is helping them understand that just because something doesn’t feel relevant doesn’t mean that it isn’t relevant. I need to know the struggles of someone who is single or dating so I can be a good friend to my single and dating friends. The same goes with divorce and marriage. If you are single, you may be married one day, and it is great if you can learn a thing or two now before getting there.

4. Pastors don’t want to deal with the pain that comes with it. The moment you start talking about marriage, relationships, divorce, dating and sexuality, you are about to open a can of worms that you may not want to in your church. You will find yourself wading into abuse, anger, bitterness, addictions, hurts and family of origin issues that often feel like a web that will never untangle. I had a pastor tell me he doesn’t preach on these topics because he doesn’t want to deal with those hurts in the lives of his people.

Yet this is the exact spot most of the hurt in your church resides, these topics. These are the fights that couples are having, this loneliness is why singles hurt so much at night and why they fall into arms they shouldn’t and pull up websites they shouldn’t. This hurt and disillusionment is why wives get bitter and why husbands aren’t servants to their wives.

Most hurt and regrets in our lives are sexual, so churches should talk about them.

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5. Pastors don’t want angry emails. As someone who preaches on these topics regularly, and having preached the Song of Solomon twice in the seven years Revolution has existed, I can tell you that marriage, divorce, dating, sexual addictions, porn and sex are fast ways to get angry emails.

Just tell a wife that the word submission is in the Bible. Talk about sex and see what happens. We challenged married couples to do something sexual everyday for 30 days. Some people loved that, others didn’t. I heard from both. I had people tell me the Song of Solomon shouldn’t be in the Bible, that it really isn’t about sex but about God’s love for us. If you have read through the Song of Solomon, it’s kind of awkward; it’s like being a voyeur to someone’s sexual life. It’s descriptive, clear, intimate and inspired by the Holy Spirit just like John and Romans are.

If you preach on these topics, don’t go into them blindly. You will make people angry. Some is to be expected. When you talk about forgiving someone who abused you or your ex-husband, expect some anger and hurt. This is natural and okay. This is an opportunity for you to disciple someone to be more like Jesus. Will that be easy? No. Will it be worth it? Yes.

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Look Before You Lead: How to Discern & Shape Your Church Culture

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bookEvery Tuesday morning, I review a book that I read recently. If you missed any, you can read past reviews here. This week’s book is Look Before You Lead: How to Discern & Shape Your Church Culture (kindle version) by Aubrey Malphurs.

I can’t even begin to describe how good and helpful this book is. The appendixes alone are worth the price of the book as they essentially give you Malphurs consulting toolbox.

The struggle many pastors have when it comes to leadership, making changes, preaching, leading their staff, working with volunteers is that they don’t understand the culture they work in. They are simply trying to put ideas into place, move things forward or make a difference. Until you understand the culture you have as a leader, those you lead, the world around your church and the world inside your church, you won’t be able to move anything. This book is particularly helpful for pastors about to move to a new church as Malphurs has an entire checklist of questions to ask a church board who is interviewing you. I found that extremely helpful from the other angle as it gave me questions I need to know for Revolution and questions I would ask a leader to determine if they fit our culture.

The reality is that every church is different. Every church has a different history, different set of leaders. So what works in California doesn’t work the same way in New York. In the same way that what works in one part of a city doesn’t work in another part of a city.

But what is culture? According to Malphurs, “The church’s congregational culture as the unique expression of the interaction of the church’s shared beliefs and its values, which explain its behavior in general and display its unique identity in particular.” And, “a primary responsibility of today’s strategic church leaders is to create, implement, and re-implement an organizational culture that rewards and encourages movement toward the church’s mission and vision. Every pastor must understand that to a great degree his job is to lead and manage the congregational culture, but if he doesn’t understand that culture as well as his own, he won’t be able to do the job.”

Here are a few other things that jumped out:

  • The organization’s beliefs and values intermingle and are seen in the church’s behavior or outward expression of itself. This is the first layer that is represented by the apple’s skin. Churches express themselves through their behaviors and outward appearance.
  • The behaviors and outward expressions are what an observer, such as a visitor, would see, sense, and hear as he or she encounters a church’s culture. Some examples are the church’s physical presence (facilities), language (multi- or monolingual), clothing, symbols, rituals, ceremonies, ordinances, technology, and so forth.
  • Churches are behavior-expressed but values-driven. The inward values drive and explain the church’s outward behavior. These values explain why the church does what it does at the first behavioral level and why it doesn’t do what it should do. When a church culture acts on its beliefs, they become its actual values. Until then they are aspirational in nature and inconsistent with the church’s actual observed presence and expressed behavior.
  • Churches are behavior-expressed, values-driven, and beliefs-based.
  • These three elements of organizational culture—beliefs, values, and their expression—work together to display the church’s unique identity.
  • Congregational culture as a church’s unique expression of its shared beliefs and values.
  • “The most important single element of any corporate, congregational, or denominational culture . . . is the value system.”
  • A ministry based on clearly articulated core values drives a fixed stake in the ground that says to all, “This is what we stand for; this is what we are all about; this is who we are; this is what we can do for you.”
  • An organization’s core values signal its bottom line. They dictate what it stands for, what truly matters, what is worthwhile and desirous. They determine what is inviolate for it; they define what it believes is God’s heart for its ministry.
  • Core values are the constant, passionate shared core beliefs that drive and guide the culture.
  • The key to understanding what drives you or your ministry culture is not what you would like to value as much as what you do value.
  • To attempt change at the surface level is problematic and disruptive. People persist in their beliefs and resent the change because leaders haven’t addressed it at the beliefs level. Thus the leader or change agent must discover the basic beliefs and address them as the church works through the change process.
  • Every thriving, spiritually directed church is well fed and well led.
  • We cannot do anything we want, because God has designed us in a wonderful way to accomplish his ministry or what he wants. Only as we discover how he has wired us will we be able to understand what specifically he wants us to accomplish for him in this life, whether it’s through pastoring a church or some other important ministry.

As I said, if you are a pastor, this is an incredibly helpful book to work through.