Tag Archives: passion

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How to Stay Passionate as a Leader

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Starting something is easy. Getting married is easier than staying married. Starting a new company or church is often easier than maintaining one or turning one around.

Yes, it takes a lot of work and effort to get something off the ground, but the dreaming phase, the launching phase, is often incredibly fun and exhilarating.

Why?

Passion.

Passion can take you incredibly far in life.

We don’t follow people who aren’t passionate, and often passion is what will keep you going when the road gets long and hard as a leader. Your passion to see a dream come true, a marriage survive, a child succeed. Our passion can carry us.

But no matter how passionate, energetic, or optimistic we are,

passion also drains and runs low.

There are times when we are simply showing up, going through the motions and trying to survive.

The passion that got it off the ground is hard to maintain.

Sadly, when this happens, many people quit. They give up. They throw in the towel, or they keep going through the motions, which kills them and sucks the life out of them.

Why stay?

One author said, “You will be most tempted to quit moments before the critical breakthrough.”

You will be most tempted to quit moments before the critical breakthrough. -@cnieuwhof

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How do you raise your passion when it gets dry? Here are some ways:

Have you lost your passion?

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1. Ask God. Our passion and calling come from God. He has wired us with it. When it is waning and not burning hot, ask God for the desire and original passion He gave you.

2. Go back to where you started. Place is important in our lives. For many of us, the dreams we have or the things we started began at a place. I can take you to the seat in an auditorium where God called me to plant a church when I was 21. I can take you to the banks of a lake where I knew at 18 I was supposed to be a pastor.

Many people have sat in conferences or gone on mission trips that have changed their lives and perspectives.

Go back to those places. Sometimes the return to a place ignites a passion in us.

3. Look for small wins and celebrations. Too often the reason our passion is waning is because it isn’t as big or as great as we imagined. It also goes slower than we expected. Most successful people have walked a long winding road to their success.

Look for the small ways you’ve moved ahead. Celebrate the little things that have happened.

4. Get around passionate people. You and I both know passionate, optimistic people. When your passion is waning, get around them. Ask them what they’re dreaming about. This is a great opportunity to stretch yourself and get out of your comfort zone.

5. Be honest. This might feel like a downer when talking about passion, but a lack of passion might be the end of your time somewhere. All things come to an end, and that is okay. The reality is that it is possible that when our passion wanes in a job, it is a sign of the end, and that is okay. God will often speak through passion or lack thereof.

This is why it is crucial to have a team or friends who can help you and talk with you about your passion level, where it went, why it is down and how to raise it back up.

If you’re a leader, this matters. Not only for your sanity but for those around you.

If you’re a pastor, your church will feed off your passion, whatever level it is.

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When You Feel Hopeless as a Leader

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leader

At some point as a leader, you will feel hopeless. As a pastor it will more than likely happen after the weekend. It is hard to keep hope alive all the time as a leader. I often read people on Twitter who are overly positive, and I wonder, “Are they really like that? Is life really that exciting for them all the time?” Then I feel like I’m doing something wrong as a leader because that isn’t me.

Should a leader be hope filled? Yes. A leader should carry the banner of hope and excitement. You are the main vision carrier of your church.

Will you always feel like doing that? Probably not. At some point you will feel like you have no hope and like you don’t want to go on.

So, what do you do then?

Here are some things I do when I feel hopeless:

5 things to do when you feel hopeless.

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  1. Pray. While this seems like the expected answer, it isn’t the easiest thing to do. Often as a leader, our last thought is to pray. We want to think, strategize, vent, read a book, figure out how to get out of this funk. Spend some quiet time with Jesus.
  2. Talk to trusted friends. A leader needs people to vent to, people who can help to shoulder the weight, people who know the weight a leader carries.
  3. Sleep. Much of the hopelessness we feel as leaders comes from the fact that we are tired and need rest.
  4. Do something active or fun. This helps to balance out the chemicals in your body. Take a hike, workout, have sex with your spouse, play with your kids. Do something fun, something recharging.
  5. Know that this won’t last forever. Hopelessness feels like the end of the world. That’s why we call it hopelessness. This won’t last forever. Tomorrow will come, another sermon will happen. This is a season that might last a day, a week or a month, but it is a season.
5 ways to deal with hopelessness as a leader.

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How to Recover from Preaching

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preaching

If I got to rank what I love about my job, preaching would be in the top two. I love the prep, working through a passage, a series, thinking through how to best present an idea, and praying about those who will be there, that God would work in their lives and draw them to Himself through my meager attempts at presenting His Word.

There is a downside to this love. It is what happens after preaching. The recovery.

I remember when Katie and I met with a doctor to talk about how to handle the adrenaline that goes with preaching, the emotional, relational and spiritual drain that it can be. (I’ve heard of pastors who sleep for days after preaching because their bodies can’t handle the adrenaline.) The doctor asked, “Is it like teaching a class?” It’s different for one reason – eternities hang in the balance. I heard one pastor describe preaching as “reaching into the road to hell and pulling people back.” (I realize there are some possible theological problems with that, but you get the point.)

The crash a pastor experiences the day after preaching can be brutal. Your whole body aches, your eyes hurt, you feel as low as you have felt all week. For me, I am often so stiff that I can’t bend down to pick something up off the floor after preaching.

So what do you do?

5 ways to recover from preaching.

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  1. Manage stress. Keep the day before and after preaching as stress free as possible. Don’t have meetings; stay focused on preaching and recovering.
  2. Recharge. I do something that recharges me. Hiking, running, playing with my kids, reading a book, drinking coffee with Katie. Read something that recharges you or takes your mind off church. This can be a novel or a spiritual book that challenges your own heart and soul as a human.
  3. Encouragement. Have some people who call/text to encourage you afterward. Have elders or friends check in with you to ask how they can pray for you, encourage you and let you know that they are lifting you and your family up in prayer.
  4. Eating. Most pastors are notoriously poor eaters. What you eat before and after preaching is incredibly important. What you eat will make it easier or harder to preach, to sleep, to recover. Make sure you also drink enough water to stay hydrated.
  5. Move forward. As quickly as possible, move on to next week. Regardless of how your weekend went, good or bad, the next weekend is coming very quickly. So move on. Don’t dwell on what happened (especially if it was bad). Celebrate what God did, learn from what you did poorly, but move on.
5 things to do this Monday if you are a pastor.

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Dear Worship Leader

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worship leader

Dear Worship Leader,

Because I speak every week and have done so for the last 10+ years, I’ve seen a lot of worship leaders. From camps, conferences, church services, student and college ministry, it takes all kinds. Most of them are great. Some of them, not so much. Most of them have great hearts with a desire to lead a group of people into the presence of Jesus to worship, others, not so much. I thought I’d share some thoughts as a person who preaches and worships in church on a weekly basis, sort of my viewpoint of you and some requests.

  1. It’s not about you. I know worship leaders would never say it is about them or preachers either. But sometimes, it seems like it is more about you than Jesus. We are not there to watch you worship. We are not there to see how amazing you are or how incredible your voice is or that killer drum or guitar solo you just nailed. If that’s all people talk about at the end, it failed.
  2. Talk normally. So many worship leaders when they talk between songs sound like they are trying to seductively get me out of my clothes. If your voice sounds like Barry White normally, then great. If not, talk normally. Don’t breath heavy, make weird pauses. I leaned over to Katie at one worship service recently and told her I felt like the worship leader was hitting on us. It shouldn’t feel that way.
  3. Everything you say, pray and the songs you sing teach me about God. When you pray, think through it. When you talk about asking for more of the presence of the Holy Spirit, is that possible? Or do we need to be more aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit? Make sure you know what the Father, Son and Spirit do. When you make it up on the fly, you make theological errors that we in the seats listen to and believe. After all, you’re on stage. As for lyrics, make sure they are theologically correct. Also, what does it mean to sing to the heart of Jesus? When you tell us to sing this straight to Jesus I wonder who we’ve been singing to this whole time. A lot of what is said on the latest Hillsong and Passion album sound awesome in an arena, but when there are 25 people in a church plant, we don’t want to shout to God.
  4. Pray normally. When you pray, do you say God or Jesus over and over. Dear God, we love you God. Thank you God. God, your presence is so amazing God. Oh God. If that’s how you pray, great. If not, pray normally. Sometimes people pray and I wonder how many times they will say God’s name like they might forget it. The way you pray teaches the rest of us to pray and if it doesn’t sound normal, it communicates a normal person can’t pray. Also, when you pray, I learn theology about God.
  5. Don’t repreach the sermon. There is nothing worse than preaching a sermon, one that I as the preacher have thought about for anywhere from 1 week to 8 months just to have a worship leader come up after me and on the fly repreach it in 5 minutes and make me wonder, “Why did we just sit here?” Or, when you repreach it incorrectly. I remember speaking at another church and the worship leader came up and tried to make my point, but missed it. Showing he wasn’t really listening.
  6. Your dress reflects your heart. This is for men and women. If your dress is distracting, revealing or over the top, no one is paying attention to Jesus. They are looking at you. What you wear, how low cut it is, how short your skirt is, how tight your shirt is, all reflects your heart.
  7. Don’t make us stand forever. I know people stand forever at a concert, but once you start getting to 15, 20, 25 minutes of straight standing people start checking out because it hurts. Knees, back, necks, they all start to ache.
  8. When you sing high, men stop singing. If you are a worship leader, you probably have an incredible range. That’s awesome. You can probably sing all the songs exactly as they are recorded on the CD. That’s awesome. The problem is few other people can, especially men. When you sing too high, men stop singing and check out.
  9. Explain what we are doing. Why are we standing? Why are we reading this prayer? If you want me to do something, tell me and explain it. Don’t assume I want to do the thing you want me to do. You’ve spent all week thinking about it, working on it and I just heard about it.
  10. Sing familiar songs each week. I love new songs and if you lead worship, you get tired of songs quickly. The reason? By the time you teach a song to a church, you’ve listened to it 100 times. The problem is, most people do not listen to worship music throughout the week. They don’t know the songs. So, if you teach a song and the following week don’t sing it again, we forget it.

I love worship leaders. I love that at Revolution, almost half the service is music. I want you to be great. If you don’t serve with a pastor that wants you to be as great as possible, go find a new pastor to work with. The people who show up each week show up wanting to meet Jesus and you are a big part of that. You help us encounter Jesus in a personal, emotional and logical way. I want you to be great and I don’t want anything to stand in the way of you being the worship leader God called you to be.