Tuesday Mind Dump…

mind dump

  • What a whirlwind the last 2 weeks have been.
  • I got to be at the Rethink Leadership conference in Atlanta and then at the Acts 29 West Conference in Reno.
  • Still processing all that I learned.
  • I love the large family that Acts 29 West has become.
  • I got to teach in the 200-400 track at Acts 29 West.
  • I love helping leaders who want to learn and grow.
  • I got a ton out of the other 2 track leaders, Jim Applegate and Matt Kyser.
  • Sunday night, Katie and I celebrated our birthdays with a bunch of friends.
  • Our table was filled with people from our church and our crossfit box.
  • That pretty much makes up our relational circles right now.
  • Speaking of Sunday.
  • Mother’s day at Revolution was a great day as we continue our series New in the book of Romans.
  • We’re almost out of depressing parts of Romans.
  • I keep reminding our church, the amazing parts of Romans, being set free don’t make sense without understanding sin and God’s wrath.
  • Although, we like to skip that part.
  • Katie is going to Chicago this week to take pictures of our good friends who are adopting from the Congo and their girls are finally coming home.
  • It’s going to be such a sweet moment.
  • Say a prayer for them and me, as I get to single parent it!
  • I see a lot of video games and pizza in our future.
  • I got to host a podcast episode for I4JLive today and looking at pastoral burnout yesterday.
  • The conversation went in a direction I didn’t expect and it was incredibly helpful.
  • I got a lot out of it personally.
  • It should be out soon, so stay tuned.
  • I’m blown away that it is almost summer.
  • I’m definitely looking forward to a different pace at Revolution.
  • It’s coming at the right time.
  • Read 2 fantastic books on my plane rides over the last 2 weeks: Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal and The Truth About Employee Engagement: A Fable About Addressing the Three Root Causes of Job Misery.
  • Both were excellent.
  • Well, time to get back to sermon prep…

How to Recover from Preaching

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?

  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.

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

leader

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:

  1. What time should your church meet? by Thom Rainer
  2. 6 Podcasts every Pastor Should Listen to by Vanderbloemen
  3. 3 Reasons your church Might Not be Ready to Reach Baby Boomers by Hadyn Shaw
  4. 8 Ways Pastors can Prevent Burnout by Brian Jones
  5. 10 Ways to Not Grow Your Church by Charles Stone
  6. 5 Lessons I Learned When Just Starting Out by John Maxwell

Are You an Insecure Leader?

leader

Insecure leaders scare me.

Before I tell you why, let me tell you what an insecure leader is. An insecure leader is…

Someone who name drops. They know everyone, they know the top pastors, top worship leaders. They are always talking about who they know.

Someone whose past is greater than their present. They always talk about what they’ve done. It is always about their last ministry, church or job. The grass is greener in their past.

Someone who jumps on the latest bandwagon. They are up on the newest, greatest fad in church leadership. Each week it is a new vision for their church. This creates turbulence in a ministry because no one knows what the win is.

Someone who goes to the latest conference, reads the latest book and gets a new vision each time.

Someone who won’t stop talking about themselves. They always have a story about how great they are, why they should be on your team, how grateful Jesus should be they are a Christian and on board to build the kingdom of God. They tell story after story of their exploits.

Someone who is about building their kingdom instead of God’s. This can be difficult to detect because insecure leaders are very spiritual and manipulative. But underneath their spiritual veneer is someone who is more about people following them instead of people following Jesus.

Insecure leaders scare me because they are hard to detect. They are “wolves in sheep’s clothes.” (Matthew 7:15) They come across as together, they know the right answer, they often have a lot of biblical knowledge, but they go about things and have goals that go contrary to scripture. I often call them the guns blazing awesome guy.

So what do you do if you’re an insecure leader or you encounter one?

1. Know yourself. All of us tend to be insecure in certain areas. We struggle to believe God will use us, or we don’t want to come across as prideful about the gifts God has given to us. So we need to be honest about who we are, what we can do and what we can’t do. You aren’t insecure if you say, “I’m not as gifted at that as you are.” That’s self-awareness.

2. Have a process. One of the best ways to weed out the guns blazing awesome guy is to have a process. This process also helps to develop leaders to help them grow so they aren’t insecure. A process tells people, “You won’t be a leader here right away.” This is good for people who are unsure, to make sure they are trained. This is good for people who think they are awesome because it guards the gate.

3. Always talk to their last pastor. If a leader from another church shows up at your church singing your praises and bashing his last church, be wise. Talk to the last pastor they served with. Cover your bases.

4. Trust your gut. I could spiritualize this and say, “If the Holy Spirit tells you…”, and that might happen with someone you are considering for a leadership position. Sometimes your gut and the Holy Spirit become one and the same. Sometimes your gut is wrong, but I’m never mad when I trust my gut. If something says “wait” or “no” on someone, stick to that. You don’t always have to have a reason.

When your Church Should Move

church move

When it comes to real estate, the old cliche of location, location, location is king. Your location matters. There is a corner near my house that no matter what restaurant goes into that corner, it never survives. I’m sure you have something like that in your city.

The same is true for churches.

Location matters.

Not only in terms of space and what kind of ministry you can do, but what and who is around you.

If you attend or lead a church, I want you to think for a minute about where your church is located and who is around that location. The people who live there, are they old or young? Hipster or middle age? Are they wealthy, middle class, below the poverty line, or a mixture? Think in terms of nationality and ethnic backgrounds.

It is easy to overlook this as a church and keep humming along.

A good missionary, though, thinks about who is around them.

Now the second question: Who are you as a church and as a leader best suited to reach?

This is a hard question and can feel like you are picking and choosing who to reach (which you aren’t). You are simply asking who you are as a leader and who your church is.

Often God lines up who we are with where we are.

I have a friend who planted a church in a bilingual community where almost everyone lives below the poverty line. Why? He grew up in a community like that and understood the struggles. I have another friend who planted in one of the most suburban places in America. Why? He grew up in one of the most suburban places in America and understood the idols and struggles of that community.

Here is the tricky part: What if who you are best suited to reach is not where your church is?

This happens to older churches who watch a neighborhood change around them.

You have two options at this point: one, change things to reach those around you, or two, move to where those people and cultures live.

The question a leader and a church must answer is which path to take. Both can be right.

While this is something church planters and missionaries think through as they embark on their leadership, this is something churches and pastors must continually consider as their church grows and ages. This is being a good missionary as a leader, and as your city changes it will mean some changes to your church and maybe even some hard decisions.

Highlights from Rethink Leadership on Team

leadership

I’m at Rethink Leadership Conference in Atlanta, which has been like drinking from a fire hose of leadership wisdom. The fourth session was on team, which is always a challenge in a growing church and one that I really appreciated. Here are some highlights:

Brad Lomenick & Heather Larson
  • Everybody around the table needs to be known and recognized for what they bring.
  • One of the best things that everyone can do on a team for the lead pastor is get good at leading up.
  • It is important to know what is the lead pastor’s passions in the local church to know how best to help him.
  • Influence matters far more than position.
  • What someone grows up is very different than what someone walks into.
Jimmy Mellado
  • The most important thing you will bring to your team is your soul.
  • The reason teams break up is the inner stuff, not the skill stuff.
  • Great gifts will take a leader to a level, but an absence of strong soul and character won’t keep you there.
  • Hell is not just a destination but can be a diagnosis of where your soul is today.
  • A good or rotten soul never stays to itself.
  • Do people want to be around you because of your soul?
  • What is running your life at any given moment is your soul. -Dallas Willard
Cheryl Bachelder
  • What are the convictions about leadership that are evident to the people who are entrusted to your care?
  • Why do people work?
  • Why do we lead?
  • Where are you taking the people you lead? How do you think about the people you lead?
  • A leader needs to take people to a daring destination with the humility to serve them along the journey.
  • A leader needs to choose to lead people to a daring destination.
  • Taking people to a bold destination is serving them well.
  • A leader must choose to love the people they lead.
  • A leader has to deliver results.
  • No one wants to hear your convictions about leadership if they don’t work.

Highlights from Rethink Leadership on Momentum

leadership

I’m at Rethink Leadership Conference in Atlanta, which has been like drinking from a fire hose of leadership wisdom. The second session was on momentum, which is always an elusive thing for a leader. Here are some highlights:

Geoff Surratt
  • We are on the cusp of a new way of doing church and that’s exciting.
  • Churches that are winning with Millennials…
    • Transparency. They don’t care about outside accountability. Millennials want to if you are the real deal.
    • Collaboration. Boomers want to know what happens at the decision making table. Gen Xers don’t just want to be in the loop, they want to be heard at the table. Millennials don’t just want to know what’s happening, they want to be a part of deciding what’s going on.
    • Learn to let Millennials lead. Our job stops being the mentor job but letting them get out in front.
    • Make failure an option.
    • They have figured out mission in a different way, they are living on mission(al). How are you on mission everyday, in everything you do?
    • Is your organization the real deal? Is there fluff going on here?
    • They learn to live in the mess, to do ministry that is messy.
Interview w/ Josh Gagnon
  • See the need and communicate the why behind the need gets people on the same boat headed in the same direction.
  • Staying consistent even when you feel like you are making no movement.
  • You gain momentum when you stay true to who you are.
  • You can find momentum in seasons on the calendar. Don’t fight the calendar, live in it, work in it.
  • People who create momentum are teachable, thrive in a culture of change and openness.
  • Momentum is killed when you do it at the wrong time with the wrong people.
Kevin Myers
  • A powerful force is the momentum of the soul of the leader, when Jesus is changing the life of the leader.
  • Keeping our calling current is critical to keeping our momentum, don’t let the fire go out.
  • Main thoughts: smoke what you’re selling. Sell what you’re smoking.
  • Questions to keep wood on the fire of my soul for momentum on the inside:
    • What’s my current word from the Lord? It’s not new, but what is God whispering to you lately.
    • What’s my current obedience to the Lord? There can be sacrifice without obedience, but there can’t be obedience without sacrifice.
    • What is my current awe before the Lord? Will I get on God’s agenda and trust Him to take care of my agenda?
  • How to move momentum as a church:
    • What’s your current territory?
    • What’s your current risk?
    • What’s your current discipline to afford the risk?

Highlights from Rethink Leadership on Strategy

leadership

I’m at Rethink Leadership Conference in Atlanta, which has been like drinking from a fire hose of leadership wisdom. The first session was on strategy, which was incredibly stretching. Here are some highlights:

Reggie Joiner
  • It isn’t the vision that determines our success at a church, it’s your strategy.
  • A strategy is a plan of action with an end in mind.
  • You don’t have to work at getting misaligned as a team or organization.
  • Questions to ask: What do we want someone to become? If you could only get the people who come to your church for one thing, what would that one thing be?
Carey Neiuwhof
  • Is vision as important as we think it is?
  • The reason vision isn’t as important as we think is almost every church has the same vision.
  • Your problem as a leader isn’t a vision problem, it’s a strategy problem.
  • Mission and vision determines intention, but strategy determines direction. -Andy Stanley
  • Strategy initially divides, but ultimately unites, every organization.
Leonce Crump
  • Forms and functions change, but convictions never should.
  • How do you change your strategy without losing your core:
    • Can you measure your core? Do you know who your core is? Make sure they know your core convictions.
    • Vision is taught, culture is felt. What do people feel in our church?
    • Every person wants consistency out of their leaders more than anything else in the world. Do you know who you are and can you consistently communicate who you are?

Monday Mind Dump…

mind dump

  • Some days after preaching you have this high that you can’t explain.
  • Some days, you feel like you trudged through the mud of a passage and came out on the other side only to see the next verse waiting for you.
  • Today, I feel like the second one.
  • If you missed yesterday on “Do good people go to heaven?” you can listen to it here.
  • Romans 1 – 3 is an amazing set of verses that sets up the amazing truths that await in the rest of Romans, but they are hard passage to preach through.
  • Grateful for a church that wants to know what the whole bible says and sit under hard passages like ones on God’s wrath and judgment.
  • Those are humbling topics.
  • Got to celebrate with someone who kept inviting someone who finally came.
  • There’s nothing better than hearing someone say, “I have prayed and asked for years and they’re coming today.”
  • It’s a reminder that every Sunday is someone’s first Sunday. 
  • Since moving to our new location I feel like we have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes of our church to strengthen our discipleship and leadership development systems.
  • Right now, our staff is working through the leadership pipeline material from lifeway.
  • Such solid stuff.
  • Can’t wait to roll this out across all our ministries this year and how it will help people move on a path to use their gifts and talents.
  • Started reading You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit by James K.A. Smith.
  • The book is not at all what I thought it would be about.
  • Not sure if that’s ever happened to you.
  • But I’m loving it despite that.
  • So there you go.
  • Took our kids to the fair last week.
  • Spent too much money on rides but made a ton of memories.
  • Went to see Zootopia with our kids and 4 of their friends yesterday, so yes, we took 9 kids to the movies.
  • Got some funny looks.
  • All in all, a good movie. Always interesting processing with our kids the messages of a movie and it was interesting the timeliness of the zootopia message about being anything you want to be as it relates to our culture.
  • I’m predicting some fun conversations at dinner tonight about it.
  • If you’re like me, you are excited about the NFL draft this Thursday.
  • If you’re not, you just found out the NFL draft starts on Thursday.
  • I love watching the draft.
  • Yes, I’m that guy.
  • I’ll be on a plane Thursday night so I’m hoping the airplane wifi is better than the usual airplane wifi.
  • Got a lot to do today.
  • Tons of follow up.
  • Back at it…

10 Ways to Beat Stress & 5 Other Ideas To Help You Grow as a Leader

leader

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

  1. 10 Rules for Beating Stress by Travis Bradberry
  2. 10 Rules for Upping Your Speaking Game by Nick Morgan
  3. What Happened When I Stopped Using Screens after 11 p.m. by Alex Cavoulacos
  4. 8 Ways to Slow Down & De-Stress Your Busy Life by John Rampton
  5. 5 Things Great Leaders Know about Emotions by Carey Nieuwhof
  6. 5 Reasons Church Announcements Cause Problems by Thom Rainer