To go with our Waiting on God series we asked someone to make some video stories of people in our church who have waited on God, are waiting on God or are in the midst of a hard season of life.
Below is the story of Mike and Alice; the journey of their marriage and Alice starting to follow Jesus before Mike and how that affected their marriage.
Waiting on God: Mike & Alice Rodriguez Story from Tucson Revolution on Vimeo.
Recently, I read through Dave Ramsey’s leadership book EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches. The title is right. There is tons of wisdom in this book and it is incredibly practical and helpful.
Here are 11 things I learned or was reminded of that I think are helpful for other pastors:
Many churches (and pastors for that matter) do not know what to do with pastor’s wives, how to treat them, what role they play or how important they are. It is a hard role to live in and stay in. Everyone has a lot of their own expectations of what the wife of a pastor should be like, yet, they are all different.
While Revolution (and myself) has struggled just like every other church to figure this out, I believe Katie and I have figured some things out that we have put into place which will prove to be invaluable in the future. While this is not exclusive to pastors, any leader in a church and for that matter, any husband can do better in understanding their wives and how to engage them.
Over the next month, I’ll be sharing some of the things we’ve learned that I hope will be beneficial for you.
I remember when Katie and I were engaged; she met with a woman who was married to a pastor. Katie told her about our engagement, our future plans of being a pastor and starting a church. This pastor’s wife looked at Katie and told her to “run away as fast as she could.” In no uncertain terms, she told her to not marry a pastor. Now that I am a pastor, I can see why (now, let me share my completely biased opinion).
I have not held many other jobs. At 18, I knew what I wanted to do with my life and I poured everything I had into getting there. God opened many doors for me and blessed me with the opportunity to be on staff at some great churches and be around some world class leaders.
But, being a pastor is hard work. It never ends. There is always another meeting to be had, another person who needs help or someone else to counsel, there is always another book to read or a sermon to write, there is always another fire to put out, another person who needs me this minute. Simply put, being a pastor is a lifestyle job. This is the joy and curse of it. It is what I have given my life to, I will just never complete my to do list. And that is okay. What many pastors struggle with is that it is easy to serve others and help others instead of helping and serving their own family. They pour all they have into their churches and leave their families to fend for themselves. What is interesting though is that according to the qualifications of a pastor/elder in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 is that you judge a pastor/elder based on his family and how he leads them, serves them and how they work together.
Protect Her Heart
It is easy for a pastor’s wife to get bitter. To see how her husband helps so many other people, how he listens to other people’s problems and not hers. How he can be ready to serve someone at the drop of a hat, but not pick up his clothes at home. She is left to fend for herself and her kids. What many pastors forget is that their wife and kids attend their church and not only are they pastor dad, they are a pastor to them in the same way that he is a pastor to everyone else in the church.
Because it is a lifestyle job that involves counseling, doing weddings, funerals, and being with people, you get a front row seat to everything. You see the good, the bad and the ugly (and sometimes grotesque) of people in the church. A pastor’s wife sees all of this as well. What can make this painful is when you pour into someone, help someone through a difficult patch, spend hours with someone, only to have them stab you in the back, gossip about you, take all of your available time and then tell everyone you weren’t “there for them when they needed you.”
Pastor, are you pastoring your wife? Are you making time for her? Are you helping her deal with the pains you are experiencing? As a man, it is easy to compartmentalize what is happening and you can get lost in your work, but she doesn’t have that luxury, so you need to help her. I remember one time we went through a painful experience and I got over it rather quickly, but never told Katie that I had dealt with it personally, so she kept hurting for me. One night she let me know how bothered she was by this situation and I told her, “That is over.” Not a good thing.
She will be affected by things you won’t be affected by and you need to be sensitive to those things.
Her Gifts
Another area I see many pastor’s failing in is not helping their wife find her gifts and passions. In the past year, Katie has gotten more and more into photography, which has been awesome to see. For too many years, I failed her by not helping her find her gifts and passions outside of church, and was too focused on mine.
Many pastor’s wives are not able to use their gifts because they aren’t seen as worthwhile in the church. Many people think a pastor’s wife should lead the kids ministry, sing, play piano, lead the women’s ministry or teach somewhere. Maybe she is better at discipling, she may be gifted in hospitality or she may be a talented graphic artist. Whatever it is, she should be able to use her gifts.
She should also have the freedom to take breaks like everyone else as she goes through certain seasons of life. There have been times that Katie has been heavily involved in our church and other times where she did less things because of how young our kids are. I’ve always told people, my expectation for a pastor’s wife at Revolution is that she should be like everyone else who attends our church, plugged into community, and using her gifts. Sometimes she will do a lot and sometimes she will do a little, but we’ll have the same expectation for her as anyone else, she just happens to be married to a pastor.
Help Her Grow Spiritually
Another area pastor’s can help his wife is to grow spiritually. Spiritual growth can be hard for a pastor and his family because everything about their life seems spiritual. Often, Katie and I will talk about things she wants to grow in or learn and I will put books on her kindle for her to read. Men are called to pastor his wife and what better way than making sure she is reading good books instead of garbage (which there is no end to in popular books).
Bottom line for this first post, a pastor’s wife is part of the church. They attend it, use their gifts in it, are bought in, but they can easily become bitter or feel left out. They can feel like their husband has chosen work or other people over her and her kids. Don’t do that. Protect her and her heart. Make every effort to make sure she is growing, that she has hobbies and friends so that she is able to become all that God has called her to be.
Recently one of our up and coming leaders at Revolution told me they were going to do something. They asked me if I wanted to be told when it was done, he made it sound like I was going to get a play-by-play of how things were going.
I looked at him and said, “If you tell me it’s going to be done, then it’s going to be done. I trust you.”
Herein lies one of the great tests for you to know if you have the right person in charge of a team, ministry or project. To know if you have the right person on your team.
If they tell you something, do you believe them.
If you have any doubts about someone’s word, they are the wrong person.
If someone says it will be done and you think, “We’ll see.” They are the wrong person.
The people who you put into leadership roles should be the kind of people you could bet the farm on their word.
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As much as I hate to admit it, as a control freak, my life is largely out of my control.
Yes, I control my reaction to things, what I think about things and how I move forward. But, I can’t control what someone else does and I certainly have no say over what God allows to enter into my life.
My summer did not go as I planned.
For some people, this is a reason to celebrate because it would mean new adventures, unexpected opportunities. The optimists in the world would dance a little dance and be on the merry way to see what will happen.
That’s not me.
What I have learned over the summer as things at church haven’t gone how I expected them, is that unexpected season often lead to greater growth.
The optimists might be right in that the unexpected really does lead to greater opportunities.
This summer I’ve learned that when something you weren’t planning to have happened, happens, it creates opportunities.
When our worship pastor, who helped me start Revolution (he came when our church was 4 months old), when he left in June it gave me an opportunity to do some things I hadn’t thought about doing when he was here. It helped me see areas of our church that weren’t healthy, ways I was leading that weren’t as helpful to our church as they could be.
It opened up new possibilities.
Could that have happened if he stayed?
Sure.
I’m not sure I would have gone looking for it, or it would’ve presented itself otherwise.
Experiences like this create in me a more opportunistic streak. I am starting to look for ways to grow now instead of waiting for discomfort to push me into it. I’m starting to ask more questions about how to improve personally or as a church instead of waiting for a crisis to push me.
At some point in your life, you will find yourself waiting on God.
It might be a prayer that is seemingly unanswered. A request for healing, physically or emotionally. It might be a request for guidance or direction for God, a look into an open door that never comes. It might be asking God to change someone or a situation, only to find that it stays the same for years.
The waiting is brutal at times.
Yet, most of our life is spent in the waiting.
Most of our life is spent asking God to deliver us, rescue us, change us.
The waiting can be wasted if we aren’t careful and we find ourselves back waiting again without learning the lessons or seeing the insights we were supposed to see.
Is there a point?
Yes.
Three things happen while we wait on God:
The idea of roles in marriage is filled with land mines. Many people have misused and misinterpreted the beautiful verses in the Bible to make them say what they want to. Few people have actually seen healthy couples live out roles well and often have incorrect views of Biblical roles. We have visions of quiet wives who say nothing, men who dominate and abuse their families all based on Ephesians 5, completely missing the point of this passage.
In thinking about how a husband helps his wife flourish and become all that God has called her to be, here are 5 ways men often fail and how to work against these problems to create the picture described in Ephesians 5:
If you are married and curious to know how your marriage is in this area, here is a simple question to ask: is the wife flourishing?
When a man fulfills the role God has called him to in marriage, his wife will flourish. She will have room to grow, there will be grace for her to deal with past hurts in her life, she will be able to use her gifts to bless her family and the world around her, she will have freedom to be who God has called her to be.
I often tell our church: Husbands should create an umbrella under which a woman is protected to become the woman God has called her to be.
To go with our Waiting on God series we asked someone to make some video stories of people in our church who have waited on God, are waiting on God or are in the midst of a hard season of life.
Below is the story of Justin and Heather Bailes as they walk through her journey of pancreatic cancer that spread to her lungs.
Waiting on God: Justin & Heather Bailes Story from Tucson Revolution on Vimeo.
I’m part of the Reformed camp.
We are known for a few things: a deep love for theology, a desire to be right in that theology, and often, an unwillingness to bend and learn from people outside of our camp.
This isn’t true of everyone the Reformed camp, but it is what we are often known for.
I think the strongest leaders and the strongest churches are willing to learn from anyone. I didn’t say, they do everything they do or even agree with every part of their theology, but they learn from them.
I was asked by a new church planter in Acts 29 who my favorite preachers to listen to and he was surprised when I listed all guys who fall in the “seeker targeted” world of evangelicalism. Why? They know how to do things many in my world struggle with: making their messages relevant and calling people to action. They are also great at inspiring people.
Let me illustrate what can easily happen when we believe churches and leaders don’t learn from everyone: They look the same.
Recently, we were talking with someone that we were interviewing for a position at Revolution. When he learned that we organize our church around missional communities he said, “I can’t get on board with that, I don’t like that model.” At this point, he had no idea what our model looked like, only what he perceived it to be. He had an expectation, that we would be like every other MC model, which we aren’t.
Last year, I spoke at a church planting event that attracts thousands of planters to it. When I was talking to one of the organizers about it, he said, “I’m surprised you’re here because most people in your camp don’t come to our events.”
Why?
An unwillingness to learn from everyone.
This isn’t just the Reformed camp. This is everyone. Pastors not learning from business leaders and vice versa. Seeker churches not learning from the Reformed church or the high church. Worship leaders in attractional church not learning from missional/organic churches and vice versa.
Sadly, many pastors when they start their churches and settle into their camps seem to be above learning from outside their comfort zones. So, they read the same books they’ve always read, go to the same conferences with the same speakers who line up with them saying the things they are expected to say.
Here’s what it can look like. At Revolution, we’ve been heavily influenced by leaders like Tim Keller, Jeff Vanderstelt and Matt Chander. We’ve also been enormously blessed by Andy Stanley, Nelson Searcy and Bill Hybels.
How does this work? Two things need to happen:
As long as leaders are able to hold humility and wisdom together, they are able to grow and do great things and see God use them to their full potential because, they are learning from everyone.
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Building a platform means that people follow your updates, listen to your words, respect and trust you, and yes, consider buying whatever it is you’re selling. But they will only do that if they like you – and the way you get readers to like you is by legitimately helping them. Answer their questions. Give them stuff for free. Share sources of good, helpful information. Make them laugh and smile. Do what they cannot: gather information or share entertainment value. Access people and places they want to learn more about. Help them achieve their goals. Enrich their lives. After they have seen the value you provide, they will want to stay in contact with you so they can receive more information. They will begin to trust your content – and become a follower. And the more followers you have, the bigger you platform becomes.
