Posted on Monday, June 6, 2016

Two Things Every Church Planter Must Know

by Joshua Reich

I’m often asked what I would tell church planters or what a church planter should know before they take the plunge into church planting. While this isn’t an exhaustive list, here’s what I told them the other day:

1. Know that you (and your wife) are called. This seems obvious since the qualifications of a pastor and elder start with this in the New Testament, but it is amazing to me how many guys think church planting would be fun. Let’s define that. Fun is going to the beach, hiking with my wife, playing with my kids. As one author said, “Church planting can kill you.” It can certainly kill your marriage if you aren’t careful (or called). If you aren’t called, don’t even think about it. If your wife is not called, and she needs to be just as called you are, then don’t plant a church. You are now one, which means you must both be bought in. If she has doubts or hesitations, listen to her as the Holy Spirit may be using her to talk to you.

The reason calling is so important is because the Bible says it is important. There is a reason this is the first qualification in 1 Timothy 3. The other reason is that leadership is hard, and church planting can be brutal. There will be times when no one likes you, they are spewing venom at you, stabbing you in the back, leaving your church in droves, spreading rumors about you; core team members that bail, donors who forget to send a check, leaders who sin and then get mad because you hold them accountable. And those are just Christians. Wait until your church is fully on mission and reaching people who are far from God. The bottom line, on those days (and there are more of those days than any other days in church planting), your calling is the only thing that will keep you going. I can tell you from experience that the only reason Katie and I started Revolution and made it to where we are now is because God called us to it. It gives you the determination, the energy, the passion and the fortitude to fight.

If your wife doesn’t feel called to plant a church, you shouldn’t plant one.

2. Know what you will be, not just what you won’t be. Lots of people plant a church because they are too smart for the church where they are on staff. Every student pastor I have ever met (and I used to be one) is smarter than their lead pastor. Why else would they be the student pastor under the lead pastor? Makes sense. So many guys start a church simply to prove how smart they are, how innovative they are and how if only everyone who had stood in their way would have seen the light, revival would have happened.

Whenever I meet with a guy who wants to plant I ask him, “What will you do, and who will you try to reach?” This answer should take less than 30 seconds to give. Anything longer than this and it isn’t clear in your head. If it isn’t clear in your head, it won’t be clear for anyone else. How can you form a core team who will give up time, money and energy for something that doesn’t yet exist? How will you get churches to partner with you, support you and pray for you if you can’t tell them why they should?

2 things every church planter should know.

Posted on Monday, May 23, 2016

The Letdown of Ministry

by Joshua Reich

It’s Monday.

Yesterday was a long day. Maybe it was a good day. Maybe it was an average day. But it was a day.

Some Sundays you preach your heart out, counsel, pray with people, trying to respond to the Holy Spirit’s movement, and it is amazing what happens. People respond, sin is confessed, people are saved, marriages are changed, people take next steps in their sanctification, and you think at the end of the day, “I can’t believe I get to do this.”

Some Sundays you preach your heart out, counsel, pray with people, trying to respond to the Holy Spirit’s movement, and nothing seems to happen. The music feels flat, your sermon seems to be missing something, people aren’t as engaged (they are there but somewhere else); you counsel people, and nothing seems to move the needle. You pray with people, and it feels like your prayers are hitting the ceiling. You lay down at the end of the day and think, “Why do I do this?”

It is amazing, the longer I am in ministry, how the feeling of a day can impact my memory of that day. My feeling of the day can also impact what I believe God did in that day.

This is important: my feelings and what God does are not always the same thing.

My feelings and what God does are not always the same thing.

Here are five things (and questions) to keep in mind, regardless of what yesterday was like:

5 things and 11 questions for pastors on a Monday.

1. Good or bad, did you give God all that you had? Sometimes our feelings of misery after a Sunday are deserved. We didn’t give all that we had in our sermon prep, we didn’t preach with passion, we didn’t preach from a transformed heart and instead preached some information we were hoping to pass on. Sometimes you preach with everything you have, and people just sit there and take it in. Okay, what then? Does that matter?

2. What do your feelings, right now, say about your identity? Is that true? What truth do your feelings about a Sunday reveal about what you are telling yourself? Is your worth wrapped up in what people think? How many people took next steps? How many people got baptized? What if someone heard your sermon on Sunday and became a Christian in 25 years? Would that matter?

What do your feelings, right now, say about your identity as a pastor?

3. Do you believe what you’d tell a friend in this situation? If a friend called you on a Monday and said, “I preached my guts out and nothing would happen,” you’d remind him that God’s word never returns void, that it always does its work. Now, do you believe that or are those just words on a page? Are those words just as authoritative and inspired by the Holy Spirit as Romans 8, Ephesians 1 or any other passage you love to preach?

Do you believe the advice you’d tell a friend in this situation?

4. God doesn’t need you. This should humble you. God can save every one of the people He intends to save without using any of us. He doesn’t need you or me for His gospel to be preached or for anyone to be rescued and enter His Kingdom. He doesn’t. He doesn’t need your words, your sermons or your songs. But He takes them. He uses them.

5. Today is another day. Get up, exercise, get some coffee, read your Bible and spend some time with your Heavenly Father. It is a new day. What happened yesterday, while it has an impact on today, happened yesterday. Too often we worry about yesterday. Let it go.

11 questions for pastors on a Monday.

Posted on Wednesday, May 18, 2016

9 Things I Learned From Preaching About Homosexuality

by Joshua Reich

Recently I preached on the topic of sexuality, specifically homosexuality, and what the Bible says about it. I’ll be honest, for me this sermon felt like a dark cloud waiting for me as I thought about our series through Romans. While I love preaching and don’t mind when people disagree with me, this topic feels different in our culture.

Let me be vulnerable for a minute. This topic is one reason it took me so long to preach through Romans. Sadly, one reason is because of fear of what people would think of me and our church. The other is because I didn’t know if I could talk about it in a way that didn’t make me sound like a jerk. I’m convinced if I had preached this sermon two years ago, the tone would have been radically different, and that grieves my heart to think about what I used to sound like, but also grateful for the work of God in my heart.

Now that I’m done with that confession, I hope you’re still reading.

If you are a pastor, you should preach on this topic. If you will, here are nine things I learned that you should keep in mind:

9 things to keep in mind when you preach on homosexuality.

1. Your people are curious. If you’re a pastor, you get the question, “What do you believe about homosexuality or gay marriage?” on a weekly basis. I know I do. People are curious. Most people think they know what Christians think, but most Christians aren’t even sure what they think. Why is there so much hate around this topic? Why do Christians treat this sin differently than others? Is that right? Did God make someone that way? Do I attend a gay wedding? How do I respond to a friend or child who says, “I’m gay”? All of these are questions they have.

2. Your tone matters as much as, if not more than, your content. Your content matters, so before you email me about that, it matters. A lot. You need to be clear and say, “This is what I think the Bible says.” In fact, as one friend told me, “Your church will remember your tone more than your content after this sermon”, and I believe that is true.

Your tone matters as much as your content when you preach on homosexuality.

3. Your language and tone tells your church how to communicate it. Not only are you training your church what to believe about homosexuality, but you are also training them how to talk about it, what they will sound like. You are teaching them how to treat people in our culture that they disagree with. Christians are notoriously terrible at this. We post stuff on social media on a whole host of topics without ever asking, “How will a friend of mine who disagrees with me take this?” If you don’t have a friend who disagrees with you on homosexuality or some other closely held belief, that is a problem.

You teach your church how to talk about a topic when you preach.

4. Your language and tone tell people who struggle with same sex attraction what kind of reaction they can expect from your church. This to me is one of the most important things about this entire topic and how to preach on it. Sitting in your church every week are people who love your church and are trying to love, or trying to figure out who God is, and they are wondering, “What do I do with these feelings? Do I talk about them in my small group? Can I ask my pastor about it?” You are telling them, “If you bring this up, here’s the reaction you can expect.” My hope is that my church will be a safe place to bring up this or any other struggle. It helped me to talk with friends who are gay and ask them about their story. How did people react? I also asked, “If you walked into a church and this topic was being talked about, what would you want to hear or not hear? How can I communicate what I think and not sound like a jerk?” These were incredibly helpful conversations.

What kind of response would someone struggling with same sex attraction get at your church?

5. It helps to preach through a book of the Bible. I don’t know if I would choose to preach on this topic if it wasn’t in a book of the Bible I was preaching through. In fact, I wouldn’t choose to preach on most topics, because like all pastors I have the topics I like to talk about, and those are usually ones that aren’t uncomfortable or things I’ve conquered in my life. That’s why preaching through a book of the Bible is so important. It makes you unable to skip things. I couldn’t just breeze over these verses. Also, it helps in prep. I knew for over a year that this topic was coming, so I was able to get articles, books and other resources to work through in preparation.

6. This is a gospel and worship issue. This topic is incredibly divisive for a number of reasons. It is a political battlefield as it relates to rights. (I think that’s a different topic, so when I preached on homosexuality, I stayed away from that.) It is also incredibly personal because most people are related to someone or are friends with someone who is gay. This is all about the gospel and worship. Here’s why: Is Jesus Lord and King? If so, then it matters what he says about this. If not, then we are back to exploring the gospel and what Jesus said. (And yes, Jesus talked about homosexuality, so don’t let someone tell you, “Jesus never mentioned homosexuality.”) Additionally, marriage is connected with the gospel throughout the Bible. Whenever we talk about it, we are talking about the gospel.

Homosexuality is a gospel & worship issue.

7. As passionate as you are about homosexuality being a sin, be that passionate about greed, gossip and adultery being a sin. Yes, I believe that the Bible calls a homosexual relationship a sin. I don’t think struggling with same sex attraction is a sin, just like being tempted isn’t a sin. Acting on that temptation is a sin. Getting drunk, ruling your life, trying to control your world, gossip, letting the opinion of others drive your life, being a workaholic, finding your identity in anything other than Jesus, the Bible calls all of those sins that Jesus died for. Yet Christians don’t put up a sign about that when they protest. If you are going to talk about this and be passionate, as so many are, be just as passionate about those committing adultery and being greedy as well. The Bible puts them all together. In fact, when Paul lists homosexuality in Romans 1, he also lists more than 10 other sins with it.

8. Think through redemption for someone in light of this topic. I’d love to say I have a clean answer on this, but I don’t yet as I’m still thinking and praying through it. Now that gay marriage is legal and happening more and more, what does redemption look like? What happens for the lesbian couple who has kids and they are rescued by Jesus? But if you are a pastor, you need to start wrestling through that and thinking about what gospel redemption looks like for those in gay marriages. In the same way that this conversation in our culture is becoming more and more complex (as letters continue to be added to LGBTQIA), this idea of redemption will become more complex.

What does redemption look like for a gay couple?

9. Get over your fear. Maybe you aren’t afraid. If you aren’t afraid when you step into the pulpit to preach on homosexuality, you are probably going to sound like a jerk. Maybe not, but probably. If you are afraid, get over it. Pray through it, talk with friends, your elders, study up and get on stage and preach.

9 things to keep in mind when you preach on homosexuality.

Posted on Thursday, May 12, 2016

Take the Lid off of Your Church

by Joshua Reich

In every leadership book or at every leadership conference you hear the mantra, “Leaders are readers”, or “Growing leaders grow churches”, or something to that effect. In his book The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber puts it another way: “The job of the leader is to know more than you do.”

“The job of the leader is to know more than you do.” -Michael Gerber

If you aren’t careful, though, you can put a lid on your church and its potential for growth.

Now before you email me and tell me that Jesus grows the church, he does. Yes, the Holy Spirit can and will do what the Holy Spirit does, often even when we are trying to wreck things with our pride and sin.

At the same time, there are consistent things that churches that are growing, healthy and effective do that others do not. The same goes for their leaders.

I meet a lot of pastors who unknowingly are not allowing their churches to reach their full potential because they are not reaching their full potential. For a lead pastor, eventually your church will look like you, good or bad.

As we grow, I am seeing that I need to spend more and more time learning, stretching myself, getting alone with God trying to discern what is next and not getting comfortable in what we already “know.”

Here are a few questions I am constantly going through:

For Revolution to become twice the size we are now, what do I need to start doing? What do I need to stop doing? What things will keep us from getting there?
If we were twice the size we are now, what things would we do differently?
What things are we doing right now that need to be tweaked? What things need to go to a new level?
What new leaders do we need to raise up?
What leaders need to be challenged to go to a new level?

“5 questions pastors of growing churches ask themselves.

Posted on Monday, May 9, 2016

How to Recover from Preaching

by Joshua Reich

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.

Manage stress. Keep the day before and after preaching as stress free as possible. Don’t have meetings; stay focused on preaching and recovering.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Posted on Monday, May 2, 2016

When your Church Should Move

by Joshua Reich

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.

The location of your church is one of the most important decisions you make as a pastor.

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?

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.

Your church might be in the wrong location if…

Posted on Thursday, April 28, 2016

Highlights from Rethink Leadership on Team

by Joshua Reich

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.

Posted on Thursday, April 21, 2016

Should I Leave my Current Ministry Position?

by Joshua Reich

Too many pastors work at churches they would not attend if they didn’t get paid to be there. Think about this: If you work at a church, would you attend it if you didn’t get paid to be there?

Would you attend the church you work at if you didn’t get paid to be there?

The answer to that question will tell you a lot about your church and whether you should be working there. I talk to so many pastors who would not attend the church they work at. Bottom line, maybe they shouldn’t work there.

Over time your church will attract people who are like the people in leadership and on stage. So when you are planting a church or pastoring a church, do it with the mindset of, “Would I come to this church?” The easiest way to be passionate about your church and what is happening is if you want to be there.

I get asked a lot if I am really as excited about Revolution as I seem on Twitter and my blog. Yes. I love my church and what God is doing there. I can’t wait to get there on Sundays.

The question I started with, “Would you attend the church you work at if you didn’t get paid to be there?” was the impetus for us to leave the church we worked at in Wisconsin and move to Tucson to eventually start Revolution. The answer to that question says a lot. It is a scary question to ask and even scarier to look that answer in the face, but I wonder if more churches would be healthier and more effective if pastors and staff wanted to be there.

Should I leave my current ministry?

Posted on Monday, April 11, 2016

What Should the Culture think about Christians?

by Joshua Reich

When I read through the gospels, I am blown away by the conversations Jesus had with people. There is a difference in the way Jesus talked to them and his expectations for people outside of Christianity compared with today.

It always strikes me as interesting when Christians talk about the culture, politics or current issues and are surprised when people who don’t follow Jesus act like they don’t follow Jesus.

Why are we surprised?

If Christians believe that the gospel changes us (which we do), then we should expect someone who has been changed by that truth to live and act a certain way. The New Testament writers did. That’s what all the NT letters are about, how to live and act as the body of Christ. Paul did it one way in 1 Corinthians, a different way in Philippians, and James and Peter added their own takes to it.

5 things to remember when you talk to someone you disagree with.

Here are a couple of ideas on how to interact with the culture in light of this:

1. If you are a follower of Jesus, live like it. One of the best ways to move the gospel forward is to live like the gospel has changed you. Too many people who attend church every week do not live, think or feel any different from those who claim to not follow Jesus. As I said once in a sermon, a follower of Jesus should be obvious because they will have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22 – 23).

2. Give space for those exploring Jesus to explore. Your church, community group and missional community should be places where those who don’t know Jesus feel comfortable asking questions and exploring Jesus. You should be the kind of person those who don’t know Jesus feel comfortable being around. Too many Christians don’t know how to be friends with people who don’t know Jesus, let alone share their faith with them. Be a good friend. Be someone who can be counted on, trusted, respected. This goes a long way in sharing the gospel.

3. Have a community/life that is attractive to those who don’t know Jesus. Same thing as above. If you are a pastor, how many people who don’t know Jesus do you see coming through your doors each week? How many people are getting baptized? Following Jesus? If the answer is low, you do not have an attractive community for the gospel.

4. Lovingly confront sin. If you are around humans, you will need to learn how to lovingly confront sin. The NT calls us to do this. Over and over community is to pull people aside and confront the sin in their lives with the truth of the gospel. Christians are good at shouting about the truth but terrible at doing this in a loving way. Don’t be passive aggressive. Remember how broken you are when confronting someone, and confront them the way you would want to be confronted.

5. Lovingly confront Christians who are unloving to those who don’t know Jesus. When you hear about Christians pointing their fingers, turning up their noses, or expecting not yet Christians in your church to act like Christians, lovingly confront them. Tell them how great it is that someone felt comfortable to put their cigarette out in the parking lot; at least they are there. Roll the red carpet out for not yet Christians by teaching Christians to love.

What people should think of Christians.

Posted on Tuesday, April 5, 2016

The Benefit of a Church Crisis

by Joshua Reich

That title may startle some, the benefit of a church crisis. Nobody likes a crisis. No one likes bad news or being disappointed or being uncomfortable. We like when things work, when things are easy, when things go our way.

Yet if you are a leader, at some point you will walk through a crisis with your church.

It could be financial, you may struggle with where you are meeting, it might be relational with another leader or someone in your church. It might involve your sin or the sin of another leader. It might be that you have someone on your staff who does something stupid, and you have to pick up the pieces of that situation.

4 responses to a church crisis.

In that moment you have some options as a leader:

1. You can run. Many pastors when they hit a crisis run from it. While no one likes conflict, relational conflict in a church can be especially painful. We put off conversations we should have, we avoid people we need to run into. Or, many pastors leave when a crisis hits. I heard one pastor say that an average church has a crisis every 18 months, and the average stay for a pastor at a church is 18 – 24 months.

Do you run from or towards a crisis?

A crisis is where leaders have the opportunity to shine. It is the moment they are needed the most.

2. You can pretend it isn’t happening. Many people in their personal relationships act like a crisis isn’t happening. Couples pretend they aren’t hurt by the other or that they aren’t angry. Many pastors, when a crisis hits, pretend nothing is going on. Instead of looking at hard numbers (i.e., our attendance is dropping, less people are serving, less people are joining small groups, giving is going down, we aren’t seeing people come to faith), they simply keep doing business as usual.

Another sign of this is making it everyone else’s fault. The culture is hard, people aren’t dedicated anymore, no one is listening. So the blame game continues to get passed.

The reality is: numbers are your friend. Numbers may be painful and reveal some truths you don’t want to look at or want to pretend aren’t real. But numbers are your friend.

3. You can outlast the crisis. Hopefully you are picking up a theme in this post.

Leaders shine in a crisis. Leaders don’t shine when things are going well because they aren’t needed as much. They are needed, but a crisis is when it shouts for leadership.

Leaders outlast the crisis. Does this mean that people who leave aren’t leaders? I would say yes.

No one said leadership is easy; simply look through history. It is filled with people who rose to the occasion in spite of great difficulties.

A crisis is when a leader shines.

4. You can learn from it. Never waste a crisis.

Never waste a crisis.

As soon as possible, begin learning from the crisis:

Could we have seen this coming?
Did we do something to make this happen?
Did we overlook something?
Is there a system that is broken?
Did we miss something when we hired someone?
Did we extend ourselves too far financially?

Make no mistake, a crisis is when leaders shine. A church crisis in many ways is a wake up call to a church. It is God’s grace to a church. It causes a church and its leaders to see what is most important.

It can also cause leaders to take a step of faith they should have taken but maybe were too afraid to take. Many times in my leadership a crisis has pushed me and our church out of our comfort zone. That is hard and painful, but it’s also good.

Don’t waste a church crisis.