Posted on Monday, January 14, 2019

Five Things That Destroy Your Courage in Life

by Joshua Reich

To accomplish anything in life, you need courage.

You need the courage to get out of bed each morning and face the day. It takes courage to tell a boss, co-worker, spouse or friend what you need or want. It takes courage to lead anything forward. It takes courage to parent. It takes courage to quit a job and leave security to chase a dream.

But courage is easily lost. And when it’s lost, we miss out on new things, great things.

In their excellent book The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, the authors list five things that hold us back from having the courage to face the road ahead:

5 things that hold us back from having the courage to face the road ahead.

1. Loyalties to people who may not believe you are doing the right thing. We often underestimate the power of people in our lives, especially people from our past. Teachers, parents, first bosses or coaches, guidance counselors, boyfriends, girlfriends; they all make an impact. They have said things that encouraged us and pushed us forward, but they have also said things that have cut us.

My guidance counselor in high school told me I wasn’t college material and I should give up that goal and get a job working with my hands. That has always rung in my head. I am constantly fighting the battle of feeling like I belong somewhere, or that I am smart enough to be sitting at a table.

Are the loyalties you have to people in your past holding you back in any way? Are there any messages ringing in your head that are keeping you from reaching for a dream?

2. Fear of incompetence. Nobody wants to look dumb, unprepared or not up to the task. Failure paralyzes so many of us.

The reality is, anything new will be a learning curve. Asking for help is difficult for many of us, but is the only way to new things.

If you knew all that you needed to know to reach that future goal or dream, you’d probably be there by now. But you aren’t.

If it’s helpful, make a list of things that you don’t know, do you know anyone who is an expert in those things? Podcasts you can listen to? Books or blogs you can read? Make an effort to grow and fight that fear of incompetence.

Now, this list will be helpful, make a list of things that could go wrong if you had the courage you needed. What is the worse thing that could happen? The irony of this list is that the worst thing that could happen is rarely horrible.

Five Things That Destroy Your Courage in Life

3. Uncertainty about taking the right path. Going closely with the fear of incompetence is the deciding on the right way forward. The reality of having courage is that you might take one step forward and three steps back, four steps to the right and then you’ll be on the right path.

That’s okay.

Your life isn’t over. And you aren’t too old to start over or brush off the dirt and move forward.

4. Fear of loss. The reality of anything new, any new dream or goal brings about change.

Change always involves a loss.

Sometimes that loss is good and dead weight that needs to let go of in your life, but often that loss will hurt.

If you’re a leader, you know that any change you make will bring loss because everyone won’t move forward with you. That is difficult for you and those around you.

Life and leadership are about learning to grieve the losses along the way so you can keep moving forward.

5. Not having the stomach for the hard parts of the journey. I once heard someone say that “everything great is uphill.” Probably both ways!

But it will be hard.

You will hit moments where your passion is gone, your energy is zapped, and you wonder if you can make it.

It is at this point that most people get off the dream train.

This is why I think it is so crucial for you to feel a sense of calling, purpose or meaning to what you are going after. Merely liking a challenge or thinking this is the next step for you will not get you through the hard parts.

Five Things That Destroy Your Courage in Leadership

You will not experience all five of these today or maybe ever. There will be one that will keep you from reaching the peak of your life. It is important to know which one it is for you so you are able to see it coming a mile away and learn how to combat it.

Posted on Monday, January 7, 2019

How to Build Loyalty on Your Team

by Joshua Reich

I hear from a lot of pastors, and their complaints are often the same: a staff member or volunteer that isn’t fully bought into the vision or bought into the team. Team members who are off doing their own thing instead of the job the team is doing. Backbiting, gossip, half-heartedness about the mission and where things are going.

All of this comes back to loyalty.

The reality is though; everyone shouldn’t be on your team.

Some people are a good fit for a season but don’t belong on your team forever (whether you realize that or they do), some think they should work at a church when they shouldn’t, and sometimes out of frustration or weariness, pastors think of quitting their teams.

What many leaders fail to realize is that loyalty, camaraderie is not built quickly and it isn’t built around the mission of the church as much as it is built around relationships.

Loyalty isn’t built around the mission of the church as much as it is built around relationships.

A few years ago, we were interviewing a pastor to join our team, and after interacting with our staff and elders I asked him for his thoughts, and his first response surprised me. He said, “Each of those people would run through a wall for you.”

The reason that surprised me is that I’m not naturally a relational leader. It is something I have had to work at and create systems to make it happen.

But he was right. It also dawned on me; I would run through a wall for them. And they knew that.

As I reflected on that, I realized there were some things I did to create that.

5 ways to build loyalty on your team.

1. Be loyal to your team. It’s sad that this is on the list, but I think this is one reason pastors fail to have loyalty on their team and it is because they aren’t loyal to the people on their team.

This took me a while to figure out.

Leaders expect people to follow, bosses expect people to do what they’re told, so they don’t spend a lot of time thinking about loyalty or being loyal to those people.

Some of this comes from past hurts, broken trust or not expecting people to stay, which is a big one in the church world.

2. Explain what you mean by loyalty. Leaders and churches are always throwing around words thinking everyone thinks the same thing. Churches are notorious for this, especially when they say, “Church is a family,” but everyone has a different definition of that.

Same goes with loyalty.

When you say loyalty, what does that mean?

For our team it means: always make everyone on the team look good, have each other’s backs and don’t surprise anyone.

In public (and private) make the other team members look good. Meaning, don’t put them down, don’t gossip, don’t say, “I knew that wouldn’t work.” Have their backs.

And don’t surprise them. I tell my team, if you surprise me, I can’t help you. If something is going wrong, don’t wait, tell me. Let me help you get in front of it.

3. Invest in their life. This is still one of my most significant growth areas but is crucial for loyalty. This is how people feel valued by you as the leader.

How’s their life going? Personal goals? How’s their marriage and parenting? Do you have things you can be praying for them about that aren’t related to their work?

I now spend the first part of my one-on-one times with my team checking in on their lives.

4. Invest in their leadership. Are they growing as a leader because they are on your team? Many staff members in churches would say no to that question, and that is a problem.

Invest in them through books, podcasts, blog posts. Take them to training events that you attend. Pay for coaching and conferences for them to grow as leaders and in their craft. Expose them to new ways of thinking, new ways of doing things. Encourage them to seek out growth opportunities.

5. Give them gifts of thanks and affirmation. When was the last time you said thanks to a team member for something? Or gave them a gift?

This goes a long way to building loyalty on your team and showing care for them.

This is similar to the love languages, but know what affirms them, and what makes them feel appreciated.

Do you know what motivates your team?

Steve Stroope says that each of us is motivated by ten things: Money, private thanks, public thanks, more responsibility, input, access, empowerment, significance, knowledge, and tools.

The problem for many leaders is they don’t know what motivates their team or they think everyone is motivated the same way or they think what drives them as a leader is what motivates their whole team.

The ten things that motivate everyone to accomplish things.

You should what motivates each of your team members from the list above. Each one is valid and vital. Unfortunately, in the church world is motivated by money is seen as a bad thing, but it doesn’t have to be.

Loyalty, when done correctly not only strengthens the church but is a benefit to everyone on the team. It shows the value of each person and how God has wired them and makes them want to show up for work!

Posted on Wednesday, January 2, 2019

The Four Friends Every Pastor Needs

by Joshua Reich

Friendships for most men are difficult. Naturally, men aren’t good at friendships. The older we get, the fewer friends we have as we pour into our work, marriage, and kids.

Yet, if we don’t keep up friendships, it will lead us to be very lonely.

The Four Friends Every Man Needs

Pastors are just as guilty as the larger population of men, but for different reasons.

Finding and keeping friends can be very difficult for a pastor. It can be awkward for people to be friends with a pastor because they sometimes don’t want to invite their pastor over when they have the guys over for football. It is often easier to think of your pastor as someone you see at church, not someone you hang out with on a Friday night. It can be hard for a pastor because there are times he wants to stop being a pastor and be one of the guys. It is hard for him to turn that off and it is hard for those around him to let that happen.

The Four Friends Every Pastor Needs

Trust is also a big factor for pastor’s when it comes to choosing friends. They have experienced hurt in their family of origin, or someone at a former church broke their trust and betrayed them.

Pastor’s will wonder, “If I open up to this person, will they use it against me? Can I be truly honest with this person?” As people in their small group share a prayer request, it is difficult for a pastor to say, “This has been one of the worst weeks at work for me. I’m so frustrated with a co-worker” because everyone knows his co-workers.

Pastor’s and their wife often wonder when someone wants to hang out with them if there are ulterior motives. Do they want to be our friends because they like us or because of what we do? Sadly, people want to be friends with a pastor or his wife, to get closer to the center of the action, to be closer to the power as they see it in a church.

The four types of friends everyone needs.

People in a church wonder the same thing. Do the pastor and his wife want to hang out with us because they like us or because they think we need ministry? When they hang out with us, are they working or having fun? The lines of working for many pastors are blurry in their heads because almost anything is “ministry.”

Friendship and community are incredibly crucial to surviving as a pastor or a pastor’s wife. But how does that happen? Brian Bloye, in his book It’s Personal: Surviving and Thriving on the Journey of Church Planting talks about the four types of friends a pastor needs to have in the journey of church planting and pastoring:

The four types of friends every pastor needs.

The developer. A friend that makes you better. They encourage you, lift you when you fall, someone who believes in you during times you don’t believe in yourself. Someone you can call on a bad day and they encourage you and help to pick you up — a great cheerleader in your corner who is telling you to keep going, to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
The designer. A mentor, coaching you in life and ministry. Someone who shares the wisdom they’ve gathered in life. Too many pastors walk through ministry without any coach. Find one. The coaches I have had have been invaluable to me. Some I’ve known for over a decade, others have come and gone in my life in different seasons, but you must have someone you can call and say, “I’m facing this, what would you do?”
The disturber. The friend who rocks your boat. He’s there to bring discomfort to your world, not comfort. This friend challenges your ideas, is not impressed by you. Not a yes man. This can also be someone who isn’t a follower of Jesus who pushes you in your faith and asks hard questions about beliefs as they are wrestling through them personally. Or someone who is pushing you as a leader, father or parent.
The discerner. An accountability partner. Someone who looks you in the eye and asks the hard questions about your life and where you stand with things. This person walks with you through life’s highs and lows.

The four types of friends every man needs.

Posted on Monday, December 10, 2018

How to Fight Cynicism

by Joshua Reich

When you’re in your 20’s, starting in your career, life, or marriage you have dreams.

Great dreams.

Dreams that get you out of bed in the morning and that excite you.

You have dreams that propel you to do difficult things, take crazy risks, bet the farm, take jobs that don’t pay well because they are exciting and fill you with passion.

How to fight for contentment in life, marriage, and ministry.

But something happens along the way, and you look up one day and think, “I thought I’d be somewhere different right now.”

In marriage, this happens when you thought your marriage would feel differently than it does. Assuming you’d have kids by now, that your kids would be different than they are, that my spouse would be different than they are.

What to do when your marriage isn’t like the marriage you imagined in your head.

Our careers hit this place where we thought we would be making more, more fulfilled, more excited or at a different level in our company.

Pastors feel this when they look at your church, but it isn’t the church they imagined. The passion they once felt, the vision they once had isn’t there.

What to do when your church isn’t like the church you imagined in your head.

Carey Nieuwhof said, “Cynicism happens not because you don’t care but because you do.”

Cynicism happens not because you don’t care but because you do. -@cnieuwhof

The places in our lives where we become cynical are deeply personal places to us — personal hopes and dreams that we carry for our present and future.

In this place, we have to battle for contentment and fight cynicism.

One of the things we miss when we think about contentment is that our contentment in life, marriage, parenting, and leadership is not just about us but all the people connected to us. Our spouse and kids are affected by our contentment or lack thereof.

If you are a pastor, leader or boss, those that follow you are impacted by the contentment or cynicism that you feel.

We can easily beat ourselves up because of contentment and cynicism ebb and flow in life.

But how do you fight for contentment, especially if you are not naturally a positive person?

3 ways to fight cynicism.

Get around contented people. A thankful person is a joy to be around. Get around them, listen to them. They have peace that few other people have.

Learn what leads to cynicism. If you are a church planter or pastor, cynicism comes from hearing about a larger church or hearing about a church planter who was given a building out of the blue (that’s mine). If you are a parent, it might be hearing about another family or seeing something on Instagram. Know your triggers. Know when they might hit. Hint: it will often happen when you are tired or emotionally depleted. Just be aware of that.

Be grateful for what you have. One of the practices that have helped me this past year is writing down at least three things I am thankful for each day. This has caused me to pause in my day and see how things are going well, things I can celebrate.

Posted on Wednesday, December 5, 2018

The Problem of Tasks Not Getting Done

by Joshua Reich

Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard who researches creativity in business found, “Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.”

The single most important thing for your day is making progress in meaningful work.”-Teresa Amabile

This makes sense.

It is why we love checklists, crossing things off and that feeling of a “zero inbox.”

For many of us though, depending on what you do, this is difficult.

If you are a stay at home mom, making progress on meaningful work is challenging as laundry and dishes pile up.

If you are creative, there is always one more tweak to the design, one more thing to check out.

As a pastor, everything I do is meaningful as it relates to people and sermons (or creating content).

How to get things done.

The problem is that you can spend 6 – 8 hours working on a sermon and only have read some commentaries and things are fuzzy in your mind.

For many of us, the day ends with a feeling of “incomplete.” We look back and think, “I know I sent out emails, had conversations, sat in meetings, but what did I accomplish?”

We look back on our day and think, “I know I sent out emails, had conversations, sat in meetings, but what did I accomplish?

One of the things that have helped me is setting up benchmarks around my tasks and goals.

For example, if you have 50 unread emails, make a goal of getting through 25 of them.

For a sermon, instead of making my only goal completing the sermon (which every pastor knows isn’t done until you preach it), make a goal of reading X number of commentaries, clarifying your big idea, working out your introduction or conclusion.

How to break goals into smaller steps.

Doing this helps you see significant movement on your tasks.

Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2018

The Tension of Leadership

by Joshua Reich

Leaders live in two worlds: the one of reality, where their church or organization is, and the other is the one that is not yet, the world they are moving towards as a church.

The two worlds of leaders.

To lead well, leaders must live where their churches are, and they must lead them to where they are going. Which means they must have a firm grasp on reality and the present, as well as where they are going. Too many pastors seem to coast into the future, not sure where they are going, not sure how they will get there.

It is easy to spend too much time in either the present or the future and miss out. You can get too far ahead of your church which means you will have a difficult time getting into the future. You can spend too much time in the present and not see a vision for where you are going and get stuck in the details of just doing church.

It is a balance. It is the tension of leadership.

Many times pastors can lead churches that no longer exist. If a church grew at one point and reached 500 but has now dropped down to 150 on a Sunday, many pastors will continue as if that church is 500.

But the church has changed now.

The reality that pastors must walk with, especially because many people in their church will think their church is still what it was.

It is crucial for a leader to pull back and get “on the balcony” of their church to see what is going on and understand where they are and where they need to go.

Posted on Wednesday, November 14, 2018

How to Talk About Money in Your Church

by Joshua Reich

Many church leaders struggle with talking about money in their church or loathe the offering time. However, this fear can be alleviated by making a shift in their perspective about money. The topic of money is not about money per se. The Kingdom of God and helping people to live as disciples of Christ is the true aim of money. In the words of Peter Greer, “Money is a vehicle, not the ultimate objective.”

The reality for pastors is that money is important. It is needed when it comes to ministry and money is one of the biggest struggles and stresses of the people who sit in your church.

Many pastors this time of year (or after the new year) will talk on money in a sermon. Here are 5 things to keep in mind for the next time you preach on money:

5 things to keep in mind when you preach on money.

1. People genuinely are interested in what the Bible has to say on money. People come to your church to hear what the Bible has to say. They drove there, probably looked at your website, they drove past a sign that said church, so they are expecting for you to open the Bible and read it. I think people want to know what God thinks about a whole host of things, money included.

Why?

Because very few people have strong financial knowledge. There are so many takes on it, ideas on what you should do, how to get out of debt, where you should invest that it becomes overwhelming and then people stick their head in the sand. Telling them what the Bible has to say is incredibly helpful and refreshing to them because it says more than “you should give to the church.”

People genuinely are interested in what the Bible has to say on money.

As well, most couples are fighting over money. Most people are laying in bed at night stressing over money. Talking about it hits them where they live and answers some of their most burning questions.

2. Get your financial house in order. Many pastors don’t talk about money because many pastors aren’t generous and don’t give. Generosity doesn’t come easy for me but preaching on what the Bible has to say about money has convicted my heart to grow in it. If a pastor doesn’t preach on money, generosity or stewardship of finances, it is usually because he isn’t doing well in those areas personally and that will affect the life of a church. Generous churches are led by generous leaders.

Generous churches are led by generous leaders.

Be honest with your struggles if you have them. Talk about what you have learned and how God is continuing to grow you. People will resonate with that. Every time I talk about money I’ll hear people say over and over, “Thanks for being open about what is hard for you.”

3. Make sure you don’t make promises God doesn’t make. Especially with passages like Malachi 3, it is easy to make promises God doesn’t make when it comes to money. Is God faithful? Yes. Does God bless people financially when they give? Yes. Are there lots of rich people who don’t give? Yes. Are God’s blessings to us always financial reimbursement? No. This is the one area that a lot of damage has been done in terms of preaching on money.

4. Stewardship is more than money. While most pastors preach on money to get more people to give money, that isn’t the goal. The goal is to help people follow Jesus when it comes to stewardship and that includes money, but also includes how they use their time, house, car, retirement and steward their whole life.

Stewardship is more than money.

Make sure that when you talk about stewardship, you help people understand that God’s heart is for more than their bank account, but also their calendar, relationships, and heart.

5. Give clear and helpful next steps. You should have clear next step every week that you preach but with money, it is incredibly important. Whether that is doing a 90 day giving challenge, a financial class like FPU or something else. Don’t just leave people hanging on this. Especially because as I said on point 1, people want to know how to handle money.

5 things to do the next time you preach on money.

Posted on Monday, November 12, 2018

When to Quit Something or Let it Ride

by Joshua Reich

One of the critical jobs of every leader is problem-solving. The longer I’m a leader, the more I realize that much of my time as a leader is spent in brainstorming, making decisions or looking ahead to decisions that will be made in the future.

The struggle is that often, solving problems means taking very little information and making a decision based on that little information.

One thing that pastors seem to be notorious for is solving problems that aren’t problems. Something doesn’t go right, we start a new ministry, and no one shows up, a creative piece falls flat, a marketing tool does not bring in the people we thought, a new direction or vision is laid out, and no one is excited.

Are these problems? Potentially.

The problem is that we start to solve them before we know. One night of something not going right does not constitute a problem; it’s one night. We make changes and then when they don’t work once, we quickly make adjustments to them. Now, sometimes adjustments need to be made. Sometimes we can see things that we can tweak to make something better.

But often, we solve problems that are not problems. Let something ride a little bit before you decide it is a problem. Let it show itself a problem before fixing it. Many successes come from merely continuing down the path instead of giving up. In fact, we often quit something right before it breaks through.

Posted on Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Your Work Matters

by Joshua Reich

Think about where you spend the majority of your time. For most of us, that’s at work. If you’re a stay at home mom, you stay home. That’s the majority.

Then, the other places. Church, the gym, neighborhood, classes, meetings.

How do you make yourself more useful or effective there?

How do you spend your time on the things that matter? The things that you’re designed to do?

Many of us would like to get better at those things but often struggle with finding meaning in those places.

We wonder, what impact do I make in my life? Do people feel my presence or know I’m there when I’m working?

The reality is though; God cares deeply about our work. Our work for many of us is an outgrowth of our calling and purpose in our lives.

Your work matters to God.

Our work is a reflection of our worship of God.

Some would even say that our work = worship.

You see this if someone is fair, lazy, a workaholic or balanced.

How we work matters to God because it reflects what we believe about God and what matters most in life.

How you work matters to God.

Recently, I preached through Nehemiah 3, and when you open it, you see a list of names and the work they did to rebuild the city wall around Jerusalem.

Some of the work sounded glamorous. Some worked on the valley gate and the fountain gate. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? The fountain gate. I bet the valley gate was beautiful in the valley. I wonder if there was a stream?

But some worked on the dung gate. How do you think that assignment sounded?

The reality is, someone had to fix it. Otherwise, the wall would have a hole in it.

In a church, work, family, someone has to do it. Why? It needs to be done.

In our family, like yours, someone has to empty the dishwasher, take the trash out. Do my kids love that? No. Do they get paid for doing that? No, they do it because they’re part of our family.

In the same way, at your work or your church, that needs to be done, and you’re there.

Here’s a question I hear a lot: What do you do if you haven’t found your thing yet?

Much of the time it comes from a longing for our lives to matter and to have a purpose, sometimes it comes from jealousy and envy we have of others.

A lot of times, we don’t do anything because we’re waiting for our thing.

Here’s an important principle in life and leadership: Do something until you’re doing your thing.

Do something until you’re doing your thing.

Should we try to find the thing we’re passionate about doing? Yes. But often we learn that thing by doing other things, things that maybe we aren’t gifted at or passionate about doing.

We learn we love sales or teaching through trying things out. We find we are creative or task-oriented by doing things. The first time I stood in front of a group and spoke I was terrified, but I was exhilarated during and after the experience.

Here’s a principle that applies whether serving at church, reading your bible and praying, dating your spouse, time with your kids, building a business: Something is better than nothing.

Something is better than nothing.

Right now, you aren’t able to do all that you want to do, but you can do something.

Start there.

In those two principles, we often find why and how our work matters and how to make the impact that God calls us to.

Posted on Wednesday, September 19, 2018

How to Beat Distractions at Work & Home to Reach Your Goals

by Joshua Reich

Distractions are everywhere.

The New York Times reported, a typical office worker gets interrupted every 11 minutes – yet it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to the original task.

So, learning what distractions are and training yourself to avoid them is crucial to success at work.

It isn’t just at work though.

Distractions rear their ugly heads at home, and they keep us from the most important relationships in our lives.

So, what are the distractions at work and home?

Your phone.

Social media.

That latest app or time wasting game.

Clutter.

Multi-tasking.

Noise.

Hunger.

Email.

Kids activities.

Regrets over past mistakes.

Worries about tomorrow.

Slack and trello.

Binging on TV.

Andy Stanley said: Regardless of the nature of your vision, or visions if you are not careful, you will get distracted. The daily grind of life is hard on visions. Life is now. Bills are now. The crisis is now. Vision is later. It’s easy to lose sight of the main thing, to sacrifice the best for the sake of the good. All of us run the risk of allowing secondary issues to rob us of the joy of seeing our visions through to completion. Distractions can slowly kill a vision.

Distractions can slowly kill a vision. -Andy Stanley

So what do you do?

The reality is, you can’t plan for distractions but you can do your best to minimize them.

You can and should do things like turning your phone off, turn off email and text message notifications. You shouldn’t have social media notifications on your phone. Schedule when you do your email and when you don’t.

But if you do that, it won’t guarantee you won’t have distractions.

So what then?

Here are two questions that help me navigate my day and accomplish what I need to:

Two questions to accomplish what you need to in one day.

What is most important to you?

This question is something you need to determine every day, whether it is at home, with your kids, at school or at work.

Each morning, I lay out the 3 most important things I need to accomplish each day.

This helps me to focus my time and energy.

Most of us allow other people to determine what is most important for us. Whether that is a school, a boss or a spouse. Sometimes this is out of your control, but often it is not.

What do you have the energy for?

The reality is, it might be essential, but you may not have the mental, emotional or physical capacity for it.

Each day for me is different like it is for you.

I have more energy on some days than others. Those are the days I plan my most important work.