It’s the weekend…finally.

And since it’s the weekend, it’s the perfect time to catch up on some reading. Below, you’ll find some articles I came across this week that I found helpful as a leader and parent and hope you do as well.

Before we get to those, I wanted to share some exciting news from our family.

I also wrote two other posts this week that I hope helps you. One is on how to fight for courage in your life. We’re in the new year and maybe you made some goals, maybe you didn’t. My guess is, there is a relationship or somethign in your life that requires courage, a step to take. If so, you have to fight for courage. There are 5 things that can destroy your courage.

The second is how to let go of hurts in your life, especially if you are a leader or in ministry. It is hard when you’ve been betrayed, you’re run down or exhausted, maybe you feel unappreciated or overlooked. At that moment, you have a choice and depending on what you choose will determine where you end up. I give you 9 ways I’ve learned to let go of those hurts so you can move forward. .

And in case you missed them this week. Here are the top 3 posts on my blog this week that I hope you find helpful:

• Five Things That Destroy Your Courage in Life
• 11 Ways to Know You’ve Settled for a Mediocre Marriage
• How to Ask God for Help (Psalm 121)

Now, here’s what I found helpful:

If you read my blog, you know I am a big fan of goals, habits and growth plans, so hopefully, you have one for 2019. If you don’t, Brandon Kelley has you covered on how to develop a plan.

Going right along with creating a growth plan is productivity. With a growing church and fast-paced family, it is easy to get lost in the weeds and get overwhelmed. Which is why I appreciated this post of 9 productivity hacks.

If you’re anything like me as a parent, you are trying to figure out the balance of technology in your home, with your kids. When do you give them a phone, social media accounts, etc? How much screen time should they have, what should they do on it? Andy Crouch has a great book called The Tech-Wise Family and he talked recently with Russell Moore about how to handle technology in your family.

The beginning of a new year often means new growth for your church, but it can also mean decline as people move on. Sometimes those reasons are good and other times as a leader, if you’re honest, they are frustrating. This post will help you to know the difference. And here are 24 reasons someone might quit attending your church and what to do about it. And one more, 10 reasons people don’t invite people to church.

As it’s the weekend, it’s a perfect time to review your week. Look for things to celebrate, things to process and changes to make moving forward. Here are 10 questions to help you do that.

This post by Chuck DeGroat on The lost pastor is a startling look at the inner life of pastors and why it is so important to grow your soul as a leader. He shares 3 important steps forward to “being found.”

• It’s been a while since I’ve posted a mind dump and a lot of things have happened in our family.
• For one, we bought a house that is closer to where our church meets and we’re moving in the next couple of weeks.
• Cue excitement and stress!
• But seriously, we’re really excited about this and what it will mean for our family.
• I had a blast kicking off our brand new series Forward this past Sunday and talking about the barriers to Christianity and following Jesus.
• If you’re skeptical of Jesus or have questions, I’d encourage you to watch it.
• We also kicked off our groups sign-ups this past Sunday and the response has been incredible.
• In fact, one of the groups has already filled up.
• If you haven’t signed up yet, you can do so here.
• Katie and I are launching a short-term marriage group in February around the time we kick off our series on the Song of Solomon called #RelationshipGoals. 
• So excited for that series and that group!
• And I might have something fun to share at church this Sunday.
• Lots of great things going on as we move into 2019.
• Back to sermon prep and packing and life!

It’s the weekend and it’s been a while since I posted a list of articles I’ve enjoyed, so I thought I’d bring it back.

Recently, I posted about some of what I’ve been learning recently as a pastor and parent and I think you should check it out. Especially if you struggle to enjoy things instead of fixing things and struggle to be thankful in the moment something happens.

Before diving into those, in case you missed them this week. Here are the top 3 posts on my blog this week that I hope you find helpful:

• Creating a Family Mission Statement
• Why Your Spouse Doesn’t Listen to You
• 11 Ways to Know You’ve Settled for a Mediocre Marriage

Here are the posts I enjoyed:

A lot has been written this week on the passing of Eugene Peterson and his accomplishments and he had an enormous impact on me as a pastor, especially his memoir. But I particularly enjoyed reading Philip Yancey’s tribute to him.

Recently, I’ve been enjoying and been challenged by the writings of Chuck DeGroat. If you’ve never read anything by him, you should start. Here’s a great first post, The beautiful mystery of you. 

I’m always on the lookout for evaluation questions that help me to move forward. Most of the time as leaders or parents, we focus outside ourselves or what we can fix in others. That often leaves me frustrated, so I really appreciated this list of 11 questions to ask yourself about soul care and personal fulfillment from Paul Alexander.

I’ve been reading a lot about gratitude and joy recently (read this recent post to see more) especially because of how negative and toxic our world through social media has become recently. So, I really appreciated Brandon Cox’s post on 3 practices to becoming a more positive person.

I’m always looking for tips to grow as a leader, so I really appreciated this list of 7 ways to grow as a leader from Ron Edmondson.

• Holiday weeks are great and terrible at the same time.
• You still have to get the same amount of stuff done and with one less day.
• One thing I love about a holiday week is getting to smoke some meat.
• I did brisket on Monday, and it was delicious.
• This week, our boys start baseball.
• This is an exciting step for our family.
• We are stepping into the realm of youth sports for the first time.
• Should be fun.
• We put it off until now because we wanted to be able to control our schedule as a family.
• A lot of parents have asked me if I feel like they missed something and maybe they did, but I also know what we gained as a family through that choice.
• Next week, I’m giving a talk to a group of high school and college athletes at the U of A on leadership and influence.
• I’d appreciate your prayers for that.
• I can’t wait to do that and interact with them on such a crucial topic.
• There’s so much at stake in their lives (and ours) if we get that wrong.
• I’m in the middle of the book Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People and it might be one of the best books I’ve read all year.
• I don’t know about you, but the fact that football is on makes my heart happy.
• This is the first year in a while that I’m not doing fantasy football.
• Made a choice this year to take a break and gain back some time.
• I’m sad but also happy about that.
• No, I’m not against it.
• Just felt like my life and kids are in a stage where doing that would get in the way.
• This week in our staff meeting at Revolution, we’re discussing this podcast Les McKeown on Visionaries, Operators and Processors and How Each Is Necessary In Thriving Organizations. 
• I can’t wait for the discussion we’re going to have today on it.
• I love the aspect of our staff meetings where we are learning and growing together.
• If you know anything about Les’s book The Synergist, which this podcast is about, you now know which one of those I am!
• Well, time to get back it.
• Even though summer is over, I’m going to share tomorrow ideas on how to maximize your summer vacation next year.
• Yes, you need to start planning it now.

• It’s been a long time since I had an emotional roller coaster ride of a weekend like the one I just had.
• I spent all weekend in the hospital with my dad because they discovered blood clots in his leg and lungs and they planned to do surgery yesterday, but then decided to go the treatment route and discharge him.
• Definitely not how I expected my weekend to unfold.
• Thankful that we had a video sermon already planned at Revolution.
• I love that our church got to engage in the Ask It series from Andy Stanley.
• It is helpful and uncomfortable all at the same time, which is a great sermon series.
• So excited to kick off our brand new series Difference Maker on the book of Nehemiah this Sunday.
• Nehemiah is by far, one of my favorite books of the Bible.
• It is weird in some ways working on a sermon after not preaching for 5 weeks, but I can’t wait.
• Our church is also going back to 2 services on Sunday.
• Got to read some great leadership books and novels on my break.
• Trying out a new thing on my facebook page each week, just answering common questions I get on marriage, preaching, leadership, parenting, and health.
• Click here to see the first one on how to do date night at home.
• We had a meeting last night with all of our group leaders to share with them some of the new things we have planned for our groups to improve them.
• I can’t wait to roll them out in January 2019.
• I think our groups are about to become the best they’ve ever been.
• Our big audacious goal is to go from 8 groups (what we had this past year) and launch 20 in January 2019.
• Would love your prayers to that end.
• Started reading The Practice of Adaptive Leadership last night and wish I would’ve read that book a decade ago.
• I loved the other books by the authors but this one is a new level of greatness when it comes to a leadership book.
• I have had a hard time fathoming that we will have a teenager in the house next week.
• Here’s one thing I do each year for our kids.
• We recently did a new planning process with our staff at Revolution Church, a total revamping to how we do yearly planning and quarterly goals.
• I’ll share more about it next week, but I love it!

It’s the weekend…finally. Hopefully, you’re enjoying the beginning of summer break with your kids (if you have any). And hopefully, you can grab some coffee and find some quiet to read some great articles that I hope help you as a leader.

Before diving into those, in case you missed them this week. Here are the top 3 posts on my blog this week that I hope you find helpful:

• 11 Ways to Know You’ve Settled for a Mediocre Marriage
• God’s Answer to Our Doubts, Questions & Hurt
• 10 Books Every Christian Leader Should Read This Summer

Also, if you’re looking for a fascinating and helpful book to read this summer, be sure to check out the last one I read: When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.

Now, onto the posts I enjoyed that I hope will help you:

Rich Birch has some great ideas (as always) on how to help make the summer great in your church and experiment with some new ideas that will help in the fall. The idea of tag team announcements is one that sounded really fun to me.

If you feel stuck in your church or need to figure out how to lead into 2019, Brian Jones has a unique but genius idea on replanting your church in 2019.

Shari Thomas has a great post on what it is like to be a pastor’s wife. I’ve written on this before as well, as it is a complex role to fill. If you’re a pastor, a pastor’s wife or attend a church, I’d encourage you to read her post.

What matters most in discipleship? Do some things move the needle more than other things? The answer is yes, some things move the need more than other things in discipleship. What are they? Eric Geiger shares 5 things from a 10-year research project.

• I love the weeks I am off from preaching.
• Gives me a chance to refuel physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally and relationally.
• It’s good for my heart too because preaching can become an idol and a source of control for me, so not preaching keeps that in check for me.
• The last month or so have been a whirlwind for me.
• I’ve had more travel than normal because of my grandmother’s funeral, we’ve navigated a church plant we were getting to launch this year hit the brakes and we’ve been in the process of hiring a new worship pastor at our church.
• It’s been hard but good.
• In past seasons when stress is high, I get really irritable and difficult to be around and want to fight with everyone (or so it seems). Katie made the comment when the stress was at its highest how glad she was with all that was going on that we weren’t fighting.
• What a testament to God’s grace in our lives and the work we’ve done in our marriage.
• One of the things that came out of this last season for me is a renewed commitment to getting to bed early and getting 8 hours of sleep.
• That’s fallen off and something I need to be doing.
• I was reminded of the importance of this in Michael Hyatt’s most recent podcast.
• I got to be in Las Vegas last week, which sounds really glamorous, but we stayed in a hotel 30 minutes from the strip in the suburbs.
• Anyway, it was for an Acts 29 coaching cohort. It was with lead pastors of churches similar in size to ours.
• So helpful.
• It’s nice to hear that you aren’t the only one struggling with something.
• Our team is reading The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups. In it, the author recommends asking your team the following questions: What is one thing that I currently do that you’d like me to continue to do? What is one thing that I don’t currently do frequently enough that you think I should do more often? What can I do to make you effective?
• It was scary and I know they weren’t excited about it, but it was so helpful to hear from them.
• Right now, I’m preaching through the second half of Daniel.
• I’ve been asked about books that would help with that.
• Here’s one Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative.
• In the end, whatever you think about end times, the timing of Jesus returning, hold your cards loosely.
• Lots of smart people disagree with each other.
• Well, time to get back at it…

• After being out of town for the last week, it feels nice to be sitting in my office today.
• I first went to Reno for the Acts 29 West Conference and then spent Wednesday – Sunday with Katie in Colorado.
• The conference was good.
• One of the best Acts 29 conferences I’ve ever attended.
• Eric Mason’s message on justice was by far, one of the best talks I’ve ever heard on the topic and one I think every Christian needs to wrestle through.
• She was shooting a wedding, and I officiated it.
• The first time we both did that at the same wedding, so it was a fun time.
• I love watching Katie use her talents in photography.
• The wedding took place in Breckenridge, so it was beautiful.
• One of the highlights for me was it snowed last Thursday, dropping 2 feet of snow on the top of the mountains, so I got to spend the day on Friday snowboarding.
• It’s the first time I’ve ever snowboarded at 13,000 feet.
• These pictures don’t even do it justice.

So @katiereichphotos & I are in Colorado for a wedding and it snowed 18ish inches on Thursday and the ski resort 7 miles from us was open. So…I got to spend my Friday here on a snowboard. I’ve never been snowboarding at 13,000 feet. All the locals I talked to said it was some of the best skiing all year.

A post shared by Josh Reich (@joshua_reich) on May 5, 2018 at 8:37am PDT

• It feels good to be back though, but now that it is 100 in Tucson, I do miss that snow.
• I’m so excited for this weekend because not only is it Mother’s Day (which is a big day at my church), but were interviewing a worship pastor candidate this weekend.
• I can’t wait!
• We’d appreciate your prayers.
• I got to read most of Daniel Pink’s new book When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing on the plane.
• I also finally finished Bloodline on the plane.
• If you want to see broken family systems and family of origin issues on display, it is a fascinating show to watch.
• On the podcast I co-host, we’re interviewing Greg Atkinson this week on first impression and guest services in a church.
• So excited for that interview.
• Definitely going to have my notebook out to take notes during it.
• Casey and I also shared this week one of the most helpful exercises our staff did recently.
• Well, time to get back at it…