7 Common Hiring Mistakes Churches Make

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Hiring is more art than science. That’s what one mentor told me years ago.

Is it?

It depends on who you ask.

At some point, you will walk through a hiring process as you look for a new employee or volunteer (if you work at a church or non-profit). Many pastors have no idea what they are doing regarding hiring.

And make no mistake, a bad hire can cost you, personally and as a church.

How much?

Some estimates range from 30% of the person’s salary to one that says it can cost $240,000. After one bad hire, I went back and calculated as best as possible and found that it cost (just my estimate) over $200,000. That was simply a financial look.

Once you throw in the time and emotional energy that you, the employee, or anyone who helped train them or dealt with them in the meetings that led to them leaving and then throw in the loss of momentum at your church and the loss of trust people have in you, and the loss of people leaving your church.

The cost is enormous.

And while there is no foolproof plan when it comes to hiring, there are some things pastors and churches can do to raise the likelihood of success.

Here are 7 hiring mistakes churches and pastors make:

Talk themselves into a hire. This isn’t just a church issue but one across the board in hiring.

But churches are notorious for talking themselves into hire for many of the reasons listed below. While there is a leadership mantra of “Hire slowly, fire quickly.” Churches tend to “hire quickly and fire slowly.” Is one right or wrong? No. Is one more “Christlike?” No.

Almost every frustration I’ve ever had with an employee was something I saw in the interview process and chose to overlook. Now, that doesn’t mean you are looking for a perfect hire or that your team won’t frustrate you (or that you won’t frustrate your team). But it does mean that you need to pay attention to those things.

Just like you can’t get everything you want in a job, you will also only get some of what you want in a hire. So, you must be clear about what you need versus what you want.

Assume culture and theological fit. It is easy to assume agreement on church culture and theological fit. Churches hear a candidate talk about a certain church or stream and think, “They fit us.” Or, if the candidate is a fan of ____ podcast, they must fit our church.

But not always.

The other aspect comes into play when you think about the layers of theology. If you are a charismatic church, how open does a candidate need to be to the gifts of the spirit to fit you? If you are a cautious but open church, how much is too much for you theologically in this area?

You cannot assume fit and match simply because you want to.

This means that you need to articulate your church culture clearly, what you do and don’t do, what it takes to be successful at your church, and what your goal as a church is. You must also know your closed-handed and open-handed theological stances to find someone who fits you.

Context mismatch. Every church is in a specific context and culture, and that context and culture determines the kind of staff you are looking for. Not everyone fits in a suburban, rural, or urban context. If your church is in one of those, you need to know who would fit best with you.

The same goes for the region of the country. Even if someone is a good fit in Texas, will they still be a good fit in Seattle and vice versa. There are many differences between Arizona and New England.

When we started a recent hiring process, I talked to someone who has been a part of hiring for 30+ years in New England, and he told me, “The most successful people here have lived in New England, have a family connection to New England or is from the pacific northwest or Minneapolis.” He said, “Almost everyone else struggles to fit here and understand the culture.”

The same was true in Arizona. Many church planters from the southeast struggled to understand and reach the culture.

Now, this isn’t a hard and fast rule, but churches often overlook the context in which they live. This is because they live in the water and don’t see it. It is just normal to them.

Ask questions about your context. Does the person understand what it means to live and work in your context? Do they understand the history and what determines the culture of your people?

Hire quickly because you’re desperate. This isn’t just something churches do but are guilty of. Each time I have made this mistake, I have paid dearly for it.

A few things might happen: you suddenly lose a leader, your ministry grows, and you need someone to jump in. No leader is better than the wrong leader.

But just because you need someone doesn’t mean you should hire just anyone.

Take time, check their references, and ask questions about their character and abilities. Listen to any checks in your gut or pushback those on the interview team give. Everyone sounds amazing in their interviews and on their questionnaires, but are they being truthful about their experiences and abilities?

One practice a mentor told me that has proved helpful is when you are narrowing in on a candidate for a job, have a meeting all about why you wouldn’t hire that person. Take the other side.

It is easy to talk yourself into hiring someone, but taking a step back to ensure you get all the information is helpful.

Write a job description for someone instead of what you need or want. Too often, churches write a job description to fit someone instead of doing the work to determine what they need or want.

What will often happen is you have a volunteer who is there and doing a great job. So, you offer them the job. But what makes someone a great volunteer might make them a mediocre staff member.

What churches do, though, is they want someone who is a visionary leader, a great counselor, a great teacher, and a great manager with some administrative gifts. That person does not exist. You can get one or two of those things, so you must decide. This can be hard to discern, but you need to decide upfront what you are looking for to find it. 

Hire for the season you’re in instead of the one you’re going into. What season are you in as a church? What season are you going into? Do you need a builder, a maintainer, or someone to turn the ship around in an area or ministry? The answer to these questions determines what kind of person you hire. 

And make no mistake, one size does not fit all. 

Many churches now find themselves in a place where it takes a lot of energy to do ministry, more than in 2019, and many of the people in ministry don’t have that kind of energy. So what do you do? This is where it is important to know where you are in the life cycle of your church

Make a hire based on feeling instead of data. This is a very common one for churches because we make it spiritual. We hear someone say, “God called me here.” Or “This feels right to me.” While those are important, you need to test that out.

The best thing you can do is determine at the beginning what kind of data would make someone effective in this role: how much experience in leading teams, teaching, worship leading, making graphics, etc. do they need to have? In 12 – 24 months, what will make this person successful or unsuccessful? Then, find data to support candidates and ask questions about these things. If there is one thing I wish churches would change in their hiring processes, this would be it. This one switch has made all the difference for me. 

Lastly, throughout the process, keep pulling up what you say you want and ask, “Is this the person?” The person you are interviewing might be the best candidate out of everyone you interview, but that doesn’t mean they are who you want. 

Will this guarantee you find the right person? No. 

But doing these things will increase the chances that you will find the person you need for the next season of ministry. 

Four Challenges to Leading Change

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Changing anything is a challenge.

Whether in your personal life, finances, marriage, work, or church. The reason isn’t that people hate change, even though that is what everyone thinks. On the contrary, as Ronald Heifetz says, “What people resist is not change per se, but loss. When change involves real or potential loss, people hold on to what they have and resist the change.”

But when you lead change in a church, the challenges you are facing are obvious and not so obvious.

The first challenge is authority and influence. You can only accomplish something with authority and influence. When they begin to make changes, many pastors think they have authority and influence but may not have what they need.

This is important because you will need authority and influence to change anything. If you are new to your role or church, you must determine who has the most authority and influence. For my first two years at CCC, I only made changes by getting crucial people on board first because they had the relational equity I needed. According to the org chart, I have the authority to do things but need more influence to see them through.

How do you know who has authority and influence? Listen to whose name comes up often. Who do people seek out for advice and input? When you bring up ideas, does anyone say, “I wonder what _______ thinks?” As you sit in meetings, see who sways the room and who people wait to hear from. The person with the most authority and influence in a church is rarely the person with the title but who has built the relational capital over the years. This person can make or break change.

The second challenge is tradition and how things have been done. Countless leaders can tell stories of new ideas that died on the vine of “That’s not how we do things around here.” Or, “We’ve never done it that way here.”

This doesn’t mean you don’t try something or do something, but you need to know what has been done and what hasn’t been done in the past. It is particularly important to know what has been attempted and has failed in the past at a church. Those have important lessons for you as you lead.

When you seek to change traditions or how things have been, you must do some groundwork to understand why something began and how effective that thing is, and also understand the sweat equity people have in a ministry or program.

To understand tradition, you need to look at who is involved, who has a passion for that ministry, and how much budget it receives. When you ask questions about a ministry or a way of doing something, listen to how people respond. When you ask why things began or have changed over the years, listen to any indication of people trying to change or take away a ministry or way of doing things.

Does this mean you should always keep something that falls into this category? No. But it does require care and influence, which will take time.

The third challenge is cultural. If you are new to the city your church is in, this is one of the hardest challenges. You don’t know what you don’t know about culture. I grew up in Pennsylvania, similar to New England but also different. Each state in New England has its flavor and way of doing things, which impacts how the church is done. The same is true in other parts of the country. And while some places are more transient, which lends itself to less tradition, there is still a culture there.

There is also church culture that you have to navigate. That culture has been built from Day 1 (even before) of your church. Was your church started as a plant or a split? What families built the church? How much power do they have? How has the conflict been handled over the years? How many transitions have there been in your church? Has your church experienced growth or decline in recent years? These things fit into the culture and “how things are done around here.”

Culture is simply what people do without being told. Culture can be shaped and changed, but that is a very intentional process that is a different blog post.

For now, you must become a student of your culture. Over the last two years, I sought out staff members and leaders who have left our church to find out what happened and looked for commonalities (which there are). That’s culture. Watch how things get handled, how decisions are made, and how things happen. That’s culture.

Make no mistake; culture can work for or against you, so you must know how it plays out.

The fourth challenge is memory. This one is the least obvious because it is so personal.

Every person in your church has memories of your church, for good or bad. They can tell you stories of the church at its peak, when the building was full, when this program or that began, and the excitement of it.

Many pastors find themselves working against the memories of the past. Those memories are real but only sometimes accurate. While you will hear stories of how full the building was for that program, you will hear from someone else about how that program burned them out or made a different part of the church challenging. Memories and stories are personality and people-specific. They are also never as great or bad as people remember them. So, ask for stories, listen for commonalities, and talk to as many people as possible inside and outside the church to get as many details as possible. 

These stories will help you as you lead change because they help you understand your church’s story and your people’s experiences. 

When you arrive as a new pastor, you will feel the pressure of living up to people’s memories. This is hard, especially after COVID-19, because the reality is that those memories won’t easily be replicated.

Is leading change difficult? Yes. 

Is leading change impossible? No. 

It will require a certain kind of leadership. 

To begin, lay out what will change and won’t change. This can begin just in your mind. Share it with trusted leaders, get feedback and help. 

A simple first step is laying out your top 3 priorities as you move forward. These are things that are ripe for change. Not everything is ripe for change. 

How do you know?

Here’s a simple question: If you don’t change anything about ____, will it matter in two years?

Not everything is worth changing now or maybe ever. This question will help you know where to begin, what to work on, and what to fight for. 

The Halfway Point of the Year & the Top 10 Posts so Far

black Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses on beach sand

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It’s almost the end of summer.

We’ve loved spending tons of time at the beach and soaking up the sun before cooler temperatures come!

The year is more than halfway over.

Hopefully, you are closer to the goals you set at the start of the year.

If not, don’t fear.

The year isn’t over, and it isn’t too late to hit restart and try again.

In case you missed them, here are the top 10 posts from this year. Hopefully, they are encouraging to you but also help you reach the goals you have as a leader and a person. Thanks for reading!

  1. What I Didn’t Know About Being a Lead Pastor
  2. 8 Things I Wished People Knew about Enneagram 8’s
  3. 11 Ways to be an Engaging Preacher
  4. How to Stay Passionate as a Pastor 
  5. How to Walk with People Through Pain & Difficulty
  6. Forgiveness, Letting Go, and Figuring out How to Move Foward
  7. How to Plan a Preaching Calendar
  8. How to Let Go of Shame
  9. 4 Ways to Build a Strong, Healthy Elder Team

The First Question In Forgiveness and Reconciliation

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At some point in your relationships, you will be hurt. Someone will say something that marks you; it might be a small thing or something that changes your relationship(s) forever. You might be the one who says something. Maybe you have already experienced this and wondered, how do I trust again? How do I forgive that person and move forward?

Whenever this question or situation arises in Christian circles, we often read Matthew 18 and what Jesus says about reconciliation and hurt. Jesus says we must go to our brother or sister alone and tell them about their sin. If they don’t listen, take a friend along. If that doesn’t work, we must bring them before the church. This is challenging, and many times people skip this whole process and end the relationship, which is another blog post.

But, we skip an important part of this passage at the beginning. In verse 15, Jesus says, “If your brother sins against you.”

So, before confronting or bringing someone with us, we need to step back and ask, “Did this person sin against me?” Or did they do something I didn’t like?

I wonder if people often do things that we don’t like or irritate us. You can still go to that person to say, “When you did this or that,” or, “said this or that,” I didn’t like it. But one of the things we know from Proverbs, and a characteristic of a wise person, is the ability to let go of an insult or not be offended

Jesus wants us to pause during an emotional situation or a moment of frustration to take a breath and ask, “Have they sinned against me?”

The God of Delays (John 11)

What do we do with the delays of life? The moment when we ask God to move, and it doesn’t seem like He’s doing anything or at the very least, He is moving at a very slow pace. The moments when we ask for healing that doesn’t come, for restoration that doesn’t happen, for the mending of a broken heart that seems to break more.

Believing in God’s goodness and love is the hardest in these places.

That happens in John 11 as Jesus gets word that his friend Lazarus is sick. But instead of rushing back to Lazarus to help or to heal him, Jesus stays where he is for two more days (John 11:6). 

If you know how John 11 ends, we can shrug at this verse. But imagine this for a moment. You are Lazarus or his family, and Jesus doesn’t rush to you. Jesus stays where He is. 

This is the moment many of us have experienced. When you prayed for healing that hasn’t happened, for a relationship to be healed and mended that is still broken, for a child to be born or healed, for an addiction to be broken, and it seems like nothing is happening. 

John 11, though, shows us 3 important things about God’s delays:

They are inevitable. God’s timing is not our timing. The reason God’s delays are inevitable is no matter what God does in our lives; it will almost always feel like a delay to us because we want it now. 

They do not contradict his love. While Jesus stayed two days longer, he showed his love for everyone. He showed his care, not just for Lazarus and his family, as we’ll see, but also for everyone in front of him. 

His delays are not final. He will come in his own time and his way. It will be later than we’d like, but from God’s divine perspective, it will be the right time.

When Jesus arrives he tells them in verse 23: “Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her. Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who comes into the world.”

You can’t have a resurrection without a death.

Life cannot come without death, without change. 

This means as God changes us, frees us from sin, death must come in areas of our life. Life does not come without what seems like a loss.

And we know this: sometimes healing only comes after a death.

Sometimes, we must walk through the valley of death to find life. 

Sometimes, a relationship must end for us to find new life. 

Sometimes, we must hit the end of ourselves, rock bottom, to find life. 

How to Ask God for Help (Psalm 121)

For most of us, prayer bounces between a plea for help, a running conversation or to-do list with God, a reassurance of God’s power and presence in our lives, a wishlist or a shouting match with God, and wondering if God has forgotten us.

One of the most common ways we pray is a prayer for help.

Eugene Peterson said, “Trouble is what gets prayer started.”

And that’s true.

We pray out of desperation. We pray because we aren’t sure what else to do. We rend the heavens in hopes that God will hear and move. We pray through tears, mumbling, and bumbling from a place of helplessness.

We pray for health, healing, relationships to be mended, kids and parents and spouses to be saved, to be changed. We pray for jobs and finances. We pray for those close to us who are destroying their lives. We pray for wisdom in decisions.

And in all this, we are often very helpless to bring about an answer.

So, how do you ask God for help? How does He hear?

Psalm 121 gives us the answer:

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.

The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.

Here are four things we learn from this Psalm about asking God for help:

Admit your need for help. This seems obvious, but asking God for help means admitting our need for help. We don’t do this naturally. We are naturally self-sufficient, self-assured people. We are raised to handle it, get it done, be fine, and not depend on anyone.

The writer of this Psalm is helpless, and they know it. They need help.

Believe God can and will help. Know where your help comes from.

For many of us, once we exhaust our ability to fix something, we still don’t go to prayer. Maybe there is a book, a sermon, a financial move, a Google search I can do, a person I can get advice from. Prayer for too many of us is a last resort.

When we get there, we say, “God, I don’t know if you can help. I don’t know if you care to help. So I’ll look around.”

Be patient. The writer of Psalm 121 reminds us to go to sleep. This communicates that sometimes our prayers will take longer than we think, but God will fight for us and work on things while we sleep.

Sleep is one of the greatest pictures of faith in our lives.

Why?

We worry, are anxious, and replay conversations over and over in our minds at night. We lie there, staring at the clock, thinking about our bank account, job, marriage, kids, and parents. The problems we experience in relationships, worrying about college, bills, health, and so on. Yet, at that moment, there is almost nothing we can do.

The people we worry about are asleep; the people we call for help and advice are asleep. The writer of Psalm 121 says, “Go to sleep.”

God is over all things. Why can we be patient and go to sleep? Not only because God is our help and never sleeps, but because verses 7 and 8 tell us that God is over everything.

He watches all things. He is not surprised by anything. Nothing catches him off guard.

It ends with a crucial word, forevermore.

Forever is a long time, yet that is our God’s scope.

Psalm 121 is a prayer to give us the confidence to ask God for help and confidence as we wait for that help to come.

How to Plan a Preaching Calendar

preaching

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It’s the summer time, which means for many pastors, they are working on their preaching calendar for the coming season and year at church. The summer is a great time to pull back as a pastor, strategically evaluate your ministry, and plan for the future.

I’m often asked by pastors and church planters about how to plan a preaching calendar. While each church is different, I think there are some things that can be important for every pastor to think through when it comes to giving your church a healthy, balanced diet of preaching.

Before getting to those questions and guideposts, you need to decide that planning ahead is a wise idea. I just heard from a worship leader who told me he finds out what his pastor is preaching on as late as Thursday. If you are that far behind, it is hard for your team to plan with you. It creates stress for your group leaders (if you discuss the sermon, which you should), and for your worship leaders who are trying to plan songs and moments.

Now, someone will say, but if you plan too far in advance, you take the Holy Spirit out of it. Yes, that is possible. It is also possible to plan too late and have no room for what the Holy Spirit says. The Holy Spirit also can move months in advance, so this is a weak argument to me. Anyone who has followed this blog for any time knows that I am a proponent of planning ahead.

I would encourage you to take a day or two to get away with your bible, some books, and your journal and listen to what God is saying for the coming year for your church.

What have I already preached on? It is important to know what you have already preached and not repeat it. When I came to CCC in 2021, I wanted to start with the book of Ephesians, but they had just preached on it, so I had to pivot.

Change it up if you’ve done 3 New Testament books in a row. If you’ve done 4 topical series in a row, put an expository series in.

One thing that can help with this is alternating between Old and New Testament books.

What topics do I feel my church needs to hear? This gets at who is at your church, who you are hoping to reach, and what questions your culture is asking. Every year at our church, we seek to preach about marriage and relationships; and one on generosity and money. We will hit those topics every single year regardless of what books we preach through. Why? Our culture is always asking questions about those things.

Think through the seasons of the year. You also need to think through the seasons of the year. What people are asking and thinking about in January is not what they are thinking about in September. It is important to match a series to what your people are walking through.

What haven’t I talked about recently? This helps to identify the places you gravitate towards and helps expose things you are afraid to address or have skipped. This is when you look back at your old sermon schedule and see where you’ve been. Maybe you’ve been at your church for 5 years and never preached through a gospel or an Old Testament book. That would be a good place to start.

What am I passionate about? This can be good or bad. It is good because you have to preach what you are passionate about. Otherwise, no one will listen. It isn’t good because you can easily preach what you are only passionate about.

Where is my church going? This is a vision question. What is coming up in the next year that you can preach about? If you are praying about planting a church, preach about that. If you feel like you need to preach on generosity or grow in community, preach that vision. This means, though, as a pastor, you need to lead with vision and know where you are going.

Is there anything big coming up I need to be aware of? As we enter 2024, the election is on the horizon. one of the things I’ve been thinking through is the topics I need to teach to prepare my church to follow Jesus in the midst of election season.

5 Questions to Ask Before Quitting Your Job & Taking a New One

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Many of us will struggle at some point whether or not to take a job, move our kids to a new school, or move across the city or the country (like my family did).

How do you know? How do you know if it’s time to leave your job? To take a new one? How do you know if now is the moment to step out and start that ministry, church, or company you’ve always dreamed about?

I think there are many questions to ask yourself, but here are five that I think you can’t miss if you want to make a great decision in this area:

Do you feel called to somewhere or only called away from where you are? We often think of calling as where God is calling us, the new land, the new opportunity. And I think we focus on that because it is more exciting. But before you put a for sale sign up in front of your house and tell your boss that you are leaving, you need to be honest if this is more about running from somewhere or going somewhere.

Yes, God may be calling you into a new season, job, or opportunity. But are you finished where you are? Have you done all that God called you to in that place? I know you might be done, but is God done with you there?

We need to be careful that we aren’t running from something we don’t like or something hard to get to the new, shiny opportunity.

And these are questions only you can answer.

Do you want to live there? Now, we can mistake the answer to this question and miss what God has for us because we want to live somewhere. And yes, God will call us to places that aren’t the fun, top 10 places to live. And that’s okay.

But I do think God puts a place in us, a place that we can connect with. The reality is every region in America is different. As Colin Woodard points out in his book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, America was settled by different nations, and those nations still impact us today. You can’t overlook that when you look at moving. I often tell people you have to want to live in a place during the most challenging time of year (whether winter in New England or summer in Arizona). 

Does the church need your gifts? This is important for you to discern when interviewing a church. One of the ways to ask this is, “If God answers all of your prayers, what does this church look like in 5 years?” This question is crucial because it explains their hopes and dreams for their church, and they hope you will take them there.

At one church, they told me they wanted someone to continue the legacy of the pastor retiring. The church was growing, and God was doing many great things there. The problem is, I wouldn’t say I like to maintain things; I want to build and create. Some leaders love to maintain something and hate building things. You need to know how you are gifted, what brings you life, and if that matches with a church.

Is this the right next step? Just because an opportunity is in front of you doesn’t mean you need to take it. Is this the right moment for your family or your career? As Emily Freeman asks, “Is this the next right thing?”

What will you prioritize: your kids’ school and sports, money, location, church fit? While you want to hit the jackpot on a new job or opportunity, you must sacrifice something. You probably won’t get everything you want.

What will decide for you?

Some of that depends on your life season, your kids’ activities, how close you are to retirement, or if all your kids are out of the house or still in school.

What should be on your list of priorities is really up to you, but I’ve talked to too many leaders who did not think through this question, and they took a job that they regretted right away.

Forgiveness, Letting Go and Figuring out How to Move Foward

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Forgiveness is tough. In a sermon, giving forgiveness sounds so easy and clean. Yet, in real life, it is difficult and messy. Often, we forgive as much as we believe we are forgiven. Whenever we withhold forgiveness, we deny the power of the cross. Whenever we say, “I can’t forgive that person,” or, “I can’t let go of that situation”, we deny the power of the cross. We deny the power of what God redeemed us to do.

Before walking through giving forgiveness, let’s look at what forgiveness is not because many of us have the wrong idea about forgiveness. 

Forgiveness is not the same thing as forgetting. Forgive and forget is not a reality. We will always remember. It is a part of our story and past. We will remember the room, the smell, the face, the words. 

Forgiveness does not always mean reconciling or trusting. Just because you forgive someone does not mean you have a relationship with them moving forward. Wisdom might require you to have boundaries. You can forgive them and release them, but the wisdom may tell you not to trust them. You can also reconcile with them and not trust them to the same degree you once did. 

Forgiveness does not mean excusing what happened. This goes with forgetting, but forgiveness does not mean you are excusing it or saying it’s no big deal. 

Forgiveness is not simple or easy. When the other person pushes you to forgive, they underestimate the impact of their words and actions. Forgiveness is complex and challenging. 

Forgiveness does not depend on the other person. You can forgive someone who hasn’t asked for forgiveness. They don’t need to apologize for you to forgive and let them go. Stop letting them take up real estate in your heart and mind.

Forgiveness is letting go, canceling what is owed to you, and letting go of the control the offender has over you. It is giving up revenge; as we see in Romans 12:19, it leaves it in God’s hands.

As you walk through this door and grant forgiveness, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Forgiving someone does not mean pretending it didn’t happen. Forgiving does not mean forgetting, as the old saying goes. Those scars still exist. They are still there. Forgiving means acknowledging it happened and the pain associated with it. It is facing the hurt.

Giving forgiveness means bearing the other person’s sin. There is a cost to forgiveness. You must bear their sin. The cost of forgiveness is always on the person granting forgiveness. This is why forgiveness is so hard. C.S. Lewis said, “Forgiveness is a beautiful word until you have something to forgive.”

Forgiveness is possible because Jesus bore your sin and the cost of forgiveness. When we look at the cross, we see how Jesus bore our sins, knowing we would fail repeatedly. Yet, he forgave us. The power of this moment is what enables us to forgive the way Jesus did.

How to Know if You’re Dealing with an Evil Person

One of the things that gets us in trouble in our relationships is that we respond to people the same. The reality is that our response to people depends on some things. The boundaries we have with one person aren’t the boundaries we should have with another person.

The book of Proverbs states that there are 3 kinds of people: Wise, foolish, and evil. How do we know what kind of person we are dealing with? It depends on their reaction to the truth.

We’ve already laid out how to know if you are a wise person or dealing with a wise person and how to know if you are a foolish person or dealing with a foolish person.

But how do you know if you are dealing with an evil person? They aren’t the same, and we must deal with them accordingly. 

Henry Cloud, in Necessary Endings said, “Evil people are not reasonable; they seek to destroy.” 

Here’s how you know you are dealing with an evil person: 

  • They like to bring others down. 
  • They are intentionally divisive. 
  • They enjoy it when someone else fails. 
  • They try to create the downfall of others. 

When dealing with an evil person, you must go into protection mode, not helping mode.