Each Friday I share some posts that I’ve come across in the last week. They range in topics and sources but they are all things I’ve found interesting or helpful that I hope will be interesting and helpful to you. Here are 8 posts I came across this week that challenged my thinking or helped me as a leader, pastor, husband and father:

1. 4 Things Leaders Should Be Thinking But Many Aren’t by Brian Dodd
2. Epidemic: On The Creeping Hollow Within a Pastor’s Soul by Carey Neiuwhof
3. 8 Reasons Pastoral Tenure Matters by Chuck Lawless
4. Why More People Don’t Meet Jesus At Your Church by Paul Alexander
5. 10 Characteristics Of Churches That Grow by Brandon Kelley
6. Why Senior Pastors Should Quit Social Media (or, what Cal Newport can teach us about sermon writing) by Brian Jones
7. How the Enneagram Can Help You Become a Better Leader by Michael Hyatt
8. 4 Common Church Staff Issues by Shawn Lovejoy

The post 10 Characteristics Of Churches That Grow & 7 Other Posts You Should Read this Weekend appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

• Had a pretty full weekend.
• I spent Friday and Saturday up in Phoenix watching one of the guys I workout with compete in a Crossfit competition.
• Crossfit gets insane when you watch people who are ridiculously strong and good at Crossfit.
• Blown away at what some people can do.
• Got to spend the last 2 days in Orange County with the other area leads from Acts 29 West.
• Love being with them, praying together, strategizing and thinking ahead about how to best plant churches in the western US.
• Also love hearing what God is doing in places like Alaska and other states.
• If you are a pastor, you need to make sure you are friends with other pastors.
• It helps.
• All of that though has led to me dragging my way through the day.
• Excited to spend a few nights in a row in my own bed!
• Been enjoying doing a fantasy league with my boys.
• I let them fill out teams this year.
• Their passion for football is a little ridiculous, but awesome at the same time.
• Tomorrow I start a coaching cohort with 12 pastors in Acts 29 West leading smaller churches.
• I’m excited to help them take the next step.
• Speaking of leaders, I’ve gotten a few emails about what we do to develop leaders at Revolution.
• I’m working on a blog post.
• We had our early morning leadership group today and had an awesome discussion.
• Love the different points of view and learning how to engage each other.
• Conversation and leadership goes hand in hand, but is really difficult if you are a leader, because you think you’re always right.
• I have my pastors covenant group today.
• Each month, I meet with 4 older pastors to pray together and support and encourage each other.
• For me, it is incredibly helpful.
• I’m grateful for the investment older leaders have made in me.
• We’re trying an experiment this Sunday at Revolution: Because we have 2 services, we are having 2 different speakers preach on the same passage and topic. Each taking a service.
• No idea if it will work, but if it does, it’s a great way to get more communicators chances to preach.
• Well, back at it…

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• I feel like I’m still playing catch up from 2 weeks ago.
• Katie, me and our 5 kids flew to Boston to see my cousin get married on Cape Cod.
• It was beautiful, breezy, sunny.
• It was awesome seeing family and horrible flying through 3 time zones.
• Last week, the Acts 29 Arizona pastors and their staffs got to spend time on a zoom call with Larry Osborne and talk about leadership development, small groups, discipleship and breaking growth barriers.
• So enlightening.
• Sunday was one of those days that pastors know well.
• We’ve been going through Romans this year at Revolution and Sunday we got to Romans 9.
• I love theology, but trying to explain Romans 9 in a relevant way to someone who has know idea about calvinism, free will or predestination.
• I ended up preaching 2 different sermons between our 2 services.
• Not really a good thing but it happened.
• Here’s what pastors know well: your feelings on how church went rarely line up with how church went. 
• Some of the books I’ve enjoyed in prepping for Romans 9 have been Chosen for Life: The Case for Divine Election, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace and for the theological beatniks, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23.
• I’m reminded that your church really likes it when you tackle hard topics.
• Unchurched people especially because they have no idea this is in the Bible.
• So ready for football to start this weekend.
• I let my 2 oldest boys create a fantasy team this year.
• They couldn’t believe how excited they were about drafting their team.
• According to Yahoo, I won the draft and got the highest grade (even though I didn’t draft a defense).
• So you know I’ll go 2-14 this year.
• People often ask what books me and our leaders are reading.
• Here’s one we’re about to start: The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals.
• Really excited about it.
• Our entire team loved his talk at the leadership summit.
• I have my pastors covenant group meeting today.
• Honestly, at first I was skeptical about joining, but it has been a huge blessing to me.
• I meet once a month with 4 older pastors, I think I’m 20 – 25 years younger than all of them.
• Pastors need other pastors to confide in, pray with and share ministry with.
• Got to celebrate my Mom’s 60th birthday last night.
• She’ll be embarrassed when she reads this that I told you, but we’ll keep it between us.
• I love being able to watch my kids interact with and laugh with my parents.
• Time to get back at it…

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One of the ways we battle condemnation, guilt, regret, shame, and hurt is through our mind. Our minds are incredibly powerful things. They determine our steps, our feelings, what bothers us, what we think, and the decisions we make that have an enormous impact on the people we become. We often think our minds aren’t that important, that we are feelers, or emotional people making emotional choices.

But we aren’t.

Our minds drive much of what we do. In fact, the New Testament often talks about the battle of our mind, and in numerous places the apostle Paul encourages us about what to think. In Philippians 4:8 he writes, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Why? Because what we think about determines so much.

So, how do you change your thinking? How do you battle your sin in your mind? This is important because much of our sin comes from thinking. We often think we sin and “it just happened.” But it didn’t. We chose to be there, chose to open that website, chose to say those words, chose that person as a friend.

In the same way, through the power of Christ, we can choose to not be there, to say no and not hang out with that person.

To do that, though, requires intentionality and putting on the mind of the Spirit. (Romans 8:5) The best way to do this is through reading the Bible, words inspired by God, authoritative, true and sufficient for our lives. One of the things I love about our church is that we produce daily devotional questions to go along with the sermon that you can subscribe to by emailing here.

5 questions to ask if your bible reading has grown stale.
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As you read through your Bible, it can be daunting. Here are some questions I use to put on the mind of the Spirit:

1. What does this passage say (not to me, but actually say on its own)?
2. What words or phrases stood out to me in this passage?
3. Why do I think those words or phrases stood out?
4. What is God trying to show me through that?
5. Are there any sins I need to confess, changes I need to make or steps I need to take because of what I’ve read?

How to get the most out of reading your Bible.
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The other day I asked a friend why he thought leadership and being a leader is so hard. He looked at me and said, “That’s why only a few people aspire to it and only a few people ever do it.”

To cast a vision. To stand against a tide. To say that you are moving forward to a place that no one has ever been and you don’t know how you will get there, but you know you are going. That is hard.

To challenge people to become all that they can be. To withstand the criticism that comes with leadership and the misunderstanding that comes with being confident and purposeful. That is hard.

Romans 12:8 says if you have the gift of leadership you should lead with all diligence. Diligence means, “A zealous and careful nature in one’s work, a decisive work ethic, budgeting one’s time, to guard against laziness, putting forth full concentration in one’s work.”

That is leadership. That is what makes it hard. Leadership challenges. Leadership and vision divide because they say, “This is where we are going and this is what the win is, and consequently, that over there is not where we are going and that is not the win.”

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