If you’ve been married any length of time, you’ve wondered what happened. Why did dating seem so easy? Why did it seem like it was easy to have fun and connect with your boyfriend or girlfriend while you were dating and engaged, but now that you are married it is like pulling teeth?

Anytime you share your feelings, you have a fight. One of you wants sex, but the other does not. One of you feels satisfied, but the other does not. While dating, you could agree on what movie to watch, what activity to do or where to eat, but now you find yourselves having nothing in common but a last name and maybe a child.

How do we get the excitement back like when we were dating?
Click To Tweet

Many couples struggle with this. While you may feel like you are the only one, you aren’t.

Yes, your life has changed now. You are older, have more bills and more history with your spouse than when you dated. You also have stress you didn’t have before. I know, it was hard planning your wedding and dealing with families, but now you are dealing with bosses, teachers, your children and you are still dealing with your families! Everything has simply magnified.

Why is it so hard to connect to my spouse?
Click To Tweet

But the question remains for many couples and keeps them stuck.

Why can’t I connect to my spouse like we did when we dated?

One other thing changed that is subtle, and many couples miss it.

It isn’t that you have less in common (although your interests may have changed) or that you aren’t in love anymore, although you may need a refresher on what love is.

There is a word that defined your dating and engaged life. A word that you didn’t discuss. You never sat down as a couple to decide on this word. It just happened.

Ready?

Intentional. 

You were intentional.

You decided in advance. You decided to pursue the other. To work at your relationship.

You decided you would put effort into your relationship and yourself.

You made special plans. You thought through how to wake up early and drive to watch a sunrise. You found out things they liked and sought to make that happen. You surprised them.

You decided to wear things to attract them instead of mailing in your clothes choice.

Most dating couples are incredibly intentional about their relationships, and most married couples expect a great marriage to just happen.

But it doesn’t.

A great marriage doesn’t just happen.
Click To Tweet

Here’s a great question to discuss as a couple: In what areas of our lives (marriage, kids, career, finances, sex, spirituality, etc.) are we being intentional, and in which areas do we need to be more intentional?

In what areas of your lives are you and your spouse intentional, and in which areas do you need to be more intentional?
Click To Tweet

The post Why Dating is Easy & Marriage is Hard appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

When God thinks of you, what comes to mind?

This is a hard question for many of us to answer. We often think the answer is failure or disappointment or unloved.

Yet, none of those are true.

What you believe the answer is to that question shapes much of your life. This is especially true if you are a pastor.

There is a weight that pastors feel that I don’t know translates into other jobs. I think that people in churches can know about it, but not fully understand it. I know that as a youth pastor, I didn’t truly understand the weight of pastoring until becoming a lead pastor. For no particular reason, it just worked that way.

While there are many weights that a pastor carries, some of them are just human weights that others carry (including parenting), but I thought up five that I think pastors particularly carry on a daily basis because of what they do each and every week. There is an important distinction here. These are not pains; they are the weights of pastoring. There is a huge difference between pain and weight (so no one misses that).

I’ve been sharing these weights and joys recently so that those who attend a church know what it is like to be a pastor and how to best support their pastor. When those two (a pastor and the congregation) work together, some amazing things happen. When they work against each other, it is a disaster.

To see the other weights and joys, you can read them by clicking on the links: Preaching God’s word every week, You can’t change people, God’s call on your life, Seeing life change, People under you are counting on you and God using you.

Weight #4: What God Thinks of You

Pastors do not answer to their churches, boards or anybody else. Ultimately, they answer to God. Even though it is incredibly biblical, most Christians don’t like to hear it.

While pastors do answer to boards in their job, we ultimately do not answer to people. I remember having a conversation once with a guy who was upset about something we decided to do, and he said, “I give here. You answer to me. I should get to say what happens because I give here.” It is a whole other post, all the inaccuracies in that statement. I looked at him and said, “I don’t answer to you. I answer to God, and that scares me a whole lot more than the idea of answering to you.”

While this is true and biblical, most Christians do not like this idea. (Side note: This isn’t a ticket for pastors to do whatever they want.)

And it should scare a pastor to death. It should keep him humble and on his knees.

The idea of God judging how I lead Revolution, how I preach, how I shepherd, scares me. But I think it is a holy fear and one that should drive all pastors. Will God approve of what I did? Will God be glorified with what I did?

Before many pastors can answer those questions, though, there are some things they feel but never deal with. Many pastors get into ministry to help others, but many carry around approval idols. Not dealing with this causes them to put the emphasis on what people think of them instead of what God thinks of them.

Don’t miss this: Whichever one you think is more important will have an enormous impact on your leadership and the kind of church you lead.

The post The Weight & Joy of Being a Pastor: What God Thinks of You appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

So it’s January.

This is the year.

This is the year you finally do what you have longed to do.

This is the year you take that step financially, spiritually, physically, relationally, emotionally.

This is THAT year.

I know. I know.

Statistically, this isn’t your year. It’s someone else’s year.

But, what if this was your year?

It has to be someone’s year, so why not yours?

Take a moment and thank God that you woke up this morning. That you are breathing. That you live somewhere with internet.

Thank God that it is a new year and what is past, while part of your story and who you are, is in the past.

It’s time to move forward.

Alright. Pep talk done.

Let’s get going!

The post This is THE New Year appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

• What a whirlwind the last 2 weeks have been.
• I got to be at the Rethink Leadership conference in Atlanta and then at the Acts 29 West Conference in Reno.
• Still processing all that I learned.
• I love the large family that Acts 29 West has become.
• I got to teach in the 200-400 track at Acts 29 West.
• I love helping leaders who want to learn and grow.
• I got a ton out of the other 2 track leaders, Jim Applegate and Matt Kyser.
• Sunday night, Katie and I celebrated our birthdays with a bunch of friends.
• Our table was filled with people from our church and our crossfit box.
• That pretty much makes up our relational circles right now.
• Speaking of Sunday.
• Mother’s day at Revolution was a great day as we continue our series New in the book of Romans.
• We’re almost out of depressing parts of Romans.
• I keep reminding our church, the amazing parts of Romans, being set free don’t make sense without understanding sin and God’s wrath.
• Although, we like to skip that part.
• Katie is going to Chicago this week to take pictures of our good friends who are adopting from the Congo and their girls are finally coming home.
• It’s going to be such a sweet moment.
• Say a prayer for them and me, as I get to single parent it!
• I see a lot of video games and pizza in our future.
• I got to host a podcast episode for I4JLive today and looking at pastoral burnout yesterday.
• The conversation went in a direction I didn’t expect and it was incredibly helpful.
• I got a lot out of it personally.
• It should be out soon, so stay tuned.
• I’m blown away that it is almost summer.
• I’m definitely looking forward to a different pace at Revolution.
• It’s coming at the right time.
• Read 2 fantastic books on my plane rides over the last 2 weeks: Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal and The Truth About Employee Engagement: A Fable About Addressing the Three Root Causes of Job Misery.
• Both were excellent.
• Well, time to get back to sermon prep…

The post Tuesday Mind Dump… appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

I’m at Rethink Leadership Conference in Atlanta, which has been like drinking from a fire hose of leadership wisdom. The fourth session was on team, which is always a challenge in a growing church and one that I really appreciated. Here are some highlights:

• Everybody around the table needs to be known and recognized for what they bring.
• One of the best things that everyone can do on a team for the lead pastor is get good at leading up.
• It is important to know what is the lead pastor’s passions in the local church to know how best to help him.
• Influence matters far more than position.
• What someone grows up is very different than what someone walks into.

• The most important thing you will bring to your team is your soul.
• The reason teams break up is the inner stuff, not the skill stuff.
• Great gifts will take a leader to a level, but an absence of strong soul and character won’t keep you there.
• Hell is not just a destination but can be a diagnosis of where your soul is today.
• A good or rotten soul never stays to itself.
• Do people want to be around you because of your soul?
• What is running your life at any given moment is your soul. -Dallas Willard

• What are the convictions about leadership that are evident to the people who are entrusted to your care?
• Why do people work?
• Why do we lead?
• Where are you taking the people you lead? How do you think about the people you lead?
• A leader needs to take people to a daring destination with the humility to serve them along the journey.
• A leader needs to choose to lead people to a daring destination.
• Taking people to a bold destination is serving them well.
• A leader must choose to love the people they lead.
• A leader has to deliver results.
• No one wants to hear your convictions about leadership if they don’t work.

The post Highlights from Rethink Leadership on Team appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

I’m at Rethink Leadership Conference in Atlanta, which has been like drinking from a fire hose of leadership wisdom. The second session was on momentum, which is always an elusive thing for a leader. Here are some highlights:

• We are on the cusp of a new way of doing church and that’s exciting.
• Churches that are winning with Millennials…
  • Transparency. They don’t care about outside accountability. Millennials want to if you are the real deal.
  • Collaboration. Boomers want to know what happens at the decision making table. Gen Xers don’t just want to be in the loop, they want to be heard at the table. Millennials don’t just want to know what’s happening, they want to be a part of deciding what’s going on.
  • Learn to let Millennials lead. Our job stops being the mentor job but letting them get out in front.
  • Make failure an option.
  • They have figured out mission in a different way, they are living on mission(al). How are you on mission everyday, in everything you do?
  • Is your organization the real deal? Is there fluff going on here?
  • They learn to live in the mess, to do ministry that is messy.

• See the need and communicate the why behind the need gets people on the same boat headed in the same direction.
• Staying consistent even when you feel like you are making no movement.
• You gain momentum when you stay true to who you are.
• You can find momentum in seasons on the calendar. Don’t fight the calendar, live in it, work in it.
• People who create momentum are teachable, thrive in a culture of change and openness.
• Momentum is killed when you do it at the wrong time with the wrong people.

• A powerful force is the momentum of the soul of the leader, when Jesus is changing the life of the leader.
• Keeping our calling current is critical to keeping our momentum, don’t let the fire go out.
• Main thoughts: smoke what you’re selling. Sell what you’re smoking.
• Questions to keep wood on the fire of my soul for momentum on the inside:
  • What’s my current word from the Lord? It’s not new, but what is God whispering to you lately.
  • What’s my current obedience to the Lord? There can be sacrifice without obedience, but there can’t be obedience without sacrifice.
  • What is my current awe before the Lord? Will I get on God’s agenda and trust Him to take care of my agenda?
• How to move momentum as a church:
  • What’s your current territory?
  • What’s your current risk?
  • What’s your current discipline to afford the risk?

The post Highlights from Rethink Leadership on Momentum appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

I’m at Rethink Leadership Conference in Atlanta, which has been like drinking from a fire hose of leadership wisdom. The first session was on strategy, which was incredibly stretching. Here are some highlights:

• It isn’t the vision that determines our success at a church, it’s your strategy.
• A strategy is a plan of action with an end in mind.
• You don’t have to work at getting misaligned as a team or organization.
• Questions to ask: What do we want someone to become? If you could only get the people who come to your church for one thing, what would that one thing be?

• Is vision as important as we think it is?
• The reason vision isn’t as important as we think is almost every church has the same vision.
• Your problem as a leader isn’t a vision problem, it’s a strategy problem.
• Mission and vision determines intention, but strategy determines direction. -Andy Stanley
• Strategy initially divides, but ultimately unites, every organization.

• Forms and functions change, but convictions never should.
• How do you change your strategy without losing your core:
  • Can you measure your core? Do you know who your core is? Make sure they know your core convictions.
  • Vision is taught, culture is felt. What do people feel in our church?
  • Every person wants consistency out of their leaders more than anything else in the world. Do you know who you are and can you consistently communicate who you are?

The post Highlights from Rethink Leadership on Strategy appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

Someone asked me what made a lead pastor love his church. Outside of the obvious: being called by God to lead and love the church they are in, the answer is pretty simple.

What a lead pastor wants from his church is also what a church wants from their pastor.

Here are some things that if you attend a church, your lead pastor wants from you but maybe has never said (in no particular order):

What a pastor wants from his church is what his church wants from him.
Click To Tweet

1. Commitment.

A church wants their pastor to stick through thick and thin, and so does a pastor. He wants people who will stick with the vision and not quit. He wants people who are sold out to what God has called them to, not just consumers who show up for the latest sermon series.

Your pastor wants a church that has people willing to push through hard times and stay committed. This is not something our culture does very well, and most churched people are terrible at it. Hurt feelings, leave the church. Don’t like the music, leave the church. Moved to a new facility I don’t like, leave the church. Sadly, pastors and the people who attend their church don’t expect the other to stay. They have both watched too many people come and go. This should not be so.

Your pastor wants you to be committed to your church.
Click To Tweet

2. Loyalty.

Your pastor wants you to be loyal. Being loyal does not mean following blindly. Loyalty means that when you have hurt feelings, you talk it out with the person who hurt your feelings, not share a prayer request in your small group about it. Loyalty means that when you hear people being divisive, you stop it instead of joining in or being silent.

3. Growth.

Yes, every pastor wants the church to grow, but that’s not what he wants from you. He wants you to grow into the person God has called you to be. He wants you to use your gifts inside the church and outside the church. He wants you to be in community and take the risk to make that happen and make community a beautiful thing. He wants you to be generous not only with your time but also with your stuff. He doesn’t want you to be stingy.

Your pastor wants you to grow spiritually.
Click To Tweet

4. Prayer.

In the same way that you want your pastor and leaders to pray for you, your pastor wants you to pray for him and his family. He wants you to lift him up during the week while he’s working on a sermon, he wants your prayers on Saturday night before church, and then afterwards when he’s exhausted and spent. If you don’t know how you can pray for your pastor, you can ask or simply pray during those times.

Your pastor wants you to pray for him and his family.
Click To Tweet

5. Appreciation.

Everyone wants to be appreciated for what they do, whether it is as a volunteer, in a job or in a relationship. We all want people to say thanks, give a gift or let us know how something made a difference in our lives.

Being a pastor is no different.

While many churches use October as pastor appreciation month and say thanks to their pastor then, some churches give their pastors gifts or people in the church are generous in some way, many churches show no appreciation to their pastor outside of saying, “Today’s sermon was nice.” To be fair, many pastors do not show appreciation to their volunteers and staff, and so the cycle continues. I’ve talked to many pastors who left their church, not because God told them but because they didn’t feel appreciated.

Your pastor wants to be appreciated.
Click To Tweet

There are more things that could be added to this list, but if every person in a church did these five things, I believe the longevity and happiness of pastors would soar. I also believe the health of churches would greatly increase.

5 things your pastor wants from his church.
Click To Tweet

The post What a Pastor Wants from His Church appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

No leader or pastor starts their career or starts a church with thinking about quitting. All of them start with grand plans and dreams of the future and finishing, retiring, making it to the end with friends and family around them.

Yet statistically that is incredibly rare. Most quit, give up, fall out of the race or simply stop trying while still collecting a paycheck.

According to stats:

• 78% of pastors say they have no close friends.
• 1,500 pastors quit each month.
• 70% of pastors battle depression.
• Only 10% of pastors will retire as a pastor.

Recently I’ve had several pastors talk about not wanting to burn out, which seems like a good goal. But the moment you start talking about burnout, you have moved into a dangerous place.

Let me throw out a different question, one I think is better: How can you lead and live at a sustainable pace?

How can you lead and live at a sustainable pace?
Click To Tweet

There is a great passage in Matthew that you have more than likely heard a sermon on, or if you are a pastor you’ve preached on this passage. It is so common and so easy to forget the power in it.

To remind you, this is what it says in The Message version:

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

I think according to this passage, there are four things healthy leaders (or non-leaders) do:

4 things healthy leaders do.
Click To Tweet

1. Healthy leaders don’t try to be God.

We say we aren’t trying to be God or we say we can’t save anyone, only the Holy Spirit can, but many leaders carry the burden that they can, or at the very least, they will try.

We think, “If I can just talk to them, or get them to read this book or hear this podcast, that will help.” It might, but it might not.

We can also drift so far from God personally that we simply lead out of our abilities and strengths. This is easy to do if you have a strong speaking gift. You can cover up your lack of relationship with God by being charismatic or interesting on stage.

Healthy leaders don’t try to be God.
Click To Tweet

2. Healthy leaders walk and work with Jesus, not for Jesus.

Yes, Jesus is the chief shepherd and the senior pastor of your church, but you don’t work for him. We work with him and through the power of the Holy Spirit. We follow what the Spirit starts and is doing.

We talk about our priority list as Christians being God, family, job. Yet it is easy for a pastor’s list to be God/job, family because of how closely connected his job and God are. Often this is so subtle that no one sees it, or if they do they don’t say anything about it.

I firmly believe there is a calling that comes with being a pastor, but, and please hear this: being a pastor is also a job. A job that will end. A job you will retire from one day.

If we aren’t careful, we start to become unhealthy when our identity is too wrapped up in what we do. This is why we get hurt when someone rejects a sermon, our advice or the vision of the church. We feel like they are rejecting us, because our sermon, that vision, is who we are. It is our identity.

That’s a dangerous spot.

Healthy leaders walk and work with Jesus, not for Jesus.
Click To Tweet

3. Healthy leaders don’t force stuff.

The reason I love this version of these verses are two phrases. The first is, Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I am like most leaders. We are incredibly driven, we make things happen, and we force it.

How many times have you played a conversation in your head before it happens: you’ll say this, they’ll say this, then you’ll respond, then they’ll respond, and this is how it ends. Then the meeting goes just like that and you think, “That could’ve been an email.”

We also can very easily force our kids and our wife to be something they aren’t.

One of the saddest things to watch is, as a man is pushing his calling and planting his church, his wife is sitting there dying emotionally, physically, spiritually.

Here’s a question for you as a leader: Is your family too much about your calling and goals? Does your wife have space for hers?

Healthy leaders don’t force stuff.
Click To Tweet

4. Healthy leaders don’t carry burdens they aren’t meant to carry.

I’m a perfectionist. In every part of my life, I carry a burden of wanting everything to be perfect. Every experience with my kids and my wife, I build up in my mind, and when it fails to reach that I get stressed out and angry.

Another struggle for many leaders is they don’t know how to handle the emotional side of ministry. We struggle with our emotions of hurt, depression, loss, anger, and then as those emotions entangle with the emotions of those in our church and we walk with them through divorce, miscarriages, death, suicide, and addictions (just to name a few), we become at a loss of what to do with all the burdens.

Healthy leaders don’t carry burdens they aren’t meant to carry.
Click To Tweet

In the end, Matthew 11 is an invitation from Jesus to live freely and lightly. That’s the second phrase in this passage that is so beautiful. Many pastors do not live in this place. Many followers of Jesus never experience this, yet this is supposed to be the normal Christian experience.

The post 4 Things Healthy Leaders Do appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

A few years ago another pastor told me he was concerned for me because my blog only reviewed leadership books but not a lot of “gospel centered or theology books” as he said. The other day another pastor asked me why I don’t review more of those books and then said, “Do you even read theology books?”

The short answer is “yes I do read them” but I believe pastors (especially ones in my Acts 29 tribe) read too many theology books and not enough leadership books.

In fact, when I shared what churches could learn from Amazon, I got comments about how business thinking and learnings fail the church and pastors need to spend less time learning from CEO’s.

Here’s a few reasons pastors should read more leadership books:

1. It’s the language people in your church are speaking. If your church is like mine, it is filled with leaders and businesspeople. They respond to strong leadership, budgets, systems, and marketing (and yes your church markets simply by having a website and a place to meet).
2. The church is like a business. I didn’t say it was a business, but like one. Money comes in and goes out. There are bills. Each church has a target audience. Each church competes with things (ie. sports, trips, activities on Sunday mornings, school, work). Churches do not compete with other churches, but there are a lot of things vying for people’s attention on Sunday’s.
3. You need to be stretched. Most pastors are very smart when it comes to doctrine and theology. Yes, you should grow in those areas, but most pastors are well on their way in those things. They can counsel people well, preach well, but struggle to lead meetings, handle budgets and build systems for follow up with guests, new givers and new believers (most pastors give me blank stares when I ask what happens for all those things in their churches.

Robert Bruce Shaw in his book Leadership Blindspots: How Successful Leaders Identify and Overcome the Weaknesses That Matter said, “My fundamental belief is that if a company wants to see the future, 80 percent of what it is going to have to learn will be from outside its own industry…Leaders need to master the details of their business but also need to remain curious about a broader range of topics that can enrich their ability to seize opportunities and recognize threats.”

I am blown away at the sermon material I get simply by reading the latest business book. A lot of our discipleship ideas have been taken from business books because they are stronger in the areas of developing leaders and a pipeline.

I remember talking to someone and they asked, “But how do you expect your leaders to grow in doctrine if you encourage them to read more leadership books?” The short answer I gave, “well, they do read their bibles.”

If you are looking for a good place to start, here are 10 books I think every Christian leader should read.

[Image]

Related articles

• How Churches can Learn to Think Like a Freak [Book]
• 10 Lessons for the Church from Pixar
• Being a Pastor’s Wife
• The Loneliness of a Pastor on a Holiday
• How to Be Married and Stay in Ministry
• Why You Aren’t Reaching Your Full Potential
• 4 Things a Lead Pastor Must Do

The post Why Pastors Should Read more Leadership Books appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.