Tag Archives: Christian

Posted on

Before You Criticize Your Pastor

by

pastor

The longer I’m a pastor I’ve realized something about churched people. When I say a churched person, I mean someone who has been attending church for any length of time and is a follower of Jesus (pretty broad definition). Many people in this category, while they love their church and want to see God do incredible things in their city, they also have the idea that they are smarter than their pastor or at least could do his job better than he’s doing it.

Now, they may be smarter than their pastor. There are lots of people at Revolution more educated than I am and smarter in a variety of disciplines than I am. There are people who may be able to do my job better than I can, but aren’t called to it.

I’ve written about criticism and how to handle it as a leader in other posts that you can read here and here. What I want to focus on here is before you criticize your pastor,

Here are some questions you should ask yourself before criticizing your pastor (or anyone):

8 questions to ask before criticizing your pastor.

Click To Tweet

  1. Why does this matter? At the end of the day, some of the things that bother us simply are not that important. In marriage, your spouse does all kinds of things that drive you nuts (Katie doesn’t do anything that drives me nuts but I’ve heard other people complain about their spouses). Sometimes it isn’t that big of a deal. It might be a situation where you just need to let it go.
  2. What do I hope to gain from this? What is the end result? Do you hope your pastor will say you are right and they are wrong? Do you hope to help your pastor grow or simply point out his faults? Do you want any recognition in this process?
  3. How would you feel if you didn’t criticize your pastor? What if you didn’t say anything? How would that affect your heart? Would it drive you nuts or would you forget about it?
  4. What if nothing changes? This gets to the heart for many, what if your pastor doesn’t do anything with what you say? What if they disagree with you and tell you nothing will change? How will handle that? Your answer to this question will reveal a lot of your heart and if there is sin there.
  5. Is your criticism actually from the Bible? Pastors hear all kinds of things they are doing wrong or that their church can do better. Most of the time those criticisms simply come from people who would rather things were done differently. Is your problem actually in the Bible? Is your pastor sinning?
  6. Have you talked to anyone else? If you have, you’ve already sinned and you need to repent to God and to your pastor. Don’t bounce it off someone else, don’t do a veiled prayer request.
  7. Is this consistent with my pastor’s character? Could he have just been having an off day? Many times criticism comes from things that are not who your pastor is. If your pastor consistently does the thing or sin that you see, then talk with them. It may just be that something is going on in your pastor’s life that is tough, he maybe didn’t mean anything by what he said or you may have misheard him.
  8. Am I jealous of my pastor? Maybe you want his job, the upfront attention he gets. Many people think being a pastor is easy, glamorous and fun. At times, it can be those things, but it is usually hard work. Often, criticism comes from a place of jealousy, either for their pastors job, attention, status, relationship with God, or marriage. When I meet with someone who is upset at me or Revolution, half of the meeting will be the person venting about their spouse or another area of their life that they are taking out on me or our church.
8 questions to ask before criticizing your pastor.

Click To Tweet

At the end of the day, disagreeing with your pastor is okay. Pushing back on something you think is a sin, wrong or don’t like is okay. The problem is in how it is often done. In veiled prayer requests at a missional community, a blog post, gossiping without talking to the source. Sometimes though, you need to not say anything. Sometimes it isn’t a big deal. Sometimes you need to give your pastor the feedback you are holding on to.

You also need to be prepared for your pastor to disagree with you and do nothing about it. This is when the heart issues will pop up for you. What if you believe something is wrong or should change and your pastor does nothing with it? If it is a sin, you should talk to other elders, but let your pastor know that you think this should happen. If it isn’t a sin but is just a difference in theology or how things are done at the church, if it is a big deal for you, you should leave and find another church. Here are some things to work through and keep in mind if it gets to that point.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Posted on

When A Calling Gets Hard (You Know It’s Real)

by

leadership

At Revolution, we want to be a church that plants churches. This means, we have a lot of guys walking through our doors who want to plant churches. It also means I have “the calling” conversation on a regular basis. Depending on your background and denomination, “the calling” conversation takes on a variety of weights in terms of importance.

Not only do I meet a lot of guys who want to plant churches, but I also meet a lot of guys who want to be leaders or church planters because it is cool and sexy. For these guys, being a pastor is not a calling, it is a job. Sutton Turner lists 8 ways you know it is a job and not a calling:

  1. If your primary motivation is to pay your bills and provide for your family, it’s a job. If your primary motivation is to serve Jesus and be used by him as he builds his church, it’s ministry.
  2. If you want praise and recognition for your work, it’s a job. If no one else besides Jesus needs to commend what you’re doing, it’s ministry.
  3. If you want to quit because your spouse or kids have a difficult time with you working for the church, it’s a job. If your family understands that serving in a local church is difficult and costly for everyone, and if they count the cost and invest in it with you, it’s ministry.
  4. If you envision yourself in another job or position outside the church, it’s a job. If there’s no other place you would rather be, it’s ministry.
  5. If you do the job as long as it does not cut into other things (hobbies, family activities, etc.), it’s a job. If you are willing to give up recreation in order to serve, it’s ministry.
  6. If you compare yourself with others outside of church staff who have more free time, more money, and more possessions, it’s a job. If you pray for people outside of church staff and want Jesus to bless them, it’s a ministry.
  7. If it bothers you when the phone rings on evenings and weekends, it’s a job. If you see random calls at odd hours as opportunities to help with gladness, it’s ministry.
  8. If you want to quit because the work is too hard, or the pressure is too great, or your performance is criticized, it’s a job. If you stick it out, no matter what happens, until Jesus clearly tells you that it’s time to go, it’s ministry.

That last one stands out to me. The way you know you are called to something is if you stick with it when it is hard. Leadership is hard. Planting a church is hard. Sticking it out when it seems everyone else stands against you is hard. Losing friends because they don’t buy into your vision is hard. Not making a lot of money doing something is hard.

The way you know you are called to something is if you stick with it when it is hard

Click To Tweet

Jesus is not looking for guys who want to stand on a stage, who want their name to be known or put up in lights. He is looking for people who are willing to do hard work, who are willing to not be noticed, to not be remembered, to simply point to him in all they do. That is what makes fulfilling the calling God places on your life, you don’t get the credit for it.

Posted on

Kids Take Their Cues from their Parents

by

kids

I’m often asked how to change a child. How do you make a child follow Jesus? How do you make a teenager make better choices?

There are a few realities of parenting I’ve learned. One is, you can’t change a child or a teenager. The Holy Spirit can. I’ve talked before about how you need to be praying for your child, but there is something you can do beyond that.

What is important to you often becomes what is important to your child. Think about it, there is a good chance you have a hobby because one of your parents had a hobby. Maybe you like working on cars because you used to do that with them. You might like camping or hiking because they did.

What is important to you often becomes important to your child. Choose wisely.

Click To Tweet

In our house, our kids have a deep love for music, for nature, sports in general and the Steelers. Why? Because Katie and I love those things. We pass on what we love.

The reality of parenting is that if our kids are not growing in their love for Jesus, the first place we need to look is our own lives. It isn’t the church’s fault, it isn’t our kid’s fault, the fault often lies with us. If Jesus isn’t important to us, why should we expect it to be to our kids? They pick their cues up from us.

I remember talking with two dads a few years ago who each had teenage kids. One of the dad’s was lamenting that their kids were seniors in high school and wanted nothing to do with church or God. The other dad looked at him and said, “How can you be surprised? You’ve spent the last 6 years skipping church and missional community for basketball and soccer. You’ve taken your kids all over the state for competitions. You’ve spent 6 years telling them that sports are more important than God, they are just doing what you taught them.”

Those words have stuck with me; they are just doing what you taught them. Our kids do what we teach them. They pick up their cues from us. If we tell them something is more important than church, reading your bible, praying, giving, attending a missional community, they will learn that lesson.

Here’s the question to wrestle with:

  1. Are your kids growing in their love for Jesus?
  2. If your kids left home right now, would they be reading their bible?
  3. Would they look to join a missional community or do they not know how important biblical community is?
Posted on

Is Love a Choice or a Feeling (And Why it Matters)

by

love

Here is a question that Katie and I pose when we do pre-marital or marriage counseling, “Is love a choice or a feeling?”

In our culture, love is a feeling. It makes you feel light, you think of songs, birds, roses and happy thoughts. It warms you up like hot coffee on a cold day. What this means then is that we talk about love the same way we talk about our favorite team or favorite food, “I love pizza.” If love is a feeling, then you can fall in and out of love depending on your mood or what is happening in your life.

The other side of this sees love simply as a choice. It makes loves into a cold thing. When it is a feeling, it makes it romantic and human, while a choice makes it feel like love is robotic.

I think it is both.

Love is a feeling, this is what will drive our romance and will keep us moving when life happens. Love is a choice because you will get to the place in marriage where you will have to choose to stay married and choose to love this person.

The longer you are married, the harder you will have to work to stay married. If you go into marriage thinking that it won’t be any work or that you can sit back and relax now that you are married, you will have a hard time staying married.

The reality is, each morning, a couple must wake up and decide “I will love this person.”

Is love a choice or a feeling?

Click To Tweet

Posted on

Coaches & Critics

by

critics

I was reading in Proverbs 10 this morning and one verse jumped out at me. There are so many implications to Proverbs 10:17 that says Whoever heeds instruction is on the path of life, but he who rejects reproof leads others astray. I’ve already shared how this verse applies to accountability in our lives and leadership.

But there is one more angle that came to mind, the area of coaches & critics.

As a leader, criticism is inevitable, it is the admission price to leadership. So the question is, when do you listen to reproof?

Criticism is often the price of leadership

Click To Tweet

A few things help me determine the difference between a coach and a critic.

  1. Do they love Jesus? All your critics as a pastor will claim to love Jesus, but many times their goal is simply to push their agenda, create disunity, destroy a church. Are they loving in their criticism? Jesus said that’s how we will know his followers.
  2. Do they love Revolution? If someone doesn’t love Revolution Church and they criticizing Revolution Church, I’m not going to listen. They aren’t cheering on the bride of Christ, they don’t want to see the mission God has called us to move forward.
  3. Do they love me and my family? If someone doesn’t love me, my wife, my kids and want to see me pursue Christlikeness, become all God has created me to become, if they don’t believe the best in me. It doesn’t matter what they say.
A coach possesses all those things. All 3. A critic often times will not possess any of those things.
Posted on

The Details of God

by

exodus

Katie and I are reading through the Bible right now and I just got done with Exodus and I’m moving into Leviticus.

One of the things that blew me away in Exodus are the details of God. While Exodus is a great story of how big and powerful God is, a great reminder about how God rescues us and redeems us.

Exodus shows the details to which God goes to redeem us. The details of the plagues, the provision of Israel in the wilderness. The details of the sacrifices and worship. Everything has been thought through.

It is a great reminder to me of how important all the things, big and small, in my life are to God. There is no detail too small, no detail that’s unimportant.

It also shows what God redeems us from. This past week, I preached on how the gospel frees us from our past, old ways of thinking and feeling. In Exodus, God goes to great length to show Israel that they are a new people, a redeemed people, his people. The passover is a great picture of this, the details that God gives them on how to eat, when, how quickly, etc. Showing them, you have a new identity, a new way.

Exodus also shows us how quickly the Israelites forget who God is, who they are, what God has rescued them from, what he has done for them and in them, and how quickly they fall back into old ways of thinking, feeling and believing. They complain more than almost anyone else in the Bible it seems. On and on they go, whining about how slavery is better than freedom.

I wonder if when we sin and fall into old ways of thinking, we are like the nation of Israelites. My old body image, my old goals and dreams, my old way of looking and thinking about money, marriage, sex, career, kids are better than a new way that’s formed in the gospel.