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How to Protect Your Heart as a Pastor

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Every week when a pastor preaches, they talk about the sin that binds the people in their church, the idols they battle, the lies they easily fall into and the truth of Jesus that frees them and destroys sin and death.

Pastors by and large, struggle to apply this same medicine to their own sin.

Pastors by and large, struggle to apply the gospel they preach to their own sin.

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Much of the identity and idols that pastor’s fall into reside in what happens on a Sunday morning at church. High attendance, strong giving, loud singing and it was a good day. A pastor will float through Sunday night, post about all that God did on twitter and wake up ready to charge hell on Monday morning.

Low attendance, a down week in giving, few laughs and no one sings and the pastor will go home, look at twitter and get jealous of the megachurch down the road and wake up Monday morning ready to resign and get another job.

The difference between the two examples?

The heart of the pastor.

When we started Revolution, I rode this roller coaster (and still do many weeks if I’m not careful). I was so concerned about these metrics of our church: how many people came, what did people give. Some of that is a necessity because when you are a church plant, there are weeks that if no one gives you may close down. It got so bad at one point that I would help with the offering count so I would know how much was given right after church and then I could go home knowing if it would be a good night or a bad one.

This feels silly to write, but it is the ride many pastors go on each weekend.

Here are a couple of things I’ve done to protect my heart:

2 ways to protect your heart as a pastor.

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  1. Stay off social media until Monday. Twitter and Facebook are great, but on Sunday it is pastor after pastor talking about the triumph of the day. I get it and love to celebrate it, but it can create a resentful spirit if you aren’t careful. Like all temptations, if you don’t engage, you are able to fight it. Also, many pastors want to see how many people tweeted their stuff, if anyone said anything about church and this can easily stroke a pastors ego.
  2. Find out the attendance and giving on Monday. If you find a lot of identity in what the attendance and giving was, wait until Monday to find out what they were. Yes, these are helpful metrics to the health of your church (along with how many people serve, are in community, become Christians and invite someone), but it doesn’t make a difference in the life of your church if you find them out on Sunday or Monday. It only matters to a pastor who finds identity in them.

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When Your Spouse Disappoints You

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People disappoint us on a daily basis.

You disappoint people.

For most people, we look past it, shrug and keep moving.

Something different happens though when it is our spouse.

What do you do when your spouse disappoints you?

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Maybe it is the high expectation we have of them, our hope that they won’t disappoint us, it might be because they are closer to us than anyone us that it hurts more or simply that we are jaded and hurt because of “all the disappointments.”

When it happens (and it will happen), you have some choices to make and the choices you make will have an enormous impact on your marriage, your kids and your view of your spouse.

Here are some things to keep in mind when your spouse disappoints you:

Here are 6 things to keep in mind when your spouse disappoints you.

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1. Protect your heart. It is easy when you are hurt or disappointed to become bitter and cold towards your spouse. If they’ve hurt you, cheated or made a poor decision that has led to financially hardship, it is easy to hold this over their head. Are you justified to be angry? Yes. Do you need to automatically trust them if they apologize? No. You don’t need to keep them at arms length (you may need to depending on what happened), but if you aren’t careful you will become bitter and resentful which makes reconciliation almost impossible. Protect your heart from this.

If you aren’t careful you will become bitter and resentful which makes reconciliation almost impossible.

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2. Look at your sin. When you are disappointed, it is easy to think it is 100% the fault of the other person. Very rarely is an issue in a marriage 100% the sin of one person. Both people have a part. Yes, one is more to blame than the other, but both made the issue happen or allowed the issue to keep going because of not having a hard conversation or looking at the issue. When you are disappointed, look at what you did to cause the issue.

3. Understand why you are disappointed. As you think about your disappointment, be sure to ask why you are disappointed. Often, our disappointments come from an unsaid expectation, how our spouse reminds us of a parent who hurt us, or an ex. This doesn’t mean we let our spouse off the hook, but until you identify why you are disappointed, you may be putting your spouse up against a standard they can never reach or judging them on something you never told them about.

The silent marriage killer: unsaid expectations.

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4. Is your expectation realistic? As you think about your fault in something and why you are disappointed, it is important to ask if you have communicated your expectations to your spouse and if they are realistic. Often, our anger, hurt and disappointment comes from an unrealistic expectations. The only people who can honestly answer if your expectation is realistic or if your disappointment is justified is you and your spouse. Your friends can’t. It’s just you two.

Often in marriage, our anger, hurt and disappointment comes from an unrealistic expectations.

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5. Be honest with your spouse. When someone vents to me about their spouse, my first question is, “have you told them this?” Almost always, the answer is no. Or, “they don’t listen.” Or, “they wouldn’t listen.” Until you’ve told your spouse honestly how you are feeling, you shouldn’t be spouting it to anyone else or all over Facebook. You don’t know what they’ll do with the information you’ll give them. You might be right and they’ll completely blow it off. They may surprise you. They may have no idea how they are hurting you or not showing you love. When I’ve asked Katie what she needs as our kids have gotten older, her answers have often surprised me. Very rarely what shows her love is what I thought would show her love. So tell them. Your spouse is not a mind reader, just tell them.

One thing that many couples struggle with is the wife wants to share about something and have her husband just listen. The husband wants to give her feedback and how to fix it. This often leaves couples frustrated. A few years ago a woman asked Katie what she does in this situation. Her response: “I tell Josh what I want before I tell him. I’ll say ‘I just need you to listen right now.’ Or ‘I want your help in figuring this out.'” This gives me a clear expectation of what she wants in this situation. I know, I know. That isn’t romantic or I should just know many women might say. But it avoids unnecessary hurt and fights.

Your spouse is not a mind reader, stop thinking they’ll “just get it.”

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6. Give your spouse a chance to respond & change. Once you’ve been honest with your spouse, give them a chance to make some changes. I often think a good rule of thumb when it comes to how many chances you give your spouse to change is how many you’d like to get if the roles were reversed. Again, this is the hard choice you’ll have to make, not your friends or Facebook.

At the end of it all, the most important thing to remember with this or any other issue in your marriage is to always fight for and pursue oneness. You will get hurt and disappointed, that’s one thing you signed up for in marriage or any relationship. The ones who survive are the ones who fight for oneness.

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How to Think of Blog Posts

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I always get asked, “Where do you get your ideas for blog posts?”

Blog posts like sermon ideas, article or book ideas are everywhere. They are in conversations, quotes, questions, your devotions and prayer time.

Here are a few places I find them:

  1. A question I have or someone else has. My opinion has always been, if one person has a question, others have the same question.
  2. Conversations after a sermon or in a missional community. 
  3. Book quotes. This is a great way to get a blog post. When a book or  quote makes you think of something, write it down. Many of my posts start that way.
  4. Other blog posts. Maybe you read something that makes you want to respond because you disagree, or you think you could write it better. Go through you old posts from time to time to see if you’d update something or if you can write something that is more helpful.

If none of those work, try these ideas from Ready to Be a Thought Leader?: How to Increase Your Influence, Impact, and Success: at the end of the day or each week, could you set aside fifteen minutes to write down the highlights of what happened? What were the painful moments, the funny experiences, or the most challenging decisions you made? Here are a few more questions: What have I learned from this experience? What did I do well? What could I have done differently? Is there a universal lesson here that others could apply?

If you put these into practice, you will always have ideas for sermons, blog posts and books.

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3 Strikes and a Good Idea

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In Leadership Blindspots: How Successful Leaders Identify and Overcome the Weaknesses That Matter author Robert Bruce Shaw talks about the 3 strike rule used by Mark Ronald, former CEO of BAE Systems, Inc. The idea comes that not every decision needs to be resolved right away. Even in a fast paced environment like our culture today, you can sit on ideas.

For me, whenever someone says, “I need to know now” my response is almost always, “Well if you need to know now, the answer is no.” I don’t like to feel backed into a corner and wise decisions are rarely made in a rush.

Wise decisions are rarely made in a rush.

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According to Ronald, “any concern that affects the whole organization should be given 3 opportunities for a hearing by the leader and his or her team.” He goes on, “Each time the same issue surfaces, the individual advocating the position has a responsibility to either present new date or analysis that has not been heard before – or to cultivate further support from others who were not present or supportive in earlier discussions.”

One of the things people often do when advocating an idea is bring the same stats, data, passion, etc. to a discussion. Not new information.

According to Ronald, after 3 times though, the idea is dead in the water and not discussed again.

If you can’t get buy in from the people above you after 3 tries, you either didn’t do your homework, the organization isn’t ready for it, or the church will miss an opportunity.

If you aren’t in charge though, you can only control the data you bring in your 3 tries.

Let’s say you are not the lead pastor at your church and you bring an idea to the elders or lead pastor and they shoot it down. Instead of walking away frustrated, saying they have no idea what they are talking about or how they are irrelevant and just don’t get it. Ask them if you can do some more work on the idea and present it again. If it is a valid idea, they should say yes.

The next time you see a problem that you bring to your boss’s attention, also bring a solution with it. Your boss does not want to solve your problems, they want you to. You are the leader of your area, act like it.

A simple way to get buy in on any decision.

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How to Use Evernote for Pastors

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After writing about how I was done using an iPad to read, I got several questions about how to use filing systems, Evernote, capturing quotes and highlights on kindle so that you can retrieve them easily. For leaders and pastors, Evernote is a life saver, but you have to use well or else it can become a black hole of forgotten things.

How to capture quotes and information you don’t want to lose.

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There are two resources that I would recommend looking through if you are going to use Evernote well. The first is, Evernote Essentials: The Definitive Guide for New Evernote Users by Brett Kelly and A Guide to Evernote for Pastors by Ron Edmondson.

How to use Evernote.

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Here are 3 ways to use Evernote well:

  1. Make useful notebooks on Evernote. The first thing you need to do after creating an Evernote account is create useful notebooks. I have notebooks for every book of the Bible, topics (leadership, preaching, etc.), current event issues (technology, gay marriage, immigration, etc.) as well as a notebook for future blog post ideas and sermon series ideas. One of the mistakes many people make is not having Evernote prepared to work. You can simply throw everything into Evernote and search for it later, but I think it loses some of its power then. Your notebooks need to be sorted for you needs and centered around the topics you care about or will need in the future.
  2. Get the Chrome Add On. Online, I use the Chrome add on for Evernote. It then sits in the top right corner of my browser and whenever I come across a blog post, talk, quote, picture or article that I want to save to a folder, I simply click the button and it goes right to my Evernote. I can choose the notebook that I want it go in and it is there forever. So, when I know I am preaching on a topic in 8 months and find a great blog article, I simply save it to that notebook for future use and move on.
  3. Go to kindle highlights online. If you are reading books on Kindle, Evernote is your friend when it comes to highlights. Simply google Amazon kindle highlights and click on the link. You’ll follow this page and click on “your highlights.” The latest book you highlighted will be at the top. Simply click your Chrome Add on and it will then be placed in the notebook(s) of your choice. You are all set to find it whenever you need.
How to file your #kindle highlights.

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How to Set Goals for 2015 You Will Reach

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Every year around this time, people begin thinking about the New Year and make resolutions. Sadly, many of these resolutions will not be reached. There is a way, a practice of creating goals you will not only keep but reach.

Here is a simple process I use each year to make goals and reach them:

3 Ways to Set and Reach Your Goals in 2015

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  1. Call them goals, not resolutions. I want you to think of this as a goal, not a resolution. A goal is something you are working towards, with a destination in mind. It creates all kinds of sports analogies that I think help us in our mind.
  2. Look back before you look forward. One mistake I see a lot of people make when it comes to their goals is they don’t look back and celebrate. Often, our year was not as bad as we think it was. What did God do in the last year? How has God worked, blessed, challenged and sharpened you in the past year? I think an important part of setting goals is celebrating what has already happened (and sometimes lamenting missed opportunities). But, then you get to move forward.
  3. What is the one thing you want to accomplish this year? The last thing is choose one thing, not 15 goals for 2015. Will you accomplish more than one goal this year? Probably, but one of the things many people do that sabotages them is they pick too many things to reach for. What is the one thing, if you accomplished it would make the biggest impact in your life? That’s the one thing you need to do. What if you accomplish this by April? Then set another goal. Two years ago my one goal was writing a book. Six years ago is was losing 100 pounds. Both of those goals took over one year to complete, so it rolled over, but they happened. Choose one thing and only one thing and work until it is done. Is it getting out of debt? Going back to school? Starting a business? Mending a relationship? Do that one thing and then move forward. 
    What’s the One Thing You’ll Change in 2015? Here’s how to know…

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Two Things Church Planters & Networks Don’t Talk About Part 1

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We planted Revolution Church 6 years ago. Leading up to that, I attended countless conferences, read tons of blogs and books and gathered up as much information as I possibly could. Then, we planted, joined Acts 29 (which I love), have continued to get more training and now I have the opportunity to train and coach church planters.

Sadly though, not every church planter who plants will finish. Not every couple who blazes the trail with excitement and passion with finish with excitement and passion.

Ironically, the reasons for failing, not finishing, falling out of ministry are usually the same.

The reason church planters give up (or fail) are because of things we don’t talk about

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What is sad about these the reasons is that they are the two least talked about topics on church planting circles.

Most church planters and pastors do not quit or fail in ministry because of theological issues or leadership skills. While this happens and you can lose your job because a denomination changes its stance on something or you fail in your leadership skills, that rarely happens.

The first reason pastors and church planters fail (that is not talked about enough) has to do with leadership health. I am stunned at the number overweight pastors, run down and tired church planters. We get excited about the preaching ability of a pastor but don’t ask him if he is resting well and taking his sabbath. It matters more if a pastor can raise enough money than if he is sleeping and eating well.

If you want a healthy church, have a healthy pastor.

For churches to be healthy, they must be led by healthy leaders

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This means a pastor is eating well, sleeping well, taking his vacation days, not preaching 50 Sunday’s a year.

This becomes the responsibility of the pastor as much as the church.

Leadership health, rest and eating well need to be a higher priority for churches

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Here are a few things you can do as a leader:

  1. Put into your calendar your day off, preaching break and vacation. Nothing happens if it is not on your calendar. I plan the Sundays I won’t preach over a year in advance so I can work series around them, plan my vacation and so Katie and I can make our schedule work for us instead of the other way around. It is almost Christmas, you should have your summer vacation planned (even if it is a stay-cation). Figure out what Sundays are low attended Sundays and allow people to preach.
  2. Educate your church and elders about leadership health and longevity. Your elders may not understand how important leadership health is. They may also not understand how draining ministry can be. I love being a pastor, but it is a job that never ends and can be relationally, physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally draining. By simply adding the spiritual aspect of ministry, you make this job different from others and that needs to be accounted for. Explain this, tell them your plan for health and longevity, explain what you will do when you aren’t preaching and how this benefits you and the church.
  3. Train people to do what you do. When we planted Revolution, I preached 50 times the first year and 49 the second. It was a disaster. Some of that had to do with my pride but also because I had no one else. So, train other preachers. If you don’t have any, use video sermons from another pastor. Will someone get mad about this? Maybe, but that doesn’t matter.
  4. Crush the idols that keep you from healthy leadership. Pride is a reason many pastors are unhealthy and don’t rest well or eat well. Ask for help. Do some research. Admit to someone that you aren’t sleeping well, that you are using alcohol to help you sleep or taking sleeping pills and now you are addicted. Don’t hide in the shadows because eventually you will run out of steam and quit.
  5. Create a healthy culture in your staff. I get an email almost every week from a lead pastor or staff pastor asking, “How do I rest well? How do I eat well? What do I do when my lead pastor or elders want me to be available 24/7?” The culture in many churches works against healthy leadership, but also biblical principles. Jesus had no problem walking away from everything to rest and recharge. He did it at the worst and most inopportune moments as well. He was also available when people needed him. He balanced that well. If you want to be healthy, you will probably have to train your staff as well. They won’t learn it at any leadership conference or church planting boot camp sadly.

As I said at the start, there are two things that keep pastors and church planters from finishing and those two things are two of (I believe) the least talked about things in church planting circles. Leadership health is the first one, come back next week for the second one.

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14 Favorite Books of 2014

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It’s that time of year again, time to share my top lists of the year. If you are a regular on this blog, you know that I love to read. You can read my recent reviews of books here.

Each year, I post a list of my favorite books of the year. To see my list of favorite books from past year, simply click on the numbers: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. To me, I love this list because it shows what has influenced me in the past year, where I’m growing and what God is teaching me. If you are a leader, you should be a reader, there is no way around that.

To make this list, it does not have to be published in 2014, I only needed to read it in 2014. As always, this list was hard to narrow down, but here are the top 14 books of 2014:

14. What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done | Matthew Perman

What sets this book apart from others on productivity: Its emphasis on understanding how the gospel impacts productivity, How the gospel frees us to be productive, and it also brings together some of the best ideas from other books on productivity to show a better system that combines the strengths of different systems.

13. Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know | Meg Meeker

To me, this is such an empowering book for fathers. We often feel unsure, at a loss of how to relate to our daughters, how to treat them differently than a son, or how to feel like we are moving forward in a relationship with them. This book is about what a daughter needs from a father that a mother cannot give. This book gave me such a clear understanding of how to interact with our daughter, how to build a relationship with her and prepare her for the life ahead of her. I can’t recommend this book highly enough to Dad’s of daughters.

12. Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds | Carmine Gallo

Giving a presentation that truly moves people takes hard work. Let’s face it, many pastors are lazy. They become a pastor because it seems easier, they read a lot and most people don’t have a high expectation for a sermon to be great (sadly). They are simply hoping for short. Preaching is hard work. If you aren’t willing to put in the hard work, don’t preach. At the end of the day, someone pays a price for a sermon, the pastor or the church. This is the best preaching book of the year.

11 The Catalyst Leader: 8 Essentials for Becoming a Change Maker | Brad Lomenick

One of the things I’ve been chewing on from this book all year has been, “To get to the top and to be successful at the top requires two different skill sets.” Such a helpful book for younger leaders.

10. Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration | Ed Catmull

This book was so good and eye opening, it took me 3 posts to share all that I learned from it. You can read those posts here, here and here.

9. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less | Greg McKeown

Two things stood out to me in this book that have shaped a lot of my life: If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will and If it is not a definite yes, then it is no.

8. Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God | Timothy Keller

I debated between this book and Keller’s book on suffering for this list. Both were helpful and meaningful in different ways, but his book on prayer opened my eyes on how to pray to God as Father and how to meditate on Scripture in deeper ways. If prayer is a struggle for you, this book is well worth working through.

7. The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers | Ben Horowitz

Even though this is not a church planting book, it is by far, the best church planting book of the year. So many insights from this small business guru that is relevant for churches and church plants.

6. Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church | Scot McKnight

This book challenged me in some ways I didn’t expect. How to read the Bible through the lens of Jesus was one and how to see how God worked through all of history instead of jumping from Genesis 3 to Matthew 1 when we read the Bible. The other was, seeing Jesus as King when I think about him. This may seem obvious depending on your church background, but I appreciate the emphasis that McKnight places on Jesus as King. My church background seems to focus on Jesus as Savior and Redeemer, which He is and leave the King part until the end of the world. Yet, Jesus is King, now and forever.

5. Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You | John Ortberg

If you love what Dallas Willard has to say but have a hard time understanding what he says, this is a great book. I found myself challenged, encouraged and challenged some more. It is a mix of how to care for your soul, how to rest and ultimately, how to connect with God at a deeper level.

4. Hacking Leadership: The 11 Gaps Every Business Needs to Close and the Secrets to Closing Them Quickly | Mike Myatt

This was the most relevant and helpful business leadership book that pastors should read this year. Myatt covers the gaps that exist in any business (church) and how to overcome them. This is a leadership book that I will re-read in years to come. I found it that helpful.

3. People-Pleasing Pastors: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Approval-Motivated Leadership | Charles Stone

This book is unlike any other I’ve read. First, it hits a topic that every pastor or leader (and probably most humans) struggle with: people pleasing. This is an enormous deal for pastors and churches. Second, it combines stories and real life examples with a ton of helpful research on how our brains work and what drives leaders to care what others think. Third, it ends with some incredibly helpful insights to fight people pleasing in your leadership.

2. Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm | Mark Sayers

The point of the book of the book is to show how leadership has changed, how culture has changed and what leadership looks like moving forward. I am thankful as Sayers points out, we are moving away from deconstruction in our leadership and culture and moving towards rebuilding. I’m hopeful Christians get this idea as many leaders seem to be behind the times and keep talking about deconstructing.

1. The Relational Soul: Moving from False Self to Deep Connection | Richard Blass & James Cofield

I’ve read maybe 3-4 life altering books. This was one of them. The authors walk through why we fail at relationships so often and show how that begins the before we are even born, but then our inability to deal with what our lives have been like and how to move forward. Many people cannot work well with others, can’t engage in their family or marriage, struggle to make work connections and all because of something in their past that has not been deal with. This isn’t to say that it is easy, only that, to live in true freedom and be our “true self” as the authors put it, we must deal with those things.

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Why a Pastor Should Work Ahead (And How to do It)

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Work Ahead

Most pastors, because of all that is on their plates have this revolving conversation in their head: It is Monday, they are tired and worn down and they don’t know what they are going to preach on this coming Sunday.

They start scouring the internet to see what their favorite megachurch pastor is preaching on or they read a book in hopes of finding some kind of inspiration or story to steal, or they read their Bible in hopes that God will speak to them and show them their sermon.

Not all pastors are like this, but sadly, many are.

There is another way: work ahead. 

Why a Pastor Should Work Ahead on a Sermon (And How to do It)

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By working ahead, you are prepared for what is coming up, your sermons are not last minute. In fact, I just had two pastors tell me they spend 8 hours Saturday night working on their sermons. 8 hours! That’s crazy.

Every pastor wants to work ahead and when we hear pastors say that they have their next 3 sermons written, a part of seethes in anger.

While I don’t work like that, I write the sermon I’m going to preach on Sunday leading up to Sunday, I can tell you what I am planning to preach on for the next 12 months.

One of the biggest benefits to this is how it helps you to research. By knowing the topics I will cover over the coming year, when I read a blog or article that connects with that, I’m able to save it into Evernote.

But how do you work ahead? How do you know what you are going to preach on for the next 12 months? Here are some ways I’ve learned to do it:

  1. Write out books of the Bible or topics you’d like to cover. Don’t underestimate your passion for a topic or books of the Bible. Often, the next series you should do is one you are passionate about. What is God saying to you right now? How are you growing personally? Can you make that into a series? Is there a book of the Bible speaking to you right now?
  2. Ask your church, staff, and elders for suggestions. On a yearly basis, I ask for input. Granted some people give me input throughout the year and when they do, I add it to my growing list. A pastor should always have a running list of possible series or sermons they are thinking about. Often, the questions that come up in counseling or conversations lead to great sermon series as well.
  3. Get away for some solitude. When I finally decide what I’m going to preach on, I get away. I pray through the books that have been on my heart, topics that are bouncing around in my head and things others have said to me. I often do this in the summer time to lay out the following year. So, this past summer I was laying out 2015.
  4. Map out the series for 12 months. To effectively work ahead on prep, research, and creativity, I find a year a good standard to be working from. I am always amazed when I am reading a book that has nothing to do with a sermon topic and I find a great quote that I can use in 8 months. This saves so much time the week I work on the actual sermon. In fact, just this past week I landed on my big idea for a sermon I’ll preach in 9 months.
  5. Create Evernote folders. Evernote is something every pastor should know and use often. If you are unfamiliar with it, here are two resources I’d recommend: Evernote Essentials: The Definitive Guide for New Evernote Users and A Guide to Evernote for Pastors. I have a folder for different topics: leadership, gay marriage, marriage, dating, eating, health, divorce, parenting, schedule, pace, etc. I also have one for each book of the Bible, whether I am planning to preach through it soon or not. When I’m reading a blog or article online I simply use the Evernote shortcut for Chrome and send it to the correct folder.
Stop waiting til the last minute on your sermon

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I can’t tell you the benefits of this. I am never wondering “what am I going to say this coming week” which drastically lowers my stress level and raises the quality of a sermon because whenever I preach, it has been in preparation for a year.

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Leadership Means Hard Conversations

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At some point as a pastor, you will get an angry email, someone will put you down on twitter or social media. Their criticism may be completely out of left field, false and have no bearing in reality. It may be right on.

How you handle it often has very little bearing on the truth or falsehood of the criticism.

The reason is that the criticism is reality to the person making it.

Another tough conversation that happens for a pastor and leader is letting a staff member go or replacing a volunteer on a team. What often follows this decision is anger and frustration.

In that moment, you as a leader can lash out at someone and tell them they are wrong. Or, help them to see where you are coming from or try to learn from it and help them learn from it.

3 ways to handle difficult conversations

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Here are some things to keep in mind:

  1. Understand where the other person is coming from. As a leader, it is easy to get angry and not see where someone else is coming from. In our sin, we want them to only see our point of view, but our point of view is just that, ours. It isn’t even the correct point of view, it is just ours. It might be right, partially right or completely wrong. Before having a hard conversation and during it, try to see from the other side. Don’t jump to conclusions, don’t try to come up with an answer while they are talking. You may be wrong. You may have made the wrong assumptions about them before the conversation. There might be something happening in their life that has caused them to lash out, maybe there is a reason the ball got dropped on something. Often, when something is going wrong in someone’s life, they lash out at the closest authority figure in their life, and for many Christians, that is a pastor.
  2. Help them understand where you are coming from. In a hard conversation, after understanding where the other person is coming from, you need to help them understand your perspective. This is equally as hard as it will be for you to see it from their side. Maybe there is a reason for your reaction, for your distance, for the change you’ve made. If so, explain it to them. If you no longer see them because you aren’t part of a meeting anymore, explain it. If someone has outgrown their role or doesn’t have the leadership capability, tell them. Too often, leaders will simply make changes without explaining them clearly. One of the things this is most difficult in is when you have to remove a volunteer or a staff member who isn’t cutting it anymore.
  3. Help them see the big picture. This piece is what sets leaders and followers apart. Leaders are tasked with seeing the whole picture, the whole forest, followers are not. That’s okay. It is the job of a lead pastor to see how student ministry fits into the vision, how it affects kids ministry, community, worship, etc. The leaders of those areas are not tasked with thinking about how their area affects another area. It is nice if they do, but that isn’t their role. A person often does not see how a change that might be uncomfortable for them can be good for the whole church. Your job as a leader is to help someone see that. Sometimes this can be helping someone understand why they have to make an appointment to meet with you instead of just dropping by like they used to. This could mean helping a leader see why you won’t fund their idea or continuing doing something “you’ve always done.” It is difficult when this loss is personal for someone and that is why these conversations are so important.

Does this always work and end well? No and sometimes you have to prepare for those losses and see that when someone leaves angry at you, that is God protecting you and your church.

Often it does end well.

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