Tag Archives: christianity

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When Pastoring is Hard (And 3 Ways to Survive)

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pastoring

Every job is hard. Teaching in a school. Working in a bank. Being a cashier at In n Out. Driving a trash truck is hard.

Pastoring is hard.

Some things that make pastoring hard make other jobs hard and some things are unique to pastoring.

Here are some things that make pastoring hard:

  • When someone stabs you in the back.
  • Counseling someone and then watching them do the exact opposite and wreck their lives.
  • Having a staff member lie to you.
  • Encountering Christians and leaders who are not kingdom minded.
  • When someone stop giving, stops serving, stops buying in to the vision.
  • When expectations for you, your spouse and your kids are unattainable.
  • When giving goes down and you need to make hard choices.
  • When you make a hard choice people don’t understand and criticize.
  • You spend 20 hours on a sermon only to get an email Sunday afternoon with all the things someone didn’t like about it.
  • You spend 20 hours on a sermon and it flops.
  • You baptize someone who falls back into old patterns.
  • Celebrating the victory over addiction with someone only to get a text the next day telling you they fell back into it.
  • When you take someone through church discipline and they relationship remains broken.
  • Watching a couple go through a divorce.
  • Satan showing up at your house.
  • Spiritual attacks on your wife and kids.
  • When someone talks about you (the pastor) to your wife or child.
  • When someone talks about your wife behind her back.
  • When someone you’ve poured into as a developing leader says, “I’m leaving and taking people with me (behind your back).”
  • When people ask why you aren’t supporting the ministry or person they think you should support and get angry about it.
  • Watching a person in your church listen or read someone who is preaching lies and false doctrine.

In those moments, here are some ways to move forward and handle it:

  1. This moment won’t last forever. Go to bed and wake up because tomorrow is a new day. Will some of these issues still be unresolved tomorrow? Sure. But at least you will be rested and thinking more clearly. They won’t last forever. Some of the moments that have been the hardest for me, several weeks or months later are no longer on my radar.
  2. Leadership is hard, get over it. If leadership wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. You were called to it. You signed up for it. It is hard, but that is what make leadership so glorious and amazing.
  3. You answer to Jesus. Yes, you have accountability and structures. Yes, you answer to an elder team, but ultimately, you answer to Jesus. He’s the one who called you, the Holy Spirit empowers you. You answer to them. This doesn’t mean you get high and mighty, it just means you remember where you ultimately end up, standing in front of Jesus.
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Theology Doesn’t Have to be Boring

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theology

I’ve heard a lot of sermons that are just dry and boring. In fact, I’ve preached sermons that are dry and boring.

What makes a sermon dry and boring?

When a pastor preaches everything he has read, making his sermon more of a commentary book report. Or, when he takes all the theology in the passage and has a debate about it, not making it personal or matter.

Does every theology matter to everyday life?

Yes.

The sovereignty of God affects our view of pain and good times. The love of God affects how we view ourselves, our sin and God.

This past Sunday I preached on the resurrection. It is easy if you are a Christian to take this doctrine for granted. You’ve heard Easter sermons. You’ve read the gospels. But think for a minute, someone rose from the dead. Think how insane that sounds.

But, as I read books on the resurrection, they focused simply on the debate surrounding the resurrection. This is helpful and good. The problem, especially in the reformed circles I run in, is that most sermons simply stop at the debate or information about the resurrection.

The resurrection matters more than just a debate. 

Without the resurrection, there is no hope for us. There is no freedom from sin and death. There is no hope after death. There is no hope for freedom from addiction and pain. There is no hope that one day the world will be made right.

You cannot simply teach the truth of a doctrine, you must show how that truth impacts your daily life so that your church sees the beauty of that doctrine. 

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You’re One Choice Away from Wrecking Your Life

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one choice

Last night I watched on twitter as the news of Pastor Isaac Hunter became public. He was a megachurch pastor in Florida who resigned because of an affair and on Tuesday night, tragically took his own life.

I was immediately filled with sadness for this man, his family and his church. I’ve never met him, but I can’t imagine the pain they are going through. How do you adequately explain this to a church? How do you help people struggling with faith who see their leader take this path? How do you help his kids understand why he cheated? Why he killed himself? How do you console his wife in the midst of the affair and now a suicide? For his parents, having to bury a child, something no parent should endure.

Here’s why this hit home for me:

  • Isaac was 36. I’m 34.
  • Isaac had 3 kids. I have 5.
  • Isaac was a pastor. I’m a pastor.

Many people will get up on their high horses in this situation, questioning his character and salvation and faith. The reality is, we are all like Isaac. We are all one choice away from wrecking our lives. 

Every moment, we are one step away from ruining our marriages, career, calling and reputation.

I remember a few years ago when the story was of Gary Lamb and his situation. I sat there with Katie and we talked about how to make our boundaries stronger in our marriage.

Don’t get on your high horse. Situations like this should bring tears and humility. They should cause us to stop and imagine what happens if we make that dreadful choice and wreck our lives.

I’m always amazed at professional athletes and their willingness to try and cheat with PED’s, get caught and lose millions. They are playing with fire. So are many others in smaller ways, but in equally damaging ways.

Remember, you are one choice away from wrecking your life. 

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Planning a Preaching Calendar

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preaching

I mentioned in my mind dump on Monday that we have our sermons for 2014 planned out and I got a few emails from guys asking how we plan that far in advance, what goes into it, how we decide what to do that far in advance, etc.

So, here are some thoughts.

First, why plan that far in advance. This often gets debated. Should you plan at the last minute or plan ahead. The fly by the seat of their pants guys will often say, “I’m waiting for the Holy Spirit to speak” or “If you plan that far in advance, you will take the Holy Spirit out of it.” I’ve learned that the Holy Spirit can speak 1 hour before I preach a sermon and 1 year before I preach a sermon. I just need to listen. I think planning ahead is biblical and wise, whether it is your life or ministry. Can you take the Holy Spirit out of things by planning that far in advance? Yes. You can also take the Holy Spirit out by being a last minute guy because you are more likely to preach what you want to preach.

Here are a few things I think through when planning a preaching calendar:

How to plan a preaching calendar.

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  1. What have I already preached on. It is important to know what you have already preached on and not repeat it. If you have just done 3 NT books of the Bible, change it up. We try to alternate between old testament and new. It doesn’t always happen that way, but that’s the rhythm we seek to have. We are in John right now and before that we did Ecclesiastes, Ephesians, Joshua, and before that 1 & 2 Peter. You don’t have to rigidly lock into that, but it helps to make sure you are preaching different books, topics and genres of Scripture.
  2. What topics do I feel like my church needs to hear. This gets at who is at your church, who you are hoping to reach, what questions your culture is asking. Every year at our church, we seek to preach on marriage, relationships, 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. In this point, you need to think through time of year. We talked about doing a series on pain and suffering in February, but people aren’t asking those questions then. They are still asking questions about meaning, purpose and how to have a better new year, be a better person. You can argue those aren’t great questions to ask, but you can’t argue with the fact that they are asking those questions.
  3. What haven’t I talked on recently. This helps to identify the places you gravitate towards and help expose things you are afraid to address or have simply skipped. This is when you look back at your old sermon schedule and see where you’ve been.
  4. What am I passionate about. This can be good and bad. It is good because you have to preach what you are passionate about. Otherwise, no one will listen. It is bad because you can easily preach what you are only passionate about. It took me 5 years at Revolution to preach through a whole gospel. Why? Because I love the NT letters more. That can be unhealthy for a church if it goes too long. Other preachers stay in the gospels and ignore Paul, or ignore the OT.
  5. Where is my church going. This is a vision question. What is coming up in the next year that you can preach towards? If you are praying about planting a church, preach towards 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.
5 things to keep in mind when planning a preaching calendar.

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How we Miss the Point of Adversity & Pain

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adversity

One of the mysteries in this life is how God turns our pain and adversity into joy.

Often, one of our struggles in pain and adversity is that we look for things that are not promised.

While God does give us answers as to why things happen the way they do, He doesn’t always. Not only doesn’t he always answer the “why is this happening” question, when he does, it is rarely on our timetable.

We aren’t promised answers. We are however promised that we can have joy (John 16:24), we can have wisdom (James 1:5), we can have God’s presence and peace (Philippians 4:7).

Here is our problem with that: we aren’t always content to have God’s joy, wisdom and peace. We want answers.

It is this desire for answers, this searching for answers (while not wrong) that causes us to miss the point of adversity and what God is doing in it, through it and seeking to accomplish.

In short, we ask and seek the wrong the things.

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One Way to Make Church Memorable

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worship

Every pastor when they write a sermon and preach it want people to remember it. Most people though forget most of what is said in a sermon. This is why it is important to have one point instead of five.

You can use visuals, video clips, readings, stories and a host of other things to make your sermon and church memorable.

One thing that we do at Revolution that helps to make church memorable is to line up the songs with the sermon. 

This seems like second nature to us, but I am amazed at how many worship leaders and preachers are not on the same page. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a worship service and the worship leader introduces a song by giving a 2 minute sermon that has nothing to do with the sermon and the point of the day.

A lot of times people will debate if preaching is the reason the church gathers on a Sunday or is it worship. I would say it’s both. If you don’t have both, you’ve failed to do something very important as the gathered church.

At Revolution, we use worship music to set up the sermon and then for the sermon to set up the response time and communion.

To make your church memorable, you have to do a few things:

  1. Decide to connect the dots for people. People come to church with their brains all over the place. They often rushed to get out the door, had a fight on the way to church, a screaming child. They are tired and stressed from the week. They fall into the chair at church exhausted and wanting to catch their breath. They need help connecting the dots. Talk about how songs connect to a sermon. In recent weeks at the end of my sermon I’ve talked about why we are doing a song that we are doing. You don’t always have to do this. But decide that you will do the work of working with your pastor or worship leader to connect the dots for your people.
  2. Plan ahead. If you want to do anything great or creative or connecting the music with the sermon, you have to plan ahead. You can’t decide on Wednesday what you will preach on this Sunday. Does the Holy Spirit change things? Yes. Two weeks ago I rewrote my sermon at 11pm on Saturday night. That isn’t a pattern for me. We plan about 15 months in advance to that the person leading worship can spend time in the passage and let the verses speak to them as they prepare a set list.
  3. Have a worship leader that cares deeply about theology. Thankfully this is becoming more and more important. In the past, being a worship leader meant you could play guitar and sing. The bar has been raised in churches, which is a good thing. Your worship leader does not have to have an M.Div. in theology, but they need to know theology, care about doctrine and be able to discern if worship songs are doctrinally correct. Some of the most popular worship songs today are theologically incorrect. And never miss this pastor: your church will often learn more about God from the songs they sing than from listening to your sermon. 
  4. Listen to the worship set while you prep your sermon. After talking through my sermon with Paul or the worship leader on Monday morning, when I get the final list, I will make a playlist for my iPod and listen to it in the car, while I am prepping my sermon or taking a run. I want the words to get into my head and my heart. This helps me connect the verses I’m preaching on to the songs we are singing, which helps to make church more memorable to someone when they leave the service.
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Shouting So They’ll Listen

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In his book, A Call to Resurgence, Mark Driscoll shared some eye opening stats about our culture:

  • 88% believe Jesus existed.
  • 78% believe God exists.
  • 73% believe in evolution.
  • 71% believe in karma.
  • 68% believe in heaven and hell.
  • 67% believe spirituality exists in nature.
  • 65% believe in angels and demons.
  • 59% believe Jesus rose from the dead.
  • 53% believe in the devil.
  • 46% believe in extraterrestrials, aliens, or UFO’s.

This is the culture we live in, work in, play in, and pastors, this is the culture you preach to each week.

So how do Christians tend to communicate to this culture? By shouting.

We don’t necessarily walk up to people and start screaming, although, I’ve seen people with signs stand on a corner and shout at people.

Have you ever seen someone try to communicate to someone with a language barrier? Americans when they encounter someone who doesn’t speak English, they talk louder. As we’ve brought Judah into our home from Ethiopia, we have a language barrier to overcome as he speaks little English and we speak very little of his language. Our boys, in an effort to get him to play with them or do something, simply talk louder if he doesn’t respond.

That’s what Christians do.

We don’t change what we are saying, we simply say the same things only louder and with more force.

Yes, but the message doesn’t change.

That is true. The gospel is the same. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. We never stop talking about the glorious news of Jesus’ sinless life, our brokenness and need for a Savior and how Jesus met that need by dying in our place and rising from the dead and sending us the Holy Spirit. We never stop talking about that.

But, we can change how we talk about that.

Instead of shouting, find common ground, a common language. Answer questions and needs that people have.

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So, You Want to Plant a Church

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plant a church

Because Revolution Church is connected to Acts 29, I talk to a lot of guys who want to plant a church. It is now the sexy thing to do. It used to be that you wanted to be a student pastor, work your way up to be the lead pastor of a church, but now more and more guys want to strike out on their own, make their own mistakes, do their thing. This is a good thing.

So, if that’s you and you are thinking about planting a church, here is what I’d tell you if we met for coffee:

  1. Be on staff somewhere first. I can’t believe the number of guys who have never been on staff at a church who are planting and getting funding from organizations for it. Guys from para-church or campus ministries with great hearts and leadership abilities, but church leadership is different. If you haven’t been on staff at a church, paid staff, you need to do that first. Watch, listen and learn. Spend time with the lead pastor, the executive pastor, ask to sit in on elder meetings to learn how to interact with elders, learn about the budget process, etc. Learn from the mistakes they’re making, the mistakes they’ve made in the past, learn what you don’t want to do and what you do want to do. While some of on staff experiences were hard, they taught me a lot about leadership and preaching.
  2. What does the church you work at last say about you? Are they supporting you? When a guy asks Revolution for money in planting a church, I want to know what the last church he worked at says about him and if they are supporting him financially. Some churches don’t support church planting and I’ll want the pastor to tell me that (not the guy asking for money). But what do they say about him? Do they affirm his gifts? Do they believe he is prepared? What do they say about his marriage and kids if he is married or has kids?
  3. Does your wife feel called to it? I talk about this more in depth here, but if you are married and your wife does not feel called to plant a church, you shouldn’t. You’ll say that God has clearly called you and it would be a sin not to. As the leader of your home, it would be a sin to make your wife plant a church if she doesn’t feel called to it. You married her. When we look for elders, we look at the wife and kids because that gives us an idea of the kind of disciples a man makes and then we ask, “Do we want more of those running around our church?” Your wife also knows your gifts, possibly better than you, and if she isn’t on board, that’s a sign.
  4. Know what kind of church you’ll plant. As a leader, you should have a vision and it needs to be bigger than planting a service. Too many guys want to just preach. If that’s you, don’t plant a church, become a professional speaker where you don’t have to shepherd people. What is your plan for worship, discipleship, community, mission, evangelism, follow up with guests, givers, new believers? If you can’t rattle off what you will do, you aren’t ready. Don’t just point to another church. They are in a different place, different part of the city, different state, led by a different guy. If you want to just do what they are doing, go to that church and help out.
  5. Be committed to pastoring, not being a rock star. Because church plants have grown quickly, although this is not the norm. We hear stories at conferences of the guys who parachute in and 10 years later have thousands of people, campuses all over the state and think, “I can do that.” Church planters are called to be pastors, not rock stars. Don’t plant with the goal of getting so big that you don’t have to pastor or care for anyone. That’s being in it for you and your glory, not God’s or being for the people God will send to you.
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What I Wish I’d Known About Energy, Family & Mistakes

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Energy

WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN ABOUT ENERGY

Your energy—spiritual, emotional, physical, and relational—is the most important thing you can give your church, and only you can control it.

It may seem obvious, but this is crucial. Church planters tend to be the driven, entrepreneurial, take-the-hill kind of leaders. They are also usually young, which means they think they have endless amounts of energy. They eat like college freshmen and often sleep like them. It’s unsustainable.

While planting is a busy season, filled with meetings, getting stuff done, making phone calls, rallying a core group, and raising funds, you have to hit the pause button. No one can make you sleep, spend time with Jesus, exercise, or eat well. No one can make sure you have friends—and not just church planting friends, but real friends. If you miss this, the extent of the damage can be huge.

Your energy is the most important thing you can give your church, and only you control it.

Many guys who fail in ministry and sin will tell you that it goes back to not managing one of these areas. Several years ago, I did not manage my energy well and I hit a wall. It slowed our church down, demoralized our leaders, and hurt my family, and it took a year to recover as a church.

The first question I ask my leaders when I coach them is to tell me how they are doing in these four areas: spiritual, emotional, physical, and relational energy. You as the leader set the tone.

WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN ABOUT FAMILY

Your family has to come first. They need to know it, and so does your church.

Every pastor says their wife and kids are more important than their job, but sometimes it’s not true in practice. Though it happens occasionally, when missing time with your family is the pattern, I believe it is sin. One thing I learned from Eugene Peterson was that he started to call everything he did an “appointment.” If someone asked him to meet and he already had a date planned with his wife or an activity with his kids, he said he had an appointment. No one questions your appointments.

Talk about this up front. In your sermons, lift up your wife and kids—don’t make them sermon illustrations of what not to do. Talk about how you date and pursue your wife, and talk about spending time with your kids. You are the model to men of what it means to be a man, a father, and a husband.

WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN ABOUT TEAMS

Who you surround yourself with will determine your effectiveness, and the leaders you choose will determine the health and future of your church. This means you must know who you are, your gift mix, what you can and can’t do, and what you do that brings the most glory to God. Then you must look for leaders who complement your gifts.

If you are a strong visionary and can see the future, you must find someone who can think in steps and can see the map, not just the destination. If you love to shepherd people and want to make sure no one falls through the cracks, you’ll need a leader to remind you that sometimes people need hard truth and not coddling.

Your first hire is the most important. Don’t rush this. If someone isn’t working out, don’t wait around. Move quickly to help them find a new role and responsibility. If they don’t line up with your vision and DNA, have the tough conversation. Everyone you start with will not finish with you, and it is naive to think otherwise.

WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN ABOUT CHURCH GROWTH

Think twice your size. Too many planters simply want to get started, which is a good goal. As the church gets off the ground, they can quickly move into maintenance mode. They stop thinking ahead and the grind of preaching every week starts to set in.

When before you had dream sessions, now you are having counseling sessions. Before you used to talk about the future, but now you are dealing with what just happened. In this time, it is easy to stop dreaming, stop vision-casting, and just do.

But that is dangerous. At all times, as the leader, you must think twice your size. You must ask, “if we do this, will it keep us from doubling?” Or, “When we are twice our size, will we do that?”

WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN ABOUT MISTAKES

You will make mistakes—so learn from them. In fact, you’ll make mistakes before you have your first core group member. That’s okay. Learn from them.

When we started, we did small groups a certain way. Yet they didn’t give us the results we hoped to get: we weren’t seeing disciples made and community happen. So two years into our church plant, we scrapped what we were doing and started over. That was hard to admit, because we had 85% of our adults in a small group. But we learned.

Today, I know how to shut a ministry down. I can raise $45,000 in a month to make a big move. I know how to kill a worship service. How to start a new worship service. How to hire a leader. How to fire one. How to have tough and easy conversations. You can blow through those experiences, but I would encourage you to go through them slowly, write down what you learned, and process it with someone.

Lastly, get a coach—someone who is steps ahead of you in the journey. Get someone you respect who can speak into your leadership, give advice, and be a sounding board. It is helpful if this person is not at your church so you can be completely honest with them and not hold back.

WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN ABOUT COMMITMENT

Commit to outlast everyone. Put down roots and commit to one church and city. When you start a church, it is exciting. Then the hard work starts. People stop coming, someone gets angry, shepherding sets in, and it is hard work. That is why, before you start a church, commit to that church and to that city. Put down roots.

When we started our church, our prayer was that we would die in Tucson. We wanted to give our lives to one church, to one city, and to one movement. We prayed that a million people would follow Jesus because of our church. This commitment has helped when times are the darkest, because sometimes your calling is all you have. You will come back to it, question it, and wonder if you heard God correctly. If you commit to stay, it makes difficult situations a little easier. They still hurt and are painful, but when we hit rough patches, my wife and I would look at each other and say, “We decided to outlast them, so let’s push through.”

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