If you are new to my blog, welcome. Be sure to subscribe to the right so you don’t miss anything. If you’ve been around awhile, thanks for sticking with me and reading on a regular basis.

In case you missed them, here are the 10 most read posts of the last month to help you as a parent, spouse, leader and pastor:

1. 11 Ways to Know You’ve Settled for a Mediocre Marriage
2. How to Build a Team
3. Being a Pastor’s Wife: What Role a Pastor’s Wife Plays in the Church
4. The Five Stages of Discipleship
5. How to Invite Someone to Church
6. 18 Things Every Husband Should Know about His Wife
7. Objections to Predestination
8. 6 Reasons Why Being on Time Matters
9. 10 Books Every Christian Leader Should Read
10. 5 Systems Every Church Needs

The post 11 Ways to Know You’ve Settled for a Mediocre Marriage & the Other Top Posts from the Last Month appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

Good leaders never say, “I never saw that coming”, because leaders anticipate what is next.

Now leaders cannot see the future, they do not know how everything will work out when they make a decision, how things will go in the world or what will happen next. They aren’t fortune tellers. That would be nice, but it’s not true. But the point still exists.

This is one thing that separates leaders from followers. It is also what separates great leaders from simply good leaders.

But why do some people miss things?

They aren’t looking for what is next. Many leaders are simply trying to survive the week. Many pastors are just trying to get through Sunday. When this happens, you don’t look up. You have no vision, no plan, no dream, nothing that you are moving towards. So when what’s next comes down the pike, you are helpless to grab the opportunity.

Another reason is that what we see in front of us, what we know, is comfortable. Anticipating the future is difficult and pushes us into new arenas, new skills and possibly even changing something.

So if you want to be a leader, how do you anticipate the future?

3 things that help leaders anticipate what’s next.
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1. Stay current. One of the reasons pastors and churches find themselves out of date on things is that they don’t stay current on what is happening. I’m not talking about current events as much as I am thinking through how to reach the world around you. Many times pastors don’t know the questions people are asking, so they preach sermons that are irrelevant to their audience. Churches don’t ask who lives around them and how to best reach those people. They ignore them, and consequently the world around them ignores the church.

2. Be willing to ask hard questions. At least once a year (I’d say more than that, but at least once a year) ask some hard questions about your church. Are we reaching our goals? Are we healthy as a church? Are our leaders healthy? Are we seeing lives changed? Are things clear at our church? Do people know their next step, how they fit into our church?

If you never ask hard questions, you’ll continue on the same path, which is usually the easy path of least resistance. If you do this, what’s next will sneak by you.

Hard questions help you see what’s next for your church.
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3. Be willing to look at data you don’t like. Your hard questions will probably bring to the surface things you’d like to ignore about your church. You might see that you have some leaders who need more training, a leader who doesn’t fit in their role; you might see a staff member that isn’t able to keep up. You might even see some areas in your leadership that you need to grow in. This is painful but good. Don’t ignore data, even if it hurts. Data is your friend.

In church, data is your friend.
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I talk with pastors, church planters and people who work outside of the church about productivity, pace, schedule and the stress of work. Over the past several years, I have read almost every book and blog I can get my hands on when it comes to these topics because the balance between work and life is so hard to balance.

Last week I talked with another pastor and he asked, “How do you get everything done that you need to get done by just working 5 days? I can’t imagine not working 6.” In fact, a few years ago one megachurch decided to start putting a theological framework around a 6 day work week. I’m not going to debate that, but from this blog post I think you can determine I think that was not a smart idea.

The short answer is lots of coffee.

Just kidding.

5 ways to work only 5 days this week.
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There are a few ways I’ve learned to work only 5 days instead of 6 and how to not take work home regardless of the business you have. Here they are:

1. Decide you’ll only work 5 days. This may seem obvious but most people simply concede that working more than 5 days is just the lot in life for everyone. We don’t take control of our schedules very well and allow others to dictate them. Work also takes the amount of time you give it, so if you set a cut off time at the end of the day or week that you stick to, work will get done in that time. Don’t believe me? Think about how productive you are before a holiday or vacation. You get a ton done and what you don’t get done gets left (so it probably wasn’t that important).
2. Talk to your boss about not taking work home. If there is an expectation (written or unwritten) at work that you will take work home, have a conversation with your boss about it. Ask what you could do so that work can get left at work. Don’t dictate terms, let your boss be part of the solution.
3. Control email and notifications instead of them controlling you. Too many people allow social media and email notifications to drive their lives. In my opinion, you should check email at lunch and before the end of the day and that’s it. Email has a way of determining your to-do list and if you check it first thing in the morning, it can also hijack your focus as you will think about that frustrating email you got. At night, turn your phone off and don’t check social media. 
   

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   How to control email instead of the other way around.
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4. Do only that which matters. If you hold to working 5 days and sticking to a certain number of hours, this will cause you to cut some things out of your life and make you do only the most important things. This is a good thing. As a leader, you should know what in your church or organization only you can do and do those things. You should be giving away leadership and allowing others to use their gifts.
5. Leave things undone. You don’t need to do everything. This a myth too many people buy into. Some things that come across your desk, some requests are not worth doing. They don’t move you or your church forward. What things should be left undone? It depends.

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Related articles

• Why a Pastor Should Work Ahead (And How to do It)
• Being a Pastor’s Wife
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• The Sins of a Pastor
• 10 Lessons for the Church from Pixar

The post How to Work 5 Days appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

There are a lot of things pulling for a lead pastor’s time, but not everything that comes across your desk or email is something you should do. One of the hardest and most important aspects of leadership is determining what will get your time, energy and effort. And no, the answer is not everything.

While you as a lead pastor could do lots of things, there things that only you can do and things you should make sure you do every week.

Here are 4 things every lead pastor must do:

1. Work “on” the church. Working on the church is not working in the church. Working on the church involves planning, strategy, learning about new ministry paradigms, evaluating ministries, leaders, budgets and asking questions like: where are we? Where are we headed? I try to spend 3-4 hours on Monday morning in this mode. The larger your church gets, the more important this becomes. This is the time where you pull your head out of the weeds and the day to day of ministry to check how things are going. In case you are curious, lead pastor, no one else at your church is going to do this or should do this. This is the job of the lead pastor to see the whole field, not your student pastor or worship pastor. They are in charge of their ministry and can help speak into this, but only the lead pastor is supposed to think about the whole field on a church staff.
2. Care for your soul and health. Your elders probably care about your health and so does your staff, but only you can actually take care of your soul and health. This means, each week you are taking your day off. You are taking a monthly retreat day. No one else can make sure you are getting good sleep, reading your bible (not just for sermon prep), praying, confessing sin. Only you can make yourself do that. And, you can lie to people about that and for the most part, no one will know. You have to make caring for your soul a higher priority than it is.
3. Develop other leaders. You should be spending time each week pouring into other leaders. Leaders who will one day plant churches, business leaders in your church, your staff. And not just in a staff meeting, spewing information at them or calendar issues, but training them to be leaders. You should be giving them authority, responsibility, etc.
4. Plan ahead. You should always be looking ahead. Looking ahead in sermons, looking ahead for the church. Thinking about what the church will be a like year from now, 3 years from now. No one else is doing this for the whole church. Other leaders can speak into this, but the lead pastor is paid to think about this for the whole church.

As I said, there are a lot of things you can spend your time on as a lead pastor and some of the things above other leaders are doing and want to be involved in and that’s a good thing. These are 4 things though that you cannot delegate away and that you are being paid to do.

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Related articles

• Leaders Lead by Example
• The Pain of Breaking the 200 Barrier
• So, You Want to Plant a Church
• How a Leader Fails
• Being a Pastor’s Wife
• Why People Follow You

The post 4 Things a Lead Pastor Must Do appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

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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