Tag Archives: pastor

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Just in Time for Summer!

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BreathingRoom-ebooksale-kindle

My book Breathing Room: Stressing Less, Living More is on sale for the next 2 weeks for $2.99. If you haven’t gotten it, now is the time.

If you have read it, thank you for that. Maybe now is the time to give it as a gift to someone.

A book that will help lower your stress this summer.

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Here’s what the book is about:

Finding breathing room in finances, schedules, and relationships leads to enjoying and savoring life instead of simply going through the motions. Breathing Room is a chance not only to catch your breath, but the road to the life you have come to believe is impossible.

Feeling trapped or closed in by the intensity of life is a common ailment in today’s world. You may have come to the point of telling yourself “This is just the way it is.” Don’t believe it. There is another way. Breathing Room will help you understand why you are tired, in debt, overweight, and relationally isolated—and how to move forward.

But before getting to the tips and ideas, you will uncover how you got there and why you are living as you are right now. Until you uncover those crucial pieces, you will simply find yourself spinning your wheels. You want to live the life Jesus promised, a life that is overflowing and abundant. This book holds the answers you need to fulfill that promise. Once you read it, you will have the breathing room you need.

Here’s what others have said about the book:

“You can’t underestimate how critical mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health – or as Josh calls it, Breathing Room – is in the success of a leader. Josh gives an honest account of what led him to dramatically change his life, busts the life-balance myth, and provides practical steps to help others turn that same corner.  I’ve been there too, and finding “breathing room” can change everything.” –Carey Nieuwhof, Lead Pastor, Connexus Church

“While there may be no such thing as a stress-free life, the stress-dominated life has almost become the norm in our modern-day culture. In his new book Breathing Room, Josh Reich exposes the most common sources of crippling stress and lays out a game plan for conquering the beast that so easily robs our joy and sabotages our walk with Jesus.” –Larry Osborne, author and pastor, North Coast Church

“Josh Reich’s book Breathing Room is truly a breathe of fresh air.  You will appreciate Josh’s authenticity and vulnerability as he shares his personal journey to try to find breathing room in his own life.  This is the kind of book that is hard to pick up because you know you are going to be challenged to make life-altering changes, but it will be hard to put down because you know those changes are going to lead you to discovering the abundant life that Jesus desires for all of us.” –Brian Bloye, senior pastor, West Ridge Church, co-author, It’s Personal: Surviving and Thriving on the Journey of Church Planting

“In Breathing Room, Josh Reich opens up with us about his journey of recovery from addiction and compulsions that kept him from living the abundant life that Jesus has in mind for us. All of us can identify with his struggles. Hopefully some of us can also learn from his many practical suggestions and insights.” -Reggie McNeal, author, A Work of Heart: Understanding How God Shapes Spiritual Leaders, Missional Leadership Specialist, Leadership Network

“Ministry is hard work. It’s spiritually draining, emotionally taxing, and intellectually exhausting. Josh opens his heart and shares the pain most leaders carry but reveal to no one. It becomes the secret burden we endure until something breaks. Breathing Room will reveal the warning signs that we’re headed towards a crash, but gives us hope that healthy living is possible for those of us in church work.” –Bob Franquiz, Senior Pastor, Calvary Fellowship, Miramar, FL; Founder, Church Ninja

“Josh Reich is a man of influence, integrity, and a leader of leaders. I have walked along side Josh and personally watched him live out what he preaches. I commend to you Breathing Room and encourage you to learn from Josh’s wise words.” -Brian Howard, Acts 29 West Network Director, Executive Director of Context Coaching Inc.

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How to Recover from Preaching

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preaching

If I got to rank what I love about my job, preaching would be in the top two. I love the prep, working through a passage, a series, thinking through how to best present an idea, and praying about those who will be there, that God would work in their lives and draw them to Himself through my meager attempts at presenting His Word.

There is a downside to this love. It is what happens after preaching. The recovery.

I remember when Katie and I met with a doctor to talk about how to handle the adrenaline that goes with preaching, the emotional, relational and spiritual drain that it can be. (I’ve heard of pastors who sleep for days after preaching because their bodies can’t handle the adrenaline.) The doctor asked, “Is it like teaching a class?” It’s different for one reason – eternities hang in the balance. I heard one pastor describe preaching as “reaching into the road to hell and pulling people back.” (I realize there are some possible theological problems with that, but you get the point.)

The crash a pastor experiences the day after preaching can be brutal. Your whole body aches, your eyes hurt, you feel as low as you have felt all week. For me, I am often so stiff that I can’t bend down to pick something up off the floor after preaching.

So what do you do?

5 ways to recover from preaching.

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  1. Manage stress. Keep the day before and after preaching as stress free as possible. Don’t have meetings; stay focused on preaching and recovering.
  2. Recharge. I do something that recharges me. Hiking, running, playing with my kids, reading a book, drinking coffee with Katie. Read something that recharges you or takes your mind off church. This can be a novel or a spiritual book that challenges your own heart and soul as a human.
  3. Encouragement. Have some people who call/text to encourage you afterward. Have elders or friends check in with you to ask how they can pray for you, encourage you and let you know that they are lifting you and your family up in prayer.
  4. Eating. Most pastors are notoriously poor eaters. What you eat before and after preaching is incredibly important. What you eat will make it easier or harder to preach, to sleep, to recover. Make sure you also drink enough water to stay hydrated.
  5. Move forward. As quickly as possible, move on to next week. Regardless of how your weekend went, good or bad, the next weekend is coming very quickly. So move on. Don’t dwell on what happened (especially if it was bad). Celebrate what God did, learn from what you did poorly, but move on.
5 things to do this Monday if you are a pastor.

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When your Church Should Move

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church move

When it comes to real estate, the old cliche of location, location, location is king. Your location matters. There is a corner near my house that no matter what restaurant goes into that corner, it never survives. I’m sure you have something like that in your city.

The same is true for churches.

Location matters.

The location of your church is one of the most important decisions you make as a pastor.

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Not only in terms of space and what kind of ministry you can do, but what and who is around you.

If you attend or lead a church, I want you to think for a minute about where your church is located and who is around that location. The people who live there, are they old or young? Hipster or middle age? Are they wealthy, middle class, below the poverty line, or a mixture? Think in terms of nationality and ethnic backgrounds.

It is easy to overlook this as a church and keep humming along.

A good missionary, though, thinks about who is around them.

Now the second question: Who are you as a church and as a leader best suited to reach?

This is a hard question and can feel like you are picking and choosing who to reach (which you aren’t). You are simply asking who you are as a leader and who your church is.

Often God lines up who we are with where we are.

I have a friend who planted a church in a bilingual community where almost everyone lives below the poverty line. Why? He grew up in a community like that and understood the struggles. I have another friend who planted in one of the most suburban places in America. Why? He grew up in one of the most suburban places in America and understood the idols and struggles of that community.

Here is the tricky part: What if who you are best suited to reach is not where your church is?

What if who you are best suited to reach is not where your church is?

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This happens to older churches who watch a neighborhood change around them.

You have two options at this point: one, change things to reach those around you, or two, move to where those people and cultures live.

The question a leader and a church must answer is which path to take. Both can be right.

While this is something church planters and missionaries think through as they embark on their leadership, this is something churches and pastors must continually consider as their church grows and ages. This is being a good missionary as a leader, and as your city changes it will mean some changes to your church and maybe even some hard decisions.

Your church might be in the wrong location if…

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The Benefit of a Church Crisis

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church crisis

That title may startle some, the benefit of a church crisis. Nobody likes a crisis. No one likes bad news or being disappointed or being uncomfortable. We like when things work, when things are easy, when things go our way.

Yet if you are a leader, at some point you will walk through a crisis with your church.

It could be financial, you may struggle with where you are meeting, it might be relational with another leader or someone in your church. It might involve your sin or the sin of another leader. It might be that you have someone on your staff who does something stupid, and you have to pick up the pieces of that situation.

4 responses to a church crisis.

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In that moment you have some options as a leader:

1. You can run. Many pastors when they hit a crisis run from it. While no one likes conflict, relational conflict in a church can be especially painful. We put off conversations we should have, we avoid people we need to run into. Or, many pastors leave when a crisis hits. I heard one pastor say that an average church has a crisis every 18 months, and the average stay for a pastor at a church is 18 – 24 months.

Do you run from or towards a crisis?

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A crisis is where leaders have the opportunity to shine. It is the moment they are needed the most.

2. You can pretend it isn’t happening. Many people in their personal relationships act like a crisis isn’t happening. Couples pretend they aren’t hurt by the other or that they aren’t angry. Many pastors, when a crisis hits, pretend nothing is going on. Instead of looking at hard numbers (i.e., our attendance is dropping, less people are serving, less people are joining small groups, giving is going down, we aren’t seeing people come to faith), they simply keep doing business as usual.

Another sign of this is making it everyone else’s fault. The culture is hard, people aren’t dedicated anymore, no one is listening. So the blame game continues to get passed.

The reality is: numbers are your friend. Numbers may be painful and reveal some truths you don’t want to look at or want to pretend aren’t real. But numbers are your friend.

3. You can outlast the crisis. Hopefully you are picking up a theme in this post.

Leaders shine in a crisis. Leaders don’t shine when things are going well because they aren’t needed as much. They are needed, but a crisis is when it shouts for leadership.

Leaders outlast the crisis. Does this mean that people who leave aren’t leaders? I would say yes.

No one said leadership is easy; simply look through history. It is filled with people who rose to the occasion in spite of great difficulties.

A crisis is when a leader shines.

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4. You can learn from it. Never waste a crisis.

Never waste a crisis.

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As soon as possible, begin learning from the crisis:

  • Could we have seen this coming?
  • Did we do something to make this happen?
  • Did we overlook something?
  • Is there a system that is broken?
  • Did we miss something when we hired someone?
  • Did we extend ourselves too far financially?

Make no mistake, a crisis is when leaders shine. A church crisis in many ways is a wake up call to a church. It is God’s grace to a church. It causes a church and its leaders to see what is most important.

It can also cause leaders to take a step of faith they should have taken but maybe were too afraid to take. Many times in my leadership a crisis has pushed me and our church out of our comfort zone. That is hard and painful, but it’s also good.

Don’t waste a church crisis.

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Leaders Disappoint Someone

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leaders

“Exercising leadership might be best understood as disappointing people at a rate they can absorb.” -Ronald Hiefetz

I had a mentor tell me when I first started out in leadership, “Every leader on a daily basis should disappoint someone; if not, you aren’t really leading.”

Every leader on a daily basis should disappoint someone; if not, you aren’t really leading.

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There’s a part of me that likes this idea. It means I’m moving something forward, creating change or pushing against the status quo.

The other side of me hates it because I want people to like me. I don’t want to disappoint people. I want them to love what I’m doing, be a part of it and think, “I never want to leave the church Josh is leading.”

The reality is, leaders do disappoint people, and if you aren’t disappointing people, you aren’t really leading.

Why?

Disappointment can look like frustration, bristling at changes that are made, challenging people to step up and lead, take ownership or challenging someone in a counseling session to deal with their junk.

All of those things disappoint people because it pushes on something in those people.

I’m calling disappointment; when you as a leader make someone uncomfortable, lead a church where they don’t think it should go, make a change that they wouldn’t make.

Now, to be clear: disappointment is not the goal of leadership, but it is a byproduct of it.

Disappointment is not the goal of leadership, but it is a byproduct of it.

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It is the reality of what you are doing.

Disappointment also comes in another form and from another place: past hurts.

When you hear things like, “You’re moving too fast, you’re changing too much, you’re building your kingdom and not God’s”, two things might be happening. One, they might be true and you need to listen to them. Two, someone is looking at you through the lens of a past hurt and past disappointment; you are reminding them of a leader they once followed or a church they were once a part of.

Where does that leave you as a leader?

Leaders do a few different things with this:

1. They run from it. Many leaders have enormous wounds from their past that shape their present and future, and the idea of disappointing anyone keeps them from leading. Many leaders want everyone to love them, which keeps them from making bold decisions, praying big prayers or making any changes. The slightest hint of conflict or an unwillingness to move into a new future from anyone in their church, and they are done as a leader. Many pastors fear the Monday morning emails that come in, so they look towards the status quo and simply surviving.

If you’re afraid of upsetting people, you won’t be able to lead.

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2. They revel in it. Some leaders genuinely enjoy making people mad or disappointing them. In a sick way, it is a badge of honor. “I made this change and we lost __ blank people, but I’m being bold.” Maybe you’re bold, but you might be brash and kind of a jerk. How you talk about people’s reactions to change reveals a lot about you as a pastor. If you enjoy people leaving over changes, that can reveal some broken things in you.

3. They learn from it. Leaders are learners, bottom line. It is not just about reading books and blogs (thanks for reading this one) and listening to podcasts. Do you learn from the reactions to your leadership? Do you learn from how you make people feel when you walk into a room or how you speak to them? Any time you disappoint someone, you should find out why. What can you learn from that?

4. It makes them stronger, better leaders. If you allow disappointing people, turning people’s anger into learning as a leader, you will become a stronger, better leader. This creates resilience to keep leading. The strongest leaders I’ve met are the ones who have lived and led through some pretty big storms.

Strong leaders handle storms correctly.

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How to Plan an Effective Easter Service

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Easter

Every year around this time I get questions from other pastors or people in our church about why we don’t do a normal Easter service on Easter Sunday. The thinking goes, “Churches will have people who only come once or twice a year, so you need to hit them with the Easter message. Don’t miss this opportunity.”

Do you have the right goal for your Easter sermon?

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And while I understand this thinking, I think it is shortsighted, which leads me to my answer:

Don’t miss the opportunity of Easter.

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  1. We do an Easter message every week. At Revolution we end all our services by taking communion. The goal of every sermon is to get to the resurrection. Notice I didn’t say cross, but that’s a different post. Each and every week we do the same thing: “We are broken and can’t fix ourselves. Our only hope is found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.” Easter is just one out of 52 times we do this each year.
  2. Create a reason to come back next week. I have two goals on Easter: helping people take the step of following Jesus for those who are ready, and getting everyone else to come back the week after Easter. Therefore, you have to create a reason for them to come back. Pastors do not put enough effort into this and just hope people will come back. This is why I love to start a series on Easter. In years past we’ve started a series on the Gospel of John and looked at how change works from Galatians. Last year we kicked off a relationship series on Easter. Give them a reason to come back. Never end a series on Easter; that communicates, too bad you missed all the cool stuff!
  3. If they only come on Easter, give it a twist so they don’t get bored. Unchurched people are smarter than we often give them credit for. They come on Easter, think they know the story, what you will say and how it will end. Because of this, they tune it out and wait until it ends so they can go back to their life. What if you hit them with an unexpected twist, hit a felt need they weren’t expecting you to talk about? The resurrection is our hope in all things in life; start with the brokenness it is the hope for. Too often Easter messages are geared towards Christians. I understand the tension because they are the ones who complain if they don’t like your Easter message. Everyone simply doesn’t come back.
3 things that should happen on Easter at your church.

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How to Not Have a Big Day at Church

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big day

Big days are crucial in the life of any church. They are a launching pad to something new. Whether that is a new ministry season, a new sermon series, sign-ups for small groups, classes, VBS, starting a new church, or moving to a new location, all of these are opportunities for a big day and creating new momentum.

That’s what a big day does. It starts something new. It creates or sustains momentum.

Big days don’t just happen. They must be planned for. If you aren’t careful, though, you can miss these crucial opportunities.

Yes, the Holy Spirit brings momentum that you can’t create and can’t explain. Yes, the Holy Spirit wants your church to grow and reach people who don’t know Jesus. This means there are things you can and should do to work with the Holy Spirit to have a big day. You can also do things to make sure you don’t have a big day.

Here are six ways to not have a big day:

6 ways to not have a big day at your church.

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1. Don’t tell anyone. If you want to have a big day, if something new is happening at your church, tell people. Their lives are busy, they aren’t always thinking about church, the new series, new program or new opportunity. Many times this is how things happen in a church. New sermon series, no one knows. New groups are getting started, there isn’t a clear path to them.

If you don’t tell anyone about your church, no one will know you exist.

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2. Don’t preach on a felt need topic. If you want to create a big day around your Sunday service, you need to preach on a felt need topic. This doesn’t mean you go gospel light or don’t preach from a book of the Bible. You can launch a series on Romans and make it a big day, but you have to be creative with it. People don’t show up to your church because you are starting a series called “Romans.” Think through: When the people from my church invite someone, what will they say?

What you preach on is a crucial reason people show up to your church.

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3. Create zero buzz. Big days and buzz go hand in hand. This might be having a photo booth, a giveaway, food trucks, a baptism, anything that is different from a normal week to create a “this is special” feeling.

4. Just expect people to find your church. If you look at most church websites, it can take awhile for you to find where they meet. In fact, I knew of one church that moved into a new facility, and yet the front page of their website had their old address for several months as where they met, after they moved into their new facility. Most churches simply expect people to come looking for them. That rarely happens. Most people aren’t choosing church; they are choosing football, hiking, skiing, the lake, sleeping in or running errands.

Want your church to die? Expect people to just find it on their own.

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5. Don’t give anyone in your church a reason to invite someone. The reason your people aren’t inviting anyone to your church is because you haven’t given them a reason to invite someone. I know you have told them, maybe guilted them, but people invite their friends to something worthwhile. If you can’t remember the last time someone invited someone to your church, or you can’t remember the last time you did it, ask why not? What is keeping them from taking that step? Are you doing something wrong as a church? Do your people feel weird about inviting people to your church?

If you don’t give people a reason to invite people to church, they won’t.

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6. Don’t pray for it. New people, momentum, people beginning a relationship with Jesus, marriages being saved, and the chains of addiction being broken come from the Holy Spirit. If you don’t pray for it, a big day will pass you by. You can plan, be creative, give away a car and nothing will change.

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In Honor of Valentine’s Day

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love, valentine's day

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d share the top 10 marriage and relationship posts that Katie and I have written over the years. Thanks for learning and growing with us over the years. Bookmark this page to use as a resource you can come back to. Katie and I hope this helps take your marriage to the next level.

  1. Lies Couples Believe About Marriage
  2. 11 Ways to Know You’ve Settled for a Mediocre Marriage
  3. 10 Questions You Should Ask Your Spouse Regularly
  4. 18 Things Every Husband Should Know about His Wife
  5. The One Thing Destroying Your Marriage That You Don’t Realize
  6. 10 Ways to Know if You’re Putting Your Kids Before Your Spouse
  7. When You Manipulate Your Husband, You Lose Him
  8. 7 Reasons You Aren’t Communicating with your Spouse
  9. Surviving a Hard Season in Your Marriage
  10. When You Aren’t in the Mood for Sex

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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How to Invite Someone to Church

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invite someone to church

It can be awkward inviting someone to church. We have fears about the relationship changing. What if they think we’re weird, or worse think we’re just friends with them so we can invite them to church?

Yet the reason you attend a church is, somewhere along the way, someone decided to take a risk, to take a chance and invite you. They knew that everything would change if you heard about Jesus, if you saw life-changing community unfold before you and thought, “I have to invite this person to my church.”

But how do you know if it is time to take that risk? How do you do it?

First, how do you know if you should invite someone?

There are clues to listen to when you talk to someone. Andy Stanley calls these “the not cues.” When you hear a person say something like, “Things are not going well.” Or, “I’m not prepared for…” Or, “I am not from here, we just moved to the area.”

When you hear any of these, you know it is worth the risk. Often the person who says these things is searching for something. They may not think it is Jesus, but it is.

Another way is to know what your church is preaching on and finding someone who would benefit from that. Maybe your church is doing a series on marriage, and you have a friend who is struggling in their marriage. Invite them. It might be a series on apologetics, and you have a friend who loves to argue about religion or has questions about who Jesus is and why Christianity is true. Invite them.

Once you decide to take the risk, and hopefully you do, the next question is how. That is an awkward moment. I remember this past Christmas inviting a friend to church, and when they didn’t come I thought, “Great, now it’s going to be weird.” Usually it isn’t. I saw them a week later, and it was fine. Life moved on, so don’t fear. I’ll ask them again.

You can call, text, email, share a Facebook event page or talk to them. Hand them an invite card. Take them out to lunch afterward to answer questions they have or simply to hang out with them. Be sure when you bring them to introduce them to people. Especially your pastor; he’ll love to meet your friend.

Let me end with this.

You never know when a simple invite can change a life. Hopefully your life has changed because of attending your church. This is a chance to change someone’s life and eternity, to help them see the life found only in Jesus.

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How to Make Your Next Sermon Great

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sermon

When it comes to anything in life, whether it is marriage, parenting, leadership, or work, someone pays the price.

In marriage you can either pay the price at the beginning, working through all the junk you brought into your marriage; or you can pay it later when you are unhappy and married or divorced.

As a single you can pay the price to stay pure and wait until you get married to have sex. Or you can pay the price after you get married as you work through what it meant to give your body away before you got married. Or your spouse will have to deal with that thought.

The same is true for preaching.

Either the pastor pays the price in preparation, studying, praying, planning, reading, and listening to God; or his church pays the price when they have to listen to him stand up there completely unprepared, unsure of what his big idea is, as he wanders through his sermon aimlessly like the nation of Israel did on their way to the Promised Land.

Too many pastors make their church pay the price.

I was talking with a few pastors the other day who told me, “It’s Wednesday, I’ve got a title.” If all you have on Wednesday is a title, you are not paying the price for your sermon.

In preaching, someone pays a price, the church for listening or the pastor in prep.

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Paying the price means you plan a preaching calendar, you think through where you are going as a church. You study, you pray through the text asking God to reveal to you what it is about, what your church needs to hear. You read commentaries and other books, you look into the context to better communicate the text.

Preaching every week is easily the biggest weight I carry and the biggest joy I experience.

On Saturday night I lie in bed thinking through my talk and the text for Sunday. At this point in my preparation I almost have the text I’m preaching on memorized and have thought through the ins and outs. I am now thinking more about who will be there, how I will communicate it. I begin praying for those I think of and those whom I don’t know, those who are coming to Revolution as a last ditch effort on God. This is the weight of preaching. If you do not feel this, I don’t think you should preach. Why? When you stand up to preach you are literally reaching into Hell and pulling people who are on the path to Hell (Matthew 7:13 – 14). I realize that is a paraphrase, but that is the spiritual battle of preaching. That is what’s at stake.

Sunday night I lie awake worrying if I said everything I should’ve said. Did God want me to say something else? Was I clear? I pray for those who made decisions, whether to get baptized, start following Jesus, or any number of next steps we talk through on a Sunday. I pray for the spiritual protection of those who made decisions. I know that night will be a very difficult night as Satan and his angels will be going to work on those individuals.

Pastors, do you pray for those who are coming and for those who make decisions? This is the price of preaching. This is the price of pastoring.

If you are not willing to pay it, then do something else. Lives are at stake. Souls are at stake. Marriages are at stake. Families are at stake. Eternities are at stake.

Pay the price.