Tag Archives: sermon

Posted on

Before You Criticize Your Pastor

by

pastor

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

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

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

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

8 questions to ask before criticizing your pastor.

Click To Tweet

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

Click To Tweet

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

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

Enhanced by Zemanta
Posted on

4 Ways to Wait until the Last Minute on Your Sermon

by

preaching

I meet a lot of pastors who wait until the last minute on their sermons. Whenever I meet with a pastor or church planter I ask them, “What are you preaching on this Sunday?” I love hearing what series other guys are doing, the creativity. Recently whenever I ask this question, I get blank stares and a response of “I’m not sure, I think I have a title.” Sometimes they aren’t even that far along.

Here are 4 ways to make sure that you are killing yourself on Saturday night to put a sermon together.

  1. Don’t plan ahead. Don’t worry about it. Don’t think about future series, future topics, just wait. By not planning ahead, you will make sure that you won’t find great quotes, examples, stories to use. You will also keep from being able to use videos, certain songs that will allow artists to thrive in your church. For example, I’m going to preach through Ecclesiastes next spring and just the other day I came across something that will bring my point home next March.
  2. Believe that your sermon doesn’t really matter. Some of these are connected, but a lot of people just don’t think preaching is that important. Whether they hold that people don’t want to listen to a sermon or that they should just give a lite “here’s how to make Monday better than Friday was” kind of a pep talk. Your sermon matters. The Holy Spirit likes to show up whenever we talk about Jesus and the hope we have in Him. Lives are changed through the power of opening Scripture.
  3. Unclear on what is the most important thing you do. Too many pastors are not clear on what is the most important thing they do or what should get the majority of their time. Three things occupy the majority of my time:  sermon prep, developing leaders, meeting with new people at Revolution. I essentially give almost my entire week to those 3 things. Even when Revolution was smaller and we didn’t have a staff, that’s what I spent my time on, it’s what I do that adds the most value to Revolution Church. If you haven’t already, clarify how much time your sermon will get, give the best of your day to it. I don’t do meetings in the morning, except on Tuesdays, which isn’t a day I work on my sermon. My sermon gets the best hours of my day.
  4. Be lazy. A mentor told me, “Someone pays the price for a sermon, either the pastor in preparation or the church who has to listen to it.” Too many churches are paying the price instead of the pastor. Why? The pastor is lazy.

 

Posted on

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

by

leadership

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

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

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

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

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

Click To Tweet

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

Posted on

Kids Take Their Cues from their Parents

by

kids

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

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

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

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

Click To Tweet

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

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

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

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

Here’s the question to wrestle with:

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

Dads & Family Vacations (How to Maximize Your Summer)

by

family vacation

We just got back yesterday from a family vacation. We spent the last week in San Diego, escaping the heat of Tucson and enjoying the cloudy, cool weather of California. One thing I’ve noticed in my own life, and so I assume it is the same for other dad’s, is how we misuse our vacation time and ultimately, lose great opportunities with our families.

I always hear people say after a vacation, “I need a vacation from my vacation.” Here are a few tips I’ve learned over the last few years of family vacations and summers with our kids so that when you go on vacation, you actually rest and recharge:

  1. Take all your vacation days. If your company gives you 3 weeks, take all 3. Don’t leave any left over at the end of the year. Your work hard, your family runs really fast throughout the year from activity to activity. One of the biggest wastes is vacation time left over. One study found that 3 out of 10 Americans leave vacation days on the table each year. These are free days off, take them.
  2. Dad’s set the tone. The reality of vacation, summer and really year round in a home is that Dad sets the tone. When I am frustrated, tense, anxious, the whole family ends up feeling this way. How you react to your wife, your kids. It bleeds into everyone. You set the tone.
  3. Prepare mentally and emotionally for time off. Being off from work is hard. It is a different rhythm, a different routine. You don’t wake up and make phone calls, check your email or sit in meetings. If you have young kids, they don’t usually entertain themselves. As a dad, you aren’t used to this. So, mentally and emotionally prepare for it. You probably work too many hours like most of us, which means emotionally you are fried by the time you get to vacation. Spend the week leading up to vacation mentally and emotionally unpacking and preparing for vacation.
  4. Turn off your email, phone, facebook, etc. Vacation means you are not working. I know this is hard to believe but your company will run without you. When we go on vacation, I turn off my phone, email, facebook, etc. I got home to 300+ emails, tons of facebook notifications that I get to pull my way out of. Trust me on this, if you want a sure fire way to build into your family, win enormous points with your wife, turn off your phone, email and social media. Some will tell me they can’t. I will challenge you to look at the idol of your heart that is driving that perceived need.
  5. Plan Ahead. Wherever you are going, even if you are doing a staycation, do some research. Find some ideas on groupon or living social, look for coupons. The internet makes planning a cheap vacation, inexpensive fun things to do, incredibly easy.
  6. Vacation is about you serving. Vacation is a time for you to serve your wife and your kids, not the other way around. Clean up after meals, ask your wife ahead of time what she would like to have happen so she can recharge and rest. While went to the beach, I would spend time with the kids so Katie could just sit on the beach.
  7. Make memories. This goes with planning ahead. While we in San Diego, we ate out a lot. We rarely eat out at home and thought it would be fun. We made sure that we ate near a lot of boats because our kids loved looking at them. Think through, what things can we do to make memories.

 

Posted on

What Do People Feel From You as a Leader

by

leader

If you are a leader, what do people feel when you are around? There is an expectation that people have of leaders, that they will be confident, visionary, know where they are taking a team or organization, but also not full of themselves in the process.

What happens though, when you as a leader don’t know where you are going? You don’t know the next step for your church or organization. Do you fake it til you know? What about when you don’t feel like leading or doing your job?

These feelings will come at some point. You will have a sermon to preach you don’t feel prepared for or are too tired to preach. Yet, it is the weekend.

The reality of leadership and teams is that the team feeds off the leader. A church begins to reflect the leader.

Last year, I walked through a season where I did not live with margin. Emotionally I got burned out through things going on at church (a church merge among them), as well as stress in my life with health issues, car accidents, and our adoption. I did not keep myself fresh and found myself burned out. Crispy. Toast. Whatever word you want to use.

Most weeks I did not feel like leading. I did not feel like preaching. I had no energy to give. I didn’t feel very visionary.

Here’s the sad part, it was reflected in Revolution. Revolution feeds off the attitudes of its leaders. If the leaders are tired, that is felt in the church. If the leaders don’t feel like being there, that is felt and reflected in the church. If the leaders are dry spiritually, that is felt and reflected in the church.

One might think, the answer is simply that pastor’s need to fake it, act like they want to be there and everything will be fine. That isn’t the answer, because faking it will be obvious eventually.

What this does for me is reveal what is the most important thing I do as a leader. The most important person I lead as a leader is myself.

So, how do you lead yourself?

First, you must know yourself. What are your limits physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally. These are different for each person and will often change as you age. I could handle more physically when I was 23 than I can at 33. As an introvert, my limit relationally is different than an extrovert.

Second, as a communicator, how many weeks in a row can you preach before being exhausted and run out of things to say? For me, I’ve learned that 10 weeks is about my limit. Every 10 weeks I need to have at least 1 week where I don’t preach. This helps me to regroup, helps Revolution hear from other communicators and it gives me time to physically recover. I’ve met guys who have longer or shorter reaches on this.

Third, what robs you of energy and what gives you energy? There are people and situations that rob you of energy, do your best to eliminate these from your life. The reality is, this might take some time. You may need to move things around in your life. I’ve learned how many meetings a week I can have with people, how many lunches I can have while making sure I have time to work on my sermon and to make sure I don’t kill myself relationally. On days that are intense relationally, the next day I am sure to schedule introvert time and work on a sermon.

Fourth, deal with those things in your life that have hurt you emotionally. At the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, these were the hardest months for me since we started Revolution. We had an elder roll off our elder team that was hard for me personally because of my friendship with him, but God was clearly moving him to a new adventure. It was still hard. Then we had to discipline a different elder and ultimately remove him. While this was going on, we were merging with another church. The merge was harder than I expected it to be and a lot of relationships. All of this begins to add up, stacking is what one author calls it. If you don’t deal with these, figure out how to take a break from them, you will burn out emotionally.

Ironically, most of the talk about burn out has to do with physical limits, but I think the emotional part of the equation is what burns most people out.

All of this gets into what people feel from you as a leader. If you are tired physically, not sleeping or eating well, not exercising, it will show. If you are moving further and further away from God in your relationship with him because you are so busy doing work for God and helping others with their relationship with him that you have nothing left for your own, that will show. If you have emotional baggage that you have not dealt with, that will begin to show.

This isn’t a call for a super leader. That isn’t the answer, because that isn’t possible. Instead, this is a call to be real about life. To know your limits, to lead yourself so that you can lead others.

This much is true, your attitude, feelings, excitement as a leader are felt throughout your organization, team or church. There is no way around it. Because of that, you need to lead yourself first, so you can lead others well.

Posted on

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

by

love

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

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

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

I think it is both.

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

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

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

Is love a choice or a feeling?

Click To Tweet

Posted on

15 Ways to Improve Your Marriage

by

marriage

Katie and I often get asked about how to improve your marriage, survive a hard season or simply take your marriage to the next level so that it last til “death do us part.”

Here’s a list I put together on 15 ways to improve your marriage (in no particular order):

  1. Deal with all your junk right away. Everyone brings baggage into a marriage and some couples work through as much as possible as fast as possible and others don’t. I think when a couple has been married for 2 – 3 years, you can tell if they have worked on their baggage.
  2. Understand your roles and live in them. Too many couples think they can have a roleless marriage and it will work. The Bible clearly lays out roles, what a husband is and what a wife is. Too many wives do what their husbands are supposed to do which lead to men doing nothing.
  3. Be intimate, a lot. It’s no coincidence that every marriage book, every couple who says they are happy, all say they are intimate, a lot. 1 in 5 couples has what is called a sexless marriage (less than 10 times a year). The average for a married couple is 1 – 2 times every 10 days. Wonder why couples aren’t happy? Those stats are a place to start.
  4. Date night. I’m stunned at the number of couples who do not have a regularly scheduled date night. I won’t go into much detail here because I just blogged about this the other day (you can read that here). Bottom line, you need a weekly date night, every week, protect it with your life and make it a priority and make it happen.
  5. Your relationship is more important than any other relationship (except God). Too many couples make their jobs, parents, friends, and kids more important than their marriages. Guess what? A day is coming when it will just be you and your spouse. Make that relationship the most important.
  6. Pray together. This is a great way to connect, especially at the end of a long day. It is a great way to thank your spouse for things out loud. This is especially good if you had a long day or a huge fight at night. This is something EVERY couple should do every day.
  7. Play together. Admittedly, this might be more of a man need but do fun things together. If you are both into football, go to a game. Go shopping. Play golf or tennis. Run together. Do something fun that is just the two of you.
  8. Find a mentor. Every couple should have a mentor. From the time of our engagement, we have had other couples speaking into our marriage. They have helped us get to where we are right now.
  9. Put the other person first. One thing marriage brings out is how selfish we are. All over the scriptures when it talks about marriage, it talks about serving each other. If you make it your goal to outserve the other person, you will win at marriage.
  10. Decide that you will stay married even if it kills you (and it probably will). This may sound obvious, but even though couples don’t get married planning to get divorced, so many couples are willing to call it quits really quickly. If you are going to work through all your junk (see #1), you will need the confidence that no matter what, this thing will make it to the end. If you decide to stay married even if it kills you, you can really do anything and get through anything. It will be hard, but deciding this ahead of time will go a long way.
  11. No secrets. It is amazing to me the number of couples who keep secrets from their spouse. I have had men tell me something and then say, “Don’t tell my wife.” Uh, if you don’t, I will. No wonder marriages implode, they don’t trust each other.
  12. Work out of your gifting. While there are specific roles for men and women in marriage (#2), there are many things in marriage that it doesn’t matter who does them. Things like finances. Some are gifted at it, others aren’t. Do the things you are good at, let your spouse do what they are good at.
  13. Men, lead. This has to do with roles (#2), but too many men do not lead and take initiative in their marriages and consequently, their marriages suffer. Men are called to take initiative, to lead with a servant’s heart, to passionately pastor their wives and kids. With Jesus as our model, this is something that will save you a lot of heartaches.
  14. Stay pure. This is not just for men. This is not just a physical thing. It is an all-encompassing thing. Are you physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, mentally attached to someone you are not married to? Your spouse is the person who should meet these needs more than any other person.
  15. Boundaries. Because of what I do, Katie and I have put into place some specific boundaries (you can read about those here). The point is, you must protect yourself, your heart and the purity of your marriage. It is hard to commit adultery if you don’t put yourself in the position to commit adultery.
Posted on

Coaches & Critics

by

critics

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

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

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

Criticism is often the price of leadership

Click To Tweet

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

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

Preaching to Believers & Seekers

by

preaching

I got asked last week and I’ve been asked this by leaders from time to time, but the question goes like this, “How do you preach to believers and seekers?”

This question begins with what I believe is false thinking, that believers and seekers have different needs.

I want to be clear, believers and seekers are in different places on their spiritual journey. A person who walks into a church who has been walking with Jesus for 30 years compared to someone who has walked in for the first time, are in different places. They ask different questions. They’ll even tell you they have different needs. But in reality, they are looking and asking the same thing, just in different ways.

Those who do not yet follow Jesus are asking, “How can I save my marriage? Communicate with my teenager? Get my finances in order? Find happiness in life?” They may even be asking deeper philosophical questions like, “Why did God allow that to happen in my life? Is God real or is this just a cosmic accident?”

Those who are followers of Jesus are asking, “How do I grow in my relationship with Jesus? How do I pray? Read my Bible?” They are also asking, “How can I save my marriage? Communicate with my teenager? Get my finances in order? Find happiness in life?” They may even be asking deeper philosophical questions like, “Why did God allow that to happen in my life? Is God real or is this just a cosmic accident?”

Each person who walks into a church on the weekend or a missional community during the week wants to know if John 10:10b is true. Does Jesus promise life? What is this life? How do I get it?

Now to be clear, no one has ever walked up to me and asked this question, but underneath the questions people ask, the prayer requests people list, the hurt in their eyes as we pray over them at Revolution, they want to know this. Is there life? How do I get it?

In the end, believers and seekers are asking the same thing, they are asking a gospel question.

This is one of the reasons I love preaching through books of the Bible. Every single week I will have multiple conversations that start like this, “how did you know that was exactly what I needed to hear” or “how did you know I was wrestling with that this week?” The funny thing about that is we plan our sermons 12 months in advance.

Now, when you preach to each of these groups, you will have to do some things differently. Believers will give you the benefit of the doubt. Often if you say something is in the Bible, they’ll believe. Seekers are more skeptical. They want to know why they should trust you, believe you. They often think you have something up your sleeve, like you are selling them a bill of goods.

This is another advantage to preaching through books of the Bible. You simply preach the next line in the book, the next verse, the next topic. They are able to open the Bible and see where you are, that you aren’t making it up.