Tag Archives: sin

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Helping Your Kids Process People Who Walk Out

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walk out

One of the hardest parts of parenting is helping your kids process the people who walk out of their lives. It might be a parent, a friend, or if you are a pastor, someone who used to attend your church.

As Revolution Church has grown, people have moved away, moved to a different church or just altogether decided to be done with church. All of them hurt.

This came up in our home the other night as one of our kids asked about someone who used to be in our MC and if they were coming over to watch the Super Bowl. We said, “No, they go to a different church now.” Our son looked at us and asked, “Why?”

That moment as a parent is hard, especially if that person hurt you as well. You want to be honest with your child, but you also don’t want to give your sin to your child and you want to help your child have a healthy view of that person.

It can be equally hard if you are an adoptive parent and your child asks, “Why am I here?”

So what do you do?

Here are 7 things to keep in mind when you help your child understand why someone walked out:

  1. Understand what is your sin and how it affects you. Every time a relationship ends, there is a death. There is sin on both sides. You may be convinced there is more sin in the other person, and there may be, but that isn’t important at this moment. Your response about this person, to this person, when you talk to others about this person will show if your heart is healed and if you have let go. If you struggle with letting go of people or your past, listen to this sermon Katie and I preached on the topic.
  2. Ask your child about that person. Let your child have a chance to talk about this person. As an adult, you have probably discussed the person and situation at length and may be tired of talking about it, but your child may not have had the opportunity. They may have just realized that person isn’t around anymore or this may be the first time they want to discuss it. Let them talk it out. Also, ask them what they miss the most. This will give you a window into the hole that is in their heart and how it can best be filled.
  3. Don’t lie. Whatever you do, don’t lie. Don’t stretch the truth to make this person look worse. It is easy to do, but that is not helpful (and a sin).
  4. Protect their heart. Don’t go into all the details. They don’t need to know if they are wrecking their life, that isn’t helpful. Don’t give them your jaded view of the person.
  5. Talk about who is still in your life. Switch gears and talk about who is coming over, who is still in our life as friends and family. Ask them who they are thankful for and why.
  6. It is not about the child. Remind them of the hard truth that while it might feel to them as a child that it is about them, it is not. This will be something you may continually have to remind your child, especially in a divorce or abandonment situation.
  7. Be prepared to be disappointed. As a parent who has been divorced or has adopted or has married a deadbeat, you will often have to pick up the pieces for your child and make do. This is part of parenting. You may not have realized it when you signed up, but it is part of it, just like the fun times. Be prepared. Protect your heart. Do not let another person steal your joy and fight with everything you have for the joy of your child.
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When Eating Becomes a Sin

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food

I get asked a lot about losing the weight I have and keeping it off. Losing 130 pounds was really hard, but keeping it off and is incredibly difficult. I’ll often get asked about eating habits as that is where most people get hung up.

One of the things that rarely gets talked about is that eating can be a sin, an idol. The reality is, we are told our bodies are the temple of the holy spirit and we are to take care of them (1 Corinthians 6:19). Most Christians use this verse to say drinking and smoking are wrong while eating their next 2,000 calorie church potluck meal.

The reality is that eating is a sin when:

  • We do it mindlessly.
  • We do it when life feels out of control.
  • We do it to feel better or find comfort (ever hear someone talk about comfort food?).
  • Or, when we eat too little to be prettier or skinnier.

So what do you do?

The first thing you must do is understand why you eat. What drives you to food. It is not that you are hungry, we often eat when we aren’t hungry or continuing eating when we are full, so there is more to it than that. If you never uncover why you eat, you will continue to eat in a sinful way by finding your god in food.

Because overeating or not eating enough is a sin and can be an addiction, you have to approach the way you would someone who is addicted to porn, shopping, drugs or working too much.

When you approach those sins, you make a plan, create some accountability around them to keep you from falling into those patterns. It is the same with food.

Here are some ideas:

  • Get an accountability partner for exercising or eating.
  • Don’t buy the snacks that are bad for you. If it isn’t there, you can’t eat it.
  • Make a meal plan so you eat well. If you make a last minute meal it is rarely good for you. If you go out to eat, always know what you will eat before you arrive. Looking at the menu causes you to eat more than you should or food you shouldn’t.
  • Drink at least 100 ounces of water a day. Water fills you up and helps to clean out your system which helps to move things through better. Also, if you drink that much you eat less. If you drink this much water, you are less likely to drink soda. I’ve read cutting soda out of your diet can drop 10 pounds in less than 2 weeks.
  • Eat higher protein meals which will lead to less hunger in between meals. I eat 5 eggs every morning and am rarely hungry before lunch. Not snacking makes a huge difference.
  • Start slow. The big mistake most people make is to jump from what they are doing to eating like Bob Harper tells you to eat on the biggest loser. While that’s great if you can do that, it is often unrealistic. Take small steps and then add to it. It took me 18 months to lose 130 pounds but I went slow and have kept it off for almost 4 years now.
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6 Common Struggles of Pastors

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pastors

Over the past week, I’ve been doing a series on The Sins of a Pastor. These sins are not necessarily unique, but I believe most pastors struggle with them. They are also sins that can be easily hidden, seen as spiritual things, the right thing for a pastor to do and they are often things the church or elders of the church encourage without realizing it.

If you missed any of them, here they are:

  1. Your Bible is for more than just sermon prep.
  2. Untouchable.
  3. The Pastor’s Family.
  4. Need to be needed.
  5. Letting your wife shoulder the load at home.
  6. Lazy.
6 common sins of pastors.

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The Sins of a Pastor || Giving Away too Much at Home

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book

Pastors, like any person sin. While this may be surprising for some people as they put their pastors and their wife on a pedestal, it is true. Because of the nature of being a pastor and the life they live, their sins are often not obvious and ones that no one will ever know about. In fact, some of the most hurtful and dangerous sins are ones that a church and elders can unknowingly encourage. These sins are not in any particular order, just the order I wrote them in.

So far we’ve covered:

  1. Your Bible is for more than just sermon prep.
  2. A pastor being untouchable.
  3. The pastor’s family. 
  4. The need to be needed. 

The fifth sin that many pastors deal with is the sin of giving away too much at home. I think this sin could just be labeled to all men.

This can look any number of ways:

A pastor disciples people for a living so is lazy at home. Much like the first sin we discussed that a pastor uses his bible only for sermon prep, when you disciple people for a living, the last thing you want to do is come home and do more “work.” As a pastor, I get this. It is easier to disciple others than those closest to you. The problem is that as a man, you are called to pastor your family. Every man, every father. Many men fall into this trap because his wife spends more time with the kids, he lets her disciple more than she should. Now, hear me out here because if you miss this, you will miss the point. In our family, Katie spends more time with our kids than I do. But, as the head of our house, it is my job to set the tone of family worship and discipleship. Together, we talk through what our kids will learn, what as a family we will study, what things she thinks will work best for our kids at their various ages. Too many men simply let their wives do this alone instead of walking together in it.

Does not give a vision to his family of where they are going. Many pastors are strong visionaries. They lead building campaigns, launch new ministries, cast a vision for where their church is going. Yet, they have no vision for their family. Think for a moment, do you have a way of deciding how to spend your money or time as a family? How do you know who you should spend time with? What is the most important thing for your family in the next 2-6 months? How will you know if the next season will be busy or if it is time to slow down as a family? Your family needs this, they need the structure that you as the husband/father should provide.

If you don’t have a clear mission statement for your family, read this. The bottom line, if your ran the church how you run your family, how would it go? How long until you got fired for having no vision or organization?

Makes his church more important than his family. Many pastors children grow up to despise the church and the reason is because they grew up feeling like the church was more important than they were. Dad skipped things for church stuff. They were pushed aside for things at church. Now, pastors should work hard, just like any other man. No child should grow up feeling they got leftovers from their dad.

Here are some ways to communicate to your wife and kids they are more important than your job:

  1. Tell them. One day, someone else will pastor Revolution Church. I will die or retire. No one else will parent my kids.
  2. Date nights and daddy dates. Every week you should have a date night with your wife, pursuing her, wooing her, loving her. Every week, you should have a daddy date with one of your kids. Spending time with them, doing something they want to do.
  3. Don’t look at email, social media or messages when you’re off (especially during dinner). This seems obvious, but a lot of people in our culture are addicted to technology. We go into cold sweats at the prospect of not checking social media or email for an evening, let alone a whole day. If that’s you, you should for sure turn it off.
  4. Communicate your family’s important to your church. Tell your church from up front how much your family matters. Bottom line pastor, if your marriage or family falls apart, so does your ministry. If your marriage falls apart and your church doesn’t fire you or put you on a leave of absence, you shouldn’t be there anyway. It is one of the qualifications of being an elder. You should never use an illustration that paints your wife or kids in a bad light. Need an illustration of what not to do, use yourself as an example. Talk about how important they are. Tell your church that by valuing your family, they are valuing the church. If I’m talking to someone at church and one of my kids comes up and says, “Excuse me Dad” like we’ve taught them, I’ll ask the person I’m talking to to wait. If this frustrates them, that’s okay. My wife and kids are that important. I’d expect and hope someone would do that to me.
  5. Be at their stuff.  As a pastor, you have a flexible schedule. Use that to your advantage with your family. You can work on a sermon after your kids are in bed, you don’t have to do it at 2pm during a school recital.

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The Sins of a Pastor || Need to be Needed

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book

Pastors, like any person sin. While this may be surprising for some people as they put their pastors and their wife on a pedestal, it is true. Because of the nature of being a pastor and the life they live, their sins are often not obvious and ones that no one will ever know about. In fact, some of the most hurtful and dangerous sins are ones that a church and elders can unknowingly encourage. These sins are not in any particular order, just the order I wrote them in.

So far we’ve covered:

  1. Your Bible is for more than just sermon prep.
  2. A pastor being untouchable.
  3. The pastor’s family. 

The fourth sin that many pastors deal with is the sin of the need to be needed. This directly affects what we talked about yesterday and how the pastor and his family are seen.

Many pastors as they become pastors do so out of a sense of wanting to help people. This can be seen in counseling, in discipling people or walking alongside of them. They want to help people.

This can hide for a time any way, the need to be needed. This shows up when a pastor:

  1. Must be at every meeting or party for the church.
  2. Visit every person in the hospital.
  3. Follow up with every guest or new Christian.
  4. Baptize everyone.
  5. Always preach.
  6. Never take a vacation.
  7. Respond to every email and call.

Now, I’m not calling for pastors to be lazy. In fact, the last sin we’ll talk about is how lazy many pastors are.

Pastor, take a minute and ask yourself some of these questions:

  • How much do I need to be needed?
  • Do I need to check every alert on Facebook, twitter or email?
  • Do I keep my phone on during dinner with my family and answer it when it rings?
  • Do you check your email or answer your phone on your day off?
  • Do you take a day off every week?
  • Do you take all your vacation days?
  • Do you miss any Sundays?
  • Do you take any Sundays off from preaching?

You may fall prey to the desire to be needed and that may be driving you and your ministry more than Jesus. If so, take a day off, turn your phone off and take a break from preaching.

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The Sins of a Pastor || The Pastor’s Family

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book

Pastors, like any person sin. While this may be surprising for some people as they put their pastors and their wife on a pedestal, it is true. Because of the nature of being a pastor and the life they live, their sins are often not obvious and ones that no one will ever know about. In fact, some of the most hurtful and dangerous sins are ones that a church and elders can unknowingly encourage. These sins are not in any particular order, just the order I wrote them in.

So far we’ve covered:

  1. Your Bible is for more than just sermon prep.
  2. A pastor being untouchable.

The third sin that many pastors deal with is the sin of the pastor’s family and the view they give.

The blame for this sin sits with the pastor, his wife and the church. Often equally.

First, many pastors and their wife feels the need to be perfect. They feel that they are on this pedestal and must always appear happy, put together, growing in their relationship with Jesus. No flaws can ever be seen in their marriage, parenting or life. Often, church members want this. They want their pastor and his wife to appear above the struggles they have. Consequently, a pastor and his wife always feel like they are putting on a show, unsure of who they can be real with, unsure of who they can let their guard down around. What quickly happens is anger, frustration, sadness stay pent up until it becomes bitterness and rage that is let out at the worst possible moment.

This gets past on to the kids of a pastor. They feel that they have to behave perfectly, almost like little adults. I remember when we first started Revolution and after a service all the kids, read that again, all the kids in our small church plant were dancing on the stage and jumping off. A woman came up to me and said, “Is it a good idea for your kids to be on stage dancing and jumping off the stage? I’m not sure a pastor’s kid should behave like that?” Notice, there were 12-15 kids doing this. My kids at the time were a little over 1 and 3 and a half. I looked at her and said, “I can’t think of a better thing for my kids to do be doing right now than acting like little kids and having fun.”

This one is difficult because when expectations don’t match up, fights and division occur.

As the pastor, you have to lead on this one. In your home and in your church. You set the tone.

For me, I have friends I can vent to. Friends I can be myself around. Friends I can blow off steam with. Friends that when I get angry at someone, am hurt or frustrated will listen and then challenge me with the gospel. Friends who don’t expect me to be perfect.

Your wife also needs to have friends like this.

As a pastor, you must give your wife permission to be your wife and a church member. We tell the wives of our pastors, we expect you to act and serve like any other mature church member at our church. We think mature Christians will serve and use their gifts, have a quiet time, raise their kids if they have them. This changes with life stage. There was a time when my wife did nothing but help to lead a missional community with me. I had some people ask why she didn’t do other things and I explained our philosophy, Katie’s gift mix and the age of our kids. They were unhappy and left our church.

Your reaction to that last line pastor will determine if you will find a healthy balance in this.

If you are a church member, expect your pastor to live out the qualifications of an elder, but don’t expect him to be Jesus. Your pastor did and will not die on the cross for you and rise from the dead. He cannot be Jesus. He doesn’t need to be Jesus, we already have a Jesus and he is perfect and amazing and worthy of our worship. Not your pastor.

Here are a few more things to do:

  1. Ask your pastor and his wife how you can pray for them. Don’t look for gossip, just to pray for them.
  2. Give them a gift card to a restaurant for a date night as a way to bless them. Don’t expect anything in return, you are blessing them.
  3. Expect their kids to be kids and act their age. If they have teenagers, expect them to make boneheaded teenager moves like every other teenager. If they have little kids, expect them to tear things up like other little kids.
  4. When you hear someone say, “My old pastor did this or my old pastor’s wife did this, why doesn’t this pastor or his wife do that?” Gently but firmly explain this and then tell them, “If you liked it so much, maybe you should go back to your old church and your old pastor.”

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Before You Criticize Your Pastor

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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.

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  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.

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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.

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Kids Take Their Cues from their Parents

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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.

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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?
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What I Doubt about God

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doubt

I had a conversation recently with some friends and they asked how you discern the idols of your heart. We talk about this quite a bit at Revolution and what the gospel truth is. While there are some questions that others have developed that are very helpful, they pointed out that for them it seems to be a moving target.

One thing I pointed out that has helped me is discerning idols of the heart is what you doubt about God first or most.

For me, with a Reformed lens, I love the sovereignty of God. I rest in it, trust in it, believe in it wholeheartedly. It makes sense, I see it all over Scripture. It answers the deepest questions I ask. It is one of the easiest things for me to believe about God. When life does not go as I planned, seems out of my control, the sovereignty of God is the first thing I doubt.

Think about the approval idol. Someone who wrestles with this has a hard time believing they are loved by God. When they sin, the have doubts about God’s grace, forgiveness, that he will accept them in spite of their sin. They need to grow in God’s grace.

When it comes to comfort, in the moments of doubt and sin, those who struggle with this don’t believe God is good. They believe there is something else that is better than God in that moment.