Welcome to the Wall

Over at The Resurgence, Mark Driscoll offers some helpful advice for any ministry leader who has hit the wall.

Get your sleep. If you don’t, you will get sick and it only gets worse.

Watch your diet. You will be tempted to self-medicate with junk food, caffeine, and energy drinks. Don’t.

Watch your alcohol, if you drink at all. Since it is a depressant, increasing your alcohol intake when you are slouching toward depression and exhaustion is a big mistake.

Watch your temptation. The more fatigued you get, the more easily tempted you become. Take more precautionary measures during this season of the year to safeguard your holiness.

Watch your anger. Whereas women internalize their depression and manifest it with emotion, men externalize their depression as anger and manifest it with explosion.

Get some exercise. It helps you work out your frustration, aids sleep, and is good for your health.

You really need your day off, especially during trying seasons. Guard it. If you don’t take a voluntary Sabbath you will take an involuntary one for counseling and/or hospitalization.

What advice would you give someone who’s hit the wall?

December 15, 2011 in Encouraging, Practical with 1 Comment

Truth for Rookie Pastors: Humility

This is part of a larger series: Truth for Rookie Pastors.

Underneath it all is pride.

If you trace all the failings, all the pain, all the bumps in the road large and small you will find a prideful person inflicting damage on themselves or others.

Rookie Pastors think they have things figured out. And it isn’t completely their fault.

Youth Ministries communicate just how special they are to pursue ministry.

The Christian college culture breads healthy, but unbalanced optimism.

Conferences that are attended, books that sell, and blogs that are read tell the incredible stories of the outlier that succeeded and we see ourselves in those stories.

We are bred and trained to be leaders and in our youthful arrogance we think that means asserting ourselves.

Looking at the end result we want to jump to that without putting in the ground work.

I had a notion that I would leave school and immediately lead a church. After that I set the artificial goal of leading a church by the age of 30. Telling myself that this was when I would be ready, delusional at best.

You and I have no real idea what is next.

December 13, 2011 in Challenging with 2 Comments

Monday Morning Quick Hits

Charlie Brown and the War on Christmas. The message of Christmas through the genius of Charles Schultz has nothing to do with being wished Happy Holidays.
Pastors, how many of these secrets do you have? I’m not a Senior Pastor but mine are #4 and #8.
Companies that advertise themselves as unchanging and forever static will never expand their impact.
I like this but it just more proof that the deification of Steve Jobs is well under way.
Started reading Anything You Want by Derek Sivers, reminds me of Rework or Tribes. Has me thinking if we are throwing out all the rules of running a business what rules should we throw out in ministry.
Big fan of Evernote, but have not used Evernote Hello yet or seen the ministry implications. Any users out there that could share their experiences?
Looking for a last minute Christmas gift under $20? Good place to start here.
$10,000 to Romney is $100 to me.
Dan Kimball on sharing single Bible verses out of context in social media.

December 12, 2011 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

What is Discipleship?

As a pastor who leads small groups discipleship is a common topic of conversation and a rather elusive goal. Recently the questions have become more intense. So I thought you might be able to help.

What does discipleship look like?

In your life?

In your community?

A video to get you thinking:

HT:JG

December 11, 2011 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

Do All Paths Lead to God?

Have you read With yet?

December 9, 2011 in Uncategorized with 3 Comments

What’s Your Drum?

This is a repost from The Original Rookie Pastor, David Norman.

There are few things more powerful than knowing what you’re all about. So many pastors/teachers/leaders spend all their time copying the passions of others and neglect the journey of discovering their own. We scream words like missional, attractional, incarnational, Gospel, and community, but it’s been my experience that if everyone is passionate about the same thing – no one is.

Now, I’m not denying the importance of all of the above, but I think it’s worth the effort to discern our own particular passion.

We all need our own drum to beat

“But how do I figure out what that is?” I remember sitting in a dusty church-office begging another staff member to help me figure out what God was calling me to do. Her response – however simple – was profound enough to provide amazing insight and direction for my life’s calling.

What gets your blood pumping?

Rather than looking for an example to follow (apart from Jesus) – rather than looking for a speaker to mimic – rather than electing to wail away on someone else’s passion – take the time and figure out what your drum is. Grab your drumstick. And hit that drum as loud, as long, and as hard as you can.

What’s your drum?

December 8, 2011 in Challenging with 6 Comments

A Rookie Pastor’s Guide to Christmas

When you are a kid Christmas meant a lot of things: movies, school plays, candy, and of course presents. It also meant you got about two weeks of no school with plenty of time to stay up late and sleep in. Kids don’t normally see past their own circumstances so you assume that the whole world shuts down as well for Christmas.

This changes when you enter adulthood and if you enter ministry it really changes.

If this is your first Christmas in ministry there are some things you need to know.

You’re Preaching the Next Sunday

This year you might get off the hook with Christmas and New Year’s Day falling on a Sunday, but I’ve seen five Christmases as a full time pastor and I’ve preached three times the Sunday after Christmas or New Year’s. If you aren’t the primary teacher chances are you will be the Sunday after, unless the Sr. Pastor has to preach a financial sermon.

Don’t Fight the Worship Wars

I know it is important for you to lead worship using progressive (our new word for contemporary) music, but come December no one cares about the Sufjan or Hillsong Christmas albums. Sing Silent Night, Joy to the World, and the rest of the favorites and put your via la Revolution hat back on in January.

December 6, 2011 in Challenging, Encouraging, Practical with 8 Comments

Truth for Rookie Pastors: Calling

This is part of a larger series: Truth for Rookie Pastors.

A direct result of the youth ministries that many Rookie Pastors emerge from is the notion of calling. Of course calling was not created in the megachurch youth ministries of the 90′s and 00′s, but it was taught and indirectly became the highest goal for an impressionable teenager.

Pastoral calling needs to be taught responsibly, but in the process pastoral calling became superior to all other callings and vocations. Setting aside the issues of how this is taught, those who receive this message that pursue pastoral ministry are not being set up for success.

Pride. Entitlement. Discontentment.

When you really believe that your calling in life is somehow inherently higher than others it makes it hard to clean a toilet, fold a bulletin, or work on a budget.

We pollute ministry by comparing it to other careers and forget what we know about the first being last.

If you want to think of your ministry as you would say working as an accountant or teacher realize that you have to put in your time like anyone else.

Just because someone’s tithe helps pay your mortgage doesn’t mean you are better than them.

Your calling is eternally important, but so is your willingness to serve.

December 6, 2011 in Uncategorized with 3 Comments

Monday Morning Quick Hits

We pretend that the dynamic, entrepreneurial, extrovert isn’t the ideal pastor, but we know in reality it is. Here’s a measured defense of something different.
Can honest scholarship happen at an evangelical school?
As a youth pastor who leads overnight trips with minors and as a former youth athlete that attended summer overnight camps I think that coaches, pastors, and others need to seriously assess their policies and procedures. Things are different now, and we need to take notice.
3 books I want to read, that you might want to take a look at.
Sometimes I need to be confronted rather bluntly as to how I am spending my time.
Don’t blame the media for Herman Cain dropping out. It makes you look ridiculous.
Finally, I’ve got two short videos from N.T. Wright. Summary of Scripture. Have We Gotten Jesus Wrong?