Protecting your pastor’s faith

Wow, this is really huge for me from Steven Furtick:


Leaders need to know the facts. We can’t hide from reality, nor should we. But I’m also convinced that too many leaders are confronted with too much bad news without solutions.
This is especially true of pastors. It seems like sometimes we can become the clearinghouse for all that is wrong in our church. And since solutions are rarely proposed, we spend the next few hours or the rest of the day trying to fix problems. Problems that usually dozens of other people could have generated solutions for without our help.

This isn’t just about increased stress and decreased mental energy on our part. Most people don’t realize it, but every problem they bring their pastor makes a demand on their faith to believe God. It’s the pastor’s responsibility to cast the vision God has given them for their church. But they have to be able to believe that the God-sized vision they are receiving is actually capable of being implemented.

If their people keep bringing them problems all the time, it weakens their faith and orients their mind towards wondering what is going to go wrong next. The pastor eventually doesn’t have the faith to believe God for big things because it doesn’t even seem like the small things are being taken care of.

One of the greatest things you can do for your pastor is protect their faith. You want to keep your leader in a place where he’s optimistic. Where he’s dreaming about where God is taking your church. Not on everything that is keeping it from getting there. And the best way you can do this is by limiting his awareness of problems that do not have viable solutions.

This doesn’t mean keeping your pastor completely in the dark. Yes, he should know there are problems. But more than that he should know that his team has them covered.

Commit yourself today to begin bringing solutions, not problems. It will protect your pastor’s faith. And make you irreplaceably valuable in your church.

Quote #8 - Minutia

"We spend way too much time responding and reacting to minutia than really doing work that matters." - Seth Godin

Quote #7 - Give

"It’s not about what you can accumulate but what you can give." - Seth Godin

Quote #6 - Scary

"Do things that scare you and change people around you."

Quote #5 - Internet

"One of the dangers of the internet is that you can do short-term stuff all day long and produce nothing." - Seth Godin

Quote #4 - Revolution

"Revolutions are all about doing something that’s impossible. What makes things impossible is what makes them a revolution. Revolutions change things in impossible ways." - Seth Godin

Deep and Wide

I seem to be having a reoccurring conversation lately. I have been talking with staff members, church council and people who call Charter Oak Church home about our focus. Is our focus to equip people to go deeper in their faith or is our focus to reach out to the people in this region who don’t have a church home? People ask me which one I think is most important. Many tell me which one they think is the most important for us to zero in on.

First of all I want to pull out the middle word – “and/or.” For some this is a one or the other question. Either we will focus on going deeper in our faith or we will reach out to the un-churched. For me and many I have talked with, it is not an either/or, but both/and. We will go deeper in our commitment to be obedient to God’s Word and we will reach out to those who don’t have a church home. I believe it has to be both. But it is dangerous when a congregation makes the commitment to go deep and wide.

It’s dangerous because it becomes abundantly clear that there are no perfect people at Charter Oak Church. The people who make the commitment to go deeper, which really has more to do with transformation than information, realize submission to the will of God has to happen in every area of their lives. The deeper a follower of Jesus goes in their faith the more they realize it isn’t about them. Worship isn’t for us, it is for God and God alone – we worship for an audience of One. Bible study isn’t about how much someone knows. It’s about surrendering ourselves to our Master. The deeper our roots go into our relationship with our heavenly Father, the more we will realize our mandate is to reach out to others.

So I am thankful that there are people here who don’t have it all together. I am thankful that there are people here with broken marriages and relationships because this is a place where they can experience the love and grace of God. I am thankful there are people here who have gone off the cliff in an area of their life because they didn’t have guardrails because we have “go to people” that can extend compassion and mercy in a healthy biblical way.

We don’t go deeper for ourselves. We go deeper so we can go wider. As your heart for God grows larger, you can’t keep it from growing larger for others. So let me ask you, is your heart growing larger for people outside of our church? If so, then your heart is growing larger for God. I believe God calls you and me to be both deep and wide. So what’s the next right thing for you to do? Be in worship every week? Study your Bible and pray every day? Invite a friend in your Circle of Influence to worship? Something else? What is God saying to you?

Quote #3 - Problems

"Every problem you have right now is a perfect one. If it wasn’t perfect you would have solved it by now." - Seth Godin