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.