Your Prayers Matter

Dear Church,

My family is overwhelmed with gratitude for your prayers. Thank you for lifting us before God faithfully.

Several of you ask us often how you can specifically pray for us. I always look forward to giving you honest and immediate needs because I know your prayers make a difference.

If you ever don’t know what to pray, we always are asking God for wisdom to lead well, spiritual direction and power, anointing to teach God’s word, and protection for our family from spiritual and other attacks.

We truly feel your prayers. Without your prayer support, we couldn’t do what we do.

Thank you for caring enough to pray.

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Your Friendship Matters

Dear Church,

Thank you so much for treating me like a normal person. I feel that you honor the “office” of the pastor but love and accept me as a person.

I don’t take this for granted. Many of my pastor friends tell me that they feel lonely in ministry. Many have explained that other pastors in town are difficult to get to know and trust. Others have expressed deep hurts from friendships-gone-bad with people in their churches.

My family feels loved and accepted and not judged by the church. Some people may act differently around us because they are “with the pastor.” Our family enjoys when you are yourself and let us be ourselves. I’m especially grateful when you don’t put unrealistic expectations on my children and love them as regular kids.

We’ll always try to be a good and faithful example of Christ, but we’re grateful when you love us even though we occasionally fail.

I’d love to hear your perspective of friendships in ministry.

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Letters from a Pastor

People in my church often ask me, “What can we do to help you?”

This week I’d like to dialog about how people can truly help and support their pastor. I’ll write from my perspective and would love to hear yours.

Your Words of Encouragement Matter

Dear Church,

Thank you so much for taking time to share how God is working in your life. Knowing that our ministry is making a difference is often all I need to keep going when I’d rather give up.

As your pastor, I’m way more “human” than I’d like to be. In my best moments, I’m fully convinced of God’s calling and presence. In my worst moments, I feel weak, insecure and totally ineffective as a Christian, much less the shepherd of a flock.

Just last week, one of you took the time to tell me how God has used our church to change your life for the better. I didn’t tell you, but on the inside I was wondering if my efforts mattered. God used your words to minister to me in a deep way.

Thanks so much for telling me how God is working in your life!

How has God used your church to minister to you?

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Results Verses Reality

To be increasingly effective as a person and leader, we must grow in our self-perception. Without knowing it, many people believe things about themselves that are simply not true.

One of my mentors says, “People are polite. Don’t believe everything good they say about you.”

Instead of simply listening to what people say (or what you believe), look at the outcomes of your efforts.

Here are a few examples:

• If people tell you that you are a great leader; but you have extremely high turnover in your staff, maybe you’re not as great as you believe you are.
• If you believe you are a great teacher, but few people sign up for your class; maybe your best gift isn’t really teaching.
• If you think you are funny, but other people simply don’t get your humor; you should probably keep your day job.

In the early years, I believed that I was effective in communicating God’s principles of generosity. Even though I thought I was effective, our church didn’t seem to grow much, if any, in generosity. People would even say, “That was a good sermon on generosity.” But if we aren’t getting the desired results, it doesn’t matter what people say or what we believe.

Once I realized that I wasn’t as effective as I thought, I opened my heart to hear clearly from God. He showed me I wasn’t as generous as I believed I was. God changed me before He changed our church.

You may believe something to be true, but if you don’t see results, what you believe may not be true.

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Self-Perception

Someone said, “Perception is reality except for self-perception.” The first part of that statement is debatable, but the second part is unquestionably true. (Anyone who doesn’t believe it only needs to watch the tryouts of American Idol.)

Accurate self-perception is extremely difficult to obtain—especially for successful leaders.

Instead of becoming more aware of weaknesses and vulnerabilities, flourishing leaders can easily become increasingly blinded.

One would think that success draws wise advisors. Unfortunately, the opposite is often true. The higher one rises in any organization, the more likely others will tell them what they want to hear, rather than the truth.

This week we’ll talk about how to become increasingly self-aware so we can grow as leaders and as people.

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The Other Side of the Betrayal

Let me say first of all that I would never recommend that anyone betray another person in any way.

Yet I’ve seen how God often uses what Satan meant for harm, a betrayal, to make a relationship better on the other side.

For example, I can’t count the number of times I’ve counseled a couple through an affair. Although many times this will cause an unstable marriage to break down, often times the opposite is true. When both people are truly seeking Christ, the power of forgiveness and healing overcomes the power of the evil one.

Amy and I watched as a betrayed wife accepted her wayward husband back. Through tears she told him she was choosing to forgive him as freely as Christ had forgiven her.

Stunned, he returned a bold promise that he’d devote the rest of his life to serving Christ and serving her. So far he’s delivered on his promise. Their marriage is better today than it ever has been.

If you’ve been hurt by someone or by a church, maybe your relationship—with God’s help—can be even better on the other side.

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The Other Side of the “Almost Termination”

I’m writing this post on a plane next to Jerry Hurley, our pastor of team development. Jerry leads a team that hires, trains, and develops our whole staff.

We were talking about how many of our star staff members almost didn’t make the cut at some point or another.

I remember during my first ministry role at First United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City, several people on the board decided that I was the wrong fit for the job. They told me plainly that I wasn’t likely to remain in that role.

Around the same time, leaders of the denominational ordination committee sincerely questioned my “call” to ministry. After several difficult conversations, God planted a deep resolve in my heart to humble myself, become teachable, and do whatever it took to please God–even if it meant losing my job.

Something inside me changed. I was no longer trying to prove myself and keep my job, I was trying to please God and fulfill His calling. On the other side of these rough spots, I had the opportunity to do more effective ministry at FUMC than I did before.

When a person faces one of his or her greatest fears of being terminated, sometimes the best ministry is still on the other side.

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The Other Side of Brokenness

A few years ago, I sat on my back porch with one of our campus pastors who was struggling in his role. It was clear that he may not make it as a campus pastor.

It wasn’t because he wasn’t trying. This guy was bringing his best. And it wasn’t because he didn’t care. No one cared more than he did. This guy simply wasn’t succeeding at producing the right outcomes through his people.

When he asked my advice, I told him that God needed to break him. That obviously wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Through tears he told me that he was pretty sure that he was broken.

I explained that if he was “pretty sure,” then he wasn’t broken. When you are broken, you know for sure you are broken.

Over a series of other painful events, this campus pastor finally reached a place of deep brokenness before God. When many parts of his life fell apart, God started putting them back together. Almost overnight, this pastor became an infinitely better spiritual leader and is leading a campus in a way that truly honors God.

Recently he told a group of people, “You won’t really know the goodness of God until you are totally broken.”

If you are hurting deeply right now, God’s love and power are even more evident on the other side of brokenness.

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