Month: January 2019

Episode 050: The Pastor As A Student

In this episode we sit down to talk about the pastor as a student. Why is it important that a pastor be an ongoing learner, and what does that look like?

 

 

One of the traps for a pastor is to only listen to your peers, to people who are right where you are… we need input that is qualitatively greater than our output…

 

We are those who have been entrusted with a message… for pastors, our work is words… so much of our life and ministry lives at the level of perception… that means that the pastor is the ‘first student’ in the congregation…

 

It’s too easy to let the culture at large co-opt our language, where our words all of a sudden carry meanings that wouldn’t have resonated with followers of Christ 1500 years ago… so we’re fighting for an accurate perception of God’s world as it lives at the level of language…

 

We need to be a student because our faith is a received faith… we shouldn’t be the first ones to talk this way about God…

 

In terms of a study rhythm, a lot of us try to keep the mornings open to read, write, or take notes on something… the trick is to devote a few hours a week to study that is not sermon-related…

 

When all you’re doing is taking in and then cranking content back out, it becomes functional and utilitarian… I feel a displeasure in my soul over that… it’s important to submit yourself to the pleasure of reading and learning that is not directly useful to your preaching…

 

All of our learning goes somewhere… we’ve been entrusted with the most beautiful story in the world, you need to tell it beautifully… we submit ourselves to the wordsmiths so that we can tell the story well… I don’t want to tell the greatest story in a mechanical or sleepy way…

 

The enemy of so much of this is our phones… I used to wander around the office with a book, but now I’m [on my phone] scanning Twitter… something is taking up our time… we need to be proactive and choose sources that nourish us, since we are giving out so much…

 

Don’t just read the stuff that’s been written in the last 15 years or so… access the ancients because they are there for you… that’s part of how we sit at the feet of the great cloud of witnesses…

Episode 049: When Is It Time To Resign?

In this episode we sit down to talk about what qualifies and disqualifies a person for ministry. How do you know when it’s time to resign? What kinds of structure and culture do we need to have in our churches to keep them and those who lead them healthy over time?

 

 

God is not after perfection, but he is after holiness… I’m concerned that we’ve lowered the standards of holiness in the church… which means we’re holding leaders everywhere else in our culture to lower standards…

 

In our media-driven culture, we no longer look to 1stTimothy 3 and Titus 1… instead we ask, “Can this person light the stage up?”

 

We made a decision here at New Life that when we ask a guest speaker to come to our conference or church or to impart to our people in any way, we are asking, “Is their character intact?” Sometimes that has meant we don’t invite people…

 

The problem is there are fewer and fewer spiritual moms and dads in the church… we have a lot of young men and women leading the church now with no spiritual moms and dads in their lives…

 

What holds the church together over time is lives that are rooted in Christ Jesus… genuinely righteous lives… if you don’t have those kinds of folks in leadership, the thing will ultimately blow apart…

 

When you have unrepentant sin in your life, where you get caught and you aren’t repentant… where you made efforts to hide it, conceal it, to live a double life… that is a sign that something is really broken inside of you and you need to step away…

 

The world is watching…. and one of the reasons the church has lost so much influence in the culture is that we have not handled our scandals well…

 

Abuses of sex, money, and power are disqualifiers… but also heresy… knowing that you are wrong but continuing to teach it… all of a sudden these people becomes apostles of a new theological movement, standing against the great tradition and doing it defiantly… when you catch a pastor in this kind of condition, it’s time for them to resign…

 

You can scour the documents of the early church all you want, and you won’t find a coordinated evangelistic strategy… mostly the church leaders minded the integrity of their common life… when we mind the integrity of our common life, it’s actually our best ‘growth’ strategy…  

 

Churches that do not have clear government structures inside and outside, I would avoid… a church that doesn’t have a discernible network of elders within and a discernible group on the outside that can hold it to account—chances are it won’t be safe long term…

Episode 048: Starting The Year Out Right

In this episode, we sit down to talk about how to start the congregational year out on the right foot. What should we do? What should we not do? How can January poise us for what the Lord wants to do in our churches over the next 11 months?

 

 

For us, we believe that starting the year out with worship, prayer, and the presence of the Lord does something for the rest of the year in the life of our church… if you can start the year in a holy way, the chances of you finishing in a holy way greatly increase…

 

The essence of the gospel is a new start… we always get a second chance… January gives you a chance to start over and get fresh wind in your sails…

 

Praying churches produce spiritual fruit, and if you’re not praying, then a lot of energy is going to be wasted over the course of the year… when we’re praying, it feels like we do more with less…

 

The right time to teach your church to pray is before a crisis happens… New Life was able to survive its dark seasons because it was a praying church before those seasons…

 

Some of the best prayer meetings that I have been in have been the ones that were stripped of everything and all you had was your naked longing for God… God moves on meetings like that…

 

When people know that their pastors and leaders are willing to sacrifice, are willing to fast and pray, they will show up…

 

There’s a difference between being planned and being produced… we have an idea of the songs we’re going to sing and who is going to lead… but once the service starts, we are saying “Come, Holy Spirit” and we really don’t know what’s going to happen next…

 

I like the fact that these meetings are organic, that we can call audibles… you can feel the room respond to the spontaneity of it…

 

This time of year is the wrong time to try to grow the church… this is the time to build depth and strengthen your core… we need to go deep so that when we go wide later, it can sustain itself…

 

The rest of the year is about to get very busy… if you’re going to add more events at the first of the year, don’t wear your staff out… this needs to benefit them… they’re going to have to empty their cups in the next few months… this is a time for them to fill their cups…

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