Tag: church leadership

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…

Episode 044: The Pastor in Relationship

In this episode, we sit down to talk about the kinds of relationships pastors need to cultivate in order to live and lead from a healthy place.

 

This is particularly tricky for young pastors or church planters… on one level, this is the last question you think about – who’s leading me, who’s caring for me?

 

Part of the reason this is so tricky is that there’s a power differential here… it can make it tricky to know what you’re seeing with people… are people drawing near to us because they care for us, or because they need us?

 

Only recently have I begun to think about the kinds of relationships I need… it’s not just about “having friends”… maybe we need to think of the pastor like Frodo Baggins… on the quest, you need several different kinds of people around you…

 

We need relationships inside the community certainly, but also relationships outside the community in order to stay healthy… keeping this in the right balance is crucial…

 

There’s already a distance between the pulpit and the pew in the very first interaction that people have with us… sometimes we unwittingly increase that gap… but we can also intentionally decrease that distance…

 

A spiritual director is someone that you see not exclusively when you’re in crisis… they are someone to help you see and pay attention to what is going on in your life, and even to bear witness to that…

 

What happens to us when we don’t have real relationships is that we become a parody of ourselves… we start being our persona and cease being the person God made us to be…

 

The fruits of the Holy Spirit are still the best index of whether or not we are healthy…

 

Episode 041: The Art of Making Big Decisions – Eight Questions to Ask

In this episode, we sit down to discuss eight questions leaders should ask themselves as they follow the Lord’s leading through big decisions.

 

 

[You can see Pastor Brady’s Eight Questions at the bottom of the podcast notes. If you are able, it might be helpful to view these while listening!]

 

I’m finding that seminaries are turning out great preachers and teachers… but by their own admission they have fallen short in preparing young men and women for the entrepreneurial [aspects of pastoring]… A lot of pastors make big mistakes that cost them equity with their congregations…

 

A lot of people have a “good idea” and THEN they pray about it… it can be hard to talk yourself out of a good idea… the best ideas come when we are in prayer—they don’t start with us…

 

I need to check my motives and be self-aware… what is motivating me to do this… is God really leading me to do this…? In Acts, the Scripture says that “it seemed good to them,” and then they prayed some more…

 

I know God is leading me to do it when I can’t do it on my own, when it requires faith, when it is scary and unsettling… when there is a peace about hearing his voice and a terror about following it through…

 

We have brilliant people at New Life that understand systems, structures, and budgets… they’re not there to throw a wet blanket on the plan… plans get tested in the fires of community and scrutiny…

 

One of the ways that God confirms that he is calling you to do something is that he sends you the people you need to do it with you… often, pastors have great ideas but not the right people to execute them…

 

A lot of young leaders get hijacked in this process… does the leader have the right TEAM around them… we don’t see any missionary journeys in the New Testament where people go alone… they go out two by two… even the Apostle Paul needed a team…

 

Do you have a plan to communicate the need? If you’re embarrassed about talking about money, then you’re not going to do anything big for the Lord…

 

Often, even after all is said and done, the Lord will say “Not yet…” We don’t always see everything that’s going on, so we need to learn to trust those little “pauses”… this is about taking the finalized plan and laying it at the altar one last time…

 

Knowing what the “win” is ahead of time will give you clarity and help you celebrate…

 

The Art of Making Big Decisions

Eight Questions

1 – Have we prayed?

2 – Is God leading us to do this?

3 – Do we have the right vision or plan?

4 – Do we have the right leader?

5 – Do we have the right team?

6 – Do we have enough money?

7 – Is this the right time?

8 – What is the win? Why are we doing this?

Episode 038: A Conversation with Clayton King

For this conversation, we sit down with Clayton King and discuss the leadership structure of Newspring Church and the value of healthy confrontation.

 

 

http://www.essentialchurchconference.com/

 

We have lead pastors, teaching pastors, and campus pastors… each one of our campuses has a campus pastor who handles the day-in and day-out and preaches occasionally…

 

Our lead pastors—there are four: a pastor of culture and vision, a pastor of ministries, a pastor of finances and facilities, and a pastor of campuses—serve together in a lead pastor role…

 

Then we have three teaching pastors who preach and teach and create the series’ we’re going to go through…

 

The team approach is a beautiful thing for us because it forces us to submit our egos to the Holy Spirit; you can’t hide from ego in that kind of space…

 

The system is important, but it’s really the goodness of the people that makes the system work…

 

There’s nothing like personal integrity… it is indispensable… for us, what we’ve learned is that the Holy Spirit wants to bring unity… and while there isn’t a model prescribed in Scripture, there are some bedrock principles…

 

One of the decisions we made after our change was that we were going to quit reporting our numbers… we wanted to be more focused on discipling and shepherding our people… We changed the culture so that our pastors and shepherds were part of the family…

 

We’re also more open to the Holy Spirit… his presence and gifts… we’ve sensed a fresh wind and fire, a revival, where we’re seeing people healed at our gatherings, where we’re praying over and for people and sharing prophetic words…

 

We are not telling people “This is the only way to do church”; we are saying, “This is what the Holy Spirit has told us to do…”

 

Every church has opportunities to make changes… and we should seize those opportunities… but don’t make them quickly or out of panic… don’t get in a hurry… slow down, take your time, and labor before the Lord… and God’s church will prevail…

 

When you embrace healthy confrontation, while it is hard in the beginning, eventually it becomes normal… once an ego has been exposed, bruised, and then recovers, as a team we’re less likely to get hurt or take offense… it’s a maturing process…

 

http://www.claytonking.com/

Episode 034: Reflections on Willow Creek

For this conversation, we discuss the situation at Willow Creek and how this should cause us to reflect and pay attention in a deeper way.

 

This situation should cause us to reflect and pay attention in a deeper way…

 

There are three groups of people here: the victims, the congregation, and Bill and the leadership—it’s important to separate those groups of people, and each group needs special attention…

 

But it starts first with those who were violated… those victims need to be listened to and given every opportunity to heal… they need our primary attention…

 

The first thing the new leadership must do is re-establish trust and credibility, or they won’t be able to help anyone… they need to slow down and simplify…

 

At New Life [after our crises], we cleared our calendars, stopped doing outside events, and became a church family again… for us, it was about prayer, worship, Scripture, and sacraments…

 

What I would say to Willow Creek is that you don’t know how hurt you are right now… take some time, take a deep breath, and do a full evaluation before you move ahead…

 

There are some systemic problems in the American church culture… number one: pastors are not designed or called by God to be celebrities… the moment we embrace a celebrity culture in the church we are headed for a train wreck… it has to stop…

 

We have a lot of orphans that are leading churches who haven’t learned how to be sons and daughters… you can’t be a mom or a dad before you’ve been a son or a daughter… in the church, we’ve skipped this step…

 

If your first thought is “We have to protect the church” you are in huge error… the call is not to protect the institution but to help people get healed… Jesus was not interested in guarding the religious institutions of his day, he was interested in bringing healing… if it cost the institution, then so be it…

 

If you think about the parable of the lost sheep, the 99 represented the economic good of the shepherd… Jesus was willing to risk the institution of the 99 for the sake of the one… if Jesus is the Head of the church, he is capable of sustaining the church when there is bad news…

 

The Lord brought Willow into existence and he is going to bring it back to a place of fruitfulness, so let’s pray and speak blessing over them…

Episode 033: Drawing the Best Out of Your Team

For this conversation, we were joined by Ted Egly from the Center for Creative Leadership to talk about what leaders can do to get the best out of the teams and organizations they lead.

 

The research says that a high-performing team has three things: they celebrate wins early, they slow down in order to power up, and they are willing to change…

 

In my experience, the celebrations that are most powerful are the ones that affirm or encourage those who are actually moving the mission forward…

 

This really means that pastors have to be mindful of what is happening in their ministries… sometimes when the church gets to a certain size, ministry leaders lose a sense of what is going on…

 

We need to give ourselves white space [in our schedules] to slow down in order to be more intentional about what we’re doing…

 

Routines and rituals are all about being intentional about the script that you’re writing for your week, month, and year… you need to set them up so that you’re not just pulled by the emergency of the day…

 

I tell pastors all the time that if they’re preaching every Sunday, it’s a mistake… it’s hard to be creative that often… I use my weeks off to do exactly what we’re talking about: planning, leadership development, etc.…

 

We’re married to the mission, but we date the model… the model is going to change… sometimes we get stuck in a model that used to work…

 

The pain of staying the same has to be greater [for you] than the pain of changing… pastors need to make assess whether the pain that comes from change is worth it… a lot of times for pastors, the perceived pain is greater than the actual pain of the change… usually, it brings relief to the organization…

 

We can prepare people for the changes that are coming by having the conversation early with a core group of influencers and letting them speak into the process…

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • Assess yourself: which of Ted’s three elements of a high-performing team do you think you and your team are best at? Why did you give that answer?
  • Which of the three do you need the most improvement at? Why do you think that?
  • What is one thing you can begin to do this week or month that will help your team perform at a higher level?

Episode 023: Spiritual Authority

Spiritual Authority is a significant biblical concept that recognizes that God sends people into our lives to speak to us and guide us. In this essential conversation, we talk about the importance of spiritual authority, why people don’t accept it, and how, when it is done right, it can be a beautiful gift.

 

Episode 023 – SHOW NOTES – Spiritual Authority

 

Spiritual authority is an awareness that God has placed people in my life to help guide me to the place that the Lord has directed me… It is because of the frailty of human life that we need people around us to help us see our blind spots…

 

We have created an entire generation of consumer believers who come to church because it’s convenient or feels good, but the moment someone begins speaking directly to them, they flee to the next church down the street… this has damaged the message of the gospel…

 

You only have as much authority as you are willing to submit to… everyone wants to be in charge… but delegated spiritual authority is given to us when we are found trustworthy by the Lord… he can’t trust us with leadership if we aren’t willing to serve our way into it…

 

Jesus was constantly telling his disciples: do not fight your way to the top, don’t demand to be in charge, don’t demand the spotlight… if you want to be great, you must serve your way there…

 

If people are talking more about the person who preached the sermon than on the Christ that was preached in the sermon, you need to flee and go to another place… there is a cult of personality happening in the church now that is hurting us… it’s a sign that the leaders of that church are probably not submitted to healthy, biblical authority…

 

The only way you know whether you are really submitted to authority is if someone can tell you “no”… I have some great mentors in my life, and if any of them told me not to do something, I would hit the brakes… if my wife said to me about something “Don’t do it,” I wouldn’t…

 

The three areas we need input and oversight are: your personal life, your theology, and your money/spending (both inside the church and in your house)…

 

A lot of leaders fall into this trap of being “the God expert,” and so they don’t feel like they have permission to question or doubt or wrestle with the deep, troubling questions of Scripture… pastors need people to bounce [theological/interpretive] ideas off of…

 

The way we spend our money reflects our hearts… pastors are notorious for saying this to their congregations, but often we ask it of ourselves because we don’t have anyone challenging us on it…

 

The devil works in the silences, and when you can invite trusted, wise counselors into the silences, the enemy’s power is broken off of us…

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • Does your church have a healthy culture of spiritual authority?
  • Do you have people who can tell you “no”? Who are they?
  • Which of the three areas of accountability discussed in the podcast are most difficult for you? How can you grow in that area?

Episode 021: Healthy Transitions

Transition is something that every church staff will experience. What matters is how those transitions take place. In this conversation, we discuss how to facilitate and enact healthy transitions.

 

Transitions can be beautiful if we’ll embrace them… when I arrived at New Life, I arrived in a healthy condition [because of how I was sent]…

 

A lot of times, transitions get messy when people arrive with a predetermined future… but when you come openhanded, you give people a chance to send you into the next place…

 

No one should be punished for exploring other opportunities… if you’re a senior pastor, you have to lead the way in this way…

 

I have found that the greatest joy I have as a leader is finding out what’s going on in the hearts of the people on my team… I want to call that out so that it manifests for the greater good…

 

If you bring up the fact that you’re thinking about a transition [to your leadership], you’ll be able to transition in a healthy way, or you’ll see that your desire for transition was actually a little bit of boredom and you’ll grow more fond of the ministry you’re doing…

 

It’s important not to stay around too long; once your heart has left an organization, you’re not going to give your best… so agree on a timeline that’s good for you and for the team…

 

The onus is on the leader to create a safe environment for people to share their hearts; the onus is on the young leaders to respect and honor…

 

The church is known more for its divorces than its marriages… in the case of Gateway and New Life, it was more like a wedding… Gateway felt it wasn’t losing a staff member but gaining a family of people in Colorado… 10 and a half years later, I still go back there to speak…

 

When I am willing to send out good leaders, I am sent good leaders… the same way we teach about generosity with resources and time, we need to be generous with leaders…

 

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • Is your culture one in which an emerging leader would feel empowered to share about their desire for transition? Why or why not?
  • Are you regularly checking in with members of your team to see whether they are thriving in their current roles? Why or why not?
  • What can you do to create an environment where the emergence of leadership gifts and callings is not threatening but celebrated?

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