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Month: April 2014

Sacrificial Leadership

April 29, 2014 /

Dear Friends,

If there is one book on leadership I could buy for everyone who has the audacity to call themselves a Christian leader is it David McKenna’s Christ-Centered Leadership: The Incarnational Difference.

I first heard of this book, oddly enough, from a tweet by our denominations lead pastor Jo Anne Lyon. I have learned whenever she recommends a book I go out and buy it immediately and read it. Not because she is the boss, but because of her wisdom.

McKenna paints a very different picture of leadership than many of the books we read from the business world. It is not that those books are wrong it is just that they stop short. Short of something that can only be true of one who is a Christian: The incarnation. “Servant leadership is the highest commendable option for the human mind, but sacrificial leadership is reserved for those who have the mind of Christ. The two are worlds apart. (pg. xii)

“Jesus defines Christian leadership:

Power–it has none
You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord is over them and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you.

Prestige–it is least
Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,

Position–it is last
And whoever wants to be first must be your slave,

Purpose–it is self-giving
Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve,

Proof–it is sacrificial
And to give His life as a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:25-27)” (pgs. 4-5)

I have much to learn as a leader. It is a daily struggle to keep my own pride and selfishness from rearing its ugly head. When the inconveniences of leadership interfere with my plans the temptation is always there to choose myself. McKenna said on his eighty-fourth birthday he thought he was finally ready to lead. I doubt I will live long enough to say those words.

What are your thoughts? Is Christian leadership only reserved for those who have the title of “Pastor” or can it exist in today’s secular corporate world? Please post a comment.

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

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The Misdirected Leader

April 24, 2014 /

I like listening to podcasts. Though I have learned my attention span is about twenty minutes. After that, I am ready to move onto another.

A few of my favorites are: Entreleadership (Dave Ramsey), Cartalk, College Wesleyan Church (Steve DeNeff), Redeemer Presbyterian Church (Timothy Keller) and Rainer on Leadership. It is the last one that got me thinking recently. I was listening to a podcast on Eight Struggles Pastor Face. Thom Rainer shared about two kinds of pastors: Lazy pastors and workaholic pastors. Every pastor/leader at one time or another has felt the pull to either extreme and both can be destructive to a church and to the pastor.

As I reflected, I started to think there is another kind of pastor, the “misdirected” pastor. It is a deadly place to be at. Many misdirected leaders find themselves being accused of being lazy and yet feeling like they are about to burn out from workaholism. The reason is a lack of direction and vision.

Who is the misdirected leader? It is the pastor who is doing a lot, but doing a lot of the wrong things. These are the leaders who spend all of their time and energy maintaining the machine that is church. When you look at this persons week you see they are teaching the adult Sunday School class, preaching every Sunday morning and night, leading a Tuesday Bible study, Wednesday night study, cleaning the bathrooms, painting the classrooms, leading the singing, organizing the Thursday prayer meeting, planning every detail of the worship service, driving the bus pick up kids and the hearse to bury the dead, and organizing the Saturday morning men’s breakfast. And when you get done with those things pastor could you start an 8-track ministry?

Why is the pastor doing all these things? Because someone decided they need to be done and after all, “pastor, this is what we are paying you for.” John Wesley said to his ministers, “You have nothing to do but save souls.” Truth be told, almost none of it has anything to do with saving souls. We will give it fancy names so we can pretend it is about souls, but really it is about keeping the machine running keeping people happy. It is about doing what has always been done and hoping this time something will be different.

Bypass PrunersWe have all heard the saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” There is also another saying just as valid, “if it ain’t broke, break it.” Sometimes we need to break the machine, stop doing what we have always done. The Bible uses an agricultural analogy. It’s called pruning. Do you want health in your life and church, start pruning. Here is the bad news: people will be mad. People will call you lazy. Some will leave the church. Others will stay so they can tell you stories about how “committed” your predecessor was. It is okay, quit anyway.

In the book Ministry Velocity by Wayne Schmidt he quotes the late Dr. Orval Butcher who said, “‘The problem with most Wesleyan churches is not who we are willing to win, but who we’re not willing to lose.’ It was his way of saying he’d seen churches completely lose their vision and momentum in an attempt to appease one powerful person or interest group in the church. Attempts to please all the people or meet every need drain energy that might otherwise be focused on moving the vision forward” (pg. 37).

In the great words of the immortal philosopher Red Green, “I’m pulling of your, we’re all in this together.”

Pastor Stephen

Does He still move stones?

April 20, 2014 /

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.
(Mark 16:1-4, NIV)

The women came to the tomb to complete the burial process on Jesus’ body. There was just one problem. A large stone stood between them and what they were to do. It was an impossible dilemma for the women. Or, at least, so they thought.

When they came to the tomb they found the stone rolled away. They also found out that the task they thought they came to complete was really something very different. They did not come to this tomb to prepare a body, they came to this tomb to witness and declare a resurrection.

This week, I was asked a question, “Does God still move stones?” I will admit the first thought that came to my mind was kidney stones . . . yes; my mind works that way some times. Once my mind came back to the actual question I was asked I started to think about what the stones in our life might be that he would move. I think the stones are impossible, immovable situations in our life. As much as we may push, scratch, claw, hammer, and chip away at it, we cannot move the stone. We are stuck in our tombs. We are unable to do what we are to do and unable to reach Jesus.

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” We quickly miss that Jesus said this before he was raised from the dead. Resurrection and life are part of his very character and identity. They describe, in some way, who he is and not just what he experienced.

Jesus is our resurrection and life. Moving stones is part of his very character and being. Whatever the impossible situation in your life is, he can roll the stone away and say to you, “Come out!”

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

 

 

Again

April 16, 2014 /

ShadowsWell it has happened again. Another pastor has fallen from their ministry position because of an extramarital affair and apparent struggle with pornography. This time it was Bob Coy from the Calvary Chapel Ft. Lauderdale Church.

I want to say right up front that I have never met Bob Coy and know very, very little about the details of his situation. Since he lives in Florida, and I have never been there, I cannot even say with certainty that he and I have ever been in the same state at the same time.

Mr. Coy is certainly not the first, nor will he likely be the last, leader to be caught in this trap.  It does leave us wondering why did this happen? Why didn’t he seek help before everything fell apart? How could he throw away everything so easily? Much has been written in books on why men engage in extramarital affairs and I will not attempt to enter into the psychology of it all here but I do want to drill down one issue.  Maybe one reason he failed is because the church became too big, too big for him to fail.  At least that is perhaps how it felt. And to some degree it is probably a true statement.

Now before you think this is a statement against large churches, it is not. We all have something in our lives we say is “too big” to risk if we let light shine into our darkness. Don’t we? Our job, marriage, kids, community involvement, reputation, self-esteem, mortgage payment, car payment, vacation plans, career plans, building program, and on and on it goes.

There will always be something. It is part of the lie that satan tells us and we believe. The truth is, it is never as bad as we think and the sooner we deal with things the better. The issues will be bigger tomorrow, today is the day to let light shine into our darkness.

Here are some questions to ponder:

  • What steps have I taken in my life to put up boundaries to protect myself against temptation?
  • Do I have someone in my life (other than my spouse) that I trust and am accountable to?
  • If someone was to come to me with their struggles and darkness, could I be trusted to love them and walk with them or would I tear them down and betray the trust?

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

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