Afternoon Energy Hack

I hate the use of the word hack for everything under the sun, but I’m going to use it here anyway: an afternoon energy hack. I’ve worked this issue over many different ways in my life. For instance, I know enough not to go to a Chinese buffet for lunch on a day when I need to work inside in the afternoon. That is just a recipe for napping on my seat or on my feet. It just does no good. What I eat at lunch makes a big, big difference.

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Praying Over Your Year

Today I have some thoughts on how to plan your year, but with a little bit of a twist. If you follow my Priority Pastor podcast or my content at all you know I’m fairly big into planning and goal setting and quarterly planning, all that kind of stuff. But one of the most strategic things I do as a part of planning my year is to simply write out a prayer for your year. In this prayer, I write out all the things I’m asking the Lord to do in my life, my family, my ministry, in the high level areas that I concern myself with.

This can be done in the new year, at your birthday or in the middle of the year if you have not done it yet, so really whenever you plan your year. I typically do this near the beginning of the new year, and then tweak it a little bit and make sure it kind of covers everything I want it to cover. Then for the first few weeks of the new year, I will review it and pray it over and then I’ll forget about it. I have this actually in a file I do every year called seeking and then the year number. So this year it’s Seeking 2023, and it’s basically seeking God.

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In Pain But On Mission

Today I want to share with you a teaching I did for 12Church ministry on the whole issue of pain while we’re engaged in ministry. How do we continue in ministry when we’re experiencing pain? How do we carry on in ministry when surrounded and immersed in pain, especially working with people in pain? How do we do that?

Here are some thoughts: Can we engage on mission with Jesus when we’re in deep pain?

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Five Commitments of a Disciple Maker

Today I’m sharing with you content I made recently for 12Church, which is the new venture alternative church model we’re a part of. This training really is about the five commitments that are actually required to be an effective disciple maker. It’s based on the learnings from our past year of more focused disciple making, and some of these things will be principle based and fairly obvious. Others are gonna be a little bit more tactical, practical focused, and you might be surprised in particular at one of them which is a very specific methodology that is showing up around the world in disciple making movement.

This past year has been a huge learning curve in many ways, unlearning things I’ve learned after decades of ministry and decades of being a Christian and inputting some new information, ideas and convictions that will help us be makers of disciples. So today here are the five simple trajectory, changing commitments that are required if we’re going to be disciple makers.

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Pastoral Migration or Exodus?

I am trying to discern and see whether we are facing a pastoral migration or a pastoral exodus as we move into the fall of 2021. Now we have been expecting a bit of a migration because there was a lot less pastors moving in 2020 due to how things were restricted and slowed down. There are people I know who were going to move as pastors or retire in 2020, who decided to stick around for the sake of their church and just for logistical reasons, and that was a good thing.

But now as restrictions seem to be lifting depending on whether or not there is another wave pending, we’re trying to figure out whether we’re going to face a migration where pastors are going to move. If someone resigns and someone else resigns, is starts this kind of domino effect of pastors moving around. Or maybe we’re actually going to face an exodus.

In the world in which I work with churches in transition with a certain denomination in a certain region, we’re seeing a little bit of an exodus, not just the migration. In other words, we’re seeing pastors resign and not continue in pastoral ministry. And not just because they’re retirement age, but in many cases because they’re tired, and in many cases because they’ve come out of difficult situations.

Now, a lot of church situations are difficult. There’s ministry challenges no matter what totally apart from a pandemic. You throw the pandemic in and you have people in your church bickering over restrictions and masks and vaccinations, and a pastor finds themselves in the middle of all of that, it just adds to a load and can be really a life sucking.

I have a friend in ministry who had one of his elders exited from the church with a group of people and started their own group. I know that was repeated in many places, whether elders left or pastors left and took people with them. That’s a gut punch at the very best, and it’s really, really hard.

My concern is looking at the state of churches is that there was already a shortage of pastors. By shortage I mean, not a shortage of people wanting to get jobs in churches. There’s always people applying for jobs, whether they’re qualified or not, but there’s definitely a shortage of gifted called capable pastors, particularly in lead pastor roles, but I’m sure it’s across the board. I deal more with lead pastor roles, but I know there’s challenges in other roles as well.

There’s a shortage, and now we’re starting to see (this is anecdotal, not statistical) at this point, we’re starting to see pastors leaving their churches and not continuing in pastoral ministry. There’s some real concern about that and what’s going to happen and how churches are going to handle this.

There’s going to be churches certainly closing. There may be some churches merging or becoming campuses of larger churches. That kind of thing could happen, and there might be more virtual church happening, though a lot of people are just tired of that and other people are all over it. So there’s going to be some changes that way.

But just for a moment now, I just want to speak to you if you are considering either a move or maybe a move out of ministry altogether. These are some considerations regardless of which way you’re looking. Number one if you’re a pastor, don’t forget what the word means. It means shepherd and your decision-making has to be based on what is best for the body. Now, yes, there is self care. There are family issues for sure, but as a shepherd, one of your big considerations is the life of the body that you are called to shepherd and called the serve.

The other issue of course, is your calling. Have you been called to be a pastor? Are you gifted and called for pastoral ministry? If that’s the case, you need to be very careful about leaving pastoral ministry and not just pulling the plug because it’s been a tough season. There’s been tough seasons throughout history as well, and in tough seasons, the body of Christ needs pastors who will persevere.

Another consideration is how can you be most effective in being a disciple who makes disciples, regardless of whether you are a vocational minister or not. As a follower of Jesus, you are called to be a disciple who makes disciples. What is the best way you can achieve that? That should be a big consideration.

Your answer might be that you can best achieve that outside a vocational role, but at least ask the question and give some real thought to that because there are some advantages to working and serving in a local church context vocationally when it comes to disciple-making. It comes down to your gifts, the specifics of your stage of life and everything else. But think that through. How can you be the best disciple maker?

I would say that it’s really important if you’re facing a big decision, whether to leave a church or leave the ministry altogether, that there is some fasting and prayer going on. That you’re carving out some time to spend on your face before God, spend extra time in the word pouring out your heart and listening and resting. I would say this is also a time, as a part of that, to talk to mentors and people you trust, who know you and love you, who will tell the truth to you and ask for their input on what you’re facing.

And finally, I would say, when you do make a decision, and this is maybe hard to do, but when you do make a decision, do not make it from a place of fatigue, but make it from a place of rest. In other words, don’t just leave the ministry or leave a role because you need a rest. Get a rest before you make the decision.

I know in some churches, there have been a board of elders who’ve insisted their pastor take a break. That’s wonderful. I know another role or a pastor asked for a break and faced some backlash, but ended up getting a break out of it. Do what it takes to get some rest. Perhaps go bare bones on your ministry. Do what just needs to be done and carve out some extra time for rest, regardless of what you choose to do.

Again, I encourage you to make your decisions prayerfully and carefully with fasting and prayer, with other voices speaking to your heart and mind, and really revisit your call and your gifting and ask the question, “Lord, what is the best way for me to live this out in this time, this place in this season?”

Wisdom you. God bless, press on.