Discerning and Addressing Spiritual Challenges, Part 1
You can’t solve a leadership problem simply by praying more You can’t solve a spiritual challenge with leadership savvy or charisma alone.
We know that every challenge is a “spiritual” issue in the sense that there is a spiritual interface or component to everything. For example, money is a spiritual issue.
But I find it helpful, in the intensity of life and ministry to identify if an issue or some component of the issue is primarily a technical issue or a spiritual issue.
If you can sell an enema kit to a farmer in front of a bunch of his peers, you can probably sell anything. But you need to makes sure you do this one thing.
A big lesson in communication and persuasion from a farm auction.
On November 24, 2019 I was 54 years 288 days old. That was the age my father was when he passed away.
So I decided to take a little retreat, heading out to a cutline where I knew there was a nice place to sit and maybe start a fire.
Here’s a video of a few of those moments down the line.
In addition to the thoughts I shared on the video, I grappled with the placed of online marketing in my life and how it interfaces with ministry…or not. I also thought about a time when I was in my teens and came to the brink of starting a bicycle repair shop but was talked out of it by my dad.
I wondered if that had been an early squelching of my entrepreneurial bent.
But he’s been gone 24 years now, and I have now lived longer than he did, so I have no excuses for not doing something I could or should.
Bottom line, I’m continuing to move ahead with these parallel tracks of online marketing and pastoral ministry, with my ministry focus being the transitional consultant role.
The two actually work together well, with the transitional role, which I usually fulfill part time, allowing for the online work. Likewise, the online work generates extra income and makes the transitional role sustainable.
Looking forward to the adventure ahead, continuing to be shaped by my father, but recognizing the path I walk is my own.
High leverage leadership moments, events and decisions which will shape the life and ministry of a church for good or for ill, sometimes for years to come, occur frequently.
Pastors and other leaders need to take these moments seriously, prepare for them and “Be all there” in order to ensure that the the result is a more effective, focused ministry.
