My latest book is entitled Falling in Love with God. Below is a video that explains it:
My Top 5 Mistakes as a Pastor
Today's post here on the Desperate Pastor blog is a guest post from my friend, super-pastor Jeremy Carr. Jeremy is the lead pastor of Oxford Bible Fellowship in--you guessed it--Oxford, Ohio.I’m not completely sure that the following are my top five mistakes as a pastor, as the title of this post promises, but they are five...out of a million. Some more serious, some just stupidly funny.
1. Using an illustration of my wife in a message without her permission.
This is a mistake preachers should only make once, especially if you want to remain married. I can’t even remember what the illustration was, but it was one of the dumbest decisions I’ve made. My wife is very generous with what she allows me to share, but some things are just off limits. It’s okay if I look bad; not okay to make her look bad. And after all, she IS amazing (hoping that makes up for it a bit).
2. Thinking I’m the Savior.
This is probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned. I remember early in ministry getting so excited to save marriages and restore families and heal all the wounds…only to find out I am massively inadequate. After the first marriage crisis continued to go up in smoke even after my incredible attempts to save it, I finally realized that I’m not the Savior, Jesus doesn’t need me, and I am desperate for him to work. I’m thankful that he uses us, but he doesn’t need us. He is the only Savior.
3. Thinking I’m Superman.
Only slightly better than my savior complex, for a while I thought I could lead everything, counsel everyone, and preach as many services as the day would allow. Then, after a semester of 4 Sunday services, pursuing a doctorate, leading a growing church with a limited staff, and trying to care for our then family of 5, I nearly quit the ministry. While it stinks to have a near burn out, I think every young pastor needs to get there before you understand how important the physical and emotional side of pastoring is. Only Jesus is Superman. We humans will have to settle for good rest, limits, delegation, exercise, down time, and recharging.
4. Failing to Confront and Hold Staff Accountable.
I’m thankful to work with a great staff. We have a great team environment, care for each other, and seek to advance the Gospel together. But as the team leader, I’ve had to learn some “boss” lessons the hard way. The biggest has been to lovingly and consistently hold my staff accountable. I have tended to be vague, inconsistent, and way too patient with underachieving staff members. I feared confronting and holding their feet to the fire. So I would let things go until I couldn’t handle it any more. Then I would abruptly fire someone I thought was performing poorly. The problem was that they were shocked and confused. I thought it was clear that they were failing, but the problem was that I had not communicated well and had not required accountability. This is a tough area. No one likes to confront and keep others accountable. But good leaders learn to do it. I’m not there yet, but I’m hoping to make some good progress in this area.
5. Preaching Blunders.
There is a mess of these. So here are a few. I’ve accidentally mispronounced many words, but the worst was when one came out as a cuss word. I think it began with an “S.” The college students loved it. I was rather embarrassed.
I’ve devoured Uno’s Chicken Fajita pizza on Saturday evening. You can imagine what that did to me on Sunday morning. Not a good idea, especially will multiple services to preach.
After doing some baptisms early in the service, in which I got fully wet, I went to change and realized I failed to pack clean boxers. Not a fun day to be preaching.
Like I said, those are just a few. I’ll probably add a new one this Sunday.
Happy Fourth Anniversary!
The first post in Desperate Pastor history appeared on April 25, 2009. It was titled, "The Beauty of Broken Things." Since then, more than 1,200 posts have appeared in this humble little corner of the internet.
It's amazing how much ground we've covered in those four years, and how much can change (and has)! In that short timespan I've gone from struggle to victory, from discouragement to depression to deliverance, from pastoring full-time back to writing full-time (though I suppose I will always be a pastor at heart).
So, to celebrate, let me offer, based on a thoroughly scientific formula of traffic, reader response, and my own personal preferences, ten of the top Desperate Pastor posts in the first four years:
1. Sense-ational Preaching
2. Why Every Pastor Should Go to Israel
3. Balancing Ministry and Family
4. How I Got My Groove Back
5. How Technology Helps Me
6. Top Ten Things I've Learned as a Pastor
7. A 21st Century Epidemic
8. Me and My Prayer Journal
9. My Ten Favorite Moments as a Pastor
10. My Top Ten Successes as a Pastor
Thank you for reading this blog. Please keep reading. I'll do my best to make Year 5 better than those that have gone before.
Don't Put Vision Up for a Vote
“Leaders don’t put vision up for a vote. They know that people will always vote to go back to Egypt, as they tried under Moses’ leadership” (Michael Slaughter, Unlearning Church, p. 136).
My Top Ten Successes as a Pastor
A couple days ago I reflected on some of my failings and failures as a pastor (a tough job, narrowing all that material down to just ten items). Today I thought I'd exit the confessional and with the understanding that every one of the following must be swallowed only with the phrase, "by the grace and endless patience of God," I offer my (more or less) top ten successes over thirty-plus years (and four churches) as a pastor:
1. Guiding many to faith in Christ. No idea how many, but I treasure such memories as the recovering alcoholic kneeling at the altar, the brainy young woman at the coffeehouse table, the couple who entered premarital counseling as skeptics and got married as new Christ-followers, and the man who said he'd never felt "good enough" to give his life to Christ but ended up tearfully surrendering in the presence of me and his wife.
2. Staying married. This may not seem like a "pastoral success," but it is a victory to maintain a vibrant marriage through the strains and stresses of ministry. Of course, it's due mostly to my wife's wisdom and patience, but still...
3. Avoiding even the hint of scandal. Early in our ministry, my wife and I were given wise counsel to build strong boundaries and safeguards into our ministry, which we did. As a result, my deep storehouse of cluelessness and stupidity never resulted in anything remotely resembling a scandal--sexual, financial, or otherwise.
4. Raising two awesome kids. Again, not everyone would list this among their ministry triumphs, but I totally do. As I've posted elsewhere on this blog (here), I consider my marriage and family to be my first ministry priority (after the care of my own soul). So, though this, too, is due primarily to my wife's wisdom and patience, to have played a part in the raising of such exceptional people as Aubrey and Aaron is a great honor and joy (3 John 4).
5. Influencing and ordaining people for ministry. Over the years, we've been honored to play a small role in the decisions and direction of a dozen or more people who have entered full-time ministry and gone on to serve God with amazing effectiveness. They may not have been aware of our prayers. They may not remember our influence (if we had any). But we remember them with great and abiding gratitude and joy.
6. Helping God heal broken hearts. Repeatedly, it seems, the lovely Robin and I entered ministry situations where people's hearts had been broken. Some had been wounded by a pastor or church worker. Some were alienated from the church. We thank God that he allowed us to play a part in healing many broken hearts, and restoring many to the fellowship of the saints.
7. Starting Cobblestone Community Church. If you had told me thirty-three years ago that I would one day help to start a new church, I would have called you crazy. It was not in my sights. It was not in my skill set. But God gave me that honor, inexplicably.
8. Becoming a praying pastor. I wish it weren't true, but it is: I was not a man of prayer when I started in the ministry. And it took some time for God to revolutionize my prayer life, but he did. I thank him from the bottom of my heart that my later years of pastoral ministry were undergirded by prayer. They probably would have killed me, otherwise.
9. Making and cultivating lifelong friendships. At the very start of our ministry, the lovely Robin and I were counseled by some folks we respect to keep "a healthy distance" between ourselves and people in the church. We decided together to ignore that advice, and we've never been sorry. We treasure the friendships we made with God's people, many of which remain not only intact but close to this day.
10. Leaving things better than before. In ministry as in camping, it has always been a goal of mine to leave things better than I found them. I think the lovely Robin and I managed that, by God's grace. We had ups and downs, of course, but God granted us growth--numerically and spiritually--in each church. We managed to resurrect a failed capital campaign in our first church, breaking ground on an addition the day we were told we'd be moving. We inaugurated a groundbreaking child care center at our church in Cincinnati. We teamed with others to acquire land and build The Loft, the current home of Cobblestone Community Church. Over the years we saw people change and grow; we saw their faith deepen and broaden. We helped guide hundreds of thousand of dollars to missions efforts all over the world. We baptized, counseled, dedicated, married, and buried some of the finest people on the face of the earth. And more, but all of it by the grace of God.
Looking back, it is worth noting that the things I value most highly today are not the programs we ran or the budgets I administered. Not even the sermons I preached, though I always found great joy in that. Most of the "successes," if it's even appropriate to call them that, were the result of plodding faithfulness and relationship building. They were battles won in my prayer chair and in the day-to-day "inglorious" tasks of marriage, parenthood, friendship, and love.
Our Psychosis and Neurosis
I used to think the church's inability to understand the rapidly changing world in which we live was neurotic. I'm now convinced it's psychotic. But our psychotic alignment with the place we're in exists alongside a neurotic interpretation about our place in the world. It's one thing for people to rest serenely in the limbo of our psychosis and never realize the ragbag of changes taking place during our lifetime. The masses of people do that. But it's another thing to call yourself a leader and not "be there." It's another thing to call yourself a preacher and conduct worship that bears no discernible trace of the world you inhabit (Leonard Sweet, Jesus Drives Me Crazy!, p. 66-67).
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