Being a Pastor can Cost You Your Ministry

Last week, our Executive Pastor announced that he has accepted a job that will return him to the aerospace engineering plant here in Fort Worth where he worked prior to coming on our staff. It's an amazing thing for him, and will prove to be an amazing thing for our church as he goes back to doing what he was doing before he became the Executive Pastor here.

After his announcement, I heard a person ask him why he was "leaving the ministry," which is what it would appear he is doing at first glance. In reality, he's returning to the ministry.

Before Graham became the Executive Pastor at McKinney, he was about as high-caliber a lay leader as you could ever hope for. Several of the men on our current leadership team are mature believers today because Graham led them to Christ and discipled them to maturity. He had a ministry that influenced hundreds in the corporate world, and felt like that capacity for ministry would only be expanded if he went on staff at at church.

In reality, what I think Graham realized is that vocational ministry comes at a cost. Corporate leaders may respect you, but they look at you differently. They don't understand your world, and don't really believe you can understand theirs. You don't have the same platform you used to have, and can't lead the same way.

I think we do a disservice sometimes to people in the corporate world who have great ministry by encouraging them to do it vocationally. Sometimes their capacity and gifting for ministry is best served in the corporate world. I also think we can do a disservice to the corporate world by taking great lights to the world and hiding them in our church bushels.

The fact that someone has great ministry doesn't mean they need to be a pastor. Sometimes it does, but not always. Being a pastor can cost you your ministry, if God has uniquely equipped you to serve where you are.

Viva Italia

Tomorrow morning around 8am a team of 17 young singles from our ministry will be leaving for Florence, Italy to serve alongside some of our global ministry partners there. They'll be doing the first known Vacation Bible School ever in Florence, and helping a ministry called Agape Italia as they serve university students in Italy.

I couldn't be more proud of these 17 young singles. We talk all the time about being externally focused - they put their hands and feet where their mouth is. A leadership team of 4 individuals (Laura, Betsy, Erick, and Sarod) have been tireless in their praying and planning for this time.

If you think about it, pray for their mission. A mission in Italy seems like a pretty swanky place to suffer for Jesus. In reality, it's an extremely dark place. There are massive churches in every town, but they stand simply as ironic monuments to a faith left behind. The culture is extremely wealthy, and reminds you of Jesus' words that it is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Italians believe that God is simply a tool of the Roman Catholic church to be used in the oppression and manipulation of power and government. Needless to say, they're pretty hostile to the Gospel.

My dream for this trip is that our team would come back different. I'm praying they'll get a larger view of who God is, a larger view of how He can use them, and a larger view of what God is doing in the world. I'm praying that this would be just the first of many trips for each of them; that it would give them a heart for the world.

The young singles at McKinney are the cream of the crop, and we're sending 17 of our very best to Italy this next week. I'm proud to be their pastor and hope you'll join me in praying that God will use them for something significant this week. (If you want, you can follow their progress here).

Lessons from India

McKinney hosted a guest preacher on Sunday who is one of our global mission partners in India. He grew up a Sikh, but trusted Christ later in life. Now he is doing some truly extraordinary things with Sikhs and unreached people in the Punjabi region of India. This guy was a fountain of wisdom.

Three things he said that were especially noteworthy:

"Most people vastly overestimate what they can do as an individual, and vastly underestimate what is possible with a group."

"You're only ever in two positions: A need-to-receive position or a position to give. There is no in-between."

"Before 40 you are a student, after 40 you are a teacher."

Good stuff...

Down Cycle

It's my experience that ministry (and life) goes in seasons, cycling between busy and slow times. One of the hardest things for me to do in ministry is to keep momentum going during the down cycles.

A lot of ministries are hitting their down cycle right about now. Youth ministry is the exception, but most people in most ministries are away for the summer, traveling, resting, and overall checked-out until Fall. It's not a bad thing - in fact, I'm convinced it's a good thing. The hard thing is leaning into it and figuring out how to keep momentum in the time between up-cycles. Here are a few things I think every ministry leader should be doing during a down cycle:

1. Spend more time investing in individuals - This is a huge part of my philosophy of ministry regardless of the cycle, but I find it's especially important during the down cycles in ministry. The more gas you put in the tanks of people who are actually doing the ministry, the more fuel you have for the up-cycle. If you withdraw from people because it's just so darn hard to connect with them, you'll find it twice as hard to connect with them when they're gearing back up.

2. Take time to rest yourself - One of the best parts of a down cycle in ministry is the chance to get some rest. I'm awful at this, but am trying to do a lot better, because I need it. I need to recharge my batteries, and to not feel bad for getting some rest during this time. If you're burnt out going into the fall, you're useless to everyone, and one of the only ways to avoid that is by being intentional about resting. You don't have to be out of the office, but you do have to consciously throttle-down what you're doing so you aren't spinning your wheels just for the sake of the cool sound they make when they spin... the crash often follows the squeal, and it isn't as pretty a sound.

3. Be strategic in the things you do do - We've got 5 main things we want to accomplish in our young singles ministry (Intimacy, Maturity, Authenticity, Growth, External Devotion), and we try to make sure that everything we plan is focused on helping us achieve at least one of those things. But during the down cycle, I very rarely allow us to plan something that helps us achieve less than 3 of those goals at the same time. When energy and momentum is up, we can do a lot of things. When it's down, we want to be really selective and put the energy into the things that give us the best bang for our buck.

4. Keep a long-term view - There's a temptation when numbers are down, energy is down, and commitment is down to get discouraged and forget where you are in the cycle. Most of the time when ministry leaders get discouraged by the momentum they fall to one side of the spectrum; they quit or they start trying to manufacture momentum by doing things that are completely outside their normal philosophy for ministry. Neither of these is helpful. If you know you're in a down cycle, take some time to breathe and recognize the things you can do to lean into that down cycle rather than running away from it. Remember that everything goes in seasons, and that the investment you make during this time will ultimately pay off. The farmer can't reap the harvest every week of the year. Sometimes he has to plant, water, rest, and trust that the harvest will come again when it's time.

Waves

I played a quick round of bad golf yesterday with a couple of the young-married guys from church. One of them plays at about my level; one of them is the kind of golfer that you want to beat over the head with a 9-iron because he is completely incapable of hitting a bad shot. Fortunately, he's a really good guy, so the temptation to go Tonya Harding on him has been supressed... so far.

I'm at a point in my golf game where I'm pretty frustrated. Since I've taken a couple of lessons, I've gone two big steps backward, which I expected, but which is still infuriating. When you're tweaking something with so many moving parts, you throw the whole thing off. But, you have to keep working through it, doing the right things even when you get wrong results, because ultimately it's going to pay off.

Yesterday, Adam (my own personal Nancy Kerrigan) was trying to comfort me after I threw my club (no Mom, I really didn't lose my temper and throw my club... okay, yes I did...), and he made a great point.

"Golf is a lot like the Christian life. You have to keep doing the right things even when they don't feel right. Even when you feel like you're making backward progress, you have to keep doing what you know is right. Then one of these days, everything is going to click together and you're going to see growth that feels like it took place overnight. But you have t0 keep doing the right things."

See why I want to hit him with a 9-iron?

No, seriously, he's got a great point; in golf and the Christian life. For those of us that are at a point where we don't feel like much is going right, we've got to keep doing what we know is right. You don't become a mature Christian (or a great golfer) over night. But if you keep doing the right things, even when they don't feel right, the improvement will come in waves. Practice the right things and be patient.

Family Friday

For the first 4 years of Kari and my marriage, the question we've most received is "When are y'all having kids?" Most of the time we chose not to answer the question, because we didn't feel like our timeline was anyone else's business. Sometimes we chose to respond with a smart-alec answer like "After we finish perfecting our technique," which made the question exciting for us. Nothing like seeing little old church ladies blush when they realize what you're talking about.

That answer works really well for future grandparents, though my parents are hyper-sensitive about being over-involved in-laws and didn't ever ask. Kari's parents have their grandparent-hands full with a four year old and twin infants from Kari's sister. So, we didn't have to deal with that question too much from them. Just the church ladies.

Now that our timeline is out, and the answer is "August 28thish" we get to go back to all those church ladies and explain the our technique has been perfected. See... it's doubly fun!

But the new #1 question we keep being asked is about a name for the baby.

We're not telling.

Two reasons - First: we've been on the side of the discussion where someone tells us their proposed baby name and we immediately go into a conversation amongst ourself of who gets to be the one to tell a couple that "Elmo" is going to cause some poor little kid to spend an entire life in therapy. We try to hide our disgust, but it's really hard to not say, "please tell me you're kidding." Just in case we've come up with an Elmo-equivalent, we want you to be so enamored with how cute our baby is that you can't make a knee-jerk face when we tell you the name.

Second: Several of you out there are preggers right now and due before us. When you hear the name we've chosen for our little boy, you're going to recognize that it's so cute you just have to name your little boy the same thing (Kara). And then, all your friends are going to name their little boy the same thing before us. And by the time our little baby is born, he's going to be relegated to being the equivalent of "Chris F." the rest of his life because everyone in his class will have the same name. Either that, or he's going to be forced to adopt some nickname like "Squid," or "Fat Boy" or "Stinky" so people know who he is.

If you ask our name, we're going to tell you it's Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz. And what's not to love about that? It's biblical, meaningful, and original. But when we tell you that, you're going to respond "What's his real name?" thus betraying that you're not able to handle such information without a reaction, proving point #1 and reinforcing our point.

You'll find out soon enough. Hold your horses.

Teamwork

I'm heading out in a few minutes to do a study retreat for the day with our Senior Pastor and a couple of pastors from a church in a town not too far from here. We've started doing some sermon planning together, and get together once every couple of months to study together. The recent "Divine Intervention" study in Malachi is the first study we've done that way, and we think it will be even more effective in the future.

The way it works is this: we each are responsible for studying the book of the Bible on our own prior to our time together. Generally, that means we have done a rough translation from the original languages, have an outline for the book, and a "big idea" of what the main thrust of the book is. Then when we get together, we spend some time in prayer before sharing what we've each come up with - mainly the things that stood out to us, big challenges or questions we still have, major section breaks in the book, and keywords, thoughts, and ideas that we each feel point to the "big idea" of the book.

After each of us has shared a little about our own personal study, we settle on how many weeks we're going to need, and which verses we'll teach each week. Then we start at the very beginning and work our way through the book. For each section we work to come up with a section title and outline, and we talk through any problem passages or key ideas that come out in a section. At the end of our time, we put the whole thing back together and try to come up with a title for the series, though sometimes it strikes us much earlier in the process.

I look forward to these days more than almost any other workday throughout the year. There's something about studying the Bible as a team that is unbelievably exciting. These are guys who are the real deal, but who are very different. We each bring something different to the table, with the end result being that we get further in one day of study together than any single one of us would have been able to get in a month.

Bonus Post

I just saw this on my friend Robin's blog. Two things come to my mind: (1) There are zero American gameshows that even come close to what you're about to see. This blows "American Gladiators" and "Deal or No Deal" right out of the water. (2) If this ever comes to the United States, I want to be on it. I could rock this game.

Learning Lessons

One of the members of the church took pity on my golf game and arranged for me to take a couple of golf lessons with one of Golf Magazine's Top 100 teachers. I had my first lesson a few weeks ago, and will go again this afternoon. It's making a difference, though there's a lot more "rough" than "diamond" right now.

I've taken a few golf lessons before, but from guys who were way less qualified than this guy, and who helped me develop some bad habits as quick-fixes for bad tendencies. They helped my game in the short-term, but didn't do me any favors in the long-term. This new guy has (so far) been able to help me develop habits that should help me short-term and long-term.

Something I've learned the hard way in ministry and in golf is that you have to be really careful where you learn your lessons. Some people are eager to bring you under their wing and teach you things, but their lessons aren't worth learning as far as the big picture is concerned.

Same thing with books. I used to believe there was no such thing as a book I wouldn't read. I told people, "every book contains some valuable piece of insight." I'm slowly deciding that while that may be true, it's not worth the struggle of mining insight from the weeds. There are enough good and important books out there (and being written) that it's a poor use of my time to struggle through a book looking for "that one thing."

I don't mean that I refuse to glean insights at all from people I disagree with - that's certainly not the case. I also don't mean that I refuse to read books that I don't like. Some books (and people) are important to listen to simply because you disagree. But I certainly don't look to surround myself with those people like I do the people who have something to add, and I'm more quick to put a book down halfway through if it isn't helpful. I need to invest my time in something that is going to be instructive for the long-haul.

Twenty years from now, I want to consistently score in the low 80s or high 70s when I play golf, and be the very best Christian pastor I can be. In order to accomplish that, I need to be wise in who I choose to pour into those two areas of my life.

Into the Wind

When I was in college, I got my private pilot's license. It was a great hobby to have during college, but it's pretty expensive to keep up in seminary or on a pastor's salary, so I've let it go by the wayside for now.

One of the things you may or may not know about airplanes is that they always take-off and land into the wind. Some people think it would be to the pilot's advantage to take-off with the wind in order to get airborne but in fact, trying to take-off with the wind makes it harder to get off the ground. Getting airborne has very little to do with speed, and everything to do with the flow of air over the wings of the airplane, so it helps to push into the wind.

Lots of times in life and ministry, there's a temptation to avoid going into the wind. We think it's to our advantage to go with the flow and avoid the wind in our face. We avoid conflict, avoid hard decisions - avoid anything that could possibly provide any kind of resistance to the direction we're going. But that makes it awfully hard to get airborne.

There's obviously a threshold. The person who loves conflict probably shouldn't be doing it. The person who likes to push the boundaries just to see how much wind he can endure without blowing over is a fool. But just like with airplanes, God has a tendency of using the wind blowing in our face to help get us off the ground.

If you're dealing with tough stuff or adverse circumstances, lean in. Throttle-up, and start down the runway. Even though you can feel the wind on take-off and landing, there's nothing more peaceful than being in the air.

"Lay" Leaders

One of the things I love most about McKinney is that our "lay" leaders are the most connected people in ministry. They don't have to check in with headquarters for everything they do, and don't feel like they have to maneuver through red tape and beauracracy to have personal ministry. If someone has a vision for personal ministry, we encourage them to do it. If it doesn't fit with what our church is doing, we still encourage them to do it - just as an extension of their own personal ministry.

Yeah, it's messy. Yeah, it's like nailing jello to the wall sometimes. Yeah, we have to troubleshoot when people run after the wrong things from time to time. But those times are the exception, not the rule. Most of the time, it's just plain exciting to see people living into what God has called them to do.

I feel like a lot of churches and pastors cannabalize the personal ministry of people in the congregation. They create such rigid systems for what "church-sponsored" church ministry can look like that very few people are actually able to use their gifts and talents to serve. Then, we wonder why nobody is doing anything. We preach about the Parable of the Talents and make people feel guilty for not using the gifts and talents the church won't let them use.

Sometimes it's because we're so hotly pursuing excellence that we are afraid the gifts God gave some people aren't strong enough to carry the type of ministry we're doing. More often, it's just because we want control. We want to make sure nobody messes up the ministry we've worked so hard to build. I'm fairly convinced that neither of those reasons is sufficient.

Obviously we want to protect the doctrinal purity of the ministry our church supports. But rarely is that the real reason we hold people back from engaging in personal ministry. Most of us (including me from time to time) just don't like the feeling of not being "in the know" about everything our people are doing. So church becomes about everyone who shows up helping us as pastors have great ministry - the individual empowering the institution rather than the institution empowering the individual.

Why I Blog

Last night was my last softball game for a while. I'm taking the summer off to prepare for the baby, and because if I keep playing I'm going to kill myself. I'm the only guy I know who comes home from every single softball game bruised, bloody, and dirty from head to toe.

I just don't have an "off" switch for the adrenaline deal.

I can round first base and head for second, telling myself "don't slide - it's not worth it" all the way to the base. But if the throw is going to be close, you can guarantee I'm going to be somewhere in the cloud of dust around second base. Every single time. I just can't turn "it" off.

Honestly, it's an indicator of my personality. I go hard all the time. It goes back to that "if you're not going to give it your best, don't do it at all" mentality. Go hard or go home... that's the story of my life.

Most of the time, that's one of my strongest attributes. But in most cases, our strongest attributes also give a glimpse into our deepest weaknesses.

That's a primary reason I blog.

People blog for lots of reasons. Some people think they've got something worth saying. Some people just want to practice their writing skills. Some people like to argue. Some people just want to keep in touch. All of those have been reasons for certain blog entries from time to time, but the main reason I blog is that it forces me to stop running and stand on base for a second or two.

Because I naturally go hard all the time, I need to force myself to turn off the "dive, dive dive button," sit down, and process what I'm thinking. Otherwise, I'm going to come out of these years of my life bruised, bloody, dirty, and with nothing to show for it.

Thanks for reading, but I'd still blog if you didn't. I'm just trying to avoid diving hard and missing the ball.

Starting Point

The fellas at Team Pyro are organizing a witch-hunt... ahem... just kidding... book discussion in the next few days that should be fairly interesting to follow. They'll be comparing "The Courage to be Protestant" by David F. Wells, to "Pop Goes the Church" by Tim Stevens. I've read both books - actually reviewed Tim's book for him before he published it. But I have a feeling the discussion is going to get pretty ugly over there, so I thought I'd post my thinking here and stay out of the mayhem over there (we'll see if I can resist).

Basically, Tim's thesis is that the Church can (and should) engage Pop culture as it communicates Truth. Wells believes this type of thinking amounts to "marketing the gospel," and that the "methodology [transforms] the faith that is being sold" (p 28).

Well's prefers the traditional church - rails against preachers who preach from barstools, churches that abandon the hymns of the faith, and where "organs have become as rare as dodo birds" (p. 29). The options for him seem to be either the church modeled as a "business enterprise," or "very traditional."

The problem for me in this whole deal is that I don't think it has to be an either/or. It's worth remembering that pulpits, Luther's hymns, and organs were all once contemporary - yes, even pieces of pop culture. The organ was en vogue in saloons long before it made its way into the Church. Many great hymns of the faith are simply rewritten words to common pop-culture tunes of the 15th century. So, we have to be careful saying that there is nothing in pop-culture that can be redeemed.

We also have to be careful with the way we use Pop culture.

The bottom line for me is the starting point. Pop culture can and should be used illustratively, but not instructively. Songs, movie clips, etc... are helpful in communicating the Truth because they contain some of the most helpful illustrations of how desperately the pop culture needs redemption. Pop culture contains references and illustrations of Truth, but it does not reveal Truth.

The starting point has to be Scripture. If our question is, "what can pop culture teach us about God?" we have a huge problem. Pop culture reveals quite a bit about man - our selfishness, our desires, the gods we serve, and our desperate need for a Savior.

The Scriptures reveal God.

When our starting point is the Scriptures, we begin with "What does the Scripture say?" Then we're able to examine pop culture for illustrations and ways in which the culture around us reveals our need for Truth, or our response to Truth. The Scripture is authoritative, the culture is illustrative.

The Church doesn't need to market Truth to make it relevant - God's word is always relevant (Hebrews 4:12). We do, however, need to make sure that we communicate in a language that people understand, using illustrations and applications that help the believer understand how the already relevant Scripture applies to the life who walks out of the church building and into pop culture.

The difference is the starting point.

Why We're Not Emergent

Last week during my vacation, I read the book "Why We're Not Emergent (by Two Guys who Should Be)." I picked it up based on the recommendation of my Pyromaniac uncle who gave it three "wow's." I've known Phil my whole life, and haven't ever heard him give something three "wow's" with the exception of Thanksgiving Pizza. So, I decided to check it out.

I was really ready to hate this book. It wasn't that I thought I would disagree with it - I'm not a huge fan of the emergent movement myself. But I can't say that I remember ever reading a book (or blog) whose purpose was to decry the Emergent Church that came across as honest, and humble. Most of the blog entries and comments (even including some from the Pyromaniacs) on the Emergent Church come across as mean-spirited, intellectually arrogant, and completely unwilling to admit that there might be something the church could learn from the "conversations" postmoderns are having.

As a result, most of the "anti" crowd only reinforces the Emergent guys' position that Historical Christians of a Reformation Kind (to use David F. Wells' terminology) are arrogant, mean-spirited, old-fashioned, and unwilling to change form or function. So, the "discussion" is not really a discussion so much as two sides lobbing grenades over the side of their bunkers hoping to do as much damage to the other side as possible, which is stupid. If both sides are Christian, Matthew 18 applies, and we ought to be humbly seeking reconciliation. If one side is not Christian, 2 John applies, and we need to stop pretending to discuss and start trying to evangelize. Either way, there's no reason to be a jerk.

/rant

Anyway, I was prepared to hate this book. But I loved this book.

Loved it.

Deyoung and Kluck approach the Emergent Church in a humble, yet scholarly way. The book has a perfect mix of humor and seriousness, expose and introspection, brevity and depth. This is easily one of the best books I've read this year. It helps the reader understand what the Emergent "conversation" is all about, the reason for the "conversation," and discusses some of the dangers of the direction the "conversation" has taken several of the emergent leaders.

But the book isn't a witch hunt. It's not a hand grenade over the bunker. The authors are quick to point out some of the redeeming qualities of the Emergent Church, as well as to recognize that all those who are a part of the "conversation" do not agree with all of its assumptions. They throw out the bathwater, but leave the baby in the tub which was really, really, really refreshing.

I would give you some quotes from the book, but if you're (1) under the age of 30, (2) involved in ministry of any kind, (3) interested in the Emergent/Postmodern Church discussion, you need to read this book for yourself. It is easily one of the best books I've read this year. Phil was right - Wow, wow, wow.

I realize this review is going to sound a bit like my review of a certain Mexican food restaurant (Ted's) in Oklahoma City, and that many of you are thinking the book (or the tacos) could never live up to the hype. Test me in this. If you have any interest in the Emergent Church at all, buy this book (and eat at Ted's). You'll be glad you did.

The Shack

As I mentioned yesterday, I read a new book called The Shack during our vacation this past weekend. My friend Jason (who doesn't have a blog but should) gave it to me to read so we could discuss it. The book is quickly becoming very popular - especially among people who have experienced some kind of tragedy in their life.

The Shack is a novel about a man whose daughter is killed in a heinous way. During the grieving process, the man receives a letter telling him to meet "Papa" at the shack where the only evidence of his daughter's brutal murder is found. He shows up to meet God (a large black woman named Papa), Jesus (who is described like a middle-eastern lumberjack and gets to keep His name), and the Holy Spirit (personified as a beautiful Asian woman named Saraya). That will make (and probably should make) you pretty nervous at the outset, though the personifications serve a purpose in the story, and don't come across as blasphemously as they may seem.

The book is a fiction book, though it is very clear throughout that the author intended to use it to teach Truth about God, the problem of evil, and heaven. Unfortunately, because the book is a novel, the author doesn't make it clear exactly which pieces of the story are artistic license, which are biblically founded Truths about God, and which are speculation on the author's part. That in and of itself makes this a very difficult book to recommend to anyone - especially those seeking comfort in the character of God.

The book goes from modalism (an ancient heresy that pictures God showing up in 3 different "modes" or "forms") to decent Trinitarian theology in a page and a half, which was extremely confusing as a reader. It also presented a view of a God who limits Himself with regard to the way He relates to the world to the point that He is presented as not having a plan that includes the existence of evil at all.

The Shack also presented the idea of judgment as something that is not carried out by God, but by Wisdom (a character presented as separate from God). In fact, when the main character returns to God having been judged, God is excited that Wisdom "got through" to the main character. This portrayal of God as "good cop" and Wisdom as "bad cop" may have been the most troubling portion of the book to me.

The picture of heaven is a mix between biblical heaven, Buddhism, and New Age Mysticism. The author describes characters in heaven as having auras that translate colors between each other based on the intimacy of their relationship. Sound weird? I thought so too.

There are some good moments in the book. The gospel is absolutely clear in one section (though muddied up later), and a section in which the author demonstrates the need for humanity to draw near to God while dealing with the problem of evil. There's a very compelling and helpful illustration using poison ivy in a garden, which is only poisonous when the character is separate from God.

I can certainly see how The Shack would be comforting to a person dealing with the loss of a loved one, or significant pain in their life. However, in my opinion it contains an extremely dangerous mixture of Truth and fiction in such a way that the two aren't distinguished. The reader with little Biblical literacy will find much in the story that they recognize from the Bible. What they may not recognize are the things that are artistic license, speculation, and even some outright heresy.

If you choose to read The Shack, please be extremely careful. To steal and tweak one of the author's own illustrations, there are some gorgeous flowers in the book... but there's also some poison ivy. Make sure you know which is which.

Vacation

Remember Mr. Wizard's World on Nickelodeon, where Don Herbert (aka Mr. Wizard) sets 2 million mousetraps in a box and then drops a ping-pong ball on one, which sets them all off? The setup for that is pretty much what my attic looks like this morning. If the deceased Black Knight of Mice has any family members, they're going to have to navigate a labyrinth of 3 different kinds of mousetrap to get to any more pipe. Meanwhile, if anyone has any ideas for how to stop the itch from fiberglass insulation despite two pretty serious showers, I'd love to hear it.

Despite the excitement before and after vacation, we had a great time being gone. We spent a long weekend with our friends Drew and Dawn, and Jason and Joy, at a mutual friend's lake house in Hot Springs, Arkansas. It was so great to be able to reconnect with them, though it reminded us how much we miss them. We were worried that when we moved we would lose these relationships, but we were able to pick up fairly close to where we left off - despite Drew's insistence that I got meaner when we moved.

I got through two books while we were there, which I hope to post some reviews of in the next few days. The first was The Shack, a Christian fiction book in the vein of "Dinner with a Perfect Stranger" that is getting quite a bit of publicity. The second was called "Why We're Not Emergent (by Two Guys who Should Be)." It was a recommendation by my Pyromaniac uncle who gave it three "wow's." Phil and I often have a bit different taste in the books we read for leisure, but in my entire life I'm not sure I've heard Phil give a book 3 "wow's," so I thought I'd check it out.

I hope to post on those two books tomorrow; one tomorrow and one next Monday. I'm preaching on Sunday, so a good portion of my days will be spent in preparation for that.

Have a great Wednesday. I'm off to dig out from under the pile of mail and email that stacked up while we were gone.

Uggh.

If there is a hell for mice, I hope I just sent one there.

Last week, I posted about the rain in our attic over our bedroom, and the subsequent guest room flood. Well, I turned off the water at the curb before leaving on vacation Friday, just in case. I also set a mouse trap in the attic just in case the varmint decided to return...

He came back.

To a different pipe.

Then he went to the mousetrap to partake of his own last supper. Only the mousetrap didn't kill him - it just maimed him.

So we returned from vacation today, turned on the water at the curb, sang in the rain in our living room, turned off the water at the curb, climbed up in the attic, and did battle with a maimed mouse. He was armed with razor-sharp teeth; I was wielding a shovel.

He was laying on the sheet rock - maimed, but still very much alive. I was balancing on attic beams in a 130 degree attic holding a garden shovel and paper sack.

I couldn't beat him with the shovel because he was laying on sheet rock in the attic, and pregnant women don't appreciate mice raining on them from the attic any more than they do hot water at 3am. I couldn't scoop him into the paper sack because he was still alive enough to flop around like a fish, and he wouldn't stay on the shovel. And I wasn't grabbing him... did I mention the razor sharp teeth?

We did battle for about 15 minutes. I don't know if it was similar, or if I was just dehydrated in the 130 degree attic, but I swear I heard him quote Monty Python's Black Knight, "'Tis but a scratch."

Finally though, he succumbed. I thought about skinning him and hanging him in the attic for all his mice buddies to see like the Philistines did to Saul and his sons, but it turns out pregnant ladies aren't much for the stench of rotting mice corpses either. His body is in the industrial dumpster down the street, but his soul (one can only hope) is being judged as we speak...

THNGVBDay Update

Lesson learned: Never brag that a day can't get worse!

The plumber came about noon today and was pretty nice. Said they used a new kind of pipe for our plumbing (of course) that he wasn't equipped to fix, but promised he'd send someone tomorrow first thing who could fix it. He treated my wife well, so I was okay with that.

But, this afternoon Kari came home to find that one of our bedrooms was a swimming pool. When the guy turned off the water source to the leak, he didn't turn it off all the way. Now, we're expecting visits from both the "equipped" plumber and a pool drainer company. I just hope the pool drainer company really sucks. Fortunately, everyone who has come to the house so far has been the consumate professional. Unfortunately, I'm going swimming in the bedroom as soon as I post this blog.

Our flights are booked for Australia tomorrow morning.

It's Raining!

This morning at 3:30am, my wife woke me up to tell me it was raining. I heard the thunder earlier in the night, so I didn't really grasp the significance of the announcement, and I certainly didn't think 3:30am was the right time to be celebrating.

She wasn't excited about it raining outside, but she was fairly excited about it raining from the air conditioning vent in the bathroom.

I told her it was just condensation. It's pretty warm and humid in Texas these days, and given the cold-nature of my wife, pretty warm and humid in our house most of the time (I fog up the mirrors in the bathroom when I take a cold shower after a run. Seriously). So, I rolled over, put the pillow over my head and told her to take an umbrella with her if she had to get up again.

That's when she tapped me on the shoulder and said, "no... it's pouring through the vent."

Dang it if she wasn't right.

So I've been up since 3:30am traversing beams in the attic, digging through itchy insulation, chasing down the source of the gush (a busted hot water pipe), turning off the water, mopping the attic, and trying to figure out how the heck we're going to get a pipe in our attic fixed before our vacation this weekend.

The water's off so I can't take a shower, have fiberglass insulation in places I didn't know existed, have to wear a suit today for a lunch engagement, and have to put the finishing touches on a sermon before I go out of town tomorrow. The good news? The day can't do anything but get better from here.

My favorite childrens book of all time is Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day, by Judith Viorst, and I agree with Alexander: I think I'll move to Australia.

Busy Day

I'm trying to get things together for a sermon next Sunday (the 25th) on Malachi 2:17-3:5. It's all about the problem of evil, which should be a fun message to preach. It's a great reminder that judgment tomorrow means grace today. The people of Israel wanted God to judge evil on their timetable. He reminds them that He will judge evil, and that the judgment will include them. It's a pretty fun passage because God really turns the table on them by setting them up and then dropping the hammer.

The problem is, I feel like I'm spinning my wheels running down a question in 3:1.

Most of the time when you find something perplexing in the middle of sermon preparation, you have to just do the best you can with it in a short amount of time, prepare the rest of the sermon, and come back to the challenge if you have time. This time, it's not so easy because the way I handle 3:1 will affect the direction of the rest of the sermon.

I didn't sleep much last night because I kept rolling the passage over in my head trying to figure out this question. It's a frustrating place to be, but this morning I keep catching myself thinking about how fortunate I am to get paid for doing stuff like this. It's exhausting, but you can't get much better than this.

Weakness

Like most pastors, I live with a constant realization of my own weaknesses. It's almost impossible to be a pastor and not be aware of some of your greatest weaknesses - there's always some little old lady who fills out a comment card every week and is happy to remind you. You don't talk loud enough. You don't speak slow enough. You preach too long. You didn't call me this week when I had my ingrown toenail removed...

There are times when others don't recognize some of my weaknesses, but I'm acutely aware of them. Sometimes I don't think as clearly or as quickly as I wish I did. I have to work really hard to prepare lessons and sermons, while they come easy to some of my friends. I'm not the most gifted guy in virtually any room I walk in to. Nor am I the most original thinker - I rarely come up with new ideas that are mine alone.

My weaknesses used to bother me quite a bit, but I'm learning to lean into them. 1 Corinthians 2:4-5 say "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power." Later on, in the second letter to the Corinthians, Paul celebrates his weakness even further. "[God's] power is made perfect in weakness" (12:9)

See, the way I read it is that if the objective is to demonstrate the power of God to the world, my weakness is a decided advantage.

Swan Dives

We had an excellent staff retreat last week. It's good to be back, although we're leaving again on Friday for a brief pre-baby vacation with some friends of ours, so posting will be a little bit sporadic next week too.

The highlight of the staff retreat last week for me was bungee jumping for the first time. It is something I had always secretly wanted to do, but it took the peer pressure of a couple of insane youth pastors to finally have an excuse to take the leap.

Let me just tell you, there's absolutely nothing like a 17-story swan dive, trusting only a zit-faced high schooler and the over sized rubber band he tied to your feet to get your adrenaline churning. But I got a good piece of advice from our senior-high pastor who had taken the plunge before. While we were standing on top of the crane, he said to me, "When you get out there on the platform, it's okay to look down, but jumping doesn't get any easier the longer you stand there."

Bungee jumping is a good metaphor for my ministry these days. There seem to always be hard decisions to make, and risky ideas to roll out in the face of uncertain futures. Sometimes it feels like all I'm going on is the experience of an over-confident pimply kid who uses the cash-flow from his career in bungee jumper attending to fund his Dungeons and Dragons obsession. But once you're out there, it doesn't get any easier to stand there and wait.

There are some neat things going on in the Young Adult ministry at McKinney, and in the church as a whole. But in order to really experience the excitement, it's going to mean a few of us have to stop peering over the edge and start swan diving.

Retreat!

I'll be MIA for the next few days while our pastors and wives all retreat. We don't do everything well at McKinney, but we do retreats pretty well. They're usually close - we're retreating this week to Dallas. Close enough we don't spend the whole time driving, but far enough away we're not tempted to run home for anything.

The other thing we do with retreats is play pretty hard and pray pretty hard. We don't do a lot of hard core work on staff retreats... especially if our spouses get to come. These times are primarily about connecting and relaxing. We work hard in the office, and need to cultivate those relationships without an agenda. It helps us build a good team mentality. We know each other's spouses. We know each other's kids. We care about each other, so we work well together.

So, I'll be unplugged until Wednesday or Thursday. Have a great week.

Fun

Yesterday was our Worship Pastor's birthday, and he has the worst employees in the world. Yep, that's somewhere around 2000 balloons in his office.

The staff who plays together, stays together.

Movers and Shakers?

This year in our Young Adults Ministry at McKinney, all of our young adults are reading and studying through the New Testament together. We're jumping around a little bit, so a couple of weeks ago we were reading through Matthew, and something in the Sermon on the Mount caught my eye.

In 4:23, Matthew describes how "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people. The news about Him spread throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all who were ill, those suffering with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics; and He healed them. Large crowds followed Him..."

Jesus changed the world by spending his time with 11 uneducated blue-collar workers, and a teeming throng of needy people.

If I was going to start a worldwide movement, I'd find the movers and the shakers. I'd find the people with influence, power, resources, and talent. There were very few of those men involved in Jesus' early ministry, and one of them was a man named Judas Iscariot.

It's amazing Jesus got anything done. He spent His whole ministry with the "straw people" - the people who suck everything out of you. But notice who it is that regularly bring their friends to Jesus. It's the destitute people. The rich, powerful, influential guys are the ones who come by night.

I spend a good majority of my ministry time with those I think are the "movers and shakers." But I wonder if a lot more moving and shaking would take place if I took the time to invest in the people who need it most.

Seeking and Hiring - Part Deaux

Almost exactly a year ago, I posted something about seeking and hiring church positions, the good, bad, and ugly. I wanted to follow-up on that post because it still gets a lot of views on Google, and because it's fresh on my mind.

Recently, we've started looking for a Young Adult Intern who can help with some leadership development - specifically in the area of our Eikon (Young Singles) Ministry. We're looking for someone who can help us take our IMAGE groups to the next level, and can help me continue to think through some other ways to best help young singles in Fort Worth have great ministry.

Last week, no lie, I got a cover letter for the position that said:

"chris,

i saw ur post about a intern on the swbts website. if u are still looking for someone id like that job.

see ya,"

The same week, I got a cover letter that said:

"Scott,

"I am interested in the opening at your church for the internship at your church. God has given me a great amount of passion for Junior High ministry, and I would love to be a part of what God is doing there. Please see my resume attached to this email..."

I emailed the guy back and said, something to the affect of, "I think you accidentally sent your information to the wrong place. We're looking for an intern, but it is in the young adults area of ministry." I figured the guy had me mixed up with someone else, and wanted to make sure his resume got to the right place.

I got the following reply:

"Chris,

My bad. I sent out a bunch of resumes today and must have messed up. I would like the internship you're looking to hire. Please change everything in my cover letter that says "Junior High" to "Young Adults." I hope to hear from you soon."

I've received about 25 resumes for this position so far. Somewhere around 20 of them were unpresentable. Two or three were outstanding. If you're out there looking for a ministry job, and feel like God may have gifted you for ministry in a large-church context, pay close attention to the impression your resume gives. It will automatically catapult you into the top 5 or 10 percent of resumes those churches receive, and may earn you a phone call even if you're not the most qualified candidate.

Pastor's Devotions

From time to time I hear pastors advise other people against doing their personal devotionals in a book/passage they're preparing to teach. Their advice is primarily for pastors, but applies to anyone who is teaching the Bible for one reason or another. Frankly, I think it's really bad advice.

The rationale behind the thinking - especially for pastors - is that they want to protect themselves from seeing their devotional time as a part of their daily job. So, if their job includes studying and preaching from Malachi, they would want to do their personal devotional/quiet time in another book so their personal devotional isn't just an extension of their sermon/lesson preparation.

To me, this introduces an unhealthy dichotomy (division) between personal devotion and public responsibilities. Honestly, I'm worried about sermons that aren't prepared as an outgrowth of the pastor's devotional time. The Adult Bible Fellowship teacher, seminary professor, or pastor's responsibility as a herald of Scripture should be grounded in his/her own private devotion, not divorced from it.

When we see our role responsibilities as distinct from our relationship with God, we're destined to give God less than He deserves.

Family Friday

Kari and I don't have a ton of "together" hobbies like some of my friends. Some of my friends love to cook together. Others like to work out together. Some of my friends like to communicate. Some of my friends like to play tennis together. But neither of us likes to cook. Neither of us likes to work out. Communication can lead to miscommunication, and I'm a sore loser at tennis.

One thing Kari and I do love to do is watch TV together. I can turn off my brain after a long day, and she gets to cuddle on the couch. So, it works out pretty well. Here are a few of the shows we're watching right now:

October Road: This is probably our favorite show to watch together. It's a little more drama than I usually go for, but I really like the characters and the way the show is shot. I'm not usually one to care about that stuff, but for some reason it matters to me on this show. October Road is off for right now, and the next episode hasn't been scheduled yet. But we're hoping it makes a return.

The Office: The first couple of episodes this season have been pretty slow, but usually the office is one of my favorite shows. I think the writers had too much time to think during the strike, and have begun developing meaningless characters rather than being funny. Hopefully they get back on track soon.

Lost: We were latecomers to Lost, and benefited a great deal from the catch-up episode a year or so ago. But we're hooked right now. This morning at Bible Study, my friend Erick was saying he'd prefer to just wait until they condense the whole mess into a 2 1/2 hour movie. That's probably smart. The writers are raising so many questions I'm not sure they could answer them in 10 years worth of episodes, but they say they're going to try so I'm going to watch.

Big Bang Theory: This one is new to our DVR. I heard about it from some fellow Office lovers who swore this show was funnier than the Office. It's funnier than the first two episodes of the Office this season, but isn't even close on a broad scale. It is funny though. Two genius physicists with no relational skills live next door to a beautiful blonde with everything they lack. The writing for this show is exceptional. Good, clean, smart humor.

Grey's Anatomy: Kari's favorite show. I watch it with her so she will let me watch shows that are actually good. What can I say? Our marriage is about sacrifice. Grey's is a primetime soap opera that throws in a good episode every fifth show or so to keep things interesting.

That's about it. Television has been pretty slim picking for the past year or so since 24 jumped the shark and then cancelled the season, 6 Degrees was cancelled, and the Bachelor turned out to be a womanizing Brit with skanky taste. So, our television taste is pretty mainstream these days. If you aren't watching some of these shows (especially October Road), you need to start so they don't cancel it. Otherwise, let us know if you've got any other recommendations.

Closet Catholics

Something for discussion: I don't want this to sound over-the-top, but I'm becoming more and more convinced that many of my evangelical preacher friends are closet Catholic priests. Not theologically, but certainly functionally.

If you remember, one of the hallmarks of the Catholic church was that only priests were allowed to read and interpret the Bible. The assumption was that they were closer to God and had a more special gift, so only they could be trusted to interpret the Bible correctly. Peons in the pew couldn't be trusted to study and apply God's Word in their lives, so a priest would interpret and apply God's Word for the peons, and then tell them how to behave.

In a lot of evangelical churches today, preaching takes a similar bent. The pastor spends the week interpreting Scripture to figure out how the people are supposed to behave, and then gives a message that is virtually a motivational speech on how the Scripture should be applied based on the priest's... ahem... pastor's interpretation.

Their messages are not non-Biblical, but the distinct feeling that philosophy can portray is that the authority comes from the pastor's study and creativity. He's just a middle man between the Scripture and the congregation. That sounds awfully Catholic to me.

So, for you pastors who read, here's a question: When people walk out of your church and into their life, do they make decisions based on what you said on Sunday, or what the Bible said? There's a strong difference between the two - the difference between giving a man fish, and giving a man a rod and reel.

Walking with Giants

Ken (our senior pastor) takes a group of guys through a theology class about every two years. The main book he uses is a book by Charles Ryrie called "Basic Theology." At the end of the two-year cycle, Ken brings in Dr. Ryrie to answer questions about theology for the men who were a part of that study.

Last night, just prior to the Q&A session, I got the "holy cow" honor of getting to have dinner with Dr. Ryrie (Yes, the Ryrie Study Bible Ryrie) and a couple of other guys.

I hadn't ever met Dr. Ryrie before, and wasn't sure what to expect. For some reason, I expected someone who was bigger-than-life. In reality, Dr. Ryrie was gentle, unassuming, quiet, and humble.

I know several of you who read this blog come over from the Pyromaniacs blog, and am well aware that there's some bad blood between Ryrie and MacArthurites going back a couple of decades. And I hate that, because in different areas, both men have contributed a mammoth amount to evangelicalism, and I respect both men a great deal.

Dr. Ryrie was born in 1925, and if I remember right, trusted Christ when he was 7 years old. That means he has been walking with Christ for around 76 years. And he's finishing well. He just returned from a trip to Turkey and Greece where he was teaching from Paul's epistles in the cities where they were written. When I'm 83 or 84 years old, I'd be happy to travel to the bathroom without assistance - Dr. Ryrie is still serving God around the world.

There are two or three pages of notes from the time we had together last night that I'll probably use pieces of as blog prompts for the next few weeks. But here are a couple of things I thought were especially profound. Have a great day.

"There are thousands of preachers out there today [competing for jobs], but there is very little competition for those who thoroughly know the Word of God."

"If you want to be successful in ministry, at every point of your life you have to be willing to go anywhere, at any time, to do any thing. As you age, your body will limit you; your willingness never should."

"The best thing you can do for any person in any situation is to help them understand the Bible."

iAlethia

Had a good breakfast this morning with my buddy Brandon. Brandon and I go way back to our college days. In fact, last week I credited JB as being the one who first identified me as someone who had potential in ministry. That's only partially true. Brandon worked as an intern for JB at that point, and was the one responsible for convincing JB that I wasn't just a ministry leech who had no promise whatsoever.

Brandon is the only true-to-life hermit I've ever known. He had a cabin out by a lake where he lived on virtually nothing, and spent nearly every waking hour studying the Bible. Although he would tell you today that he had some weird introverted habits back then, that time and study has paid off - God's using him to do some pretty cool stuff today.

Several years ago he got an idea to do a Bible training program that was easily translatable and transferrable to other cultures and countries throughout the world. His desire is to do something that's low-cost, but high-impact so pastors who are unable to go to formal training because of persecution or lack of funding are able to receive a strong foundation in biblical principles, in their language, with illustrations and concepts that are true to their culture. As a result, iAlethia was born.

Brandon didn't ask me to do this, but I absolutely believe in what he's doing. So go check out his website and consider praying or giving financially to support what God is doing over there. The world is a pretty small, flat place, and ministries like iAlethia have the potential of making a significant impact in places other ministries aren't able to touch.

Where do I aim?

This past weekend I taught as a part of a teacher training seminar for some of the guys who are teaching our Adult Bible Fellowships and wanted some extra sharpening. It was a fun time to be with extremely sharp guys who are doing some great things. After my portion of the seminar, one of them pulled me aside and asked me a really great question that I don't feel like I answered very well. Now that I've had a couple of days to think about it, I think I can do better.

Here was his question: "When you preach, there are 1500 to 2000 people in the auditorium at any given time. Some are seminary profs, some just walked in off the street. With such a broad audience, where do you aim?"

It's true in an auditorium of 1500 people, and it's true in an Adult Bible Fellowship/Sunday School class of twenty people. People are all over the map of maturity, knowledge, and experience. Where do you aim when you know you can't speak to everyone?

Here's the easiest way I know how to say it: Aim High, but Communicate Low.

I want to communicate Truth such that the most spiritually mature person in the auditorium is encouraged and challenged, but I want to communicate that Truth in such a way that the guy off the street can understand it. If I speak over the head of the guy one the lower end of the knowledge spectrum, it's motivating. If I speak under the spiritual guy's head it's demotivating. But if I speak in such a way that the spiritual guy is motivated by the Truth, and the un-spiritual guy is motivated by the simplicity, I've hit a home run.

You can talk about propitiation without ever using the word. You can talk about the hypostatic union, or infralapsarianism without using words people don't know. You can talk about the meaning of words in the original language without parsing Greek verbs on stage. There's no need to talk in language your audience doesn't understand... even if it's precise. But it is an equally great error for your audience to leave a lesson exactly the way they came in.

Aim high, communicate low. I'm not always the best at it, but it's always my goal.

Family Friday

Not much time to post today. I just rolled in from the Young Life golf tournament this morning, and am doing a teacher training thing at the church tonight, so I need to finish getting that together. By the way, our team is currently the leader in the clubhouse with a -11. I had a hard time carrying the other three guys on my back, but that's what servant-leadership is all about.

On Family Friday, I try to post some updates on my family, or tell those of you who read and don't know Kari and me a little more about us.

One of the things you ought to know about Kari and I is that we're completely, 100-percent incompatible. But we're also completely, 100-percent in love.

This is one of our favorite things to tell young engaged couples who think they've found the "perfect" person for them. There is no such thing as compatibility. There is such thing as humanity. And unfortunately, no matter how "alike" it seems like you are when you're dating, you're not compatible.

One of you will be a morning person (Kari) and one of you will be a not morning person (Chris). One of you will be cheap (Kari) and one of you will be generous (Chris). (Don't you love how I carefully chose the word describing me?!) One of you will like to splurge on food and skimp on clothes (Chris), and one of you will like to splurge on clothes and skimp on food (Kari). Maybe you won't be vastly different on all these things, but you'll be vastly different in some things, no matter who you are.

I didn't marry Kari because we're compatible... we're not. I married Kari because she was the person I wanted to commit the rest of my life to. Sometimes our incompatibilities serve as checks on each other or balance each other out; sometimes they just drive us nuts for no apparent reason. But we've learned (and are learning) how to embrace those differences and lean into each other despite our differences.

We're not compatible; at least not in everything. We're okay with not being compatible, because no matter what, we're completely committed.

Partnerships

I'm playing in the Young Life golf tournament tomorrow morning here in Fort Worth (barring rain). I love playing golf on my days off, and really love playing golf when it benefits a great organization.

Our church enjoys a partnership with several parachurch ministries in Fort Worth, and I think it's one of the better things we do.

We're not able to reach everyone, and we know that. We're a church that sits inside the loop, and are surrounded by homes that range in price from $400,000 to more than $1,000,000. As a result, we're probably not going to have a lot of opportunities to directly touch the lives of Fort Worth's homeless population. We're probably not going to be able to have a direct influence in the lives of teenagers who live on the North side of Fort Worth, though we certainly have a heart for teenagers all over the metroplex.

We could spin our wheels trying to figure out a way to bus all the homeless people here, or we could figure out a way to invest in the people who are already there. We've chosen the second option. They know that culture better than us. They can have a laser focus better than us, and can drill down into the lives of the people they serve on an everyday basis better than we'll ever be able to do.

McKinney strives to be a church where everyone feels welcome, whether a person is a homeless person or a gazillionaire. But when it comes to the focus of our ministry we focus primarily on the people in our neighborhood, and invest a significant portion of our resources in ministries who serve elsewhere.

And the investment is paying off. McKinney had an influence in the lives of almost 5000 girls last year in crisis pregnancies. We fed somewhere around 50,000 meals to homeless people. We ensured that almost 100 inner-city boys have something to go home to other than gangs and violence. We reached out to thousands of college students and high school students through the ministries of Campus Crusade and Young Life.

They don't steal our people... they're an extension of our people. As we invest our time, talents, and treasure in what God is doing in our city and around the world, we're serving alongside what's happening in those ministries. And we're more interested in building the Church with a big "C" than we are building our church with a little "c."

Heroes

This past Sunday we talked about passing the baton, as Paul handed his baton to the Ephesian Elders before heading toward Jerusalem and ultimately Rome. Thought it would be appropriate to mention a few of the pastors who handed their ministry baton to me.

JB Bond - JB was the one who identified me as someone with potential in ministry. He was my pastor during college, and took an interest in me. I made copies for him, and he poured his life into me (a pretty good trade, if you ask me). JB gave me a desire to teach the Bible, and a passion for proclaiming the gospel clearly.

Rodney Cripps - Rodney was the youth pastor at the church I attended during college. He became a close friend, and was a great resource for bouncing ideas off of. He's a top-notch administrator, and has an ability to bring quick clarity to every issue. Rodney taught me to pay attention to the little things.

Drew Leaver - Drew was my boss at Fellowship North for the majority of the time I was there. He loves to think through issues and problems, and gave me a glimpse of what humble, servant leadership of another staff person could look like. Aside from the fact that his family and ours were extremely close, Drew was a great boss.

Glen Brechner - Glen hired a burned out, desperate, and disillusioned pastor to serve under him, and worked hard to make sure I was serving in an area that fit my gifts and talents. His leadership is one of the primary reasons I'm still in ministry today. Beyond that, Glen has an ability to think through processes and systems about as well as anyone I know.

These are guys who reached out to me, ran together with me, and released me for a lifetime of ministry. I'm adding to the heroes list these days, but it's only because of the investment these men made in my life.

I'm wondering who is involved in your life, and will call you a hero someday? Have you identified someone to begin passing your baton to?

Joshua Fit De Battle...

This year, Kari and I are reading through one of those One-Year-Bibles together where you read through the Bible in a year. Actually, we're really not reading it "together," but we're reading through it individually, together.

The other day, the reading was from Joshua 6, where Joshua and the Israelites marched around Jericho for a week, and then yelled at the top of their lungs, after which the "walls came-a tumblin' down." It's a cool story of God's care for the nation of Israel, and about how He helped them conquer a city without having to raise a finger. But it's also a cool story about a young leader who led well, to the point that the people absolutely believed that "God [would] do amazing things among [them]" (Joshua 3:5).

The Jericho thing is a good example of that. It almost makes you laugh out loud when you think about what that scene must have looked like as this young leader steps up in the shadow of Moses and convinces the people that they can conquer a city by making tracks around it and screaming at the top of their lungs.

Can you imagine the scene?

Joshua: "Hey guys, we're going to conquer this city this week."
Israel: "Sounds great. We'll grab our swords."
Joshua: "Hold off on the swords, but get your tennis shoes."
Israel: "Our whats?"
Joshua: "Your tennis shoes. We're going to take this city by marching around it."
Israel: "That's the goofiest thing I've ever heard."
Joshua: "Oh yeah, and priests - your trumpets too. Grab those."
Israel: "So we're going to destroy this city by being a marching band?"
Joshua: Yep. Once a day for six days, and seven times on the last day. We're going to pound the ground, and then scream as loud as we can, and watch what God does.

If I had been a part of that group, I think I probably would have commissioned a study on the long-term effects of manna consumption. But they marched. They got in line and marched. And then they blew their trumpets and yelled.

You don't have any record of them doubting Joshua here, or calling this young leader's plan goofy. You don't see any hesitation - if Joshua says march, we march. If he says yell, we yell. If the kid says we're going to destroy this city by blowing our trumpet, we're going to trust the kid. Because he's proven himself to be a man who follows God, and who leads us in the direction God blesses.

As a young leader, Joshua had so proven himself to be a godly leader that people didn't make a peep when he told them to form a conquering marching band.

I wonder if the people who are following you and I would follow us into battle with tennis shoes and a trumpet if we were confident God was leading us that way? What kind of young leaders have we proven ourselves to be?

Low to High

One of the challenges of every ministry is moving people from low levels of commitment to high levels of commitment. Every once in a while we meet people who dive in and are ready to change the world alongside you, but they are the exception - not the rule.

It takes quite a bit of intentionality on the part of the leaders to find people who might be on the verge of taking steps in the right direction, but the intentionality almost always pays off.

The first step is to inform people about the opportunities that are out there. This is the hardest step because it's kind of nebulous. But if you give people a broad glimpse of what God is doing in various ministries, before long something is going to jump out at them.

After they're informed, we try to encourage the people we know who we see might be good fits in a particular area.

Once someone is informed and interested, we keep them at a low level of commitment, but begin to equip them by giving them small but meaningful opportunities to serve. We don't want to overwhelm them, but we also don't want them underwhelmed. All we're trying to do is light their fire.

After they're informed, encouraged, and equipped, we encourage them again. People need feedback here - especially if you see potential in them. I'm always amazed at how much we assume people know about how valuable they are.

The next step is to engage them in higher levels of commitment, again making sure they're meaningful opportunities that fit the gifts, talents, and abilities of the people we're trying to connect.

Finally, we encourage them again. Especially when people are engaged at higher levels of commitment, they need a reminder that what they're doing is significant. It's easiest to burn out when you're serving at a high level of commitment, but lose sight of the bigger picture.

Everyone doesn't make it through this "process" at the same rate; everyone doesn't make it through this process. But a small step is better than no step. And I'd rather have a group of people who are informed and equipped, but not ready to engage, than a group of people who aren't even close to higher levels of commitment.

Family Friday

Lots of my pastor friends talk regularly about how to balance family and ministry as if the two are in conflict. I think that's a mistake, and Kari and I try to not think that way.

My ministry is an extension of my family life, and my family life is an extension of my ministry. They're all a part of the stewardship of life that God has given me. And if God has given me responsibility for all of it, when they're done well they shouldn't be competing.

What I find is that guys who are struggling with competing marriage and ministry are usually not doing one of the two very well. Either their family life is a mess, and they're compensating for it at work, or their work is a mess and they're overcompensating for that somewhere.

Sure, there are times that ministry calls me away from home, and times when home prevents me from doing other ministry. But there doesn't have to be a dichotomy there. Both my job and my family life are a part of my stewardship from God. It's my focus, so the various parts of it don't compete.

360 Review

Every year I do a 360 degree review where I ask a good number of the people I work with to help me sharpen my skills and check me for blind spots. The way it works is this: I take a list of all the people who are regularly involved in the ministries I serve, and send a copy of a review to all those who serve in a leadership capacity. Then, I have someone else randomly choose the same number of people from that list as I have leaders to send a review to (if there are five leaders, they choose five random other people). That prevents me from choosing only my cronies, or the people who I know will say only nice things. Finally, I send a copy to anyone who works for me as an employee.

My boss does his own review of me every year which is independent of the 360, so the people who complete this review don't have to worry about negatively impacting my family or finances by giving me a negative review. That way, they can feel the freedom to be completely honest.

After each person receives the review, I don't have any more contact with them about it. They print off their responses and anonymously drop them in my administrative assistant's box. Then, she averages the scores and collects the responses before giving the review back to me. The average of scores keeps me from getting discouraged by a particularly low score, or arrogant by a particularly high score. I just get an average. It's also one more step in securing the reviewers' anonymity. Some people choose not to do the review, which is okay... it's why I try to start with a pretty high sample size.

I look at this process like a yearly doctor's visit: Nobody ever looks forward to it, but it gives you a sense of confidence that everything is okay. And if something comes back not okay, the chances are good that you caught it early enough to do something about it.

I've also found that the process is pretty helpful when it comes to dealing with either discouragement or harsh criticism throughout the year. If I've done my job in asking the right questions, and my reviewers think I'm doing a good job, I don't have any reason to be too down on myself throughout the year. Or, when someone accuses me of "not taking the Bible seriously," I can rest assured that theirs is not a majority opinion, and I can search for the truth in their accusation without being completely devastated by it.

All of us have blind spots and struggles. And all of us need a check-up every once in a while. My goal is to be the very best pastor I can be, and these 360 evaluations help me make regular progress.

Right Turn

One of the things I love most about being a pastor is the chance to be involved with people at the most pivotal moments of their life. I get to do premarital counseling with couples who are at the front porch of their life together as a family. I get to do their weddings, and pray for their children just hours after they're born. I get to baptize those same children, and visit the parents when they're in the hospital. I get to counsel people during the difficult times of marriage, and celebrate with them during the exciting times. And then I'm often present shortly after people step from this life to the next.

Often being a pastor is extremely difficult, because you're helping people navigate through turbulent water and there isn't much room for error. There's a high stress level, but also a high excitement level because I'm getting to work on the front lines - right where God is working.

Most of the time, pastors are tasked with walking people through these times individually. But every once in a while you have to walk with the entire church through a difficult time. Sometimes it is a result of a national event (September 11th comes to mind), but sometimes it is something that is unique to each pastor's individual church.

Last night, one of the heroes of McKinney Church - our retired Executive Pastor Bill Kilgore - suddenly and unexpectedly stepped from this life to the next. Since it was so sudden, it will be difficult to get word out prior to Sunday. Yet his life touched the lives of thousands of people at McKinney Church and around Fort Worth. Guess who's preaching on Sunday morning?!

Bill was a significant and beloved enough leader here at McKinney that to fail to say anything about his death on Sunday would be completely irresponsible. But, it would also be irresponsible to turn the service on Sunday morning into a memorial service (Add this to my list of things they never taught us how to do in seminary).

I'm fortunate this week because the passage I'm preaching from lends itself to a mention of Bill's life. We're talking about Acts 20:13-38 where Paul says goodbye to the Ephesian Elders, and passes his legacy on to them. The parallels are hard to miss. It could have been more difficult - I have a friend who was scheduled to preach on Hell the Sunday after September 11th.

I know several of you who read this blog are pastors. Has this kind of thing ever happened to you? How did you make the decision of whether or not to take a right turn with your sermon?

Manuscript Beating

This Sunday, I'm preaching on Acts 20:13-38, which means that yesterday and today are devoted mostly to preparing a manuscript for my sermon. For some people like my friend Drew, this is their favorite part of sermon preparation. They love working out the transitions, figuring out the best way to communicate a point, and working out their sermon from concept to manuscript. That's not me; manuscripting wears me slick.

I love studying for sermons, and I love delivering sermons, but the manuscript part is pretty tedious for me. I think it's because I'm not a detail-oriented guy at heart. I get excited about the big picture, and love to communicate the details/pieces of the big picture, but get whipped to death with the minutia of trying to figure out exactly which word to use where and when.

However, I manuscript every sermon because I think it's important. I'm enough of a wordsmith that I need the manuscript to ensure I've thought through the exact language and images I'm going to use. It also makes sure I'm not going to say something stupid about "puffed up crackers." Finally, it serves as a source of accountability for me to make sure I've thought through every piece of the sermon, rather than just throwing together a quick outline and winging it. I'm a good enough communicator that I could do that, but the risk isn't worth it.

Although I always manuscript my sermons word-for-word, I never take a manuscript with me to the stage. I carry up an outline with a couple of key points and transitions color-coded for easy reference. Just as I feel like God (and the congregation) deserves a sermon that is well thought through, I feel like it's cheating to stand up and read a sermon to them. If it's important enough for people to listen to for 35 minutes, it's important enough for me to internalize.

Notice, I didn't say "memorize." If I simply memorize my sermon, it comes across as a wooden, cold, unemotional speech. I don't want that. I want to be familiar enough with my sermon that I know exactly where I'm going and exactly how I want to get there, but only to the point that I'm free to communicate those things normally.

Nobody is ever going to accuse me of being the world's best preacher, and that's okay. But I see it as my responsibility to try to be the world's most prepared preacher, and to be the most diligent steward of my gifts and the congregation's time that I can be.

When the Cat is Away...

Our senior pastor left yesterday morning for Europe. He'll be gone for almost 3 weeks teaching at a seminary in Spain, and one in Slovakia.

I think it's a pretty cool thing to serve with a pastor who bleeds what he talks about on Sunday morning. Most pastors have a hard time giving up "their pulpit" for one Sunday, much less three in a row. But Ken feels as though he can preach a better sermon by living it out in Europe than he could just talking about it here every week.

We talk a lot as a church about being externally focused. We talk about our belief that our goal as a church is not to get everyone out there in here, but to get everyone in here out there. What better way to reinforce that than by the senior pastor spending a good chunk of time out there?

It's not just Ken. Every pastor at McKinney is expected/encouraged to go on a short-term mission every year. There is budget money set aside to help pastors get out there. To me, that is one of the strongest things McKinney does. Sure, our pastors are gone from time to time, but I think it makes us stronger. It helps us remain a church that is externally focused, and constantly resets our perspective to remind us there's something going on that is bigger than us.

Family Friday

We're retreating this weekend with the newly-married class at McKinney. We love being connected with this class, not only because God is doing some really cool things in and through them, but also because it gives us a much-needed connection with people who are at a similar stage in life.

The connection with people who smell what you're steppin' in is more important to my wife than to I, but it's important to me too. We haven't always had that ability, so we're really thankful to have it now.

Not only is it good from the standpoint of having friendships, but it's good for our marriage. Each of those couples serve as mirrors for Kari and I to look into. Sometimes they give us verbal feedback on things they notice in our lives, but most of the time we learn from them by osmosis. At some points we'll see something in one of those marriages that encourages Kari and I to love each other in a different way. Sometimes we'll see something in one of those marriages that reminds us how gracious God has been to us. And sometimes we see something in one of those marriages that convicts us to fix something we're doing wrong.

We love getting to serve the young-married ministry at McKinney, in part because they do a good job of serving us; most of the time without even knowing it. Our marriage is stronger because we spend time hanging out with people who are working to make their marriage stronger. Hopefully, we'll do some of that this weekend.

Drive-By Opportunities

Our church building is located right next door to two of the biggest Jewish synagogues in Dallas/Fort Worth. We are less than a mile from a fairly large Muslim Mosque. Across the street to the North are homes that range in value from around $800,000 to 2 million dollars. Just South of us are apartments that are inhabited by low-income families.

After church on Sunday, our people drive by all kinds of opportunity on the way to do ministry.

Most of us do that in our neighborhoods too. Kari and I have neighbors on one side who are believers, but on the other side we have a lady who we've only seen a couple of times. Across the street are a neat couple who are a long way from Christ, and next door to them is a family that created their own religion.

And every morning I get up and drive past their homes in order to do ministry.

Sometimes I hate being a pastor because it keeps me from developing genuine relationships with people who don't know Jesus; they either shut-down or start confessing when they find out I'm a pastor. Other times, I realize that I've got all kinds of opportunities to share the gospel... I just drive past those opportunities on my way to do ministry.

High Caliber Leaders

Several years ago I had a ministry where I was the only person who officed at the church. There were a lot of things wrong with that arrangement, but I was able to accomplish a lot of work in that environment. I found I could accomplish most of the things I needed to accomplish in the day between the hours of 8am and noon. That left me four or five hours in the afternoon where I was able to invest in my own personal growth.

That was a point pretty early in my ministry, and I was at a stage in leadership where I realized the best thing I could do to invest in ministry was to learn as much as I could learn about leading well. So I read almost anything I could get my hands on about leadership. I studied the lives of leaders; the things that made them tick, the way they spent their time, the habits they generated that served them well in their area of leadership.

One of the things I noticed that was true about almost every high-caliber leader I read about was other high-caliber leaders. Virtually nobody who was a successful leader - in the realm of the church or the realm of business - got there (a) by accident, or (b) alone.

So, I started trying to find the highest caliber leaders I could find, and scheduled time with them. I found that most of them - even some leaders who are pretty high-profile and busy - would take time to meet with a young guy if they felt like it was a good investment. So I got to visit with all kinds of people across the spectrum of leadership who had some really great input for me as I continue to develop.

Today, I'm still in the early stages of leadership and ministry; but I feel as though the time I took to allow high-caliber leaders to invest in me is one of the greatest leadership decisions I've made.

A couple of things are important in that process. The first is staying humble. There's a temptation when you're surrounding yourself with high-caliber leaders to become a name-dropper, and everyone hates those guys. I tried to stay completely humble, and rarely told anyone I knew about the meetings I had. If you're a name-dropper, and it gets back to the leader you've surrounded yourself with, they'll feel used and dishonored and will hesitate to ever invest in you again.

The second thing that's important in the process is asking the right questions. The more specific and direct you can be, the more valuable your time together will be. If he/she wrote a book, read it and take notes prior to getting together. If he/she spoke at a conference, or made a significant decision, or did something else significant, know as many details as you can. Those things will give you a glimpse into the leader's passions and areas of expertise; sometimes they'll give you a window into the leader's weaknesses too. When you're able to be direct and give a high-caliber leader a chance to speak about his passions, you won't have to ask many questions. And the person you're meeting with will realize that you care enough about spending time with them to use the time wisely. There's nothing worse than wasting a high-caliber leader's time.

So, make a call today. Find the person you respect most and get on his schedule. The worst he/she can tell you is "no." Surround yourself with high-caliber people, and you can't help but amp up your own leadership.

Can you fix our good problem?

I know there are several different types of people who read this blog from time to time, and this morning I want to solicit some help from those of you who are pastors.

About 4 years ago, the church where I'm a pastor built a beautiful new building. One of the things the church was most excited about in the new building was having a large foyer where people could connect before and after the service. The previous building allowed for virtually no connection, because people had to be moved out quickly to make room for the next service.

The new building has a huge foyer that is perfect for people to stand and visit before and after the service, and people are taking advantage of it. Meanwhile, we've fallen victim to the law of unintended consequences. People are using the connection space so well we have a hard time getting them to the service on time.

Currently, our 2000 seat auditorium is around 20 percent full when the service begins, and around 80 percent full when the service ends. Most of the additional people aren't late to church - they're just visiting with people in the connection space.

It's hard to gripe about people connecting with each other, but it's a significant challenge when you view the situation from the eye of a guest who shows up early (often, guests are easy to spot because they're the only people who show up to your church early). Their first impression is of a crowded foyer and an empty service - which is not what we want to portray.

We've tried everything we can think of to move people in early. We've tried countdown clocks, dimming the lights in the foyer, moving important parts of the service to the beginning to celebrate those who are on time, and asking/inviting people to make being on time a priority. So far, it's not working.

So, I know some of you have faced similar situations in the past. Some of you haven't, but have a good idea nonetheless. How would you handle this situation? It's a good problem to have people connecting too much with each other, but we need to fix it. Any ideas?