Tag Archive - spiritual

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Pastoring the Pastoral Staff at Your Church

Monday, June 2, 2014

In today’s forward moving churches many church leaders are so focused on what kind of performance they can get out of their Staff that they completely miss the point that their role is to invest in their Staff. It’s easy to get busy managing people, getting things done, and moving towards the vision. But if you’re so busy that you don’t have time to focus on discipleship, development and knowing the team then you run the risk of not only building a toxic culture on your church staff team but missing the real work God has called you to. At the end of the day the church is not a business, it’s the body of Christ. And listen, this is coming from a guy who loves goals, is addicted to progress and would much rather move further faster…but what does it matter if you get there, but you’re all alone, or worse, you’ve left a pile of dead bodies in your wake. If you’re having a difficult time figuring out how to Pastor your church staff while moving towards the goals and vision of the church at the same time then this simple list should help you.

1. Pray

It may sound elementary, but you’d be surprised how many church staff teams simply don’t pray together. On my team we take the time weekly to pray for the needs of the church for a few moments in staff meeting and I regularly start my monthly coaching meetings with individual team members in prayer together.

2. Play

Relationships are the both the glue and the grease that make work possible. Strong relationships minimize friction and keep the team close together. For me, that means I have to like my team, which in turn means we’ve got to spend time together. That’s why I do a couple of nights a year at my house where I get the team together, we’ve blown off work to go bowling, we’ve even been known to shoot skeet at during an offsite (please – all of my pacifist friends don’t hate). I firmly believe that teams that play together, stay together.

3. Spiritual Health Days

One of the better practices that we’ve developed is what we call “Spiritual Health Days.” These are a couple of half days that we build in through out the year where we literally give our staff a half day to complete a set of prepared spiritual exercises and then have lunch with another team member unpacking their experience. Here’s a link to the most recent Spiritual Health Day that we did. Feel free to use this tool with your team.

4. Development Planning

If you know anything about me you know that I believe you get what you plan for. That’s why each of my team members writes down an annual development plan in the form of goals, both professional and personal in nature. We not only talk about these when they’re put into writing but they’re measured through out the year.

Leave a comment; I’d love to hear about what you’ve done to pastor the pastoral staff at your church!

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation, Staffing

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what does spiritual depth look like?

Sunday, September 23, 2012

The word “deep” is a dangerous word in church world today. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say they’re leaving a particular church because it’s not “deep” enough for them. Or they’re going to go to a different church because it’s “deep.” I’ve even heard people criticize pastors because the sermon they gave that weekend wasn’t “deep.” In fact I’ve even been on the receiving end of a statement like that a time or two (ouch). But what does spiritual depth really look like? What does “deep” mean?

1. Emotionally moving:

For some people “depth” is an emotion. If they teared up and were moved during a sermon, then it was deep. If that’s really the definition of deep then I can show you a movie or two that are deep. I cried like a baby at the end of “Marley and Me.” Hey don’t judge, I also cried at Gladiator, Braveheart, and the list goes on. See I do have a soft side. If being emotionally moved is really the definition of deep then 2 year olds and teenagers going through puberty are really deep.

2. Academic exercise:

For some people “depth” is an academic exercise. It’s all about a particular method of studying the scriptures. Expository versus Topical…now there’s a good fight we can get into. You know this is at play when you hear people proudly use phrases like, “We’re a people of the Word!”  A scientific method of bible study sadly doesn’t make someone deep.

3. Intellectual information:

For some people depth is all about new information. Is there a new piece of information I can learn, a new fact, a piece of church history, maybe something from the original languages? While all of this may be very intriguing, it’s not all that deep. If knowledge and information = depth then you’ve got to ask yourself, “Who were the most knowledgeable of the Scriptures when Jesus was walking the earth?” Answer: the Pharisees. I don’t think crucifying Jesus was very deep.

4. Confusion:

For others still depth is about not being able to truly know anything. In other words, if I can’t understand it then it must be deep. If the pastor uses big words, cute sayings, sounds smart, but I can’t understand what the heck he’s trying to say, it must be deep. Unfortunately deep isn’t confusing.

If spiritual depth is about any of these above four ideas on this list then spiritual depth is all about the presenter. But in the passage below Jesus tells a parable about two houses that were built, one on a foundation of sand and the other on a stone foundation. In both cases the builders heard the Word of God, but only one of the builders put what he heard into action. Could it be that spiritual depth according to the Scriptures is simply putting God’s Word into action?

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.”

Luke 6:46-49

Posted in Spiritual Formation
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