Some marriages at which you officiate won’t make it. You pray not and work hard in premarital counseling to counter that possibility, but it happens. Some nonbelievers with whom you share the gospel won’t listen. The pain is great when nonbelievers just keep rejecting the good news. Some of the seemingly godliest people you know will fall into sin. I’ve done this work a long time, and I’m still shocked at times. The enemy leaves no one off his radar. Some church members will get mad and leave. The first time it happened in my ministry, I was defeated for weeks. It still hurts when it happens. Some spiritual heroes will let you down. No one intends for it to happen, but even our long-term heroes are still human. Some staffing situations won’t work out. That’s when you’re reminded that because you’re a leader, your decisions affect marriages and families. Letting someone go, especially in our ministry world that preaches grace, is seldom easy. Somebody related t

Ever wonder why some people are influential, and others, well, aren’t? Take getting others to buy into your ideas, for example. Some people seem always to be able to win the day with their ideas. Others, not so much. I get asked all the time by leaders how to get their team members to take their ideas (and their leadership) more seriously. What’s fascinating to me is that the conversation almost always begins from the angle of how to pitch ideas. It’s as though most of us have convinced ourselves that we just need a better argument, point or insight and then our ideas will catch on. Sometimes that’s the case, but more often than not it’s deeper than that. It’s easy to think leaders buy (or reject) our ideas. But I’m not sure what’s what really at play most of the time. At a deeper level, it’s often a question of whether leaders buy you. As harsh as it sounds, here’s the truth: if a leader doesn’t buy you, they’ll rarely buy your idea. Leadership, as Joh

I’ve been and always will be doggedly suspicious of pastors who rarely (or never) mention Jesus. John Piper says, “What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ.” We ministers of the gospel—and Christians at large—can fumble this commission in three main ways. 1. We speak in vague spiritual generalities.  Love. Hope. Peace. Joy. Harmony. Blessings. All disembodied from the specific atoning work of the incarnate Jesus and exalted Lord. It all sounds nice. It’s all very inspirational. And it’s rubbish. He himself is our peace. He himself is love. He himself is life. He does not make life better. He is life. Any pastor who talks about the virtues of faith, hope and love, with Jesus as some implied tangential source, is not feeding his flock well. 2. We present Christ mainly as moral exemplar.  We tell people to be nice because Jesus was nice. We tell them to be sweet because Jesus was sweet, good b

Sometimes we do the things we hate. And sometimes we get confused and begin to hate ourselves for the things we’ve done. There is a world of difference between ‘walking in the light’ while confessing our sins (1 John 1.7-10), and letting our sins define our identity. While it is appropriate to mourn our sin (Matthew 5.4), it is not appropriate to hate ourselves. In the heat of the moment of regret and shame, we can almost think that self-loathing is good and right and biblical (after all, we have offended a Holy God and become unclean!). But in truth, God never calls us to hate ourselves. The truth is that God loves us (John 3.16, 1 John 4.10). And the only one who loves our self-loathing is Satan. Why? 1. Because when I loathe myself I loathe someone created in the image of God Proverbs 17.5 says, ‘Whoever mocks the poor insults his Maker.’ James writes that the tongue ‘is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with i

Dear Pastor, I love you. I want nothing more than for you to be all who God wants you to be. So this might hurt a little. I’m writing you this letter because I have noticed a few things that we have fallen into saying or doing that don’t represent Christ well. With all due respect, please stop: 1. STOP PRETENDING YOU ARE PERFECT. Jesus is perfect. You aren’t. Let us see your humanity. Share your mistakes with us. It gives us hope to know that even the pastor doesn’t always get it right. It also gives us the courage to be honest about our faults too. 2. STOP EMOTIONALLY AND SPIRITUALLY ABUSING YOUR STAFF. Although some elements of the church are like a business, church staff should not be treated just like employees. They are family. They aren’t perfect, but you need to love them anyway. When you hurt them, you hurt God’s family. I know far too many pastors who need therapy after the wounds of working for a bad boss. 3. STOP HIDING YOUR SECRET ADDICT

Pastor, if you burnout, you have no one to blame. I know, that sounds absolutely depressing and accusatory. But for pastors it’s true. Why? Before I answer that, let’s back up. Why do leaders burnout? They burnout because they don’t get enough sleep, they say yes to too many things, they don’t eat properly, they preach too many times a year, they have too many meetings, they don’t recharge themselves well, they don’t do anything relaxing or fun, they don’t take a Sunday off, they work too many hours, and they don’t deal with the emotional side of ministry well. So, whose fault is this? Well, if you suffer from these, your first response will be to say that your church puts a lot of pressure on you (which they might), your elders have high expectations for you (which they do), so it must be them. Your kids want to be in every sport, and you and your wife want to make sure your kids get all the things you didn’t have. So if you burnout, whose fault is