The Ecclesia Network

a missional church network

Leadership

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Leader Profile: Doug Moister

The Renew Community, Lansdale PA

Doug Moister and family


Doug Moister serves as the lead pastor at the Renew Community. Doug and his wife Mear accepted the call to come on staff with Renew in 2011. Today, besides his pastoral and preaching duties with Renew, Doug is a life long learner, a church history nerd, a coach in the community, and an enthusiastic fly fisherman. Doug and Mear enjoy spending time with their kids and thanking God for all He has done and continues to do in the community.

How would you describe the area your church is in?

Lansdale is a northwest suburb of Philadelphia that sits along the R5 rail line(a rail line that runs into the heart of the city).  It is a small town that has been growing its image and identity over the past 10 years.  Some things folks notice when they come to town is the walkability, new construction, and renovations of old buildings.  We have had an influx of coffee shops, breweries, and unique restaurants in the past few years. Which has shown a jump in the housing market and made things tougher for our lower income friends. Lansdale is culturally diverse, we have a thousand member mosque within walking distance from where we meet.  Lastly, there are a ton of young families who live in Lansdale. 

How would you describe the journey of pastoring The Renew Community? What have been some of the milestones/different seasons?

Around year 7 we experienced a really difficult season with some good folks leaving well and not so well. It also seemed that some of our most steady healthy folks were going through some really hard things.  I believe looking back that Renew was invited into a season of growing up during that time and trusting the Lord to take us through that process. Another significant season for us happened a year and a half ago when J.R. Briggs the founding pastor stepped down but did not leave, that brought about the hiring of Ben Pitzen and he has been such a blessing to our community.  We are also grateful that we get to tell a story of a founding pastor stepping down, handing over the reins and being part of the community.  Lastly,  our Elders ROCK!  3 years ago we added two women elders and that has built trust and been a blessing on so many levels to Renew.  I could go on… 

Looking back, what do you know now you wish you had known when you first started at Renew?

I don’t think there is much I would change, maybe the way I personally handled certain situations, or things we tried.  I would have started seeing a spiritual director about 3 years sooner. 

As you think about what you’ve been able to do so far in ministry there what are some things you have done/tried that have worked well?

I would say we have made it goal to be more creative in the arts and take risks in our gatherings and House churches.  We have and it has paid off as we are seeing creatives come out of the woodwork for us. 

What hasn’t worked so well? What have you had to rethink/reimagine/rework?

I am constantly evaluating what is working and not working.  one thing I would say that has been something I am burdened about is continuing to push Renew outside of herself.  We have been given the gift of a healthy community, and we need to use that to move beyond ourselves. Particularly in our house churches.  House church is part of our hybrid structure and I am rethinking how we do mission in and to our geographical areas where our 9 house churches meet. 

What is one failure you experienced and what did you learn from it?

Wow, just one…. A few months ago I was getting up to teach on a Sunday and I sensed the Holy Spirit put something on my heart which would have been a complete change from what I had planned. I didn’t listen, the teaching went off well, but I missed an opportunity to obey.  
What is something you’ve been hearing from or learning from God in this last season of leading?
That God is faithful, and I need to grow in my own trust of his leadership.  

What do you dream/hope/pray The Renew Community looks like in five years?

My prayer is that we plant two churches, one to the west of us and one in Philadelphia.  

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Why the Disciplines Matter

While acknowledging no community is perfectly mature, I often think that the reason more communities are not more spiritually mature is because their leaders are not more spiritually mature.

Why aren’t they? As Dallas Willard points out in The Spirit of the Disciplines, while we want to react as Christ would react, behave as Christ would behave and lead as Christ would lead, we are unwilling to do the things and practice the disciplines that enabled him to react, behave and lead as he did.

Willard writes,

“We must learn to follow His preparations, the disciplines for life in God’s rule that enabled him to receive His Father’s constant and effective support while doing His will.”

Programs and teaching series will not do half as much good in a community as elders who transparently live their lives and their practices before a watching community.

Disciplines for God

Many times I have sat with both pastors and elders who spoke of being spiritually dry. What I hear over and over again is that it’s difficult to find or make the time for reading Scripture; it’s hard to pray in a disciplined and consistent manner; and it’s nearly impossible to set aside time simply to sit and be present to God in the midst of the busyness and rigors of life, work and ministry.

When I was a youth pastor, one day I sat at my desk, staring down at my open Bible and wondering, Would I do this if I thought no one would ever ask me if I had? At the time, my truthful answer was no. It was then I realized I needed a major paradigm shift in how I related to God.

Leadership demanded that I engage with the spiritual disciplines, but leadership was not sufficient to make those practices vital and real in my life. What I needed was to fall in love with God again—to see in him a loveliness and a value apart from how he contributed to my position in church leadership. Leadership will “call the question” in your life: do you love God for God, or God as a means to an end? To put it another way, are you in love with Him or are you seeing relationship with Him as a necessary means to maintaining leadership and your reputation?

Disciplines for others

One of the main reasons leaders find it so hard to be disciplined in spending time in God’s Word, solitude and stillness, prayer, meditation and fasting is that they feel they are so busy with life, so busy in doing good, so busy serving God and the community that they neglect the care of their own souls. As Richard Baxter, the 17th century Puritan wrote, they are busy preparing meals for others even while they themselves are starving. You simply can’t feed anyone without having been fed yourself. What you offer to others will be of little nutritional value to them unless it flows from a vital, connected, disciplined relationship with God.

This can be particularly difficult for leaders who are bi-vocational or not in paid ministry. There is a temptation to see serving the church in leadership, attending meetings and fulfilling all the obligations of an elder as, if not sufficient for our spiritual lives, all that we really have the bandwidth to do.

When talking with pastors and other ministry leaders, I urge them to see their own spiritual formation as a way of not simply growing in relationship with the God who loves them, but also of loving others around them. My wife, my children and the people in my church need me to be in prayer and in Scripture regularly, in solitude and silence often. They need me to be grounded spiritually and growing, because that’s the only way I’ll ever be able to discharge my responsibilities to them faithfully. Seeing what we do publicly as loving service to our community is only half the story. Seeing what we do privately as we care for our souls also as loving service to others is the rest.

Disciplines for ourselves

The late-night phone calls, the inevitable conflicts, the difficulty of seeing others make wrong choices—all of these have an impact. Practicing the disciplines helps shape that impact for our good.

Implementing the spiritual disciplines in our lives also helps us minimize our anxious reactivity and choose a more constructive response instead. For example, the practice of studying the Scriptures brings the cognitive perspective to an emotionally-laden situation. We are reminded by the words on the page to love our enemy when our natural reaction is to lash out in anger. As we pray for our enemy, we open ourselves up to consider compassion and mercy. As we confess our sins, we face our sinfulness and avoid over-focusing on the sinfulness of the other. Gradually, we experience transformation, becoming the kind of people who are actually capable of forgiving an enemy.

How do some handle the stress of leadership and life so they grow from it while others feel more and more like burned-out husks, stumbling through another meeting, dealing with another crisis? I would venture to say it comes down to how they view themselves and those stresses. Spending time with God reminds us of His presence, even in the most difficult parts of life and church leadership. It grounds us in the character of Christ and informs our reactions. It enables us to choose loving responses rather than react or be defensive. And it reminds us that even in the hardest parts of leading a church community, God wants to use what we go through and our responses to it to form and shape us and our communities.

This post is adapted from Eldership and the Mission of God- Equipping Teams for Faithful Church Leadership, by J.R. Briggs and Bob Hyatt

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One Simple Way to Reduce Ministry Stress- Be a Sheepdog, Not a Rabbit.

It’s often said that it’s not so much what happens to you in life, but how you react to it.

There’s a lot of wisdom in that thought. What if I told you that how you react could literally determine what chemicals your brain produces?

We’re all born with a hardwired stress response- when we get dumped into the middle of a stressful situation, our brains produce cortisol. A built in alarm system, cortisol is produced by our adrenal glands, and triggers the “fight or flight” mechanism.

So, if you are hiking, and slip off the side of a path and find yourself hanging by your fingertips on the front face of a cliff, your brain is going to start pumping cortisol.

But here’s the funny thing- find yourself in the exact same position, not because you slipped, but because you chose a rock-climbing adventure, and your brain reacts in a very different way.

When stressors are forced on us, our brains and bodies react like a prey animal. Like a rabbit. Your heart rate rises, the cortisol dump begins, your senses become hyper-aware to danger, and your body begins to prepare to either run away or go down fighting. But when we encounter the same stressors, not as a result of having them forced on us, but rather out of choice, there’s a whole different physiological response. Less like a prey animal, more like a predator. Our heart rate might rise, but there’s no dump of cortisol. We’re excited, our senses are heightened, but there are different parts of our brains that are being activated.

When stress is forced on us, we’re like a rabbit- when we chase the stressor, the danger or the challenge, we’re more like a sheep dog, running into the scary situation willingly, sometimes gladly.

It matters whether or not you frame the hard parts of your life and ministry as something you are choosing to face, or something you are being forced to face. Your brain and your body will react very differently. Your body knows the difference between being a rabbit and a sheep dog.

At a particularly tough time in ministry, I began to notice my bodily reactions to hard ministry situations. It felt very “fight or flight.” Most of the time, I wanted to run away. Some of the time, I wanted to fight. But nearly all of the time, my response was unhealthy, and unhelpful in a ministry situation.

Most of the time, I wanted to run away. Some of the time, I wanted to fight. But nearly all of the time, my response was unhealthy, and unhelpful in a ministry situation. Click To Tweet

I knew I needed to change how I was reacting to the criticism, the complaints and the “concerns” I was facing as a leader, because “fight or flight” was just making everything worse. But to change how I was reacting to those things, I had to change how I thought about them.

I began to say to myself “This is a challenge, not a threat.” I wanted to see the hard parts of ministry, not as a threat to my position, my authority or my person, but rather, as another way to level-up in ministry, to learn and grow- even if that learning came by handling the situation wrongly- at least I’d know what to do next time.

I know ministry is not a game, but when I began to think in game terms, seeing each new “issue” I was facing as puzzle to figure out, a challenge to be willingly faced, another lesson to be learned (and here is the magic part) as something I was willingly engaging with, the challenges didn’t get any easier, but… facing them sure did. And more, my adrenal glands really settled down. I was able to come a little bit closer to being a “non-anxious presence” in leadership.

This is something I’m still working on- in parenting, in marriage, in life– seeing whatever challenges come not as something that’s being forced on me, but as part and parcel of all the things I am proactively choosing. I chose to be a husband- so when marriage gets tough, I can tell myself I chose (and am still actively choosing) this! I don’t need to run from this, or fight for my life- but I can grow through this hard part. Same with parenting- I may not have actively chosen all the hard parts, but I chose to be a parent (and even if I hadn’t initially chosen, I’m choosing it NOW) and that means I’m choosing these challenges. No need to bury my head, ignore them and hope they will go away or any other rabbit-like behavior.

The same holds true in ministry. None of us entered the ministry dreaming of the hard personalities we’d have to deal with, the dire budget numbers, the seemingly complacent Christians who don’t seem interested in growing. But in choosing ministry, we chose those challenges. And the way that we face them will make all the difference for us.

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Leaders Profile- Ryan Braught

Ryan Braught is the founding pastor/church planter with the Veritas Community in Lancaster, PA. We had a few questions for him!

How would you describe the area your church is in?

Veritas is based in the city of Lancaster, a city that is growing.

How would you describe the journey of pastoring Veritas? What have been some of the milestones/different seasons?

One of biggest milestones over the last almost ten years, both for myself but also for the community was my sabbatical in the summer of 2017. It helped me rest, rejuvenate, and reconnect with God and family. But more than just what it did for me, I believe it truly grew our community- People saying “this is our community,” people taking ownership, stepping into leadership roles, and become active participants in the mission and ministry of Veritas. Another milestone or series of milestones relates to our connection with our denomination (the Church of the Brethren). They have a process of planting where plants start as a project, move to fellowship status, and then become a full congregation. We have been able to walk through this process becoming a fellowship in 2016 and this summer will become a full-fledged congregation within the Church of the Brethren.

Looking back, what do you know now you wish you had known when you first started Veritas?

Just the amount of turnover that happens each year, especially as we have connected with a younger generation. And to look at that turnover as a blessing- that we get to disciple them for a season, then send people to other places around the country and the world, and commission them as missionaries from Veritas. Also something that i wish I had known is just how slow missional church and missional church planting can be. And how much patience I need to trust Jesus, rely on him, and really lean into the belief that He grows the church- and not succumb to the latest church growth fad to try to numerically grow the church.

As you think about what you’ve been able to do so far in ministry there what are some things you have done/tried that have worked well?

I believe there are three different parts to our ministry that have worked well. First, I believe our engagement with the arts community within Lancaster has been going very well. We have been able to connect with many different artists and are building a reputation within Lancaster. We have been doing a lot of social justice/awareness shows and been able to bless many artists and get behind their work. One of the neatest things related to this- is asking the artist that we feature each month to come to our worship gathering for a 5-10 minute Q&A and have them share about their work, and allow them to find a supportive faith community that is interested in their work and wants to encourage and bless them. I believe the second thing that has gone well for Veritas is related to the development of the community within Veritas. We have a tight-knit community and we have built it through many different ways- including our Veritas community What’s App, something called Conversation Project (where we do some intentional relationship building by pairing people from the community together, get them to meet up, and have them talk through questions and get to know each other), and just regular engagement with each other outside the “confines” of Sunday morning. Thirdly, I think our value of participation has been hugely beneficial to our community- in regards to building relationships with each other, but also in relation to discipleship. This value of participation while multifaceted, has led us to have interactive discussion as part of our sermon- where people dialogue around tables during and after the message, and to talk about how they will seek to apply and live out what we are talking about each worship gathering. The value of participation has also led to the creation of a teaching team, which includes myself, but also a few others- who help develop the teaching series, and also take turns in preaching and teaching throughout the year.

What hasn’t worked so well? What have you had to rethink/reimagine/rework?

One of the things we struggle with is the role of Children within the life of the community. Do we provide a nursery and children’s ministry and have the separated from the community for the entire worship time? Do we provide a nursery only? Do we provide a nursery and children’s ministry for part of the worship gathering? Do we act more as family- and assume infants and children will be in the service for the entire time? Or a hybrid of some of these? This is something that we struggle with- especially with not really having any children for children’s ministry (but having a growing number of young babies/infants/toddlers). We are in the process of also rethinking and reworking our leadership structure and how to develop a leadership pipeline, that grows and develops leaders, gives them the permission to begin and develop ministries, and develop leadership team and ministry team structures that fit our community (our vision, values, etc.).

What is one failure you experienced and what did you learn from it?

The day after Easter in 2018 I hurriedly set up a ladder against my garage, and hurried up the ladder to clean out a gutter. The ladder slid out from the garage and I came down with it, landing on my driveway and fracturing my wrist. You might ask what does this have to do with the church and ministry? This failure- 1. to take my time. and 2. Having someone holding the ladder, taught me those 2 valuable lessons in church and ministry.

First, in ministry I need to take time and not hurry though things. Planning events, preaching, visiting people, etc… takes time and I need to not hurry through those things and move on, “to more important things”. In planning events, I need to be diligent about the details (something that I struggle with), writing out the to-do list, and steps to making the event a “success”.

Secondly, I can’t do it alone. If I try, I will experience a fall. I desperately need others- both within my church and outside my church. I need a team of leaders within my church- those having different gifts and passions than I do- in order to make the church function as it is supposed to- as a body. If I try to function alone- the body is broken (just like my wrist was). I also need others outside my community who can pray with me, walk with me, and support me (as I also support, pray, and walk with them).

What is something you’ve been hearing from or learning from God in this last season of leading?

I feel that God is speaking to me about what leadership-like-Jesus truly looks like: a dying to the self, washing the feet of others, servant leadership. This is not an easy process- and I have to continually ask God to help me lead like Jesus- which means not always going in the direction that I think we should go in, not making all the decisions, trusting the leadership of others, and seeking to build consensus.

What do you dream/hope/pray Veritas looks like in five years?

My hope and dream for Veritas is that in five years we will be looking at planting a church out of Veritas. I also hope and dream that our church would be a strong family who are pursuing Jesus together, and following Him into the world and being about His mission.






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10 Practical Ways to Cultivate Trust With Your Leadership Team

The fundamental role of a leader is to build trust, bear pain and give hope.

Ultimately, all leadership flows from these three streams.

This week I was reminded once again of the crucial and irreplaceable stream of trust. It is the least common denominator in all leadership contexts, the fuel by which the leadership car moves. It is impossible to lead effectively over the long haul absent of trust. In Patrick Lencioni’s helpful book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, he lists the major destructive factors among team dynamics: fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results. But the keystone trait that undergirds all the others is the absence of trust. As one of my doctoral professors recently said, “The absence of trust is ultimately the absence of grace.” Conversely speaking then, building and deepening trust is the single greatest thing leaders must cultivate within and among their team in order to be healthy, fruitful and effective.

Albert Winseman, in his book Growing An Engaged Church, wrote that every person who walks into your church is asking two questions: Am I valued? and Do I have something to contribute? These questions get to the heart of the matter. Yet, I would offer that these are not just questions asked by churchgoers; they are also asked by any person who serves on any team in any capacity.

I don’t think anyone would argue with what I’ve offered thus far. Every well-meaning leader I’ve met believes trust is important. And every leader I’ve talked to wants people to feel valued and to allow space for collaboration, participation and contribution with their team. However, you may be thinking: Yes but how? Practically speaking, how am I to go about deepening trust with my team?

With Lencioni’s book in one hand and Winseman’s book in the other, it’s important for leaders to drill down further and consider how we can cultivate health in specific and practical ways, first by self-assessment. I offer the following ten elements – and questions – for self-evaluation.  

  • Value and love: how do I treat the people on my team (i.e. my words, posture, presence, tone, affirmation, etc.)? Is it a judgement-free zone? Which is more important to me: healthy relationships or accomplishing more? Are our team meetings and interactions safe spaces for people to really share what they are thinking and feeling?
  • Participation: how much do I actually empower and include our team on decisions being made? Am I collaborating or simply informing them of decisions already made?  
  • Congruence: how much do my words match my actions? Where might I be out of alignment? How would I even know?
  • Consistency: is there evidence of results in my leadership over an extended period of time? Do people have confidence in my ability to lead?
  • Self-differentiation: How much of my identity is wrapped up in me being the leader? Being a “successful” leader? Ultimately, which direction are the arrows pointing: toward me, toward our team or toward our mission?
How much of my identity is wrapped up in me being the leader? Ultimately, which direction are the arrows pointing: toward me, toward our team or toward our mission? Click To Tweet
  • Vulnerability: how vulnerable have I been (and how vulnerable am I willing to be) in order to model what a safe space looks like on the team? When others are vulnerable how have I responded? Am I capable of readily admitting “I don’t know” and verbalizing phrases such as “I’m sorry”?
  • Failure: How do I respond to risks and failures, individually and as a team? How much does it define who I am as a leader or who we are as a team?
  • Truth-telling: How am I at telling the truth – and embracing it – even if it stings? Am I actually telling the whole truth or am I telling the truth, plus or minus ten percent?
  • Unity: how much are we pursuing unity (not uniformity) as a team? Am I willing to let go of my personal preference(s) if it means we will be better off as a team in the long run? Do dissenting voices have a valued role among our team or are they hushed, ignored or swept aside?
  • Clarity: How clear and compelling is our vision, priorities, what we care about? How do we know if we are being clear in our communication?

In closing, I submit these additional questions worthy of reflection for leaders when it comes to deepening trust among our teams:

  • Why should people follow me? What gives me the right to lead others?
  • Because I have power, who, in turn, is flourishing?

It takes courage to ask these questions of ourselves about our own leadership; and it requires even more courage to ask others these questions about our leadership. But because trust is so crucial to the process, we can’t afford not to ask them. Ironically, we may find that if we ask these questions of ourselves and others with a humble, inquisitive and courageous tone and posture on a consistent basis, trust among our team will deepen.  

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Can Your Church Be the Church That Doesn’t Hurt People?

Like many, I came to church planting through the route of dissatisfaction and hurt. The angry young man. I grew tired of asking the same questions, banging my head against the same walls- tired of feeling hurt by the system and tired of seeing people I loved leave because they had been hurt.

So, when we planted a church in Portland, OR in 2004- I and the others I planted alongside of secretly, inwardly, held the idea- even if we outwardly disavowed it- that we were going to be the church that got things right.

It’s not so much we thought we were better or somehow the pinnacle of ecclesiastical evolution- it was simply that we thought we could learn from the mistakes of the churches we had come from and just do it differently.

It seemed so easy.

We were going to be organic, non-programmatic, we would listen, learn, love… and though we took careful pains to warn people as they came into our community that community hurts, we believed: we would be the church that would never hurt people.

Though we took careful pains to warn people as they came into our community that community hurts, we believed: we would be the church that would never hurt people. Click To Tweet

Of course, we were completely wrong.

I first started getting an inkling of this when I noticed that though we saw many people coming into church and coming to Christ or coming BACK to Church or back to Christ through our community, we saw just as many for whom we were the last stop on the way out. They had grown up in the evangelical church, many were even pastor’s kids, and they would come to our community as this last ditch effort. We met in a pub, were not happy clappy, were not trying to be slick or production-oriented- for a lot of them, we were something still Christian that they thought maybe they could stomach. We even had some explicitly tell us “This is my last try- if this doesn’t work, I’m out.” I mean, no pressure, right?

And time and time again, though we saw many stick and find what they were looking for, we saw just as many turn around and walk out the door again, some with real anger towards us, or towards me. And in trying to pin down why this would happen, we’ve never come to any real conclusions, other than that some people are just going to be hurt, no matter what you do- their issues with God and with church are going to bubble up. Which church in inconsequential- it could be any. And quite often, it’s going to be yours.

But it hasn’t always been simply that some people were setting themselves up to be hurt- sometimes it was us- our choices, our actions. In dealing with people, with couples or individuals or even staff members, we made choices with the best of intentions that ended up alienating people, confirming their worst fears about church… hurting them.

It wasn’t what we intended, we meant well, but we stepped wrong and someone else ended up getting blown out the doors.

There have even been times when we knew- we knew- going into a situation-  there’s potential here for great hurt, and we as elders would circle up and discuss- how can we do this with the minimum amount of pain? How can we do this right? Only to have it blow up in our faces, to have our decisions and choices hurt people we loved very much.

My darkest moment in church planting was coming to the realization that no matter what I did, I was going to contribute to the hurt, the brokenness and pain that people had around church. I just was. We just were.

My darkest moment in church planting was coming to the realization that no matter what I did, I was going to contribute to the hurt, the brokenness and pain that people had around church. Click To Tweet

We always wanted to be a part of people’s faith stories. It’s just that we wanted to be a part of the good bits- the place where people came to Jesus- not the place where they rejected Him. The place where people found community and had their faith in followers of Jesus restored- not the place that got to drive the final nail in the coffin.

And after instance after instance of seeing people leave- angry, hurt- of trying SO HARD to bring the least amount of pain to people through some really hard situations and instead finding ourselves somehow, inexplicably bringing the maximum amount, I came to the hard but good realization, that we don’t get to pick which part of people’s stories we get to play. Yes- we get to pick whether or not we will act in love, with kindness, like Jesus to the best of our ability- I get that. But I’m telling you- there are times when I have felt and when you will feel as though we were in a tragic opera- that God was using us in someone else’s life and what He happened to need at the moment was not a soft place for them to land but a hammer and a chisel. God was going to use us to get some people where HE needed them- to a place of discomfort or even crisis. There have been times when I cried out to God- really? Really? We’re trying so hard with this person and still- it seems like all we can do is screw it up further- that everything we do just seems to make it worse. REALLY?

And if that’s all there was to this thing, I think I probably would have packed it in a long time ago…

The good news is, though there were a lot of dark moments, a lot of times when I wondered if we were going to “make it”, if what we were doing was even worth the effort it took to “make it,” there were a lot of bright moments as well- mostly centered around the times when we stopped trying to build the Church, and just rested in the joy of being the church.

As I think back to those moments of gathering down at the river or creek to baptize people, of dancing for hours after marrying two people who met and fell in love in our community, of sitting with people and untangling some of the knots that they had encountered in life or faith, even of walking with some couples through some really deep water and seeing marriages actually make it, I’m glad that God allowed me to even take part in this thing. Because though we often unintentionally hurt people, though we mess up, though God uses us in hard ways at times, He also is kind enough to let us share in the up times as well. The putting back together of what is broken and the healing of what was hurt.

And I’ve been able to see that best and brightest in seeing how the Gospel actually works in community. How rather than sitting as a lifeless proposition on a page, the Gospel is actually the tool the Holy Spirit uses most as He brings us not just to a saving place of faith in Jesus, but to maturity and Christ-likeness.

I have loved sitting with people who are describing to me their struggles with workaholism, or anger, or money, and realizing- Oh- the real issue here isn’t money, or work or whatever- the real issue is what you are asking it to do for you. To somehow save you, give you hope, give you worth. Let me tell you about Jesus.

I’ve loved sitting with couples in crisis- well, I haven’t loved that part, but I’ve loved being able to tell them- I know, I know the hurt seems overwhelming and forgiveness seems like an impossibility right now, but I want you to think hard, to remember, to meditate on what Jesus has done for you- how and how much He’s forgiven you, and see if that doesn’t open up new possibilities for you here.

And most of all, I have loved realizing that even for me, at my darkest moments as a pastor and in church planting, the Gospel has something to say. Those moments laying awake in bed at 2:30am on Sunday night after preaching- when attendance was low, and giving non-existent and I’m feeling like: “After that sermon it will be a miracle if anyone comes back next week.” And realizing- that in getting so tied up in the metrics, in resting so much of the weight of my soul and my identity on results, on what happened, on how I was perceived and received, I was asking those things to do for me what only Jesus could- to tell me I was worth something, make me whole, save me.

The Good News is that my church and their attendance, their applause, their approval are not my savior. Jesus is.

The Good News is that my church and their attendance, their applause, their approval are not my savior. Jesus is. Click To Tweet

And so my brightest moment of all in church planting was realizing that the Gospel- this good news about Jesus and His kingdom isn’t just a truth we learn at the beginning of our spiritual journey… the Good News is the transformative engine of change in the world, not just for Non-Christians, but for Christians and even for pastors. Our communities and we ourselves will never outgrow needing to hear it, and so we’ll never get past needing to preach it to them, to others… to ourselves.

In church planting, and in pastoring in this broken world hurt is inevitable- both to yourself and to those you are serving and reaching. Thank God we have in the Gospel the answer to the brokenness and hurt we inevitably experience and even in our best intentions bring to other people. Thank God for Jesus.

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