Victor was a retired CEO of a hospital supply company in our town, and when he agreed to be a deacon, I was absolutely thrilled. He’d bring so much insight, wisdom, and acumen to our team. He attended our first meeting as we discussed and prayed about the work of our leadership team. From the outset, there was an issue. A huge one. He wanted to singlehandedly change the vision and values of the church. For the next year, it was a push-and-pull affair rife with counterarguments and proposals that seemed to come out of nowhere. Perhaps he missed the thrill of boardroom takeovers or the ability to singlehandedly change things.

We had recently worked across our entire church organization to prayerfully create a mission statement and a long-range plan that stretched our people’s view of the church. Adding Victor’s force of personality and motives almost cost us three longtime leaders to resign simultaneously. Victor, as gifted as he was, just couldn’t align to the plan, and he left everyone frustrated, including himself.

You can’t minimize the importance of alignment when it comes to vision and effectiveness in a church leadership team. Misalignment will sabotage the tread life of any team.

Here is an easy way to remember, measure, and evaluate your alignment as leaders. I’d call it the P.L.A.N.

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Purpose

Purpose reflects the important question: “WHY.” Everything in your church needs to run through this filter. If you have a program or a practice which has no purpose, you are wasting everyone’s time. There are many things that knock churches off their purpose. Sometimes it’s a shadow mission of a member or a leader. A leader can press others to do something or decide on an initiative because there is something else going on. It could be a personal desire, a resentment, or an unshared agenda.

In other words, a leader may say, “We need to do this program” because of a need they have, or to make themselves look good, or to right a wrong from five years ago. Every leader, whether they are a pastor, staff member, deacon, or volunteer team leader, needs to ask this soul-searching question: “Why?” When you lose your “why,” you lose your way.

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Leadership

John Maxwell nailed it when he said, “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” For a vision to be realized, every leader needs to think of themselves as a champion of that vision. Our goal as leaders shouldn’t simply be to make more followers but rather to develop new leaders. Being a leader doesn’t mean that you’re going to make all the decisions. Leadership means that you will champion the overall vision of the church through your initiative and enthusiasm. That’s what makes a great leader.

Some leaders believe that their role is simply to filter or inspect the actions of the pastor or other leaders. Although we do need to assess where we are, it’s easy for us to get into an analytic mindset that sabotages the overall vision and purpose of the church. Anyone can stand back and offer opinions, but blessed is the pastor who has leaders that get in the game.

One of the greatest leaders I’ve ever worked with had a simple phrase. Every time there was a consensus for our church to move in a certain direction, he’d simply say, “Let’s go.” If he texted it, there would be three or four exclamation marks after the sentence. There was no “How will this affect me?” or “Why was I left out of the decision?” His job was simply to encourage and cheer on the entire team.

If he ever had a concern or disagreement, he would always come to me first before bringing it to the entire group. But usually, when it seemed right to the entire leadership team, he was my “Let’s Go” man. He was never the chairman, but he was always a leader.

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Attunement

Dr. Dan Siegel defines attunement this way:
“When we attune with others, we allow our own internal state to shift, to come to resonate with the inner world of another. This resonance is at the heart of the important sense of ‘feeling felt’ that emerges in close relationships.”

If you are aligned to the overall mission of the church, you’ll want to be attuned to your team. Leaders who are attuned can read the cues of their team members. They pause to think about the “why” questions but not just the “why” question. Attuned leaders are not only group-aware but are also self-aware. In other words, they don’t dominate the discussion but know how to listen, empathize, and ask important questions.

The opposite of attunement might be best described by what the Gottman Institute calls the four horsemen of the relationship apocalypse: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. If you’ve been a member of any church or organization for any amount of time, you’ve probably experienced these four horsemen.

If you align your ministry and work to the vision of your church, make sure you stay away from these four horsemen. (They are headless!)

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Nuance

Along with purpose, leadership, and attunement, an aligned leader also understands the power of nuance. They understand that no person or vision is crafted by cookie cutters or led by robots. A successful plan in one church or with one team doesn’t guarantee the same amount of success in another environment.

Many pastors and leaders know their Bibles—that is paramount. But secondarily, we need to understand our community and adapt our vision to provide strong biblical solutions in the context of our surrounding environment. We must learn to nuance our vision so that our church understands the objectives and ministries.

Shepherds don’t drive their sheep; they lead them. That’s what we should do. And we should do it with a winsome heart and nuance. It will allow you to customize, improvise, and strategize effectively.

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If a church’s alignment is off, the tread-life will be short. To be in proper alignment, we must know our PURPOSE, practice healthy LEADERSHIP, ATTUNE our minds, and adapt with NUANCE.

 

In 1996, when I was an editor at LifeWay, I spent a handful of days in the hospital. It was a difficult. I’d never spent a night in the hospital and we had four young boys. Needless to say, my wife was up to her ears in kid’s stuff and I hated that I was stuck in a place I didn’t want to be. Breaking out of a downtown facility in a hospital gown was out of the question. I’m an overly bashful sort. At about 9 PM, after I had read every bit a literature available in my room, I heard a familiar voice. It was George Clark (picture below), a pastor, fellow editor, and mentor at LifeWay. Besides the Mrs., He was my only visitor that week. Nobody from my church came to the hospital, but George was there. It was during that time that I really appreciated the power of servanthood and character. George went to be with the Lord a few years ago. I don’t remember a whole lot about that experience, but I can still see George walking through the door, and I can still hear his deep voice and his unmistakable Tennessee accent as he prayed for me. Those are the things I will remember until the day I see him again in Heaven. He showed me what the character of a man looks like. 

The following characteristics were personified in George’s life and work. I think he’d agree with this list.

Be a man of honesty. 
A man should personify honesty in all his relationships. We ought to strive to be honest which is harder than it sounds. Sometimes it’s hard to speak the truth while fudging with the truth seems easier. Truth-telling is the bedrock of character. It would have been so much easier for Stephen, one of the first seven deacons, to slowly back away from the truth when he saw the religious leaders holding rocks and daring him to continue to speak. He was the first of many believers to lose his life for the truth of the Gospel. 

“If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.” Alan K. Simpson

Be a man of sexual integrity. 
Recently, we’ve witnessed how fast and how far men can fall when they lose their way sexually. No man sets out to wreck his life over a fleeting pleasure but it happens gradually, sometimes innocently and later the damage is visible. That’s why guardrails are so important. The culture has changed dramatically in realm of sexual conduct in our culture but the Christian standard remains. We have to be diligent and guard our hearts. We see the story over and over again. It starts out with a conversation. Then a sharing of feeling and emotions that should not be shared with a woman who is not your spouse. Then the gravitational pull of sin continues to slowly wear down the boundaries until the only thing left is a mess that two or more families will have to survive and a church that has to ask what to do next. 

Be a man of generosity.  If you want to see the true character of a man, look at his bank account. Materialism is at an all-time high and generosity is at an all time low. Most economists say that todays families give less of a percentage of their income to the church and other charitable organizations than the families in the Great Depression. I really don’t understand it; but I don’t think I’ve ever met a person that has “giver’s remorse” after they gave generously to the Lord. Why? Giving makes us happy. In 2017, HealthDay News reported after research that “generosity really is its own reward, with the brain seemingly hardwired for happiness in response to giving.”^[1]

Be a man of optimism. Optimism seems like a personality trait than an aspect of character, but I would argue that optimism is primary to the health and viability of a church. It speaks louder than the eloquence of your preacher, the aesthetics of your facility, or the talent of your musicians. If the leadership is optimistic, the church culture will change. You certainly remember the twelve spies that went to get a preview of the Promised Land. What were their names? Think hard!  I’ll bet you remember only two- Joshua and Caleb. They’re the ones people name their kids after! No one names their son, Shamua or Palti or any of the other names on the spy roster. Why? All spies, except Joshua and Caleb, were frightened, pessimistic and forgettable in the long run. We must be optimistic. We’ve all read the back of the book. We all know how the whole thing ends. Jesus is on the throne. Satan is defeated. We win! And if we’re optimistic about the big picture, we can be optimistic that God can work with our faith. 

Be a man of humility. Harry Truman said it best, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.” I’ve known lots of men who seek power and prestige at church because they didn’t get it at work. This is contrary to everything the church is about. Being a man isn’t about grasping for power. In fact, a committed follower of Christ is about the exact opposite. We go about our business with a spiritual basin and towel, just like Jesus.  Once you are a man of humility, there’s no telling what you will accomplish. 

This is what I know about being a man of character. If George was around, I’d call him to improve this list. His short list would be better. He lived it every day. 

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^[1] https://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20170815/givers-really-are-happier-than-takers#1

G. K. Chesterton once said, “The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank.”

Well, I am not an atheist. I have Someone to thank. But as I’ve gown older, my gratitude list has become a little unexpected. My gratitude spans over many years, towns, jobs, and circumstances, but only one wife. And I’m thankful for that as well. One wife. I don’t know how the “multiple wife” thing would ever really work, and I don’t know any Fundamentalist Mormons to ask.

I’m thankful for the unexpected rescues that I’ve experienced, like the old lady in our church who had the stealth and courtesy to let me know my fly was unzipped before I got up to pray in front of the whole church on Easter Sunday last year. That’s called mercy.

And I’m thankful for the fireman who came to our house so quickly after our two-year-old got stuck inside the leg lifter of our recliner several years ago. Don’t ask me how he did that. There are certain things toddlers never reveal. I thought they were going to have to come in with the “jaws of life,” but it only took a special screwdriver to free the child, and the fireman even stayed to reassemble the chair. That’s called grace. 

I’m also thankful for my sisters who prepared me for marriage by helping me learn that it’s impossible to win an argument with a woman you live with. That’s called wisdom. 

I’m thankful that most broken electronics are fixed by unplugging them, waiting thirty seconds, and plugging them back in. I’m thankful for the internet and video assembly demonstrations for items that come with French language instruction manuals that only show arrows, slots, and hardware. Otherwise, I’d have a storage room of random, useless parts.

I’m thankful that I didn’t win the auditions for several theatre MFA programs after college. I would have never met my wife, and I would probably be doomed to a life of off-off-Broadway productions and bit parts lasting three seconds on CSI as the dead body.

I’m thankful for the near misses, the high school break-ups, the interstate break-downs, freedom from wealth that could have made me over-confident and less hungry, and the times I got sick, which God used as forced Sabbaths when I was too busy. I’ve come to realize that the blessings of life rarely come from shortcuts, windfalls, and leisure cruises. Instead, I am blessed because of a lot of things that were awkward, uncomfortable, disappointing, and scary. Each moment and person reminds me there was Someone behind the scenes, working all things together for my good. All things––even the unfortunate and slightly embarrassing ones.

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Photo: Photo by Alexas_Fotos on Unsplash

“I hear what you’re saying about sharing my faith but I have an allergic reaction to it, I break out in a cold sweat when I even think about prying my way into somebody’s eternal destiny and trying to get them to do what they need to do.” 

For many believers, the term “evangelism” evokes visions of awkward unexpected home visits, feelings of intimidation and inadequacy, and a fair amount of nervousness. But evangelism can be a joyful adventure and the greatest thing believers will ever accomplish in their lives. Don’t get me wrong. Street witnessing and cold-calling evangelism are amazingly effective and inspiring, but every believer can do a few simple, creative, proactive things to exercise their relational and sharing muscles. Here are some easy sure-fire ways every member of your church can share their faith in a totally nonthreatening way. 

1. Video your faith story using your smart phone and post it on social media. The video should be no longer than 2 minutes and can be a simple explanation for how you became a Christ-follower and how it’s changed the trajectory of your life. If someone is camera shy, invite them to write their story as a post on Facebook. At the end of the post or the video, explain how someone can begin their faith journey by praying to ask Jesus to be the Lord of their life.

• Invite members to have Gospel conversations. Many church members may shy away when you talk evangelism, but the idea of Gospel conversations seems like a more realistic goal for them.  So, what is a Gospel conversation? It’s fairly obvious.  It’s listening, asking questions and relating the Gospel. Ultimately, we are challenging people to place their trust in Jesus.  Jesus illustrated this time after time. His evangelism happened organically and situationally. John Meador says “Training believers to have gospel conversations with their friends, neighbors and co-workers must be one of the top priorities for pastors and leaders today.^[1]  Sam Greer, pastor of Red Bank Baptist Church, in Chattanooga, Tennessee has a unique way of motivating his church to have Gospel conversations. In their worship center, they have plexiglass display that has Jesus written on the front of it. Inside are white ping pong balls and red ping pong balls inside. The white represents every Gospel conversation people in their church have had. The red ones represent someone who came to Christ. Every time a gospel conversation or a salvation occurs, members are invited to drop a ping pong ball into the display. In one year, they recorded over 1900 gospel conversations. 

• Challenge church members to adopt their block for the Gospel. We can all get to know by name the families in walking distance of our homes. Offer assistance. Give gifts on special occasions. Host a barbeque or a game viewing party. Show up at the hospital when a health crisis happens. As we do life with our neighbors, we will earn their attention and ultimately, we’ll get a chance to share the Gospel with them. A little investment goes a long way in being heard when you start to share things of eternal significance.

• Challenge your people to practice sharing the Gospel on a friend who is not a believer. The invitation would go something like this: “My church is asking me to practice sharing my spiritual story with someone. Could I buy your lunch? And would you allow me to practice sharing my story?”Recently, I’ve heard testimonies of people who came to faith in Jesus through this simple, non-threatening invitation. 

• Finally, practice prayer-paration. We all know people who are without the hope of Jesus. Above health issues, financial hardships, and personal issues, our unbelieving friends should be at the top of the church prayer list. I know that the more I pray for someone, the more courageous I will become in sharing Jesus. Ultimately, we can’t save anyone. But we know the One who can. Let’s challenge the church to have a list of people, we’d love to reach for Christ. 

As we pray, share, give and go, we have to encourage each other to go to where the people are. It really is Good News. In fact, the gospel is the greatest news on the planet. When people in your church are challenged to share their faith, stories about evangelism and Gospel conversations will stoke the fire and increase the hunger to see more people come to trust Jesus. There’s really nothing better to create excitement, ease tensions, and grow a church than a group of people committed to sharing and celebrating this great news. 

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^[1] https://www.namb.net/your-church-on-mission-blog/the-gospel-conversation-crisis/

We are all in transition. But the transitions that mark our destiny and create our story are the ones that are thrust upon us by the Creator of a greater narrative we call redemption. These transitions whisper to us when we feel the malaise of discontent and stagnation. They seek us out in the wilderness and transcend us into a different level of purpose. We see this early on in the story of Moses. Here are five traits we discover on the road to transformation and destiny.

Patience

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. Exodus 3:1

Success doesn’t happen overnight. Most of the overnight successes include 10-year-long nights. Moses’ night lasted 40 years in the dumpy fixer-upper known as the backside of the desert. I’ve been in these well-worn dogleg paths of the human experience but never for forty years. Patience will ultimately sustain you during transitions. We see Moses and his subordinates (dust-beat, bleating monotones called sheep.) There’s nothing like working for your father in law to level out any narcism loitering in the corridors of your soul. Ask Moses when you see him. Patience will win out if you give it time., And patience always requires time.

Perception

² There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. ³ So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”  Exodus 3:2

It’s interesting to note that Moses got a call from the Lord because he was curious enough to check out was going on around him. God looks for those who are curious. He wants investigators who are willing to forget their sheep and focus in on the anomalies they encounter.

Purpose

¹⁰ So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” Exodus 3:10

Every leader has a Pharaoh in their future. We all have obstacles and ogres that God wants us to conquer. It’s your purpose and when you are called to fight, you’d better grab your moment, because it’s why you were created. 

Promise

And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.” Exodus 3:17

Every transition has a purpose and every purpose has a prize. Also note that the prize includes a handful of enemies to overcome. I don’t know. Your Hittites may be an emotional disorder. Your Perizzites may be your chronic illness. Your Amorites might be your addictions. You have been created to overcome those squatters living in the land of your future victories.  Just trust that the Milk and Honey of the Kingdom will be worth the fight. Take the fight to the enemy. In the end, you are destined to overcome. 

Power

 Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?”
Exodus 4:2

God takes the things you have and makes them holy and powerful. Trust whatever is in your hand. A pen, a hammer, a stethoscope, a paint brush… They are  tools that can transcend into the implements of the Divine. 

So now… It’s a long journey. Get some rest. Take your vitamins and when the sun rises, get after it. It’ll be well worth the trouble.