A Leaders Constant Companion - Pt. 3

3. Embrace your threshold for the pain of pruning.

• Elijah was pruned prior to his Mt. Carmel experience. God was preparing him by cutting stuff out of his life that would slow him down on the day of battle.
• It's painful when God cuts or prunes things from our lives and ministries.
• Sometimes it's a relationship that isn't healthy. Sometimes it's a time-consuming hobby that's not necessarily bad - it's just not what's best for my life and ministry in this season.
• When attendance dips and I lose people in the church because they no longer jive with the vision. I need to remember that sometimes I have to go backward in order to move forward. This is the "Gift of Gideon."
• Don't blame yourself for the declines because if you do you will be tempted to take credit for the increases.
• Everyone leader needs to "push through the pain."
• The difference between where you are and where God wants you to be is the pain you are unwilling to endure. Never give up.

A Leaders Constant Companion - Pt. 2

2. Embrace your pain threshold for making difficult decisions

• If you are a leader, you have to make difficult, painful and often times unpopular decisions
• Perhaps it's killing a ministry that is no longer effective at accomplishing the vision of the organization but still enjoyed by only a few.
• Or maybe it's confronting, rebuking or even removing someone in a leadership position and you will have to deal with major flack and even risk the possibility of them leaving the church and taking people with them.
• Sometimes it requires the leader to even change an employees portfolio that is in the wrong position.
• One of the most painful decisions is having to fire someone for insubordination, character issues, or flat out laziness.
• When you are unwilling to make the tough call you always end up causing more damage to people and the church in the long run.
• Sometimes leaders wait to pull the trigger on painful decisions until the pain of the present situation becomes greater than the pain of making the decision. That's been my achilles heel for far too long. You always end up in more pain.
• The key to making painful decision is to always do what's right in the eyes of God and trust him with the outcome.

A Leader's Constant Companion

I just finished listening to a leadership talk by Craig Groeschel at the Hillsong Conference in Australia. Craig titled the talk, "A Leaders Constant Companion" which he defined as pain. Instead of running from your pain, Craig encouraged leaders to embrace it and increase your capacity or threshold for more pain.

Pain is a constant companion in ministry. In fact, if you aren't experiencing pain, than you probably aren't really leading anyone. It's also true that the difference of where you are and where God wants you to be may be the pain you are unwilling to endure.

Craig encouraged me to do three things with my pain. I'll share them with you this week:

1. Embrace your pain threshold for unjustified criticism and the desire to please people.

• I've realized that the more our church has grown the more I have been personally criticized as a leader.
• This week I've been called "a blasphemer", "a false teacher", "one who speaks with a forked tongue", that I have "the spirit of lucifer", "that we have en graven images in our church", that "I'm a deceiving shepherd", that we use propaganda and marketing to increase our attendance", that we aren't a deep church, ad nauseum - and that was just this week :)
• Paul endured ridiculous amounts of pain to promote the gospel. Read 2 Corinthians 11:16ff.
• If you aren't hurting then you aren't leading.
• If you aren't experiencing criticism than you aren't preaching the Gospel because the Gospel if offensive - especially to those with a self-righteous, Pharisaical spirit.
• The reality is that you can't please everybody.
• The quickest way to forget what God thinks about you is to be consumed with what others think of you.
• I can't please everyone, but I can please God.

More tomorrow...

Leadership Principles #3

#3. Your Pain Threshold will determine your Growth Threshold

Yes, growing churches are led by growing leaders. But all growing leaders carry a serious amount of pain. Don't be naive and think that just because a pastor has a large church that their life is a bed of roses. Here's what I mean.

It's painful when ...
+Your church outgrows your ability to know everyone and you feel like a jerk when people meet you in public feel like they know you as their best friend and you barely recognize them.
+You pour your life into people and you watch them blow up their marriage and ministry.
+Critics misrepresent you and your church just because it grows.
+You have to fire a staff member because that's what's best for the church
+People leave your church because it got "too big." You can know everybody or everybody can know Jesus. You can't have both!
+Some of your best friends chunk their moral character and then blame the ministry
+You have to make serious changes in order to help the church grow to the next level and people get mad and hate on you.
+You take some audacious leap of faith to reach people for Jesus and you fall flat on your face. But you'd rather do that than settle for a comfortable ministry and take home a paycheck every couple of weeks.
+You confront people who aren't with the vision and you hold them to a high standard.

Listen, I love what I do. But it's hard. Ministry is tough. And many pastors are not willing to face the pain of change and therefore sacrifice maximizing the full potential of Gods ultimate plan for their ministry. How much pain can you take?