“Lists of Tens” (Part One)

For three of this week’s days let’s just look at some lists related to very practical areas of pastoring.  And these are all pretty personal with me, the writer, but worthy of your consideration, I hope.

This day’s very practical and light list is about leadership priorities for a pastor or someone else in leadership.

See if you agree with these ten or some of them at least!  Let’s start with the last:

10.  Schedule fun.

Go ahead.  Put it in your master schedule.  Plan on it.  Set apart the evening or the day and do something that makes you laugh or relax at least.

And above all do not feel guilty!  You don’t have to wear your work clothes when you’re raking leaves with your kids, or jogging, or spending a family evening, or a date with your wife.

Howard Hendreks from Dallas Seminary used to urge pastors to take “a hunk of time every day, a hunk of time every week, and a hunk of time every quarter” to get in family time and just talk and listen (listen first).

Many pastors shun taking Monday as a day off because they’re not as much fun then, being pretty tired from Sunday.  Which leads to… #9.

9.  Work your best spiritual and emotional schedule.

This is why I have always taught that a pastor should make a “master schedule” with a normal week, or a target week, that he wants to use to attack his days.  Otherwise they simply attack you.

And put the best of work times in there, saving your best work times for sermon-study times.

Not too many people are very good at creativity on Mondays, so that might be a day to schedule either the day off or administration or work that does not demand your deepest resources!

My weakest moments of the day as a pastor were always between 2:00 and 3:30 if I had a lunch appointment.  If the noon hour was basketball, I was pretty energized then.  But it was not a good time for study if it was a sleepier time.

Phone calls and paperwork can be done then.

8.  Be in a solid group.

Every pastor needs one, but less than half have one.  A group where you can disclose yourself.  Where you can really be honest.

There are two main kinds that pastors have – one is for discipleship, where you lead, and train leaders for now and the future of your church.

The other is an accountability group, where you take turns leading, and all of you are on the same ground as far as honesty and helping each other.

Sometimes it’s hard to find three to five men in a small church who will not only meet with you in this way, but be quiet about it.  Many pastors have found the best help this way with a group of three or four other pastors that meet at least monthly, and sometimes twice a month.  It’s a group where you pray for each other and question each other, where you listen to each other’s rejoicing or crying also.

It could be a very healthy addition to your schedule!

I looked forward so much to every other Wednesday when I met with an accountability group that had been together almost twenty years.  I’m not sure anyone knew who was in that group for most of my time, 26 years, in Akron.  And I was grateful for the honesty and love.

7.  Work your “holy discontent”!

I got the phrase from a fellow pastor, who defined it as a thing that bothers you all the time.  The issue is not just to grieve about it, but to do something about it.

And everybody has those areas of concern in the church and outside the church.  Rather than try to figure out if this discontent comes from God, why not try to do something about it?

Mine related to the fact that the church did not deal much with grief when I started pastoring, nor did it help people who were divorced in a strategic way, nor did it do much about racial reconciliation.  These three areas bothered me so much because of my childhood – people at our very good and fundamentalist church often did not quite know how to deal with true sorrow.  After the tragic death of my 14-year-old sister, when I was 17, a man in my church asked me how I was doing.  I began to cry.  He quickly changed the subject to sports and got me off the crying.  That’s the way we dealt with it then.

When my parents divorced the church waved goodbye to them.  Indeed, they waved also, but there was no such thing as a “divorce recovery” workshop sponsored by the church or even trying to restore people to God if they couldn’t be restored to their marriage

And the racial issue!  It was awful.  “Did you hear the one about the …” and then a racial description that was very unnecessary even for the point of the joke.

And so these three areas became areas of worry and concern but also areas of ministry in the church.  We started a grief support group that was just plain excellent, and the divorce recovery workshop, repeated several times a year, became one of the main outreach areas of the church.  But it also simply helped others.

And we combined with another church to lead the way for racial reconciliation and even to start a city-wide organization where we signed a mutual pledge of allegiance to each other.  I would be glad to share a copy!

What’s your holy discontent?  If it’s hypocrisy that bothers you, set out to have a church that talks straight and lives the truth and gets at what matters.

It’s so easy to just be discounted and to criticize the rest of the place and someday maybe even drop out.  Why not consider this irritation something that God has allowed so you help to correct it!

Maybe you are single or didn’t marry until later and you realize how easily the church neglects that group.  Or you are in a minority in your church and you realize how easily some people shun you.  Help the cause and represent Christ with a remedy.  It will take time – it’s amazing how little you can do in a year and how much you can do in five years! – but it will be worth it.

6.  Promote your values.

It’s probably healthy for every pastor to write his own mission statement or purpose statement.  And to include the things that you value more than anything else.

Mine became the church’s:  grace, worship, community (love), mission, and integrity.  It all starts with grace, and that comes down from above.  We love Him because He first loved us.  And we respond with worship – not just the services but personal obedience and worship and all the ways we respond to God.

A huge value is love toward people, here called “community.”  And that includes some social action but also making sure that you really reach out to others and learn to listen and love them.  It means medium and small groups also.

Mission certainly includes missions, but it’s much more than that.  It’s the kind of church that we want to be.  Why are we here?  What will we promote?  Are we purely Republican or Democrat, or is this a place that’s open to every background?  Would a recovering legalist feel comfortable here?

Do you make sure the church really includes missions, and start with your own time and purposes and pocketbook.

And all of this with integrity.  That means “oneness,” and certainly refers to the issue of having one true message and living what you have said so that there aren’t two sides to you that way.  A double-minded man is unstable (James 1:8).

Decide on your own values – a lot of people only have three – one that points up and one that points out to others and one that points into their own heart.  Whatever, we should always be conscious of the need to get these important things around.

5.  Believe that every contact is an opportunity.

“Little things mean a lot,” is an old song about love.  But it’s also about church life and family.  It’s about meeting strangers and showing hospitality to them – in the Biblical sense.

Every phone call is an opportunity to thank someone or to see how they’re really doing.  Every email can have a final sentence of appreciation.  Sometimes we simply need to remember that some of these people not only work hard at their jobs all week, but give time to the church on top of that, and money and love and prayers and interest.

So every contact is an opportunity to thank them and to help them feel appreciated.

And contacts are also an opportunity to show love or to raise a good question for the unbelievers.  When you hear a theory that seems wild and wacky when it comes to theology, ask, “Where did you get that?”  And then listen for an answer or see if there’s something you could read about.  But it’s also a way to urge someone to think through why they’re holding to that theory.

Every contact is an opportunity to show the love of Christ.  Even if all you do is give a cup of cold water to them, or encourage then with a thought or an appreciative statement – well most of us know what Jesus said about these little things.

4.  Know the order – God, family, company, others, and self down there somewhere.

And it’s not like we can do life with such a logical order.  If there’s a tragedy of somebody in the church, that need supersedes devotions with God or worship of God or time with family.  You don’t tell someone who is facing a tragedy or just finished a car wreck to wait until the next day.

But at the same time the priority order is a great guide to help us know how to keep our lives strong and in shape.  It means that we do schedule time with God and keep a heart for God with love.  We do the same with family.

And we make decisions for the “company,” the church, by thinking of what is best for her, not for ourselves.  Not to look good.

It’s so easy to forget the order and somehow start with me or myself or I.

3.  Define and seek wisdom.

Thanks to James, we know that God wants us to do this.  When it’s very easy to make knee-jerk reactions and then go through a day and then a week and then more without honestly asking God for wisdom, seeking it in the scriptures, or seeing how He has given it to others by reading about those others.

2.  Be able to explain that we must be perfect to know God!

So many people just talk about “accepting Christ,” or even “an intimate relationship with God through His Son.”  Perhaps you know what they mean.  But what is it we must really believe to become Christians, and to rest in the finished work of Christ?  The question is not just what are we trusting in to get us into heaven, but to be in a connection relationship with God by His Spirit, and to be “accepted in the beloved,” as Ephesians says it.

We all know it is not “going forward” or raising a hand, or even saying a prayer.

I often ask people if they realize that we must be perfect to know God and to go to heaven.  Their usual response of course is that no one is perfect.  Exactly.  But what if perfect is a gift?

Can you and your people at church explain the gift of righteousness and well as the gift of forgiveness?  In one sense the atonement for our sins would get us to zero – just be literal for a moment – and we don’t approach God with a zero.  But Romans 3:21-26 and many verses in Romans and other places are quick to tell us that there is this imputation – what a wonderful word! – of Christ’s righteousness on to us.

We are counted righteous because of the umbrella and person of Jesus Christ that covers us.

1. Follow Christ.

It seems so logical that this is first of course.  But sometimes it seems so hard to do, even for those of us in “professional ministry”!

For here we’re not talking about how we do our job but how we lift our hearts and obey our Lord.

Only God and I know how I really follow Christ, and what I say to Him in secret, and how my motives flush out.  Only our Lord and I know if I’m doing this for His glory, or just to be “seen by men,” as Jesus used to say it.

And only our Lord can give us the strength and the wisdom and the spiritual stamina to do this constantly, and to keep growing.  The way it should be.

Our mentor in scripture, the apostle Paul, said it so clearly: “Follow me, as I follow Christ” (I Corinthians 11:1).

And we should be able to say that to our people, and first to our family.

To follow Christ is to go by His mind, which is revealed in scripture.  To follow Christ is to set our treasures in heaven, and to want love and joy and peace more than we want fame and power and material possessions.  To follow Christ is to express our love to Him regularly, even in the way we treat others, for to love them is to love Him.  He said it that clearly.

To follow Christ is to see each day as an opportunity to represent Him in the marketplace and in the pulpit and in our own homes first.

The leader who does this can be sure of a good influence.  And the main way we lead is by our mood and our hearts, then our methods.

See if these ten goals are at least some of the ones you like for yourself and keep working on!