From the heart of…..

Let me say that I am so proud of my wife.  She has grown so much in her faith over the years.  I watch her everyday really pour over the word of God to learn what can and more than that to grow to be more like Jesus.  She is truly a godly woman and something that God has laid on her heart is to reach out to other pastor’s wives. She has started a blog – it is geared toward pastor’s wives but I would say what she has to say is invaluable to all.  Please check out her blog and pass it along to anyone who is in ministry. 

The blog is called From The Heart of a Pastor’s Wife and it can be found here:   http://fromtheheartofapastorswife.wordpress.com

Check it out – Pass it along – Bookmark it – Put it in your RSS feed!

(Sorry for those who RSS feed I blew up – had some issues getting this post up today!)

From the Heart of a Pastor’s Wife

I do not do guest posts very often at all but today I am doing one.  Funny thing is the person who is guest posting does not know they are guest posting.  My guest post is my wife Wendy.  Wendy just read me her devotional for her ministry site www.afterthemiracle.com and I thought it was awesome.  (By the way -  her and her ministry partner put up new devotionals each day so please check them out.)  Once Wendy read it she asked me to make coffee for the morning as she went off to bed.  As I was getting the coffee ready, I thought about what she wrote and thought it needed to be posted on here today.  So, she was in bed and I decided I wanted to honor my wonderful wife by posting her great thoughts.  So I got on her computer and sent the devotional to myself so that I could post it here.

So here is the post by my wonderful wife Wendy:

I titled this devotional today from the heart of a Pastor’s wife because I feel like over the 2 ½ years that we have done devotionals I have never really shared my Pastor’s wife heart with you. I oftentimes think that there are things that you need to keep to yourself when you are in the ministry. There is some truth to that statement but today I guess I want to share a few things because just maybe it will help you, our readers, to better understand how to pray for your Pastor’s wife and perhaps give you a glimpse into her life.

Your life is not your own when you are in ministry. See when you are serving in a church you are taking care of the needs of people. Those needs definitely involve their spiritual needs but also at times it is their emotional needs and their physical needs. It is counseling, being called out in the middle of the night because a loved one has passed away; it is marriage counseling, counseling parents in how to handle their teenager who has just been caught with marijuana. It is being so aware of how many people are hurting in your congregation and feeling their hurts too. As a Pastor’s wife I am not always involved in all of these things but guess who has to be there to take of the man who is? The Pastor’s wife! We have to take care of the kids and the house so that he can minister to the congregation in the way that God has called him to.

We so many times get the opinions of others where our husbands are concerned and yes we get the could you please tell your husband that he needs to………….you fill in the blank. We hear all the criticism and the ways that he could do better but we also hear his praises and that makes our hearts smile because that is when people see what we have known all along.

We don’t really have many people we can call friends or connect to because we can’t open up and share all the things that we experience like most people can.We are expected to be more spiritual, have the most well behaved children. Never have any problems in our life and we are so lucky to be married to the pastor, he must be the perfect man (not). We live in a fishbowl. People oftentimes want to be our friends because we are the Pastor’s wife and many times there are motives behind it.

We share our husband. Now I know that is quite a statement but let me explain. First, this is something that I struggle with and I dare say many Pastors’ wives do. We can have a wonderful day planned with our husband and perhaps even our children and a call comes in and it changes everything. My husband has to leave to go to a church member’s home. A meeting was called that we weren’t aware of until the last minute so we change our plans. I’ve spent many many nights home alone with the kids waiting for my husband to come home. I’ve had date nights interrupted and family gatherings interrupted.

For many of you reading this you go to church once a week and go home. You go to work, be with your family and you don’t think about church again. Guess what? It is our life. We pray for the congregation, we weep for them. My husband stays up late at night preparing for Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. He spends his days preparing as well and goes and visits and finds ways to connect to those in the community too. A lot of the visiting I do with him when I can and I find ways to connect to the women in the church and do that through bible studies and other events. Church is our life and we have been called to that I know.

I know that it sounds like I am complaining and believe me that is NOT my intention I desire for you to see what a typical day may look like in a Pastor’s wife’s home. We live a lonely life at times and other times we are surrounded with people who express their love for us. I read an article recently that said 80% of Pastor’s wives suffer from depression. We are unique. In no other job in America is a wife defined by her husband’s job other than the Presidency. We are always known as the Pastor’s wife, we are introduced as such. If your husband is an accountant you are not introduced as this is the accountant’s wife. You are introduced by your name.

I certainly don’t want to leave out all the wonderful parts of ministry. The most precious thing for me is to see the look on someone’s face when they come to salvation in Jesus Christ. There is great joy in watching others grow in their faith and being able to walk alongside them through it all. It is those times when commitments are made, when those in our congregation are baptized. It’s the weddings, the dedications of babies and being able to be a part of a going home celebration of a dear brother or sister in Christ. You see friends there is nothing else we would rather do in this life. My husband once had someone in ministry very dear to him say, “You will never be able to do anything else but ministry and be truly happy.” As weary as the days may be there is nothing we would rather do.

Pray for your Pastor’s wife today. Pray that God surrounds her with his love and strength. That she would be encouraged through His word and find His peace. Pray that she would be led by Him daily and that He would be her strong tower and refuge. Pray for your Pastor as well. The Lord has placed on both of their lives an incredible call and they need you prayers.

I appreciate my wife who stands with me to minister and she is awesome.  I am truly a blessed man.  Make sure you are praying for your Pastor’s wife and your Pastor.

Do you have any thoughts on what Wendy has to say?

Time To Go…

Today is the last installment of writing about Building Below the Waterline by Gordon MacDonald.  It has been a blast doing with with Bill Grandi from  Cycleguy’s Spin and Michael Perkins from The Handwritten.

Now on to the post.  I had worked for ten years at an inpatient Drug and Alcohol facility.  I started out by going through patients luggage to make sure they were not bringing in contraband and making sure people were staying in their rooms. Through the years I worked my way to second shift, then I was trained and promoted to Experiential Therapist, and I eventually was promoted to Adolescent Addiction Counselor.  I worked in that position for several years and then one day my supervisor told me that I could not make any more per hour or be promoted any more because I did not have a degree. You see,  I had left college with nine hours remaining and planed to take care of those right away but procrastination and never got a round to it.

Now for four years while I was working as a counselor, I was also a part time Youth Pastor (for the record – there is no such thing as a part time Pastor) in my first church ministry position.  The first couple of years at the church I had a pastor whom loved me and poured himself in me and helped me grow as a Pastor and a man.  Then we went a year without a pastor as he left to take another position closer to his home and more in line with his giftedness.  The church then called a pastor whom I did not see eye to eye with in many areas which pushed me to begin to search out what I was to do.  I knew the one thing, I was not to do was to make a big deal about my problems with the pastor with the whole church because I knew that it could cause a split in the church or even splinter it.

My wife and I took a vacation away to the beach with some friends seek God on what to do with the church.  The answer we got at the time was to stay.  We stayed there six more months and during that time we really then we prayed again about what to do.  Then we got an answer because that was when I was told by my supervisor that I could not move any further in the facility.  My wife and I both knew that it was God telling us that it was time to go.  During those six month of prayer and seeking God, He began to work on me about the need to finish my degree and began to give me a vision about furthering my education even more.  I applied to go back to the school that I had the remain hours from – which was five hours away – and I got accepted.  They had a graduate program I was interested in and for my wife and I this was all confirmation  that we were to leave this first church to go on to finish my degree and then head on to seminary.

This then leads in the book today – MacDonald in the book talks about eight signals that it is time to leave your church when you are a pastor (pages 243 – 248):

1. Incompatibility – simply and inability for the Pastor and congregation to get on the same page.
2. Immobility – this is where there is really no sense of direction and the knowledge that fresh leadership will bring it.
3. Organizational Transition – Organization reaches a growth point where a new kind of leadership becomes necessary.
4. Stagnancy – Pastors do not think they can no longer personally develop or develop in leadership in their present circumstance.
5. Fatigue – No renewing for the Pastor – they feel like they are always on spiritually/psychologically/ and physically.
6. Family Morale – where the situation is harmful for the spouse and/or children.
7. Closings and openings – Simply with great prayer/ advising/ and counsel the Pastor sees that they are at the point of conclusion.
8. The Age Factor – The Pastor can no longer keep up with the pace and demands of the position they are in.

When it comes to my leaving the church I would say that I would have fallen into the seventh one on this list.  We sought through prayer and counsel and simply saw that we were at the point of conclusion at the church I was serving in. Some of the reasons were because I had several teens who were graduating and so it made it a good time to leave. Another reason was that I was not seeing eye to eye with the vision and direction of the Pastor and really things were pretty tough with the church.

Something else to go with this is that I was actually at the point of conclusion with my full time job as well.  God was moving us as a family both spiritually and physically and making us pretty uncomfortable.  God was moving us five hours from most of our family.  We were as a family leaving many comforts of life for us.  I was leaving a job that I had done very well at.  My wife was leaving her family really for the first time.  We were taking a risk and trusting God.  There were many changes where were headed too.  My wife was going to have to work and she had been a stay at home mom for the past few years.  My daughter was going to have to do day care which she had never done.  I was going to be working full time and taking a full load of classes.  It was a rough and tough time for us but it was a time of growing and that is what it always is when God says it is time to go.

For all of us, we need to listen closely to hear God say it is time to go….

Have you ever left a job or ministry position?  How did you deal with it?  What was the biggest struggle in your leaving?  Did you enjoy this series by myself and the others?

This post is a part of the blogging on  the book Building Below the Waterline by Gordon MacDonald with two of the best bloggers out there – Bill Grandi from  Cycleguy’s Spin and Michael Perkins from The Handwritten .  We are sharing each Wednesday our thoughts from 2 chapters,  which means you will be able to see how God will l speak to us as individuals and then you if you read all three blogs you will see how God then weaves what we write all together.  I pray your are encouraged by the blogs.

The Only Paid Staff Member

Are you the only paid staff member at your church?

(if you are not a pastor/staff member I am going to ask that you please keep reading)

One of the passions I have is helping those who are the only Pastor on staff  (as I am ).  Let me tell you that it has been a challenge to get used to being the only staff member after being in a multi-staff church.  I have found there to be much different pressures in being a solo Pastor  than the pressures of a multi-staff which does has it own pressures.  So what I plan to do is to share ideas and create a  community for  those of  us who are Solo Pastors .  So the way we are going to start this process is by taking some time to answer some questions.

If you are the only Pastor on staff let me ask you these thee questions:

(Please take the time to answer these questions.)

1)  What is the biggest struggle you have in being the only paid staff member?

2)  What do you see as the biggest blessing in being the only staff member?

3)  What or how do you do to interact with others who are in ministry?

For those who are not pastors or staff members – let me ask you to please take time to pray for all the staff that your church both paid and unpaid.  You really have no idea how much pressure they are under each week and they need your prayers.

Now go ahead and answer the questions please.

REST?

Things have been pretty busy around here and it has had nothing to with it being Christmas time.  Let me give you a bit of a run down.  Two weeks ago on a Monday Night I got a call telling me that a dear woman in the church was ill and in the emergency room asking for me.  I went and spent several hours with her that night and they moved her to ICU later that night.  I went back the next day to visit her and found out that another lady from the church was in ICU and I visited her.  I was back each day to visit both ladies and found out on that Friday morning that the wonderful lady I went to see in the emergency room had passed away.  I was blessed to be able to lead in officiating her funeral which was on a Sunday afternoon.  I then got word that they moved the other lady from the local hospital to a bigger one in a larger city and the day I was going to visit her I got word that she passed away.  I then was blessed to be able to officiate her funeral which was this past Friday.  I then was also blessed to be asked to officiate a wedding this past Saturday.  In the middle of all this I still was doing the normal speaking (Sunday Morning/Evening and Wednesday Night) and sermon prep I do.  Let us just say – it has been a crazy busy but blessed two weeks.  I am honored to have been asked to officiate in all these but I am wore out.

Today was a day off (Monday is my day off) in the truest sense for me.  My kids are off for Christmas break so I got to sleep in today.  When I did get up I was able to move slow and leisurely.  Then my wife, my daughter, my son and I went to lunch and went downtown to do some shopping for some last minute presents.  We ran to several other places and saw some friends while we were out.  We came home and relaxed and ate some dinner. My daughter went and hung out with some friends and my wife and I played board games with my son.  We had a dear friend stop by and give use a card and he and his wife gave my kids cards (Side note:  when you bless me with a gift it is nice but when you think enough to bless my kids it is awesome!  I am sure I speak for most if not all Pastors here.)  As I write this I am just resting and watching Monday Night Football.

It has been a busy time and a blessed time for me but having a day like today where I can just rest and relax is a great thing.  We all need to make sure we are taking time to rest and relax.  Remember that God did take a day to rest and so should we!

Genesis 2:2 - By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.

Psalm 23:1-2  - The Lord is my shepherd;
I have all that I need.
He lets me rest in green meadows;
he leads me beside peaceful streams. (New Living Translation)

 

When God calls….

Back in the summer of of 1991 something happened and it is quite a story.

I went home from college to do an internship at my home church after my senior year of college.  My internship was dealing with several areas in the church and the Senior Pastor told me he had something special for me to do.  The special thing was to run a phone system that called homes, it was one of the systems that telemarketers use.  I would program the list of numbers it would call and the time it would call.  It could only hold some many numbers so I had to keep track of the numbers and the church wanted it only to call homes between 3pm and 8pm.  It would give the gospel through an automated voice and then record everything that would be said by the person.  It was quite amusing to listen too at times as you can imagine. People saying things to other people in the room with them like “It is some computer thing talking about God” or people not understanding what it is and responding with things like,”Why do you keep talking to me?  Who are you?”.  It really was quite amusing.  But it was effective on occasion as I did go to the home of a lady that it called and led her to Christ and there were others I get to go share with.

On one day off I went water skiing with some friends and we got a huge storm.  This storm knocked off the power, which meant I had to reprogram it, and I was in a hurry because I had a Bible study to get too and I was running late.  Again it had to be programmed to run from 3pm till 8pm and so I reprogrammed it and then ran out.  The next morning I got to the church to listen like I did every morning to the tape and see if I had any visits to make.  As I began to listen I realized that something had gone terribly wrong – I mean I could tell it was terribly wrong.  I programmed it from 3am till 8am.  Think about this – it was calling people from 3am until 8am in the morning and giving them a gospel presentation.  There were many angry people on the tape!  You can not even imagine how angry people were and what the recordings were like.

As I stood listening to  the tape, the Pastor’s wife was in the next room because she was the church secretary and she came in and ask me if what she thought happened – happened.  I said it did.  I was so embarrassed but I also laughed a lot as some of the responses to people who you could tell were awaken by the call but listened and answered the questions about their faith and the gospel. You can not imagine I am sure but  it got even worse!

A few weeks later my I believe it was my dad who said to me,”Did you see what was in the paper today?”.  I got the local paper out to read an article written by the consumer editor.  It was titled “When God calls at 4 A.M.”.  The machine the called the home phone number of the  consumer editor of the local paper.  Again – it was a seriously embarrassing moment for me in my life but it a funny story in many ways.  In the article he mentions getting the call and then goes in to tell what the laws were regarding telemarketing.  By the way, the message never mentioned the church so only a small handful of people ever knew that it was that particular church.  This is just one of the many bone head things I have done in my life.

No questions  today or “spiritual” point other than I just hope I put a smile on your face today.