Dan Reiland is the Executive Pastor of 12Stone Church in Lawrenceville, GA, an Atlanta suburb. Dan spent twenty years working with John Maxwell first at Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, and then at Injoy, John's leadership training company, in Atlanta. Dan coaches his large staff, speaks to and coaches ministry teams around the country, and is the author of Amplified Leadership.
Our conversation with Dan was motivated by a post he wrote in 2010 titled Why Smaller Churches Don't Grow. We really tried to fight with Dan about this, but instead, we decided to learn from his wisdom, understanding that only God decides the growth potential of each church. This means that we should do our very best to reach our communities for Christ. Dan gives us five questions that help us to evaluate how we are doing, and catch ourselves on possible mindsets as leaders that might prevent us from growth. Those Five Questions Are:
For sure check out Dan's actual post, read it and see if there is something there for you to consider about your leadership, or the leadership capacity of your ministry team. NEXT WEEK: We talk with Bill Thrall, one of the pastors of Open Door Fellowship Church in Phoenix, AZ, and a co-author of the books, TrueFaced, and The Cure - along with John Lynch and Bruce McNicol. John Lynch joined us last spring, and now we have his mentor and partner, Bill Thrall, joining us for episode 110, next week!
I (Jeff) enjoyed editing this podcast while my oldest son Joel, and I, stayed here at the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln NE with my middle son Douglas. Douglas is doing really well with rehab. His brother Joel is his most enthusiastic cheerleader, healthcare watchdog, and best friend. Joel communicates with the doctors and staff here with me and mostly for me. I have nothing to worry about with Joel at both my side and Doug's side.
So, while Jonny has recorded the intro and conclusion alone, I am here, in the background, listening and loving what we can provide to you today as a small church pastor. Remember, we are both small church pastors - and we love encouraging you - our small church pastor friends. I love Jonny going solo on this episode. He has done a great job. Chad Payne, pastor of New Life Assembly of God in Woodstock AL, friended himself into our lives and we are so glad we had this opportunity to talk with him on the podcast. And this episode with Chad Payne, just a faithful, loving small church pastor, who is committed to continued growth and learning, is our gift to you this week. As most of you know, since my son's accident on October 18, where he sustained a traumatic brain injury, life has been out of my control for the most part. So Jonny and I have been apart now for a couple weeks, but it is nice to know that you all are still with us, and that we can still connect with you. My many thanks to Jonny Craig and to all of you! I (Jeff) am not even going to look up the statistics. Partly because I don’t think I would trust them, and partly because I think I would find depressing stats. Today I talked with a couple who have had the opportunity to visit in almost twenty churches this year. This couple had occasion to spend a fair amount of time with the pastors and wives in these churches. The churches they visited were mostly small churches. They did not give me a good report. Tired Pastors
What they told me was that most of the pastors are discouraged, a little fried, losing hope, and at their wit’s end trying to find enough time to accomplish what they believe God is calling them to do. These pastors don’t have any additional time or energy to think about outreach in places far from home. They don’t want to hear about the needs of lost people in the 10/40 window, because they are still trying to figure out how to reach the lost people they can see in their neighborhood outside their own windows. Most of the pastors this couple spent time with in 2014 are tired. Culture is changing in an unhelpful way, and they are losing hope that they will be able to create new ideas and the change their churches need. Tired Pastor’s Wives The report on the pastors’ wives is no better. Many of them feel trapped, lonely, and hopeless. Their husbands are married to the ministry, and when they do come home, they often have nothing left for the family or their spouse. The wives know they must continue to support their husbands and church members, and they are also tired, sometimes resentful, and mostly losing hope. After talking with this couple, I considered doing some research on the health of ministry couples – their psychological, emotional, spiritual, and physical health. But I don’t want to. I almost don’t want to know. These 3 things might help us! 1. We need to change paradigms. A paradigm is simply a pattern or model for how things are or should be. We need to change the pattern of pastoral ministry. It needs to be less about pleasing people, and more about reaching people. It needs to be less about burning out leadership, and more about leading out of health and fullness, even overflow. It needs to be less about strategizing and structuring for convenience – i.e. we always do it this way because it’s just much easier and less time consuming than trying to reinvent things, and more about strategizing and structuring for effectiveness and outcomes. I know, it’s easier to do things the way we’ve always done them. Who has the time these days to get people together, brainstorm, listen to ideas and suggestions, try things, perhaps fail, tweak approaches, revamp, etc. etc. Let’s just try to adjust a little, and run with the tried and true. Except the tried and true just isn’t that anymore. We need new ways of doing things that reflect the reality we now exist in. Somehow, pastors must work with their people, and not for their people. They must account for burnout and allow for rest and renewal. Pastors’ wives need room to be themselves, have fun, choose their own mold, and get the best part of their husbands, not just the dregs at the end of the day. 2. We need to live and minister through the power of God, Father, Son, and Spirit! The power to change lives is not our power, it’s Jesus’ power. Without him, we can do… well, you know. Can we surrender our alleged power to his power, and trust him to lead, grow, and change his church? 3. We need to release our church to Jesus. Let’s sign over the ownership of our sheep to the Good Shepherd. They’re his sheep anyway. We don’t need to control people. We need to love, serve, teach, and shepherd people, but not control them. Hey, we can’t anyway. They’re going to do what they want to do. If we model a surrendered life, dependent on Jesus, to them, then maybe they will also surrender to Jesus, and depend on him! Helpful Questions I have just a couple questions that you could ask your spouse and your board. These questions might just start the conversation (if you have the strength and faith to even have the conversations!) Ask your spouse if he or she feels like they are getting enough of you at home – at least some of the best of you. Maybe something like, “How are you doing as a pastor’s wife? Is how I am pastoring our church helping you or hurting you? What could I do better?” Ask your board – “Are the things that we are doing as a church helping us to fulfill our mission of making disciples? What could we do better?” Let’s go back to when ministry was something we all longed for as pastors – when we got excited for the phone to ring, and when we were thankful if others needed us. Let’s get back to resting and renewal, so that the passion for the lost can again be kindled in our souls.
"I miss what I once had: a strong body, a clear voice, clear thinking, open doors for ministry ... I miss myself." This is what John Stumbo said after a mysterious disease ravaged his body in 2008-2009.
John Stumbo didn't swallow on his own for a year and a half. He had a feeding tube and used a walker. Once the senior pastor of his growing church, he was out of commission for almost a year, and then reduced to a part time associate position. Today, just five years later, he is the president of Jeff and Jonny's denomination, the Christian & Missionary Alliance. In this episode, John talks with the guys and tells his story. He shares about his early years of ministry, the churches he's served in, and then the illness that almost took his life. Most importantly, John Stumbo tell of the life change he experienced through the journey of pain and suffering. Once and ultra-marathoner, he feared he would become a quadriplegic. Through the suffering, and the process of recovery, his life and ministry changed, and perhaps more significantly, his marriage changed. Will it take a near death crisis for us to get real about our ministries and our marriages? Thankfully, we don't all have to experience that, but unfortunately, many of us will also never get to the depths of our growth because we will be too healthy. Maybe this conversation will encourage you to move toward your spouse, your real bride or groom, and reclaim the intimacy, respect, and commitment you owe her or him. This is not just for male pastors, but women pastors can also be guilty of being married to ministry. Whatever your situation, learn from one who has walked through the valley of the shadow of death - so you can grow without going there! P.S. We did not talk about this on the podcast, but John and his wife Joanna have written a book together called An Honest Look At A Mysterious Journey. John also has written a book titled, In The Midst: Treasures From The Dark. Both of these books are available in Kindle format for only $4.99 each. Last week I (Jeff) had an experience that reminded me that leadership is a team sport – not a solo sport. If you are a leader, I hope you’re on a team. Because when you start performing at too low of a level, you’ll need a teammate or teammates around you who can let you know, and help you to get better. My wife and I traveled from northwest Iowa to Vail, CO for a denominational gathering. Ostensibly, a retreat. Yeah. No. Not for me. It was a grueling grind. After arriving back home, and upon further research, I have discovered that experts on altitude sickness have no way of knowing who will get it and who won’t. A person’s fitness level or gender play no role in whether or not he or she gets altitude sickness.
The symptoms of altitude sickness which I developed to a severe extent were: headache, fatigue, sleeplessness, confusion, and, what one article on WebMD said “In severe cases, you do not have the energy to eat, dress yourself, or do anything.” Well I managed to eat and dress myself, but it took longer, like moving through a fog of indecisiveness. So yes, I had altitude sickness for a couple days at 8,400 feet. Traveling around we went as high as 11,400 feet. I love an adventure and I love the mountains, but they don’t love me! The crazy thing is this – I did not know why I was feeling so terribly. I knew that in the past I had not done well at high altitudes. I was nervous before we left that I would not feel well or sleep well. I even told Jonny where my life insurance papers were in my office, should I not return! Even after all that, when I was there, I thought I was handling the altitude well, but could not understand why I was completely exhausted. I thought I was just getting old. Really. I was blind to the cause of my weakness. I needed my wife to diagnose the problem. She told me. As we traveled east, and out of the mountains, she gave me some Ibuprofen and by the time we got back to 2,500 feet, I was a new man! I felt great! Sometimes as a leader, we get a little too high, and we get lightheaded. We’re short on oxygen and don’t make the best decisions. We think we’re doing okay, but we’re really not. We’re moving slower, interpreting reality differently, and not bringing an acceptable level of performance to the game. And the problem is, we don’t see it. We make excuses and defend our actions. We think it’s just a stage we’re going through. We blame failure on others. We’re blind to our weaknesses. We need someone else to step in and inform us that we’re just not getting enough oxygen, that we have altitude sickness. Who on your leadership team has the permission and authority to tell you that you have altitude sickness? Who is there around you who can tell you that you need to get to a lower altitude for a while to get better? Who has the gravitas to inform you that your performance is no longer acceptable? I am not referring to a demotion, but to getting some much needed help. My wife warned me before we went. I didn’t listen. She asked me when we were there. I didn’t hear her. I was like the proverbial frog in the kettle, as the water got to the boiling point, I didn’t know enough to jump out! Finally, she gave me a reality check and helped me understand. Now I see it! I could not see it in my fog of disorientation. All we need to do is one thing. Let’s not lead alone. Let’s give another or others the permission to help us lead. Then, when our kettle starts to warm up, someone is there to yank us out! Who’s on your team?
On our blog post for Monday, September 15, 2014 Jeff shared his story of walking through the valley of anxiety and panic with his wife, Debbie. He talked about how they didn't know what was going on, why she would have panic attacks, and why anxiety was her daily companion. It took them ten years before they found help... in their doctor's office.
On today's podcast, episode 88, Jonny's father recounts his virtually life-long experience with depression. As a pastor for forty years, he has been in the depression management business the entire time. Wait until you hear when he finally began to talk about it and reach out for help! (hint: you'll only need the fingers on one hand!) Our desire is for YOU to find help and hope a lot sooner than Jeff and his wife did, or than Jonny's father did. In our day medicine has figured out so many of the mental health mysteries. There's more discovery to be had for sure, but we are so much farther than we were in the 60's... or 90's. Jonny's Dad, David Craig, has written a book about depression, the first of a trilogy. You can find his book, The Birds Sang A Sad Song, here on Amazon, or at his website at DavidCCraig.net. Are you suffering with challenges related to mental health? Please get help! You don't have to face it alone. That is the LIE that so many people with mental health problems face - "no one cares, you are all alone". People do care about you, you are NOT alone. RESOURCES TO HELP YOU First, if you feel that you have no one, try us! Email us at jeff@200churches.com or jonny@200churches.com. Here are a couple websites that offer help. We cannot vouch for everything on these sites, we're just small church pastors, after all! But, they are a place for you to get started:
I thank God that nonaddictive medication is available. Medication for depression is not like sleeping pills or Valium. Antidepressants are nonaddictive. They are taken until one’s body learns to produce enough serotonin again and a person is able to get proper rest. When a person breaks his arm, he wears a cast until it heals. It is a similar process with serotonin. When I pastored, I frequently worked with ministers who were in severe depression. I recommended they visit a Christian psychiatrist or psychologist, get on antidepressants, and get balanced out. It is okay to get help. Antidepressants are a great gift. They are like insulin for a person with diabetes. What would we do without insulin? It was the late summer of 1990. With two kids under three years old, and a husband who was working 70 hours a week, obviously my wife was going through “a tough stage”. She was having a hard time. I was working a lot, and not really completely tuned in to her struggles. This stage will pass as the baby gets easier to take care of, I thought. My memory is a bit foggy on the details, but I remember that her doctor couldn’t really help her and she ended up in a neurologist’s office. He suggested an MRI to rule out a brain tumor. What?! A neurologist wants to rule out a brain tumor?! It sounds pretty serious to me, now 24 years later. I knew then it would show nothing. She was fine. I knew my wife. She just needed to think more positively. Obviously, the results came back from her MRI – all was clear, no problems. I knew it.
She was a good soldier. A ministry wife. She did what she needed to do to serve the Lord and support her husband and church. But the struggles continued. They eased considerably while she nursed each of our four children. That should have been a clue. But, what did we know? We just prayed more. Ten years later, in the summer of 2000, I fell asleep one night while she was reading next to me in bed. I woke up almost 8 hours later to find her still reading. “Did you…?” I asked. “No”, she replied. Sleeplessness. She had a woman in her Bible study who couldn’t sleep and ended up in the mental health ward of the hospital. She thought, “what if I can’t sleep?” Sure enough, she started to have trouble sleeping. When she experienced three sleepless nights in a row, we both knew we were in trouble. It was 2000. Pastoral families were supposed to have it together. Obviously this was a flaw. What was wrong with us? My wife had four children at home, and she was homeschooling three of them. She needed her sleep. She spent the next night praying, crying out to God, and reading her Bible, along with every note she’d ever written in it. “God, I’m not asking for a ‘want’, I have a need, a big need, I just need to sleep. I have four kids God!” But the sleep only came once ever second or third night. God was silent. We had been abandoned. And then the panic attacks became more frequent. We didn’t call them that then, we didn’t know. For no reason, in the middle of anything, my wife would begin to melt down. She needed to go home, to quit whatever she was doing. She needed to retreat. After some terrible times, and honestly, after much personal suffering that I’ll never truly appreciate on my wife’s part, we broke. We were devastated, exhausted, and out of options. I called one of our deacons, who was also our doctor. I called him at home on his day off, because to make it a big deal in the doctor’s office just didn’t seem right. And, we wanted confidentiality. Ministry couples shouldn’t have these kinds of problems. I explained to him what was happening. “Oh Jeff,” he said, “every single day I see people in my office for the same type of thing. The good news is, I can help your wife, the bad news is it’s going to take about two to four weeks.” Hey, that was ALL good news to me! I could feel the dread leaving my body, and for the first time in many months, I had HOPE. I had hope that my wife would get better. I knew she was fine. There was nothing wrong with her. She was a wonderful woman, godly wife and mother, my best friend, and a good ministry soldier. She just needed to think positive, I thought. The diagnosis? A chemical imbalance in her brain. Treatment? A pill. Wow. Within two weeks she was sleeping. Way fewer panic attacks. Much less anxiety. In several months we had figured out what she needed by way of a prescription, and soon she was 95% better, which was a miracle for us. Today it’s just called “mental health”. Some people have trauma or abuse, others have addictions. My wife’s only trauma was being married to me – but she simply had an imbalance in her brain chemicals – and when that was treated, she recovered. Today, fourteen years later, she still takes half a pill, every night. She understands her brain, her emotions, and how she feels. She knows how to manage average anxiety, and she knows when she may be in for a season of needing the whole pill every night. She’s prescribed the whole pill. But mostly, she’s good with just a half. I’ve given you a thumbnail sketch of what our struggle with mental illness was like. My wife could tell you story after story of her suffering from 1990-2000. Prozac was first prescribed in 1990. All these SRI drugs have been developed since the year my wife had an MRI of her brain. But today they are available for you, just like Diabetics and blood pressure patients have their own drugs. If you are struggling with mental illness of any sort, please get help. There is HOPE on the other side. All my wife needs is 5mg a night to have her life back. It’s way worth it. And, for us, none of it was spiritual. We prayed, cried out to God, for years. He was waiting for us to just go to the doctor. Oh, that. I know that’s not everyone’s ailment and diagnosis, but it was ours. And, maybe it’s yours. Get help. Call your doctor. Pastors and their spouses need to be cared for too. This Wednesday on episode 88, we talk with David Craig, Jonny’s dad. David has suffered with Depression for decades, all the while serving as a pastor, and he tells his story this week on the 200churches Podcast. I take health for granted. How’s my cholesterol? Beats me! Do I have some lurking issues that are just waiting to spring up on me? Who knows! Because I can fake health via a good metabolism and ridiculous good looks (at least according to my wife…) I just act like I’m healthy--even though I do not live a healthy lifestyle.
Episode 87 with Erik Anderson is a fast moving account of his journey to pastoral/personal health in ministry. Erik, Jessa, and their beautiful daughter Nosipho do life together in St. Paul, MN. From the Midwest, they spent six years in youth ministry in California before returning to the landlocked middle of the country.
Erik is the Senior High Youth Pastor at Crossroads Church in Woodbury, MN. If you really want to peek in on #theandersonwayoflife, you can find their blog here! They are a riot! Jessa is a fantastic photographer and you can see some of her work here. Erik and Jessa are ministry people. They pretty much live for Jesus/Family/Ministry/Kingdom/Love, and we're not sure they always know which sphere they're in! At the end of the podcast, Erik shares the four ways that he is currently trying to stay healthy in ministry - with you:
If you enjoy this episode, you'll absolutely love Episode 66 - How One Pastor Survived Burnout In His Urban 200church!
Sometimes pastors can be prisoners. Are you a prisoner? To your own expectations? To others’ impossible standards? To your church’s culturally imposed requirements? To your denomination’s ministerial mold? To your board’s unintentionally hurtful demands? Are you a prisoner to your sense of failure, lack of achievement, or low self-esteem? To your crazy, unworkable, marginless schedule? To your addiction to games, video, screens, substances, or other ministry-excluding practices?
Pastors can be prisoners. Especially when they do not have the freedom to be themselves. Can you just be yourself? Or is being yourself somehow antithetical to what you, your church, or your denomination expects from a “good pastor”? This week on the podcast, episode #87, we talk with our friend Erik Anderson. Erik got to the point in his life and ministry where both were unsustainable. He was a prisoner to how he was doing ministry. He was a manic worker – even working in the middle of the night. He was driven, but by what? He was alienating himself from his wife. He was “doing ministry” in an untenable way. One day Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall. Erik tells his story, and we have the opportunity to perhaps find a piece of our story in his. Years ago one pastor recounted how he had been so busy, busy, busy in ministry, that he finally got to the place where he had to admit to God, “Father, the way I am doing the work of God in the ministry, is destroying the work of God in my own heart.” You might be on either end of the work continuum: you might be the workaholic, or you might be the lazy pastor. Both are unsustainable. Both will catch up with you. Maybe you are right in the middle. Everything is just right. You’ve got all your ducks in a row. You’re very predictable, very scheduled, very organized. Your calendar is appropriate and your plans are set. Even the Holy Spirit can’t surprise you! One thing is certain, if we are not working with Jesus in building his Kingdom, we are on our own. And if we are on our own, we are powerless. If we serve in ministry, practicing being aware of the presence of God, and walking in the Spirit, arm in arm and shoulder to shoulder with God – we can face anything that life or ministry can throw at us. Jesus frees us. Without Jesus, we are prisoners. Prisoners to all of the above expectations and conditions we already outlined. Erik’s story on Wednesday’s podcast episode will encourage you. We are excited to share it with you. It’s our gift to you. Because, sometimes, pastors can be prisoners. If you enjoyed this post, you would enjoy Episode 44 - The Pastor's Self-Care. |
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