CLICK HERE TO GO TO WWW.TRUEFACED.COM
These are some of the ideas and concepts discussed in this episode. I (Jeff) edited this episode tonight, March 10, 2015. Now, you must understand, I was involved in this conversation with Bill, just yesterday afternoon. Yet, as I listened through this episode to edit it, it was like I was hearing this for the first time. God spoke to me through Bill's words. Bill Thrall, in this conversation, cuts right down to the roots of who we are as Christians and pastors. It doesn't get much more real, much more gut level, than this conversation. THIS IS FOR YOU... Jonny and I are so excited to share this SOLID GOLD material with you, Pastor! Most of our episodes you could listen to while doing other things like driving, exercising, etc. This episode would be one where you could just sit with a notepad and jot down reflections as you listen. This could be a life changer for you Pastor. We love you. We want you to be healthy, whole, and strong. Listen, enjoy, and may God use this in your heart, life, and ministry. We talked to Kevin Pringle on the 200churches Podcast last Wednesday about.... burnout! I took it to heart this week, when I missed my usual Friday blogpost. I am about 70% through my spring semester of three courses, family is busy, church ministry is active, and I have too many irons in the fire, again. Some people have to learn the hard way. When one of my kids called with car trouble on the way home for the Easter weekend, I needed to leave and miss my usual Thursday night foray into the Friday blogpost. Wow, it's been a busy weekend. On a normal day, I would have just made it happen somehow, even from my phone. But it's not been normal lately.
So, I thought, before going to bed on Easter eve, I would just write a very, very short post and say that this is one of the ways one avoids burnout - you just have to scale back when life starts to overwhelm. Sometimes you cannot, but when you can, do it. I'm glad I did. This week we will be talking with Dave Jacobs, the Pastor's Coach. I think we are going to get a lot more good coaching from him and I can't wait. I need it! Happy Easter! Have a wonderful and life-changing Resurrection Sunday! Years ago I had a secret. A secret so shameful, that I could not tell anyone. At the time, it just wasn’t done. It was a secret that wasn’t spoken about at dinner parties, and a problem you were expected to solve on your own. I had carried the secret for years, and it was making me sick. DO YOU HAVE A SECRET?
Pastor, do you have a secret you wish you didn’t have? Is it one that you don’t want anyone else to ever discover? Are you getting tired of hiding this part of you, of masking over the pain and the shame? Is it a secret that only you and your husband or wife know about? Or, maybe, they don’t even know? Is your secret making you sick? One of the secret weapons against secrets is also one of the secret weapons against sin. That weapon is… the light of day! Your secret only has power because it’s a secret. As long as it’s a secret, it has control over you. Once you shine the light of day on it, it loses its power and hold on you. Once you tell your secret to another person, you share the burden of it, and it begins its descent into irrelevancy. God does not want us pastors to carry secrets. They lead to shame, guilt, lies, holding our cards close to our vest, etc. God doesn’t want us doing ministry alone, and he certainly doesn’t want us carrying our burdens, our secrets, alone. Maybe it’s time for you to come clean, to share your secret with a trusted friend or mentor. Maybe you need to share the burden of it with another, and to get help. When you tell your secret, it’s like a new car immediately after you drive it off the show room floor, it’s drops in value big time! A shared secret loses its teeth, and releases its bite on you. BACK TO MY SECRET... Back to that secret I had years ago. Dear God. I carried that thing around, with my wife’s help, for years. We sweat over it, prayed about it, tried our hardest to fix it, and did make some progress. In fact, we made a good deal of progress. But we bore it in silence, and in secret, hoping no one would find out. If they did, they would think less of us, perhaps consider us unworthy of ministry. When it was time for us to move to a new ministry, I decided I would open up and let our new church leaders know up front what my situation was. I was almost sick over it, no, I was sick over it! I wasn’t sure they would want me. I’ll never forget the call. It was a special call I made before I came to candidate. I was honest and open. I shared my secret. To my shock, and delight, it was a nonstarter. “Is that all you got?” they said. I was floored, and felt a ton of weight being lifted off my shoulders. “Has it been difficult?” they asked. “Yes” I said. “Then good, we want a pastor who has been through the ringer and knows what it’s like. We want a pastor who has crashed and knows what it means to get up and keep going. We’re on your side, we’re in this together.” After we hung up, I sat there in my van, staring at my cell phone, weeping. This is what grace is. I finally experienced it. Grace. Love. Acceptance. Jesus. This is the body of Christ. What was my secret, you ask? I’ll never tell! LOL. You see, you don’t have to tell everybody your secret for your burden to be lifted. You just have to tell the right person or persons. Paul said, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” James said, “confess your sins one to another, that you may be healed.” If I told you, you would say, “oh yeah, that” and move on to the next thing. No big deal. But it was huge to me, because I had no one to help me carry it. What secret are you carrying? Can I scream it? Here I go – FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, BARE YOUR BURDEN! TELL SOMEONE! SHARE YOUR SECRET! And watch it lose its power, and feel the weight lifted off your shoulders. Then understand what Jesus meant about finding “rest for your soul.” OUR GIFT TO YOU This Wednesday, on the 200churches Podcast, episode 64, we talk with John Lynch about our pastoral health. We talk to him about what it’s like to be honest with someone else, nothing hidden. If you have secrets that are making you sick, don’t miss this episode. We love you Pastor, and we want to bring hope and encouragement to you this week. So, today, this one’s for you! For all the men and women out there pastoring small churches – we love you! You bear the burdens of others, carry the water for the ministry, and often go un-thanked and unnoticed. So from Jeff and Jonny today – THANK YOU! Hey, we noticed. We’re two of you! We know. It’s a new week. If you need Wednesday’s episode – we offer it to you as our gift of encouragement and support. Happy Monday. Now, go get ‘em! Pastor, if your people knew the worst about you, would they still want you to be their pastor?? Here’s a question, is there someone in your church who, if they did know the worst about you, would still love you and support you as a brother or sister in Christ? Pastors can often languish in the prison of secrecy, believing that if people knew the real them, they would be rejected and expelled from their leadership position. Is this not the real definition of stress?! You must hide yourself so well from your people, because if your people found out what and who you really are on the inside, they would run?
What if the worst really is that bad? Who can you tell? Who can you trust with the truth? How is it that pastors are supposed to get help? What if you are in deep in a situation and you need someone to talk with, confidentially, so that you could get out? This is what next week’s podcast is about. It’s about living grace. Grace that lives. Grace that is so real, and so much from Jesus, that it actually lives, and gives you life. Go back and listen to episode 61, with our friend John Lynch. If you’ve already listened, listen again. Then get ready for episode 64, which is the conclusion of our conversation. In the meantime, go ahead and buy the Kindle version of The Cure. You can find it here. Read it, and listen to these episodes, #61 already on iTunes, and #64 which will be released this coming Wednesday. Pastor, if you’re in trouble, help is on the way.
Watch this video first - it's short, and it's John talking about two roads, from the book, The Cure. It will give you a glimpse into John's personality and caring nature - then you'll hear him on today's Episode 61 of the 200churches Podcast!
May we introduce to you, for the first of what we hope will be many appearances on the 200churches Podcast, John Lynch! John is from Phoenix, AZ where he is one of the pastors at Open Door Fellowship Church. John has been there for thirty years. John, along with his friends Bill Thrall and Bruce McNicol, have written the book, The Cure - What if God isn't who you think he is, and neither are you
TODAY'S PODCAST EPISODE
This book, The Cure, has made a significant impact on many people in our church, and we were able to hoodwink John into joining us live in the opulent and luxurious 200churches Podcast Studio to record this episode for you! John was speaking in the area, and we sent a car, and spirited him away in the dark of night to join us in the studio. One of our church members, Steve Mason, who read the book, and whose life was changed by it, drove out and picked John up. Steve has been a HUGE blessing to our church, as we have seen the transformation Jesus has made in his life, and as we have been blessed by his love for us. The truth is, Steve’s wife Pam has also been changed by the message of the Cure, that God’s grace is so much stronger than our efforts – and Pam made two mouth watering pies that we consumed upon completion of the recording. Consumed like wild, ravenous wolves! Steve, John Lynch, Jonny, and I basically had a party in the 200churches Studio, and recorded some of it for you! We had a blast! John is one of Steve’s heroes, and one of our heroes now too, and it was so enjoyable to just sit and have fellowship together that only happens because Jesus loves us and makes us brothers.
Today’s podcast is only the tip of the iceberg. We will have another episode, much longer, next month, where John expands on the message of The Cure. In the coming months we will have John back, as well as Bill Thrall, to encourage all of us as pastors of small churches in our personal walk with Jesus.
In today’s episode John introduces and explains the foundational message of the book – replete with his Scottish accent and Irish brogue, mixed wonderfully with the voice of a drunken pirate! You’ll just have to hear it. Below are two short videos by Bill Thrall and Bruce McNicol, as well as links to the TrueFaced website and The Cure book. We do get a kickback if you buy the book – and that would be the joy of knowing your heart will be changed and you just may never understand your relationship with God the same again – really! Next week – Small Church Pastor Coach Dave Jacobs! Our topic with Dave is one of the small church pastor’s toughest struggles – Fighting Fear. That’s next week on Episode 62.
Here is Bill Thrall sharing what we think is a phenomenal perspective on the Gospel and the Christian life. Bill will join us in the future on the podcast.
How do you preach to your people? How do you teach them week after week? What expectations do you lay out at the end of your sermons or lessons? Are the lives of your people pleasing to God? Do they experience or sense God’s face shining on them? How do they think about their relationship with God? Well, there you go, Happy Monday! How about those questions? Do you find them easy to answer, or hard? Perhaps you are wondering if we are setting you up? You might ask, “What are Jeff and Jonny getting at with these questions?” We are attempting to set you up for this week’s podcast, episode 61, with John Lynch. John has been a pastor at Open Door Fellowship Church in Phoenix, AZ for the past 30 years. He and his pastor/partners, Bill Thrall and Bruce McNicol have written a book titled, The Cure. It is all about the life of grace, and it’s subtitle is: What if God isn’t who you think he is, and neither are you? At our 200church here in Orange City, IA, we have used this book in small groups and Sunday School classes, and it has changed lives as we learn that we are exactly who God says we are, even on our worst day! We are redeemed, righteous, forgiven, and loved. We no longer have to wear a mask, hide or manage our sin, live in relational isolation, or stress out over pleasing God. There is a remedy in the Gospel, that these guys call “The Cure.”
On this week’s podcast, John talks about, not so much the book, but what the cure actually is. We also have Steve, a member at our church, whose life was changed by this book, share just a bit of his story. Steve and John Lynch join us in the opulent and luxurious 200churches Podcast studio, and are almost overcome by the live, in-studio experience. :) The Cure will change how you preach to and teach your people. We know, we know, that is a presumptuous and somewhat bold statement. We too are hesitant when someone is only as good as the last book they’ve read. We’ve read a lot of books over the past few years, and we are not in the business of being affiliate marketers of books. But this book is simply about the Christian life and how the message of grace informs it. The Authors Will Join Us Because this book has challenged so many of our people, and literally changed the lives of some, we wanted to share it with you by talking directly with the authors, then sharing those conversations with you on the podcast. They will, over the coming months, be a part of our podcasts. We’ve asked them to begin to share the message of grace, a message that they have worked so hard on over the past years to articulate and model to their own church family. They’ve written several books and crafted a number of message series around this topic. These guys are pastors who are serving in the trenches along with us. They have several services and their church has run between 700 and 1,000 for a couple decades. They know the struggles, the joys, and the challenges of local church ministry. Practical Ministry Benefit Recently a member came to Jeff’s office for some counseling. She was sensing God nudging her to work on some issues in her life. She has struggled in some areas, and knows God wants her to get victory over them. She knows that these struggles are coming between her and a healthy relationship with God. She came to ask for his advice on how she could get past these things, and live in victory, with a life pleasing to God. Jeff’s advice to her a couple weeks ago was very different than it would have been a couple years ago. That advice became so clear to him after processing the message of The Cure in his reading, and going through it in his small group. This is the message we want you to hear. We are so excited to share our conversation with John Lynch with you on Wednesday in episode 61 of the 200churches Podcast! |
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