It’s been interesting. I’ve been a pastor for 10 years. In all this time I’ve always been bi-vocational. You can read about that in other places on my blog. During that time I’ve come to the realization that two things are (generally) true: In the traditional / established church world you aren’t a “real pastor” unless you are paid full-time by the church. In the church planting, missional, emerging (whatever words you want to use here) world you aren’t totally legitimate unless you are bi-vocational. Why don’t we just go ahead and say that neither of these assumptions are healthy. There is a time and place for full-time paid pastors. There is a time and place for part-time paid pastors. Neither one is more spiritual than the other....Read More →
Category: Leadership
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January 17, 2012
Are You a Real Pastor??
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October 21, 2011
Towards a Discipleship Framework
I’ve been working on the following thoughts for the last year or so and I am honestly apprehensive to even publish this because it has morphed and changed so much over the last year. It’s far from perfect but I’d love to hear your thoughts to improve it and tighten it up a bit. Discipleship as the Bottom Line “We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.” Colossians 1:28 The church, in the context of its missional calling, must work with all its energy to present people fully mature in Jesus Christ. I think we can say...Read More →
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August 9, 2011
Preaching on the Run: Preparing Sermons as a Bi-Vocational Pastor Who Can’t Spend 30 Hours in His Study
I was told in seminary that I should spend 1 hour of sermon prep for every minute I will be preaching. For many of us that means we should spend 20-30 hours preparing sermons? This approach poses some serious problems for me. First of all, I have other pastoral responsibilities. Second, I am bi-vocational so I barely even have that much time to give to everything I do. For those two reasons alone, there is just no chance I am spending 30 hours a week prepping for a sermon on Sunday. You can easily see the problem. The challenge isn’t finding more hours to prepare sermons, the challenge is finding some kind of rhythm that allows me to spend less time studying in the classic...Read More →
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June 29, 2011
The Primary Task of the Church?
“We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.” Colossians 1:28 The church, in the context of its missional calling, must work with all its energy to present people fully mature in Jesus Christ. I think we can say that mission without discipleship is ineffective and discipleship without mission is pointless and honestly can’t really even be called discipleship. It was Alan Hirsch who said, “I have come to believe we are never going to be the movement Jesus wants unless we first et the issues of discipleship right. This is because the health and growth of transformative...Read More →
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June 6, 2011
The Way of the Christ, the Way of the Cross
When we make sure the cross is at the center of the gospel, we realize that the way of Christ is one of redemption through sacrifice and struggle and that those on the inside are those who humbly trust him with the whole of their lives and entrust themselves wholly to his agenda and his plans for the world.
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April 12, 2011
Two Super-Easy Steps to Preaching a Holistic Gospel
We all think we are preaching a holistic gospel. In all my years of interacting with pastors, teachers and leaders I have never met anyone who got into a pulpit on a regular basis and said “I think I am going to preach a one-sided gospel.” In reality, none of us are preaching a fully holistic gospel, are we? Obviously I don’t think so, or I wouldn’t have asked the question. I believe this is one of the reasons we need to continually be in dialogue with the entire body of Christ, Christians from all walks of life. We must know and learn from Christians from different racial, ethic and socio-economic backgrounds and even Christians from urban, suburban and rural contexts. It is in these conversations and friendships...Read More →
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March 4, 2011
What is the Form and Function of the Church?
A community that is guided by the scriptures. Without the scriptures, we’d have no direction or compass. Its our family history. It’s gives us a trajectory for our future. When we read the scriptures we read them in community with a missional bent. A community that is dependent on the Spirit. Without the dependence on the spirit, the church is merely wasting its time! God sent the son, the son sent the spirit, the sprit sends the church. A community where people are learning to become disciples of Jesus. We’re learning to do the things that Jesus would do if he were us. A community that is incarnational rather than attractional. If you build it they will come just doesn’t work in post-Christendom. A community...Read More →
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February 28, 2011
Submission in Leadership
One of the major early themes in The Imitation of Christ is that of humility. I will be honest. I am not a big fan of humility. Humility is one of those things that constantly seems desperately out of grasp. Just when I feel like I am getting close to understanding it and getting it, it moves further away from me. As a pastor however, I know its the one thing that I need the most. It is the one thing that fights against most pastor’s greatest temptation: Pride. It is a strange thing that pastors and leaders struggle so much with pride. We are supposed to be the ones who are most grounded in the scriptures, grace and truth. I think therein lies the...Read More →
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December 18, 2010
God is With Us.
Immanuel. God is with us. Wait. Stop. Listen again… Immanuel. God is with us. God. Is. With. Us. Wait. God is with you. Sure. But God is with me? Yes. Really? Yes. You don’t need to come to Jesus. He’s has come to you. He has pursued you. Loves you. Yes, you. The wait is over.
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December 16, 2010
The H3 Project
I’ve been dreaming about doing something like this for awhile and I’m really excited to introduce The H3 Project in 2011. I’m a big believer in shaping leaders and disciples in community whenever possible (as opposed to shipping them off to Seminary for a few years). Here’s a teaser to what H3 is: The H3 Project is a seminary-ish style experience based out of the local church. You will be interacting with some of the best thinkers and practitioners in the church today while being challenged in topics that are important for our witness as followers of Jesus. The H3 Project is all about forming people to be part of the mission of God. But it isn’t just about forming one kind of person, it...Read More →
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December 14, 2010
The Death of Leadership? Yes and No.
There has been a bit of talk going on in the “blogesphere” about whether or not leadership is actually help for the mission of the church. I had a pretty enjoyable twitter debate (yes, apparently those exist) with Bill Kinnon and my friend Dave Fitch this afternoon. Bob Hyatt was in on it too and I think he’s on my side here. (Side note: I’m pretty sure Bob promised a blog post on the topic later today. Hopefully my calling him out here puts some pressure on him. The world is a better place when Bob blogs – Here is Bob’s post as promised). You can follow most of the conversation from Dave Fitch’s excellent post which resides here. The more I interact with Fitch and...Read More →
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December 13, 2010
Participation in Change
I’m continuing to devour the book by Margaret J Wheatley called, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time I think most of us will agree with this quote… As leaders, we have no choice but to figure out how to invite in everybody who is going to be affected by change. Those that we fail to invite into the creation process will surely and always show up as resistors and saboteurs. But I haven’t become insistent on participation just to avoid resistance or to get people to support my efforts. It’s because no one person is smart enough to design anything for the whole system. No one of us these days can know what will work inside the dense networks we call organizations. We can’t...Read More →
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December 8, 2010
Your Audience Isn’t Stupid
Yesterday afternoon I was in a meeting with my good friend Scott Hackman. We were working on the beginnings of a new business venture we’re part of called MyOhai (website / twitter). I’ll be talking more about that in the future, what it is and what we’ll exactly be doing. But that’s for another time. We were meeting at Borders and I came across this: There are so many things wrong with this picture. First of all, we all know that pay phones are obsolete, or at least well on their way to being so. If you’ve been in any airports recently you’ll have noticed that the rows of pay phones have been replaced by laptop charging stations. Second of all, does anything about this actually...Read More →
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December 7, 2010
Are People Generally Screw Ups?
As you can tell I’ve been reading the book by Margaret J Wheatley called, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time. I can’t say enough good things about this book. That’s probably why I keep on quoting from it. I think she has some important things to say to us, especially those of us who are leading church communities and other non-profits. Read this whole quote, it’s worth it… If you look around at most organizations and communities, people are still being kept in boxes. They are not invited to contribute, to create, or to care about each other. Instead, it’s assumed that people must be policed into good behavior. Endless policies and laws attempt to make us behave properly. Yet very few people tolerate...Read More →
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December 6, 2010
ReWork: Creating Leadership Culture
Earlier this year I wrote a series of posts called “Cultivating a Leadership Culture.” You can read this series in it’s entirety here. That series developed out of the nine years that I have been learning along the way as Pastor at The Well. I love the challenge and opportunity of creating community and culture, especially in the area of leadership. I’ve become somewhat of a leadership junkie and nerd and I have grown to love the sociology of the leadership task. That’s why the book ReWork by Jason Fried and David Heinemier Hansson, founders of 37signals, was such a refreshing book. This book is essentially a series of short reflections and essays on creating a healthy leadership culture. It seems to me that in...Read More →
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December 6, 2010
Are You Stooping to Greatness?
I’ve always loved Pat Lencioni’s writing. I think he just get’s it. This is no exception.
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December 6, 2010
Leadership and Control
Some great quotes from a great book by Margaret J Wheatley called, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time. Trying to be an effective leader in this machine story is especially exhausting. He or she is leading a group of lifeless, empty automatons who are just waiting to be filled with vision and direction and intelligence. The leader is responsible for providing everything: the organizational mission and values, the organizational structure, the plans, the supervision. The leader must also figure out, through clever use of incentives or coercives, how to pump energy into this lifeless mass. Once the pump is primed, he must then rush hither and yon to make sure that everyone is clanking along in the same direction, at the established speed, with...Read More →
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December 2, 2010
Diversity, Unity and Submission
I can’t believe it’s been almost nine years since I met Laurence Tom. LT, as we call him, in a Chinese-American pastor in Chinatown Center City. I met him while we were in seminary. I should actually say I met him while he was in seminary as I am still in the process finishing my degree 10 years later. The wonderful thing about our friendship is that while we have very similar beliefs on leadership, mission and theology we come from very different backgrounds and we lead in very different contexts. I come from a semi-fundamentalist upbringing where I am a 5th generation pastor. I grew up in white-suburbia where my pastor was a proud dispensationalist graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary. LT was raised in...Read More →
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September 30, 2010
DMin at Northern Seminary
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… I started my MA at Biblical Theological Seminary. That was nine years, 3.5 kids and four apartments ago. I’m happy to say that I am finally scheduled to graduate with an MA in Missional Theology from Biblical Theological Seminary. It’s been a pleasure studying here (yes, I’m writing this in class… whoops) and I’ve really been blessed by John Franke’s teaching over the years. Now that I am finishing up, I’m thinking about what’s next. I have been looking into the possibilities of pursuing a DMin as I’d like to do some adjunct teaching in the future and, more importantly, I’d love the focused learning that a degree like that brings. That being said I...Read More →
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September 16, 2010
10 Suggestions/Thoughts on Bi-Vocational Ministry
I’ve been bi-vocational in some way or another for about 9 years. Here is some random advice/thoughts to those who are beginning or in the midst of the bi-vocational approach to ministry: Try and find a second job that feeds your gifting and passions in some way. I actually really enjoy web design. It taps into my creative side and gives me an outlet for that kind of thing. So, while it has its frustrations, I really can enjoy the work. This has been very important as it doesn’t necessarily drain me as I engage the these responsibilities. Try and have your second job be a career type job and not just a part-time placement where the only positive is that you make money. While...Read More →
