Category: Leadership (page 6 of 8)

Heart Surgery Update

June 8, 2011 / / 12 Comments /

Thanks for all your prayers, Facebook posts, emails, text messages, Tweets, voicemails, and even the snail mail cards. I really appreciate all the encouragement as I move toward heart surgery this Friday. I am thankful for each of you, I promise. I, as well as Pam and the kids are completely at peace about this surgery and believe the best days are still ahead for all of us.

Some of you have asked how to specfically pray in the next few days and weeks, so here is a short list.

1. Pray for a smooth and unenventful pre-surgery procedure on Thursday. I will be in the Cath Lab of the hospital most of the day as they check the electrical functions of my ticker. Pray I get to go home with no complications.

2. Pray for the surgery on Friday, which begins at 1pm. Pray for the surgeons, the nurses, the anesthesiolgist, and anyone else who has a role in the surgery.

3. Pray for minimal pain in the recovery. The heart will be great, but the sternum needs to heal quickly so I can get back to normal routines, like walking, coughing, hiking, and preaching.

4. Pray for Pam because I am not good at being still at home for long periods of time. She is super gracious, but this may be her biggest test yet. 🙂

 

Thanks again for all the love and support. Turbo Brady is on the way, and I cannot wait to get back to living alongside you and not talking about surgeries, pulmonary valves, etc.  Remember, I may be on pain meds when I write my next blog, so I ask your forgiveness in advance for any crazy thoughts that may be posted.

Peace and blessings to all of you.

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Fast Food Marketing and the Local Church

May 26, 2011 / / 16 Comments /

Have we, as American pastors, given up our calling as shepherds and unknowingly become fast food entrepreneurs who are building a religious business and not a church? Before I dive into this, let me first confess. I am the pastor of a church with several big buildings, one of them with a cafe and a bookstore that sells products. Our stage is backed by a huge high definition screen and surrounded by lights of every color.

In many ways, we are not unlike any other mega church in America because, we too, have used marketing techniques to attract a crowd on Sundays.  But, the internal conversations among our leaders are shifting. We want to be what Eugene Peterson calls “a company of pastors” and not a company of shopkeepers. Church is not a product to be consumed like a gym membership, but rather a holy gathering of sinners who are becoming saints because of grace.

This is a blog, not a doctoral thesis, so I am not trying to give complete answers to the three questions below. Instead, I am hoping to start some conversations and maybe some helpful debate. I will ask some questions here and give some of my thoughts. I hope to create a symphony of discussion that may be helpful to leaders who are brave enough and secure enough in their calling to honestly evaluate the way we are leading our churches. Also, this is not a slam on the fast food industry, of which, I am a big fan. In fact, I might starve to death if my driver side window ever broke.

Read the three questions and consider my thoughts and then give me your thoughts.

Question #1 – Is it wrong to use marketing for our church?

I don’t think marketing is evil or carnal, as long as we are not solely leaning on worldly principles while forgetting the primary disciplines that truly build the church. Prayer is the engine of church growth, followed closely by our personal witness to others. Praying people who know they are called to a local fellowship will bring others with them to the gatherings. Slick, four-color door hangers are fine, but passionate people who love their neighbors are the real church builders.

At New Life we have banners on the outside of our church to tell people what times we meet and, from time to time, we use local media to promote events. However, we are also convinced, it’s the unseen work of the Holy Spirit birthed in prayer that really gathers the lost, the hurting and the disenfranchised.

Question #2 – What do we REALLY want?

I emphasized REALLY, because I know what most church leaders would tell me if asked this question. They would say they want to make disciples, reach the lost, and help the hurting. And they probably do. But what I hear leaders talk about most are attendance numbers and because our mouth always betrays our hearts, I suspect we have focused too much on how many are attending rather than how many are growing.

We stopped emphasizing overall weekend attendance numbers about 18 months ago. We do not talk about it in meetings or in the hallways, but we do know how many were baptized, how many went on missions trips, how many joined small groups and how many became a part of the Dream Team, which is our group of servant leaders who lead inside and outside the church.

The result has been a liberating release from the temptation to compare ourselves to other churches and a freedom from the impulse to perform solely for numbers sake.

Question #3 – Do we really know the stories of our people?

Instead of telling me attendance numbers, I would like to hear about stories. In the sea of faces, there is a surplus of stories waiting to be told. Tell me about current accounts of redemption, healing, restoration and rescue. How many that arrived is a lot less compelling to me than how many are thriving.

In a neighborhood restaurant, there are lingering unhurried conversations about stories. In a fast food restaurant, there is a hurry to get to the next customer with short blurbs of discussions about a numbered meal on a well organized wall menu. Everything in a fast food restaurant is about efficiency and excellence. Time is the master and we are the slaves.

Church for the past 2000 years has been centered around the story of our Christ, pausing to remember him in the Sacraments and interludes to celebrate the stories of a persecuted but joyful people. It has always been about the gathering of the called out ones, not the gathering of potential customers who we hope will have a great consumer experience.

I do believe in excellence and efficiency, but not at the expense of relationships and stories. We can do both – tell stories and build relationships in a environment that is warm and inviting.

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Monday Confessions from a Pastor – Part 2

April 25, 2011 / / 11 Comments /

Dear God,

It’s  the Monday after Easter Sunday, but I am sure you’re already aware of that fact.  I hope you were pleased with what happened at church yesterday. By the way, thanks for being there. Church is always better when you attend. I hope you felt honored and I did not hinder people from meeting you personally.

I realize I am already rambling here, but you know how tanked I feel on Sunday afternoons and on most Mondays.  Why can’t I be one of those pastors who are hyped after a service instead of one who feels like a can of Spam? By the way, thank you for Tuesdays. My brain and body somehow start working better then.

It was great to see 102 people baptized last night and hundreds more praying to follow you during the morning gatherings. Thanks for what you are doing in Corey and thousands of others who did not get their story told on a video. I hope you felt honored and trust that the spotlight was on you more than those of us on the stage.

Lord, help me to not be so aggravated when people give me immediate criticism about the Sunday talk or wait for me off the stage to point out one minor detail I got wrong. They should wait a day or so to give me their opinion but they don’t and probably never will. Forgive them Lord, because they have no idea how vulnerable and tired I feel right after a service. They have never been on a stage in front of people talking about life and death issues. When you give them that chance, I am sure they will then be more considerate about when to give their feedback.

Lord, help me not feel like every Sunday has to be “the best Sunday ever, in all of church history.” Not every talk has to be epic and not every worship service has to be “off the chain.” Remind all of my pastor friends on Twitter not to hype every weekend like it is the Super Bowl of all church weekends, every single week.  You know that every Sunday service is not that great, because you attend their churches, too.  Help us to build disciples with our weekend gatherings and not create consumers who expect a new and improved product every weekend.

Lord, thanks again for allowing me to pastor New Life.  Keep me focused on the important things and help me to ignore my own carnality. Thanks for the time. I hope to talk to you again real soon.

Love,

Brady

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God Needs My Help

April 10, 2011 / / 4 Comments /

I was hours away from speaking to a large crowd of people and I found myself praying the typical pastor prayers.

“Help me tonight to speak clearly and effectively. You know I cannot do this without you.”

As I was praying, God interrupted. Imagine that, God had something better to say. 🙂

“Why don’t you pray that you would help me? Maybe I am up to something tonight and you could be a part.”

The way I pray before speaking has forever been changed. From now on, I will ask God to show me what He is doing and to help me to simply cooperate. It’s not about me after all, and that is a huge relief. God is active and moving among people, most of the time, invisibly.

It’s not about my performance or my communicative ability as much as I thought. It’s more about a partnership with the unseen. May we all table our agendas, our objectives and our well planned goals and, instead, simply ride the wake of what God is doing among the people whom He loves more than we can imagine.

Cooperate. Participate. Partnership.

That seems so much better than hoping I do well in front of a crowd. It seems more spiritual and more eternal. Help me God to help you.

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Fear No Evil – Chapter Nine

March 29, 2011 / / 2 Comments /

The journey through my first book continues with an excerpt from chapter 9 which talks about how we got our joy back at New Life after a season of darkness and tragedy. I would love to hear your thoughts about this very important topic.

The proceeds from Fear No Evil will help support the Dream Centers we are opening here in Colorado Springs. The book releases April 26th on Amazon, but you can pre-order Fear No Evil here.

There is a reason that every car manufactured in this world has a small rear-view mirror and a large windshield, which is that you and I are supposed to be far more focused on what is in front of us than on what it is we have just passed. But there were times after the shooting when New Life had the two fixtures swapped. We allowed our windshield to become tiny and our rear-view mirror to captivate our every thought. And so one final joy-robber I want to mention is this: beware of your life’s windshield becoming dangerously small.

Whenever we allow the forward-looking, future-oriented, front-windshield work yet to be done to eclipse that magnificent work that is being accomplished all around us, we miss real blessings that God is trying to pass our way. What’s more, we give the enemy of our souls a foothold as he works to deflate our hearts.

Satan loves nothing more than when you and I fixate on our past. Don’t give him that kind of satisfaction! Focus on the good you see happening, and on all that lies ahead. For us, one simple way this idea got played out involved engaging in our “Summer of Serving.” Despite the two cataclysmic events we’d walked through, we called the church to rally together on behalf of our city, we prayed fervent prayers asking for direction, and then we worked to meet as many needs as we could possibly find. We planted gardens and repainted walls at the downtown rescue mission, we lifted the spirits of home-bound elderly men and women who craved community, we cooked and delivered meals to families in need and more. The acts of service didn’t equate to quick progress in terms of our emotional healing, but they did help us shift our focal point from our own pain to the needs we could actually help meet. And by taking that one small step of faith, our church was reaffirmed in our belief that God would use us in days to come to serve the poor, plant new churches, and catalyze transformed living in people whose paths we crossed.

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Fear No Evil – Chapter Four

March 3, 2011 / / 1 Comment /

For the next several weeks, leading up to the late April release of my first book, I am posting some excerpts from each chapter. All the proceeds from this book go to support the Dream Centers we are opening here in Colorado Springs. If you want, you can Pre-Order Fear No Evil here.

This is from Chapter 4, where I describe the unbelievable Wednesday night gathering at New Life Church after the shooting the previous Sunday.

After the great Old Testament leader Moses died, his aide Joshua was tapped by God to take the reins and lead the Israelites across the Jordan River. And as God commissioned Joshua for this new role, he told him not once, not twice, but three times to “be strong and courageous.” “Be strong and courageous,” he says in Joshua 1:6. “Be strong and very courageous,”7 he says one verse later. And then, in case Joshua missed the first two installments, verse nine reads this way: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Based on the tenor in the room that Wednesday night, I could tell that the people of New Life knew what I firmly believed to be true: This was our Joshua moment. Sunday had threatened to rob us of our peace, our solidarity, and our faith. But on Wednesday night, we would say, “No.”

On Wednesday, we would choose to claim not fear, but courage—to live, to love, to engage.

At any given time, courage either is entering into you or departing from you. It’s always doing one or the other; it is not static. When you’re discouraged—when courage drips its way out of you like water from a leaky hose—nothing you do seems worthwhile. Every molehill shows up as a mountain, and every dilemma is a debilitating crisis just waiting to take you down. All that is negative in life is amplified, and whatever good exists fades to gray.

But when you’re encouraged—when courage is coming in—you feel like you can do just about anything in God’s name and will experience a fair measure of success. You charge hell with a water pistol and serve like your hair is on fire, not knowing what else to do with your massive influx of holy audacity.

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Bill Hybel’s Foreword for Fear No Evil

February 10, 2011 / / 0 Comments /

RECENTLY WILLOW CREEK celebrated our thirty-fifth anniversary, and after the festivities had come and gone, during a quiet moment of reflection I thanked God for his goodness that has sustained us all these years. Like any church that has been around for a while, we have experienced ups and downs, good times and bad, seasons of blessing and those marked by immeasurable pain. By God’s grace, we have prevailed.

Throughout those three-plus decades of ministry, I have seen too many churches wind up with a far different story to tell. Despite noble intentions and well-meaning commitments, adversity wins the day. The sequence is predictable and sad: calamity strikes and people scatter. They despise the sting, they fear the pain, they rush to disassociate from the mess. But not so with New Life Church. After suffering back-to-back blows that might have leveled another group, this courageous congregation chose to renew their faith, rally their energies, and doggedly rise again.

It is more than a feel-good story for New Life; it is good news for us all. Because as churches reach for their redemptive potential instead of forfeiting the fight, increasing numbers of people wind up living lives that  conform to the teaching Jesus offered and the example that he set. The net effect is a drastic reduction of the dangers of living on this planet. Think about this with me: if a few hundred million more people were to enter into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ over the next few years, and if they were then to start choosing inclusion over exclusion, righteousness over evil, serving over controlling, giving over grabbing, peace over violence, and love over hate, this world would be a far better place to live. This is why Jesus told us to pray each and every day that the will of his Father that was being played out to perfection in heaven would start to operate more and more here on planet Earth. Depravity may be on the loose today, but it doesn’t have to be tomorrow. You and I can be agents of eternity-impacting change. We can be ambassadors—of compassion, of encouragement, of hope.

When pain hits home, most people’s tendency is to want to run from it, replace it with another feeling, and pretend like they escaped unharmed. I experienced this most dramatically just after my dad died decades ago. The sadness that descended on me was so awkward and uncomfortable that I merely tried to pull myself together and move on. I returned to work and threw myself into a frenzy of ministry activity, counting on the chaos I was creating to distract me from the deep despair I felt.

But that is not God’s way.

Instead, he encourages us to lean into the neediness we feel. He invites us to watch him bandage our wounds, set our broken bones, and start to stabilize things once more. He inspires us to slow down, review the loss, pray through it thoroughly, talk about it openly, think about it deeply, and write about it reflectively. Thankfully, that is exactly what Brady Boyd has done. And now, in these pages, you and I get to benefit from the lessons he learned along the way.

These days, whenever a round of suffering comes my way, the first thing I try to do—even before I allow myself the first taste of panic—is to try to grab hold of a foundational truth from God that I can cling to until things get sorted out. One that helps me every time is this: God is never, ever the author of evil. If I can’t keep that particular truth straight in my mind, I am going to lose the plot every time. But if stay focused on the theological certainty that God never authors evil, then I stand a better than average chance of weathering the storm.

Throughout the Bible, God also promises that when we pass through the rising waters, we won’t be walking alone. When we fight through the raging rivers, they will not sweep over us. When we walk through the furious fire, the flames will not set us ablaze. And when we trudge through life’s darkest valleys, God promises he’ll always be there.

What’s more, our good God limits the amount and the severity of the evil that comes our way so that it stays within our capacity to endure it. I don’t know about you, but that kind of promise serves as a strategic part of my survival plan for life. Even when my circumstances unnerve me, I can hang onto that with my white-knuckled grip.

You may be reading this and thinking, “That’s great for you, but you obviously don’t understand how severe my suffering is.” Deep down, you believe you are beyond hope, that life’s rising waters are about to pull you under. But it’s simply not the truth. The open tomb of Jesus Christ never stops tossing a life-preserver of hope to even the most hopeless of heart.

If you are going through a rough patch right now, then I’d ask you to consider by faith that just as God wove together something beautiful for the once-brokenhearted people known as New Life Church, he is at work behind the scenes in your life too. Despite how bleak and bitter and cold things may seem as you survey the landscape of your life, I promise you God is working, just beyond what your eyes can see. He never sleeps, the Bible promises, and he never slumbers. He doesn’t take the month off during your season of despair. On the contrary: Romans 8:28 says that for those who love God and follow him, he is working to make all wrong things right.

Take to heart the lessons from Fear No Evil. Don’t wait for the next round of suffering to surface in your life before you confirm your belief that hope exists, that hope is available, and that hope will always prevail.

P.S. from Brady – The proceeds of this book will support the Dream Centers we are opening in Colorado Springs. Pre-order Fear No Evil at www.amazon.com

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What makes all this worthwhile?

February 7, 2011 / / 0 Comments /

I was meeting with a young leader recently, talking about church, the future and all that God is doing right now in our fellowship. I found myself really excited about life and realized that I really like what I get to do everyday. Why am I so excited?  What makes all this worthwhile? These are questions that need to be discussed and answered by everyone, whether you’re a pastor or not. Here are some of my answers.

1. Life must be lived with friends.

Working alongside people you love and respect makes all the difference. In fact, I believe the camaraderie, the laughs, and the conversations will be the things we remember the most. Telling the stories of what God did among us, remembering the gaffes and the goofiness of the past are some of the most treasured times I have with friends. Not everyone around us has to be close, personal friends, but there needs to be close relationships present somewhere or the road just becomes too arduous.

2. Life must be lived for His kingdom and not for our personal empires.

When a group of people put God first and their egos and agendas last, a momentum is created that’s almost impossible to stop. When no one cares who gets the spotlight or the accolades and only God is worshipped, the atmosphere becomes ripe for miracles. I can give my life away without regrets if the end result is building something eternal that brings God glory.

3. Life must be full of experiments that lead to innovation.

I really enjoy a work environment that is full of risks, experiments and potential messes. This is when the most innovative ideas tend to surface. The moment that everything is predictable is when I get really bored and distracted. I can pastor for another 40 years if the church keeps its sense of wonder and continues asking the question, “What is the best way to do this?”

4. Life must be about others succeeding.

Life is better when we are cheerleaders. Watching others do more because of our influence and facilitating the growth in those around us really makes the tough days worthwhile. Leading is more than just telling others what to do. It’s speaking the right words at the right time, igniting passions and opening eyes to opportunities.

What makes it all worthwhile for you? What keeps you going forward with joy and purpose in every step? What would you add to this list?


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How to take a day off

February 1, 2011 / / 6 Comments /

The sabbath was not a suggestion. Moses included it in his top 10 and Jesus completely redefined this ancient practice to the Jewish culture who had made it a chore instead of a blessing. But, let’s be honest, most of us do not know how to take a day off without feeling guilty, restless or insecure. As a young pastor, I seldom chilled for a entire day and it almost cost me my marriage, my health and my ministry. Today, I am better at it. Here are some thoughts and suggestions to help all of us unplug and recharge our lives.

1. Tweet less or not at all.

2. Don’t look at your Facebook inbox.

3. Go on a date with your spouse.

4. Go outside and take a walk. The sun recharges our bodies more than we think.

5. Unless it’s family or one of your close friends, do not answer your phone. Voicemail is a great screening tool.

6. Don’t drink cheap coffee.

7. Talk about anything but work stuff. Note to pastors – church stuff is work stuff.

8. Wear clothes you would never wear to work. I have an awful set of t-shirts I wear on my day off.

9. Do something that makes you smile or laugh. If nothing comes to mind, read something from Dave Barry.

10. Spend time reading the bible. If you’re a pastor or teacher, do not read the text you plan to teach on Sunday. Read for yourselves today and not for others.

11. Hit yourself on the kneecap with a hammer each time you read an email from work. After a couple of emails, you will be forced to lie down and rest.

12. Spend some time completely alone. Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. We should too.

May our souls be restored and our joy return as we trust that God can do more in our lives in six days than we can accomplish in seven days on our own. The sabbath requires faith and obedience, but the rewards are incomparable.

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The Lonely Place of Prayer

December 26, 2010 / / 3 Comments /

“Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sickness. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” Luke 5:15-16

What was Jesus thinking? Crowds of people were anxious to hear him teach and there were throngs of sick people who needed healing, yet Jesus took a break to be alone and pray. It seems that would stop his momentum and suffocate the growth of his following. The buzz was at full strength and Jesus did something counterintuitive to most modern church leaders. He stopped, found an isolated, lonely place and prayed. And he did this often because it was a discipline, a part of his lifestyle.

It would seem every leader would follow the habits of Christ and schedule time to be away from the crowds, away from the pulpit and it’s teaching responsibilities and even away from the pressing needs of people. There are a few reasons why we don’t make this a part of our personal discipline.

1. We feel guilty

Pastors love people and want to help people. Regardless of the size church we lead, there are always people who want to meet with us, need us to come pray for them or would like us to teach more often. We know we need to rest, but the guilty feelings drive us to an impossible schedule. After all, how can a real shepherd leave his sheep? Truthfully, we are doing our sheep more harm than good if we do not rest. In the end, we will burn out and then the sheep have no shepherd at all.

2. We fear people

What will the people think if I am not at every meeting or attending to every hospital, funeral or wedding request? Will they leave the church and attend somewhere else? Worse yet, will they stay at the church just to remind me of why others left. 🙂 Proverbs 29:25 says “Fearing people is a dangerous trap …” When we are caught in this trap, we are ensnared in a perpetual cycle of performance and insecurity.

3. We like the attention more than rest

Ouch! Just writing that brought me conviction. No matter how much humility we may have, it is still a temptation to love the adoring stares of the crowd more than a private pursuit of God. Our primary motivation for solitude and rest is to make sure our personal fascination with the nature of God has not waned and to calibrate our primary motivations for ministry. In the end, we are to make Jesus known and not make ourselves famous.

For this reason, I am going to spend some time alone this week. No crowds, no email, no social media, some football 🙂 and very few phone calls. I will be back at New Life for Celebration Sunday on January 2nd and for the week of worship and prayer January 3-7. Until then, may we all withdraw to a lonely place and pray.

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