Joel Young Blog.com

This morning I read a blog entry written by Lori Black, a Pastor’s executive assistant. She spoke about the trust that a pastor needs to have in the people he leads in order to really be able to do his job, and not spend his time worrying about whether things are getting done or not.

After reading I have to agree that TRUST IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF CHURCH STAFF RELATIONS. If it isn’t there it can make the lead pastor’s life miserable and crazy. Listen some of the things that Lori articulated about this key factor.

“Consistently displayed loyalty builds trust between leaders and their staff. You can show your loyalty in many ways, but the more a leader feels your unwavering commitment to them, the more they’ll feel able to allow you to carry.
• Over-communicate your support and belief in what God has called your leader to do
• Show your loyalty to them by your commitment to help in even the smallest, seemingly insignificant ways
• Follow through to completion all the tasks your leader asks you to do. A leader needs to have confidence that even if something isn’t done right the first time, you are committed to working until his vision for the project is fulfilled
• Above all, allow them to know and feel your complete support and belief in how God has called them to lead so that even in difficult decisions or processes, your leader knows he has you to lean on and you’ll stand with him through any outcome
Commit yourself to being the kind of person your leader can rely on to stand with them through anything and you’ll be amazed at how God will use you as a source of strength.”

You can read the entire blog entry here.

The first four months of services are in the books at Horizon, and we have all learned a lot about when works and what doesn’t. We haven’t gotten ANYTHING down to a science yet and we are constantly tweaking things to achieve a greater outcome because we want to be a church that is boldly proclaiming the truth of scripture. Here’s a list, in no particular order, of some things that I believe characterize a bold church.

1. A bold church is never afraid to fail.
2. A bold church is not easily discouraged.
3. A bold church thinks outside the box.
4. A bold church is never comfortable knowing that there are people in their city who don’t know Christ.
5. A bold church pushes boundaries.
6. A bold church never says, “That’s good enough.”
7. A bold church gets criticized.
8. A bold church will be attacked by the devil.
9. A bold church changes people’s lives.
10. A bold church keeps God’s will and Word at the forefront of their decision making.

Are you serving in a bold church? If not, what can you do to change that?

To understand this post fully start out by reading this short blog entry by Pastor Steven Furtick.

This morning as I read this post I felt like it could have been me writing it. As a leader I am often consumed with every detail and sometimes, not always though, those details are gnats. You wouldn’t want a cloud of them forming around you as you lead, but a few here and there are hardly even noticeable, and not worry about them will keep you sane. That’s easy to say but hard for a perfectionist like myself to put into practice.

The one area leaders of the church cannot afford to have gnats flying around is their teaching. If we’re consumed with discussing the meaningless and hypothetical then we’re going to wreck the car that is our church’s overall mission (that is if your mission is to being people near to Christ through a committed relationship with Him).

This past Sunday we started a new teaching series at Horizon called “Urban Legends – Debunking Spiritual Myths”. In this series we are confronting some tough issues and unbiblical perspectives that have become popular opinion in our society. Will it be a difficult series? Yes. Will it upset some people? Most definitely. But, if we are able to avoid presenting “bubble gum” version of the gospel to the world then at least we know we’re not swatting at meaningless gnats.

I’m one of those people that really struggles with what to personally study when I sit down with my Bible. There are so many things that I like to read, and so many things that I don’t like to read, and too often I gravitate to the parts of the Bible that I like to read. So, with the start of the new year I started a new Bible reading plan that I had heard about that I think you might get some mileage out of as well.

It’s a very old plan called the Daily Bible Reading Plan and it was developed by Robert Roberts over 100 years ago. This plan takes you through the OT once and the NT twice in a year. Really, the main reason I gravitated to this plan was because lifechurch.tv has developed an awesome new way to stay with the plan, but it’s a pretty good way to read the Bible. They developed a website and an iPhone app called YouVersion that makes reading the Bible with this plan, and just in general, very easy and collaborative.

The app sends the daily reading to my phone and I can read it right off the screen every day, and since I always have my phone it couldn’t be easier. You can also go to the website and get the daily reading each day and read it right from your browser.

Check out YouVersion.com to give it a try or if you have an iPhone go to the app store and download it there. Either way, this one is worth your time and the plan might actually make it easier for you to get serious about reading God’s Word.