“I love your sermons. I don’t mind being late each Sunday as long as I can hear the sermon.”

“I am so glad we put the sermons online. That way, I don’t have to miss Church.”

“You are a great preacher. Don’t ever leave because I like coming to Church here.”

These are all statements I have heard this year. I know that all of these are meant to be compliments, and I appreciate the sentiment of kindness directed at me.

But you need to know how I hear it. Here is what I heard in each of these conversations. “I am an immature disciple who likes the Pastor more than Jesus.”

Before you get upset, please hear me out. Pastors like me want to see you connected to Jesus and not to us. We want to see people love to worship the Lord and not hear us preach. Our desire is for people to connect to God and one another every Sunday, even if we are not the ones preaching. All of these statements tell me that you are building your faith on me, and know this: I WILL disappoint you sometime.

My dream as a pastor is to have people who love to come to Church out of a commitment to Jesus and nothing else.

If you think of the Church only in terms of the pastor, then we have failed to do our job.

While I enjoy attending, I do understand conferences are designed with one major flaw. They provide education with no accountability. You can learn volumes and then do nothing with it. There is no one to say, “You know better than that.” As a result, most of the things I have learned over the years are grand theories and ideas kept in various binders and notebooks.

That is the genius of God in the local Church. While it might not always inspire you like a conference, it is a place where people can hold you accountable for what you have learned. Fellow believers can come alongside you to help you implement God’s word as you are transformed to be like Christ.

Of course, the Church is flawed, too, if you treat it like a weekly conference that is meant only to inspire or educate you.

The questions are similar but not the same.

Do you want it to be right?

Do you want it right away?

Immediate results are not always the best long-term decisions. You need to be clear on what type of choices you are making because the future will be here sooner than you think.

I was talking to Caleb, a local minister with a similar background to mine. We talked about ministry, marriage, and our lives. He told me how he was spending most of his free time remodeling the bathroom in their house. We exchanged stories of plumbing nightmares, extended budgets, and unhappy spouses. 

Then he paused and said something like this: “I love it, though. It is good to see a project start and then finish. It is the opposite of ministry.”

I knew exactly what he meant. One of the strains of doing ministry is that you never see a finished product with people. No one shows up a mess, comes to Jesus, develops as a complete disciple, and the person is finished.

Transforming people takes years of teaching, preaching, and discipling. It happens over time through pain, joy, and everything in between. It involves making mistakes, continually struggling with sin, and living in the light of grace. Some people will quit, others will move away, and some will become your biggest advocates.

Ministry for God, both paid and unpaid, is a nonstop job that only ends at the grave. There are many days when I do not know if I am doing any good. The results can be impossible to see. Were my efforts a waste of time, or will something amazing happen? Even when I know the seed gets planted, it will take years for the tree to produce fruit, and I might never see it happen.

Working for Jesus can be frustrating for results-oriented people like me. Faith is not only about believing in God; it is also about trusting that he will take my efforts and use them to bring his work to completion.

I was completely loaded with gear and had over a mile to walk with all the weight. I was pushing myself as I took one small step at a time. When I was about to give up, I stopped to rest and looked back to where I had started this journey. I was more than halfway. I had come a lot farther than I imagined. At that moment, I was encouraged by my progress, and it gave me the strength to keep pushing forward.

Biblically, there are instructions never to look back. Lot’s wife looked back, and she was turned into a pillar of salt. Jesus told his followers that anyone who puts his hand on the plow and looks back is not worthy of his kingdom. Those are examples of looking back with longing. A desire to return to the place we had left. That is not my encouragement today.

I am telling you to look back so that you can gain strength for the journey ahead. Sometimes, it is good to look back, not with a desire to return, but rather to see how far you have come. Take a moment to pause and remember what your life was like when you first came to Jesus. Think through all the changes you have made and how your life looks different today.

Some days, as a Christian, you can be weighed down by the road that lies ahead and forget how far you have come since you started. Occasionally, it is good to recall the path God has led you down and the person you are today.

Keep pressing on; you have come so far. Don’t give up.

Twenty-five years ago, I heard Church consultant Lyle Schaller talk about visiting Churches in an attempt to help them face the future. He said the very first thing I tell everyone is, “All of you are going to move, quit, or die. We cannot count on any of you to be here in the future.”

Although statistics vary based on the location of the Church, the average rate of attrition is around 20% for the local community of believers in the US. That means every year, a Church of 100 people loses around 20 people who are attending today. Reasons for this also vary, but Lyle’s categories are still valid: people move, quit the group, or go to meet Jesus.

Since this is true, for a Church to maintain its current size and ministry, it needs to be adding 20% growth of new people each year. Obviously, some of those people will be moving into your area as others move out. There is also a group who will quit one Church and then join another. So, some of the new people will simply come from a reshuffling of the deck. The rest must come from new converts, or the Church will begin to shrink.

For a Church of 100 people to grow each year, it will need to add at least 25 new people for minimal growth. As the numbers increase, the amount of people coming and going gets staggering.

When I heard Lyle say this, I thought to myself, “Not my Church. Everyone will love what I am going to build, and they will never want to leave.” Sadly, I was wrong. I could not control job changes, retirement, and death. I also had no control over people losing their faith and those choosing to join another Church because they had something more appealing. Slowly, I had to accept the fact that he was correct.

Whenever I hear someone say they are not interested in their Church growing or they wish their Church would stay the same because they love it so much, I know they are dreaming like I used to do. Churches are continually changing, and those who refuse to share their faith with nonbelievers are slowly dying because attrition rates are a real thing.

“Pastor, several people in the Church are upset about what you said on Sunday.”

“Some people here are not happy with the music we have been singing lately.”

“There is a group of people who would prefer that the elders lead the prayer requests.”

Those are all statements that I have heard as a pastor. There was always a group of unnamed people who hid in the shadows and were unhappy about something.

I spent years trying to do things to make “some people” or “a group of people” happy. I hated myself for never being able to do it because that meant many people didn’t like me.

Then, one day, I asked the person telling me this to give me names. I said, “Tell me who these people are, and I will go talk to them.” 

I was shocked when they could not produce a name. Slowly, I discovered that every time a complaint was registered and credited to other people, the only person who seemed upset was the person telling me the issue. I had been chasing after people who did not exist. One person was merely using a plural pronoun to describe their own opinion in an effort to sway me.

Today, if a criticism does not come with a name attached, I immediately dismiss it. I suggest you do the same.

Graduation season is upon us again. That has me reflecting on my high school graduation and the yearbook that accompanied it.

I graduated as part of a class of 125 students. Where I grew up, several small towns were consolidated into one high school. My tiny hometown only had three seniors that year, but I was part of a much larger class.

As an introvert who has always struggled to make friends, it may come as no surprise that my yearbook is empty of anything from my senior year. I was not involved in any sports, clubs, or organizations. I was not elected as “most likely” to do anything. There were no accolades or achievements listed, as I had none. When the books came out, no one signed mine, and no memorabilia was inserted.

At this point in the story, you might be depressed. Don’t be. I view my empty yearbook as a blank slate. Those years did not define my life or my future. They were a stepping stone on the way to what God had in store for me. High school was not my “glory days” that I will spend the rest of my life trying to reattain. They were a fun time that God used to mold and shape me for the next step in my journey with him.

Some people look at their lives and feel a sense of sadness about their lack of accomplishments to this point. What if you turned that thinking over and claimed the years ahead as an opportunity for God to use you in new and exciting ways? Everything up to this point has been preparation for the ministry that lies ahead of you. In Jesus, your past does not define you.

What if, during this graduation season, you saw your future as a blank slate, and you allowed God to write his story with the rest of the pages?  

What would your friends say about the current state of your spiritual life?

How about your mom or your grandmother?

Do you think your small group leader or Sunday school teacher would approve of your growth in Jesus?

What do you think your pastor would say about your spiritual maturity?

Sometimes, we do not grow spiritual depth because we ask the wrong person to give us their evaluation.

When I first entered the ministry in 1993, revivals were already a dying event. The Churches I led once held these annual revival meetings that used to draw large crowds of people. What had at one time lasted for eight days or more was now occurring for 3-4 nights with only a handful of people attending.

I tried to rally the people, and by 1996, I had given up the project as it took more time, energy, and money than the fruit being produced. The Church leadership did not put up a fight with me as they were tired of trying to generate excitement for this as well.

There are numerous reasons these revival meetings died. One of the biggest was the invention of mass media. Even in my early years, people could tune in on Sunday morning TV and see some of the best preachers in America every week. They could flip on their radio while driving around the farm and listen to fantastic preaching. The chance to hear a challenging word from the Bible was available to them every week, not just when the revival speaker came around. Nowadays, we have added all forms of digital media, which make it possible to hear a sermon on any topic at any time of the day or night. 

There are other reasons, like busy schedules, vacation opportunities, every night sports for youth, and endless entertainment options that also led to its demise. No longer were they opportunities for growth and outreach, but they were simply another event to fill Christian’s schedules.

For me, there was another reason I wanted to stop having revivals. I hated people treating faith like it was a one-time event. The speaker would come in and call people to turn to God. Several would get excited. A few would make their confession of faith, repent, and be baptized. Then, when the revival was over, they would disappear from Church. The revival led people to view their faith decision as a one-time, often emotional event. True faith is about a whole life transformation.

In the last couple of years, I have noticed Churches and groups trying to push to bring revivals back. I recently saw a friend of mine posting all about their “Old Time Revival.” For you, that may be exciting as they do generate a feeling of nostalgia. For me, as a Church leader, I am glad they happened, but I would like them to stay dead. Much like 8 track tapes, they served their purpose, and it is time to move on to new forms of outreach.