Nobody tells you in Bible college that some church people are just not nice. But I quickly learned how difficult they can be in my first ministry as youth pastor at a small church a little way from the school I was attending in Illinois.

I remember one time in particular. I had just gotten home from a night class I needed to finish up my degree. It was 11:30, and when I checked my email, I discovered a rant from a guy complaining that the decibel level of the music in our student gatherings was too high. (The youth group had swelled to about 60 in a church of 170, and he wasn’t the only one threatened by the growth.)

No sooner had I shut my computer than I got a phone call from a 15-year-old kid in the group who said, “If you can’t get here in the next 20 minutes, I’m going to kill myself.” And I was 40 minutes away from her.

I stood in a corner and said out loud, “God, I didn’t sign up for either one of these things.”

I almost walked away from ministry that night. But in answer to my prayers, six months later my wife and I had moved to Compass Christian Church in Dallas. The leaders there cared about lost people and gave me freedom to go reach them as I saw what would work. But even there, in that positive environment, there were days when passion was hard to come by.

In fact, I can point to dozens of times, if not hundreds, since then when I’ve just gone through the motions of ministry. I knew theology. I had learned how to do church. But doing church and being the church are two different things. I remember times when I’ve stood on the platform and put on a face that said, “Things are OK,” because people couldn’t handle it if I didn’t.

I thought about all of this week as I re-read what God told the church at Ephesus, “Look how far you have fallen from the love you had at first” (see Revelation 2:4, 5). If the last year of pressing through a pandemic has taught me anything, it is that we must fall back in love with the God that transforms us, not the world that informs us. His remedy for the Ephesians and for us was a three-part approach I know I must pursue in my own ministry.

THE CHURCH OF THE DO WHAT YOU WANT

Almost three decades ago a mission trip with my high school youth group changed my life, but not in a way you might expect. It wasn’t the people we served or the work we accomplished that helped define my path. Instead, it was the words sung by a second-rate band at a cheesy “Christian nightclub” that I want to tell you about.

We were in Virginia Beach, maybe a dozen of us students, and in our free time we went exploring to see what we could find in the resort town. We happened upon this club where the band was singing about “the church of the do what you want, the church of the do what you please.”

The words struck me like a thunderbolt. And even though I was only 14 years old when I first heard them, I’ve never forgotten. In fact, that indictment of so much represented by Western church culture has colored my whole ministry and purpose in life.

4 THOUGHTS THAT GIVE ME PASTOR PARALYSIS

Craig Groeschel’s Winning the War in Your Mind has led me to see thoughts I sometimes have that definitely are not good. See below, and I think you’ll find application not only for pastors like me, but every Christian. Lies like these poison leadership and every kind of spiritual progress. Let me tell you what I mean.

MOVING FROM BITTER TO BETTER

Leaders in any organization, but especially in the church, spend so much time in bitterness management. Life Church pastor Craig Groeschel once said the thing he deals with more than anything else as he tries to grow a great church is lawsuits and negative people. Thankfully, he finds ways not to focus on such problems, because what you focus on is what you fall on.

I’ve decided not to make negatives my focus. I want to concentrate on making people better, not bitter.

And I’ve come to realize that the first way to do this is to work on making myself better instead of bitter. Most of the bitterness in the people I encounter began inside of them. Their own view of themselves and their personal circumstances created the bitterness that then spills out into the situations they enter. I want to be better than that. Concentrating on better always leads me upward. Slipping into bitter leads to a never-ending downward slide. Me being bitter doesn’t make me better, and it surely does nothing for those around me.

Church, Leadership, LifeTrevor DeVageFebruary 10, 2021better, bitter, leader, leadership, church, relationships, love, love one another, life, bitter to betterComment

EMBRACING LONELINESS OVER ISOLATION

I don’t know about most of you, but the last year of leadership in ministry has had some very lonely moments. For some it has even been isolating. There were moments where it was lonely pre-pandemic, but in the midst of it, it has been even more lonesome and even isolating at times. Throw in political, racial, and social upheaval, and you have a perfect leadership storm of loneliness that can turn isolating quickly.

“It’s lonely at the top.” Like most clichés, this one gets repeated so often because it expresses at least a little truth. In fact, according to some research, at least half of all CEOS report feelings of loneliness. As one researcher puts it, “You can imagine that … over time having to make a lot of tough, unpopular decisions that are constantly going to upset at least one part of your constituency could start to feel isolating.”

Church, Leadership, LifeTrevor DeVageJanuary 13, 2021loneliness, lonely, alone, isolation, embrace, church, ministry, leadership, jesus, clarity, discover, desire, community, hurt, covid, corona, pandemicComment

Trevor DeVage

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