Our topic is when the church comes between you
and God leading when disillusionment fills
your soul.
It's a two day class and today we're kind of
introduce it and hopefully have some discussion
toward the end about disillusionment.
It's a real, it's a real issue if you're a
Christian and you've worked in church or been
in church or worked in an institution at all.
And so we're, I had a bunch of slides, they're
somewhere there.
If you can read the small print, the class is over.
You got everything you need.
But let me get my, well, can you get them down?
The title is Provocative and Real.
I am 58 years old, I look really good for 58, I
just want you to know that in case you
don't know that.
And I've been in ministry 36 years, 7 as a
youth minister and then the rest of the time preaching.
I've been in 5 congregations, rural, urban and
suburban and inner city.
I've been in 9, worked with 90 elders in 36 years.
I've worked with 80 deacons roughly, 25 staff
members, 15 secretaries, administrative assistants
and the next phrase out of my mouth is I
understand disillusionment.
I understand disillusionment.
I've been preaching a long, long time and it
feels, somebody said if you preach every
12 months it's like living 18 months because
it's not the preaching on Sunday that gets
to you.
It's carrying the emotional and pastoral weight
and the leadership weight and that sense.
And so what I want to do in this class is the
first few minutes I want to frame while
the title is provocative, it is very, very real.
Next slide. Yeah.
Thank you.
We can get there.
That's it.
Okay, you go ahead.
When you hear the title, what do you think of
when the church comes between you and God?
What comes to your mind?
This is class participation.
Yeah, it's like the Charlie Brown thing that
said years ago, I love humanity, it's people,
I can't stand.
You know, Charlie Brown had, Linus I believe
had that statement and it's a great cartoon
but it's true.
Okay, somebody else.
When you heard the title, what did you think of?
That's a really good summary.
Anybody else, anything different from that? Yeah.
Particularly if you're a man and I want to talk
about that tomorrow to give you a heads
up to entice you to come back tomorrow morning
and that is men are fixers.
And if any of you are married, many of you are,
you college students need to know that
if you marry a man, which hopefully you will if
you're a girl, but when you get married
and you're going to marry the knight in shining
armor, you got to know men are fixers.
Men are fixers.
We're not really, really super good listeners.
And so when a wife says, well honey, and he
starts talking, we're automatically thinking
here's three things you can do, here's how I
can solve this problem.
She looks at you and go, I don't want you to
fix it, right?
I don't want you to fix it.
I just want you to, help me out.
I just want you to listen.
And so we're going to talk in detail tomorrow
about what, one of the things that creates
great disillusionment is when we don't fix, we
can't fix problems.
And in church it's a really, really, really big deal.
And so we'll talk about that tomorrow.
So church is human beings with weaknesses and
few things sap our energies like disillusionment
and congregational life can cause great disillusionment.
You tell me why.
People are human.
One of the biggies is expectations.
Everybody that walks into a church has an
expectation of what that church is supposed
to be like, what the elders, how the elders are
supposed to function, how the preacher
is supposed to preach.
Everybody has expectations.
Church leaders have expectations of what things
should be like and this idealistic stuff goes
away fairly quickly.
And so congregational life can cause deep, deep disillusionment.
I work also, 30% of my time I preach for the
Mansfield Church of Christ in Mansfield, Texas.
It's about 30 minutes south of Dallas-Fort
Worth Airport, if you know where that is.
And when I went to Mansfield, this is my second
time to go back there, I preached there for
five and a half years, went to Irving, Texas
for 16 years and worked through, had a wonderful
ministry there, great people.
The neighborhood changed radically.
We didn't know what to do when the neighborhood changed.
We wanted to be a certain kind of church and I
felt all the responsibility on my shoulders
to lead us into the future and every trick I
pulled and everything I did and all the
missional teaching I did and all the stuff I
thought we were going to do would just in
five to seven years turn that thing around and
I felt like a failure, a failure.
We weren't equipped for a community that's 82%
Hispanic now in the school district.
We were equipped for a middle class white
church and we knew how to do it.
We had good hearts, we had loving people, we
had kind people, we had generous people,
but we didn't have the skills or the aptitudes.
We didn't know how to go about being a
multicultural congregation.
We didn't know how to do it at all.
And so I work with Hope Network and Hope
Network is founded by Brother Len Anderson and Len
Anderson started working with mentoring
ministers and offered them encouragement and
hope and
then as they talked, he says he realized he
needs to talk to shepherds.
He wrote the book, The Smell Like Sheep, one
and two, he's done a lot of stuff.
Many of you know who Len is and me and another
guy have taken over Hope Network ministry.
We have 10 partners and if you could help me
right here, I'm giving these away today.
It's an introduction to who we are in Hope Network.
If you want one, fine, if not, just pass it on
and we can go there, thanks Brother Joe.
And I'm giving these away today because there's
a few typos in them and we're not charging
for them.
And so the second edition, but it's also in PDF
form on our website, Hopenetworkministries.org.
We have a burnout inventory for church leaders
on there.
We have a theological worldview inventory on there.
We're adding resources every week.
We basically are made up of 10 partners, about
to be 16 partners that mentors church, mentors
leaders, guides churches, helps with interim ministry.
We have a whole interim ministry wing of four
guys that come into the churches in between
ministers and work with that church to help
them find a minister, help them read vision,
help them work on leadership issues and then
provide transitions.
So a little information about Hope Network.
Well in the last year, with just 10 ministry
partners, and our ministry partners are scattered
from Harding School of Theology to local
preachers, the 10 of us, we've had over 150 conversations
with ministers and other church leaders in 50
plus churches just this year, just the
last 6 months.
Why do I tell you that?
To brag?
No, it's exhausting work, it's rewarding work,
it's great work.
But this title on disillusionment, when the
church comes between you and God, is very,
very real.
A couple of years ago, to validate this even
more, David Fleer at Lipscomb University said,
Grady, you're talking to a lot of preachers.
Just last week, I talked to 11 preachers on top
of the local congregational work.
I had 11 conversations, phone calls, emails,
text messages, of just saying, hey, I'm looking
for a job.
Can you help?
Hey, me and the elders are on different
viewpoints, and they're good men, but I think
it's time
for me to leave.
We're not the same philosophically, the same ballpark.
And all these kinds of conversations are
happening, okay?
And so, two years ago, at Lipscomb University
Christian Scholars Conference, Dr. David Fleer
at Lipscomb said, hey Grady, I want you to come
and put a panel together of ministers
that had education, experience, talent, that
wrote the books, and all of a sudden, they're
not around.
They quit.
A lot of them quit in their early 40s.
And you can't hardly find anybody over 45.
The pool of preachers is small, and it's
shallow, and a lot of younger guys don't want
to get
involved in it. Why?
It's because they don't love God, because they
don't know the scripture, because they
don't want to talk about leading a church in a
missional way.
No, not at all.
It's the dynamics of disillusionment in a local congregation.
Some of that's leadership structures.
And so, here's what happened.
I sent out 55 surveys to a few young preachers,
mostly guys that, if I mentioned their names,
you'd say, yeah, I read their book.
Yeah, I read their book. Yeah.
But they're no longer preaching in a
congregation week in and week out.
No longer.
They quit.
And they're not interested in coming back.
Now that would mean they don't love God.
A lot of them are leading para-church
organizations, doing global missions, doing
church planting,
doing mission stuff.
But as far as local congregational preaching,
they're saying, done.
Not going to do it anymore. Why?
Anybody want to take a stab at that?
Got a lot of young people in here.
I don't want to discourage you today.
Why do you think preachers would get to a
point, and I'm talking about guys that have
education, have experience, have talent, love
God, and they're saying, I'm done.
Well, one of the issues is that your entire
support system is in one basket.
Your entire support system is in one basket.
Flesh that out a little bit.
For example, if I'm working for a religious and
I am a priest, I can change churches numerous times.
It has no effect upon me financially.
On the other hand, if I'm going to XYZ Church
and I change jobs numerous times, go from
another school district or another company or
whatever, it doesn't affect me spiritually.
My emotional support group is still there at
that church.
All my buddies are still there.
However, if I'm a minister and I change jobs,
it affects me financially, emotionally, and spiritually.
Good summary.
All that's true.
And I'm not whining this morning.
I am not a whiner.
I've never been a whiner.
I'm just saying the reality is this, that there
are men in my church and women in my
church that suffer a great deal of job loss and
insecurity and lots of stuff.
But there is something different about
ministers and ministry that's different than working
at some other job.
It's different.
Very different.
Now, here's what I found in the 35 preachers
who are no longer preaching, I put together
the top.
I spent three months just listening.
And it's not a scientific survey.
It's not.
We're trying to get to that point where we can
do it as a legitimate statistical survey.
This is just for our presentation purposes, but
here's what I found.
Next slide.
These are the top five reasons, these guys, and
they're all tied to some form of disillusionment.
The top five reasons that they said, no more,
I'm out, doesn't mean they don't love God.
Doesn't mean they aren't doing ministry.
But I'm talking about leaving congregational
Ministry as preachers, all right?
The number one thing, hands down of all 35,
there are only four of them, but
this is number one, is our governance model and
our structure.
Here's the way I translate that.
Call it church policy, call it what you want.
How do elders and ministers relate to one another?
How do elders and ministers relate?
Now, I hold to a gift-based leadership model,
that our model should be gift-based leadership,
and that it's a flat model.
It's not a corporate hierarchy.
It's based on the gifts of the body, Romans
12:1 Corinthians 12:1 Peter 4:10, whatever
gift you receive, faithfully administer God's
grace, whatever form that takes.
So our models have come more from the corporate
world and the industrial society than they
have come from scripture and a theological understanding.
And so guys get in situation that many of the
ministers feel a responsibility preaching
and teaching and leading in the church, running
the church in a sense during the week, okay,
well, most elders are out working other jobs,
and our guys get, there's just no way that
a church can be effectively managed, if you
will, use the corporate word, led, only meeting
six or eight hours a month.
You got to do some delegation.
There's a lack of clarity in job roles, lack of
clarity in expectations.
When I first started preaching, over the
preacher's door was these two words, minister study.
36 years ago, the first two churches I preached
in, when I went in, they showed me my office
at the church.
They said, I noticed over the door, it said, or
beside the door, the nameplate, minister study.
What was expected was be a student of the word,
visit people, care for people, love
people, evangelize people.
Then it began to change.
And so there's a lack of clarity.
And so now ministers are feeling the
unrealistic expectations from the pew.
We are to be everything.
We're to be CEOs, CFOs, managers, visionaries,
leaders, ministry initiative people, we're
to preach the word, we're supposed to be creative.
It's the unrealistic expectations and the
consumer orientation of the culture has bled
into so much.
And these guys that responded to the survey
said, I'm just so disillusioned, it's an impossible
I can't do this anymore.
It's too hard on my family.
It's too hard on my life.
I've gained weight or I've lost weight,
whichever you do.
And they're just going, I just can't do it.
And the third was lack of meaning, me, and it
meant most of them said this.
I just don't feel like I'm making a difference
in my own church by what I'm preaching.
I think our people are too busy and too fragmented.
I think they're too materialistic, including myself.
Most of them said, I struggle with that.
I don't think we're making a difference in the
community of why we're even here.
There's no sense of mission.
There's just no lack of meaning.
There's no fire in my belly anymore.
I'm tired.
I'm worn out.
And these are guys that you've probably read
some of their books and you've probably listened
to them at different places.
And they probably, you know, so fourth reason,
just the decline of the established church
that many, many churches and particularly
churches of Christ are really struggling to
hold their own, not reaching that many people
and they're going, we just see the decline
of the church and how do we connect with the
18-35 year olds and the tension between
being relevant and being using all the stuff we
need to be to be relevant and music and
in teaching and creating slides and technology
at the same time.
All those things are exhausting, but they're empowering.
They're exciting.
Firstly is loneliness, just flat loneliness.
Who in the world do you talk to?
I tell people this all the time.
People don't like me saying it.
Nobody likes me saying it, but it's the truth.
If it wasn't for Jesus Christ, I would give in
to my full-blown cynicism.
You understand?
The only thing that keeps my cynicism in check,
and by the way, thinking people, people that
want to know why, people that want to think, I
struggle with cynicism.
I would be a full-blown cynic if it wasn't for Christ.
It's not the church that holds me together.
I appreciate my support.
It's my faith in Christ and being anchored in
Christ and Christ is the one that challenges me.
It's once a year I insist on preaching at least
a 10-12 week series on the Gospels
because I got to get back to Jesus because
there's so much disillusionment.
And so I said all this about Hope Network, I
said all this about the local ministries,
I said all this about the years of experience.
When Brady Bryce called and says, speak on
anything you want to, speak out of your experience,
I'm thinking, I know there's a lot of
disillusioned, discouraged leaders out there.
I talk to them regularly.
Me personally, just in the last three months,
have been on the phone, conversation, email
with about 55 ministers and about 35 elders
across the United States, listening.
Now let me say a word about elders while I'm here.
I love elders.
I really do.
They feel some of the same stuff about failure
and disillusionment and frustration as every
preacher does.
How many elders did I say I worked with?
Ninety elders.
I've only worked with one or two that I thought
were in the eldership for all the wrong reasons.
That is my experience.
Most of the guys were good men, godly men, and
we take for granted that they can come
into a room, however it's structured, table or
chairs, table or a living room, that good
godly men can come into a room and all of a
sudden make really good counsel and decisions
and pray together and talk and converse and
talk about this.
We take for granted, that's no easy task.
That is no easy task at all.
It is hard.
And the people in the pew go, well you know,
our elders ought to and our elders ought to
and I talked to this elder and then you
realize, man, he's not speaking for the rest of the
He's speaking for himself.
How come these guys can't make that decision?
How come these guys can't do this?
There's a reason the corporate world has CEO,
CFO, chairman of the board, but now we've
got spiritual gifts in the body of Christ and
five, seven, eight, ten, twelve men come
together in the name of shepherding.
That's not easy.
And I have more sympathies for elders now than
I ever have in my life.
And I see myself as being a friend to elders.
When I was twenty-five and needed a father
image, I was frustrated they didn't provide
what I needed because I didn't have it in my
own life.
See so I expected them to be the dad I never
had, but at fifty-eight, since I could be
an elder, okay, at fifty-eight I'm thinking,
you know what, they feel the same disillusionment
and discouragement as I do.
So I refuse to get in an adversarial position
and the one I disagree with the most in the
leadership is the one I seek out most for coffee.
And it's not easy.
It's not easy.
But my natural flesh tendency is to do what?
And another elder I agree with or that agrees
with me and us rally around talking about
oh, Brother Joe over here, we love him, we
know, bless his little pea-picking heart.
That, you know, that's just cover for we don't
really like him, we wish he wasn't around,
you know.
But so I, but it's Jesus that pushes me that way.
It's not because I'm a good church person.
It's not because I'm a good person myself.
Jesus will not allow me to act in certain ways.
That's why I anchor my preaching, my teaching
and my ministry in Christ.
That's why the gospels are central to who I am.
So all right, let's go to the next one.
Now who's set up for disillusionment?
We got about ten minutes here for this and I
want you to give feedback and then tomorrow
we'll talk about fixing the church, how our
restoration heritage sets us up with a certain
kind of thinking about perfecting things that
creates more anxiety in us and yet there's
a lot of good things about it.
So we'll deal with that stuff tomorrow.
Timothy was a man set up for disillusionment.
I don't know how much you've thought about
Timothy as a case in point of all this disillusionment
But he was a product of a godly family, at
least his grandmother and his mother, right?
His father was Greek, 2 Timothy 1:3-6.
He was the product of the apostle Paul.
Paul invested himself in his life.
He was a young man that was very concerned,
very concerned.
Here's the way things ought to be and this
shouldn't be so.
We ought to function this way.
He was a man charged to lead a church as a very
young minister.
Charged to lead a church as a very young minister.
My question in the city of Ephesus, in the
church of Ephesus where he was charged to
stay in Ephesus and get back to the task of ministry.
My question is where were the older Christians?
Now the text doesn't even address it.
But where were the older Christians?
Well let's go to the next slide.
Ephesus, capital of the Asian province under Romans.
Cultural crossroads, a melting pot, many kinds
of philosophies.
The temple of Diana.
She was the fertility goddess, you know, she
was the fertility goddess who is worshipped.
All that's going on in Ephesus culturally.
All that stuff affects the church.
All the kinds of different philosophies going on.
All the stuff that comes into the church.
Timothy had to face as people became Christians
and he's developing leaders.
1 Timothy 1:3 talks about speculations and
English genealogies.
Here's the reality.
The teachers of the church were the worst enemies.
They were confidently asserting things and
using the law in very unhealthy ways with people.
1 Timothy 1.
They were, Timothy was told to rekindle the
gift of God within you.
Fan into flame is the way the NIV says it.
And Paul told Timothy, you know, God did not
give you a spirit of timidity or of fear but
of power, of love and self-discipline.
Now what's Paul trying to do with Timothy?
Cope with his disillusionment.
Deal with his disillusionment.
Pastor him through disillusionment.
Timothy was ready to give up, to quit, to
forget it.
And what is Paul telling him to do?
Let's go to the next slide.
Everywhere you go is a potential emphasis.
How would you like to place membership there?
You did.
Because people are always in the process of change.
It's like walking through the dynamics of Corinth.
Chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4 and
you go, whoa, man, there's just no way
I would have, who would ever want to be a
member of Corinth?
I mean you got divisions, chapter 1, you've got
immaturity, you've got lawsuits among
brothers, 1 Corinthians 6, you've got
immorality, 1 Corinthians 5, you've got to deal
with that
guy and get him out of the church, no table
fellowship with him, you've got people that
are going down to the meat market and
worshiping idols and you've got Jewish-Gentile issue
and tension, you're thinking, ooh, man, I'm
glad I'm not part of that church.
Yes, you are.
You are.
All you've got to do is get just below the
surface where ministers and elders live or
not even ministers and elders, it's just people
trying to run a ministry.
Trying to work with people in the church and
you're going, ooh, man, this can be pretty
discouraging, this can be disillusioning.
That's why we have a number of our people that
go, we might be the priesthood of believers
but as long as they're in charge of that
ministry, I'm not participating or I think what I'll
do is I'll just be a good Christian, take
communion, sing the songs, I don't want to
lead anything.
And that's an interesting phenomenon these
days, very interesting phenomenon is you go
to people and you say, this ministry, we're in
transition here and we really need this
hospitality ministry, this Welcome ministry and
you are such a gracious, welcoming person
and you have some good organizational
administrative gifts.
Could you lead this hospitality ministry?
No, don't have time.
Not interested in leading.
Well, let's just get together and talk about it.
Have a cup of coffee.
You know, preacher, I'm just telling you, you
need somebody else.
When I get below the surface, it's some
conflict or some criticism or some weariness that's
disillusioned them, so much so, they refuse to lead.
I went to a brother last week that's been an
elder in two churches.
He's a prayerful man.
He's always asking me what he can pray for,
love of spirit and we're in a capital stewardship
campaign right now to pay off our debt so we
can free up money for ministry and mission
and I said, I would love, brother, would you,
you have such a prayerful spirit, you're always
asking me what can I pray for in your life,
could you lead the prayer part of the capital stewardship?
No, that's just, I don't think I'm going to do that.
I'll just, just tell me what to pray for for it
and I'll pray, but I don't want to lead anything.
And I'm getting it across the board.
I'm getting it from 25 year olds, I'm getting
it for 55 year olds, I'm getting it for 70
year olds.
People want to participate.
Well, I'm not really, I won't lead it, but I'll help.
I won't lead it.
What's going on with that, you think?
Somebody want to take a shot at that one?
Is it the examples they have?
What else could it be?
Why don't people want to take charge and lead? Failure?
Oh, yeah, the old pedestal shooting, it's the
new hobby, isn't it?
Put them on a pedestal, okay.
Well, the point is, the application of this
study with Timothy and Ephesus, all of us
place membership there in some church.
It's depending on what level of involvement
you're in.
People are always in the process of changing.
Every church in the New Testament had problems,
was coming out of problems or going into problems.
You can't think of one.
Oh, no, we love Philippians.
Philippians is such, rejoice in the Lord always
and again I say rejoice.
For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.
Consider him who did not account the quality
with God, something to be grasped, but empty
of himself to take on.
That's such a positive book.
The only thing you might have is a little
tension between two women named Yodi and Syntyche
that they need to agree in the Lord, Paul says
in Philippians 4.
But you know what?
If you look under the surface, and I don't want
to do a mirror reading of the text, that's
not good study really.
But you could do a little bit of stepping back.
Philippians was not all that together either
because it's people in the process of change.
And so every New Testament church either had
problems, was going into problems or coming
out of a problem.
And when we get problem focused rather than God
oriented, our soul gets disillusioned
big time.
Next slide please.
God's great gift to the church is that he will
not allow it to live in a fantasy land.
No fantasy land in church.
God's great gift to the church is that he will
not allow it to live in a fantasy land.
Who was Dietrich Bonhoeffer?
He lived from 1906-1945, was the Lutheran pastor.
He was shot at a firing squad in Germany in 1945.
He wrote the book Cost of Discipleship, if you
haven't read it, it's a wonderful read.
Bonhoeffer is one of my heroes along with some
other people in the same spirit.
Bonhoeffer wrote about discipleship.
He was a brilliant young theologian and
scholar, but mostly he was driven by Christ and
a pastor's
heart in Germany and saved many, many Jews from
the ovens of Hitler.
And he lost his life in 1945 at 39 years of age
to a firing squad because he refused to
deny Christ and they saw him as a leader of
rebellion against Hitler.
And he always talked about the church and what
it meant for the church to be the church.
And I love this quote, God's great gift to the
church is that he will not allow it to
live in a fantasy land.
So if you're disillusioned today, I'd love to
visit with you.
Do I have a quick solution?
Absolutely not.
Now in the book that you have, if you take one
of those, if I've run out, I'll get you
some more.
I think we have some more back here.
The chapter that I wrote is Hope for Weary
Leaders and at the end of it is five or six
practical things you can do as a disillusioned,
weary leader.
In this book, it's basically all our partners
that are involved in Hope Network wrote their
passion in a chapter that kind of says, this is
kind of an extended, somebody says, Hope Network.
What do you guys do?
Well, mentor leaders guide churches.
Well, what's that involve?
Well, this book kind of is an extended calling
card, a little 90 page booklet.
It's also in PDF form on our website.
And actually I don't think the PDF has the
mistakes this one has in it.
The joy of printing.
But we're going to reprint.
But I've got some extra copies, I'll give them
away if you want to take them home with
This is a chapter I wrote in here on a cold
winter day meeting a deadline, which I think
if I've read all these, I have the most typos.
But Carolyn Thompson did not edit this obviously.
And so there's one paragraph, just because it
makes sense, but they say that about every
sermon I preach.
So it's just I'm consistent.
There's some paragraph in what I'm preaching
that doesn't make sense.
So it's there.
But anyway, let's get about 10 minutes.
What I want to hear is from you about what
causes disillusionment in your life in church.
Where are you in your life if you want to share?
What have you found helpful when you're feeling disillusioned?
Anybody want to jump in?
I don't want this to be a one-sided deal where
I just talk the whole time.
When you start bringing some of that stuff into
the mix, there's a lot of resistance
because all they know is you're not talking
about a rural congregation where the members
are very established, have been there for a
long time, haven't experienced much else.
What size of church?
About 100.
I grew up in a 100-member church in eastern
Oklahoma with no elders.
I started singing when my voice was changing at
age 12 or 13.
I'd say, oh, how I love you.
I went everywhere.
I had these little microphones in the ears, in
the pews, and the little ladies would pull
it out when my voice would go real high because
it was screaming in them.
I was in a church like that, had no elders, and
we all said, oh, little churches are so
sweet and they're so loving.
Yes, little churches can be some of the hardest
things in the world to get into and to be
accepted in.
Oh, I don't want a big church.
I want to be a part of a little church because
a little church is everybody loves everybody,
everybody knows everybody.
That's really good.
That's really bad also.
It cuts both ways.
So I understand what you're saying.
I grew up in that church.
I did.
It was a good experience overall.
They paid my first, had no elders.
The men of the church got together on a men's
business meeting and they collected money
to pay my first registration fee into Oklahoma
Christian College at the time.
So I'm grateful for it.
But I can remember Brother So-and-so, you know
how he is.
We'd go to funerals.
And my mother, I remember this, I was 13 years
old and my mother was fairly outspoken.
My sister's like that, I'm not.
And my mother was fairly outspoken and the
preacher was talking about how wonderful this
man is.
I heard her lean over to her friend and she
says, he's lying, he wasn't that way at all.
A small church has its benefits and it's not a
big deal. Disillusionment.
Go ahead.
One of the causes of disillusionment, one of
the things that feeds disillusionment is
simply being in harness all the time for an
extended period of time with no break.
At my church, we have adopted a leadership
model where our, we call it pastoral, we call
our eldership the pastoral team, that our
various leadership teams all have fixed terms.
In other words, say a four-year term or a
five-year term and then you roll off.
You can be reappointed but you have to stay out
for at least a year or two.
That's becoming more and more popular by the way.
And that has really made a big difference
because it gives people a break.
It also provides a graceful way of letting
people who weren't all that effective sort
of, you know, without actually having to fire them.
But it also gets more people involved in
leadership over time.
The harness imagery is real powerful, it speaks
to me very, you feel that.
Yeah, and that's not, there are lots of things
that feed disillusionment, but that is one
of them. Yeah.
I'm finding many, many ministers, Henry Nowen
is one of my favorite writers and in his little
book The Way of the Heart, he talks about many
a minister or church leader is driven
by two things, insecurity and greed.
Greed, I don't make enough at my church now,
what are you talking about?
I haven't had a raise since I've been, it's not
greed for money, it's greed for power
or position.
And most ministers, most church leaders I know
just under the surface, there's a high
degree of insecurity or there's a degree of insecurity.
And some of that's connected to our family of
origin issues.
Many, many ministers I know either had, it
falls along a continuum of two things, I haven't
done the social science research on it, but my
experience says they were raised by incredibly
strong fathers who were godly examples or they
had no father at all.
And both ends of the spectrum have their
implications about how you live that out.
And so I can't change my eldership, I can't
change my church, I can't fix it.
Now, my good friend, our good friend, Tim and
I, excuse me, Charlie Seibert, he hammered
that in my head time after time after time
after time about King, you can't fix the church,
work on yourself.
And that's what Paul's telling Timothy, right?
I didn't give you a spirit of fear, but a power
in love and self-discipline.
Pay attention to who you are.
Take care of yourself regardless of what's
going on around you.
Because something's going to happen.
But I appreciate the harness imagery, that's a
helpful imagery.
Somebody else? Disillusionment.
Any thoughts on that?
Go ahead.
And that's in that very first one I mentioned,
governance models, structures, that's one
of the sub-points of that, right there's the
very first one, is that our system, we just
haven't thought reflectively about our system
very well, it's broken.
It's not that I don't want elders, I think God
wants elders.
Not that I don't want ministers, obviously.
But it's that we've got to have some reflection
about what are our gifts, what are our skills,
what are we trying to do?
Is there clear job roles and expectations?
What's our model?
What kind of conversations?
And if somebody had to say, what's Hope Network
really about?
It's helping leaderships, ministers or elders,
have the conversations that they won't have,
and don't have.
We're facilitators of conversation.
And our website's on there, you can call me, or
John, or any of us, and we can be a support
to you and help.
But that's a big thing right there, what you
just said, is how do we help have more effective
leadership understanding?
It's at the core, it's just a group of guys
that individually, they're fine, they get
together as a group, and it just doesn't mesh.
That's what's sad.
Most of them already know that.
They don't talk about it, but they know it.
They know it.
And I can watch it, when we go into groups and
work with elders,
my partner that leads Hope Network with me,
John Mulligan, will go in, and we just ask
questions and listen for a long time.
Take a first break, and John pulls me out, and
he said, did you see three of them cross
their arms, two of them rolled their eyes when
so-and-so started talking?
Just watch the body language.
And they talk about, well, we're a United
group, we love each other, and so I let John,
because he likes to do that, and I let him just
address, well, here's what we observe.
So we don't really know if that's the case.
Oh, yeah, it's usually one guy.
Oh, yeah, we're united, and I'll tell you,
we're here tonight to solve this problem,
and what they say is the problem's usually not
the problem.
Nine times out of ten.
So, you know, I'm a little more in-your-face
kind of, so John says, let me handle this,
I'm a little nicer.
I smile a lot and use humor, but, anyway.
Somebody else?
I don't know if I answered your question, but
it's under that very, I'd be glad to talk
some more about it.
You know, amazingly, amazingly, we found some
really good men who, we found some really
good men who are open and want to put things on
the table, and a lot of it's process.
They don't have a way of talking about it, and
they don't have a safe place to get out
their emotion, and they seldom talk around each other.
They don't talk to each other, but have we
solved some of it? Yes.
Have we?
I don't know.
We failed.
Why would I admit that?
I'm a man.
Some of it, we just had to walk away and say,
you're not ready to deal with this, guys,
and we just walk away from it.
I mean, because if they're not ready, and they
don't want to
face it, there's not a lot we can do.
Yes, and that's one of the things we're
committed to is, like when my friend John with Hope
Network, when he leads with a group, it's not a
one-time workshop.
He checks back in regularly, and he asks them,
and we're kind of committed to ongoing, because
it takes a long time to change habits, and we
default pretty quickly back to the old ways.
I do in my own life.
I went to a preaching workshop last week on
just, I've got to end, but my voice, and so
I preached before this guy that I never
preached before, and he said, you have three really
bad habits, and I said, let me tell you what
two of them are, and he said, you're right.
What are you going to do about that?
And I said, it's just hard to change, just
hard, you know.
So I noticed three of them I used today.
Thank you very much for your time, and I
appreciate that.
I'll be glad to visit with you tomorrow morning.