James MacDonald's Blog, page 6

5 Forgiveness Failures

Forgiveness is the decision to release someone from the obligation that resulted when they injured you. Many in ministry leadership are failing in this area, to the detriment of their churches, their families, and themselves. When people end up in the ditch and out of ministry, it is very often because of unforgiveness.

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Two years ago, we made a Christmas Eve short film for our church, called The Ride, dealing with some of the harsh realities that can surround forgiveness and reconciliation. Though only intended for our church family, this film went on to win awards and impact churches across the country. And tonight, Trinity Broadcasting Network will air it in a special program at 9pm, CT. I’d love to encourage you to tune in, or you can order your own copy here as a gift or ministry tool. You’ll be glad you did.

Ministry to Millennials: #verticalcon

Every pastor has felt the weight of disappointment as significant people transition through their ministry from life stage to life stage. Youth pastors probably feel this most potently of all. Too often they see students who had flourished in their faith begin to struggle during the often tumultuous post-college years.

We have seen this happen in our church, and I am excited my son Luke is trying to do something about it through the Vertical Conference. Though catalytic events aren’t the only thing needed for spiritual growth, they can foster amazing work in re-directing us at crucial moments. The agenda for this event is simple: seek after God through prayer, worship, and the Word to start 2015. Listen below as Luke and I talk about ministry to young people, and I give some advice to 20-somethings.

Download audio file (PastorJamesAudio.mp3)

As a faithful reader of this blog, I hope you will consider helping someone under your influence get to our beautiful church in downtown Chicago from January 1-3, 2015, to seek after and be changed by God. As a thanks for reading, use the code:VCGROUP at registration by Dec 5 for $50 off the regular registration price.

Fast 5 for Thanksgiving

An early Thanksgiving post on the blog today. I want to share some things I’ve learned not only about being thankful, but how you can help, encourage, and bless your people—and your family—this holiday week. Happy Thanksgiving!

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Some Wind for Your Sail

Ministry leadership is a privilege, but we all face difficult seasons of pruning and even times of fallow ground. Again and again, I have seen tough seasons yield in God’s time to renewed seasons of joy and ministry growth. As we wait by faith for God to move afresh, we wonder if those joyful fruit-bearing days will ever return.

If you’re facing a dry season today, I want you to know that I have faced them too. Press ahead in faith, believing that God is at work—and soon you will see the evidence of what He has been doing all along. God is on the move in our world today, and we are blessed to have a seat on the kingdom bus.

Take a moment and be encouraged by this recent evidence of God’s continued work through our fellowship. And if you’re currently in a hard place, let these stories stir your faith for more good days of gospel impact just up ahead.

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5 Essential Yet Neglected Pastoral Duties

Watch this first.

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5 Essential Yet Neglected Pastoral Duties

Why did you get into ministry? Why did you become a pastor? For most of us, the answer would be a combination of a calling to preach the Word, love people, and spread the gospel. These are the things that are rooted deep in our hearts. They inspire us to get up every day and serve the church. They are what keeps us on course when ministry gets tough. They are essential to any ministry, but there are also other essential pastoral duties.

So what is meant by “essential”? Essential duties are the things that must be done to grow the organization by achieving its ultimate goals in continually greater ways. The purpose and the end goal of the church is defined by Christ in Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples . . .” So what duties are essential to making as many disciples as possible? Just as farmers will never grow more crops by painting the barn, mending the fence, or hanging out with the other farmers at the co-op, pastors cannot grow disciples by focusing merely on the things that make the church run well and look nice. As pastors, we must be about making more disciples who will, in turn, generate more resources for the church and make even more disciples.

This blog is dedicated to training pastors who lead vertical churches that glorify God. According to Jesus, one major way this happens is in multiplying disciples. To this end, God has called us into a divine/human cooperative to build His kingdom through the multiplication of disciples. As pastors we cannot let our focus on being a vertical church undermine our fulfillment of our essential horizontal duties.

The first essential duty neglected by pastors is connecting.

Pastors are connectors, and when they are not, their churches struggle. When pastors see potential disciples they must pursue them. Paul did this in Acts 16:13-15 with the group of women praying outside the city. Pastors need to connect with people in real ways, by taking interest in their lives and families, by finding commonalities with them, and by ministering to their needs. Many pastors say they want to love and care for people, but they never pursue new people to that end. The reality is that when people feel connected, they feel cared for.

The second essential duty many pastors neglect is analysis.

Pastors must be constantly analyzing every aspect of their ministry with a critical eye. This is not micro-managing, but ensuring that every aspect of the ministry is best positioned to make more disciples. We see Paul’s example with the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 11 when he corrects their communion practices. Pastors must analyze staff hiring and ongoing performance. They must analyze problems and craft solutions. They must analyze processes such as visitor assimilation. They must analyze every aspect of the organization in order to work on it, not just in it. Quality analysis ensures that everyone is clear on expectations, and this is an essential part of pastoring.

The next oft-neglected essential duty is recruiting.

The pastor is the best and primary recruiter in the church. He must find the right people for the right positions and then sell them on the mission. When a pastor does this, he creates an army of people who have bought into the goal of making disciples. Paul again serves as a great example of recruiter, evidenced by the long list of his fellow workers in each of his letters. This often requires a level of persuasion—not manipulation, but persuasion. Effective persuasion starts by appealing to the mind with facts, then proceeding to appeal to the heart through emotional connections, and concludes with an appeal to the will by asking for commitment. A failure to recruit effectively becomes a formidable barrier to multiplying disciples and growing the church.

The fourth essential duty that many pastors fail to fulfill is managing.

Many pastors are natural motivators, persuaders, and encouragers. This is great for making people feel cared for, but often undermines effective management. Management is direct and measured. It brings clarity to roles and how they support the organization. It optimizes and demands performance. It sets up clear expectations for people and holds them accountable. Paul demonstrated this when he instructed the churches to collect money each week for the church in Jerusalem, telling them he would be coming to ensure it was done (1 Corinthians 16). This is trickier, yet no less needed in a church, because of the need to manage numerous volunteers. Still, regardless of whether the pastor is dealing with paid or non-paid workers, stating clear expectations helps the people know they are accountable for their performance.

The final essential duty that is often neglected by pastors is resolving.

Churches are made up of sinful people working together to serve the Lord, which leads to conflict. Some conflict is due to sin, other conflict is just due to preferences, but either way, it is essential that the pastor recognize it and then work to help people resolve conflict. This means getting people into a room and helping them work out their issues by finding a win-win solution. Perhaps the most pronounced example in Paul’s ministry was his letter to Philemon seeking to reconcile him and Onesimus. When the pastor works hard at this essential duty, the people under his care will be able to say “I’m good,” and then focus on the key task of making disciples.

Now, many of you reading are probably thinking, no one can do all those things well—I know I can’t. Most people are not gifted in such a way as to do all these essential duties well. That is why it is critical that you staff to your weaknesses so your church is not lacking in any of these essential duties. If you can accomplish that, you will be well on your way to better glorifying God through multiplying His disciples.

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Micah Mathis is a Harvest Bible Fellowship church planter with a M.Div. from Liberty Theological Seminary and more than ten years of ministry experience. He and his wife Courtney have a heart to see the gospel have a greater impact in St. Louis, Missouri. They plan to plant a new Harvest Bible Chapel there in 2015.

5 Time Wasters (and What to Do About Them)

Hey, welcome to our first ‘Fast 5’! In 2 Timothy 2:2, Paul exhorts us to entrust what we have learned “to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” And I’m fired up about sharing some practical things I’ve learned through my years of ministry. I pray these insights will help you steward your time more effectively and advance your ministry in the mission of making disciples.

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48 Hours Can Change a Life

What does it look like for God’s men to act like men? Not with some crazy, inflated bravado, but men who are strong in the strength of Christ. Men who are stoked by a renewed passion to love and serve others as an expression of thankfulness for everything God has done for them.

When solid, biblical theology calls men to lives of gratitude for a Savior who loves us and gave Himself for us, it looks like this . . .

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The Act Like Men conference is coming to Dallas/Ft. Worth on November 14-15. And I cannot wait to see the transformation God will be working in men’s hearts during those 48 hours. Joining me will be my good friends Matt Chandler, Eric Mason, Greg Laurie, and Jack Graham.

If you or someone you know should be there too, reserve your seats today.

I Preached a Bad Sermon…

It’s a famous story in our church’s Elder history. A group of Elders and their wives were enjoying a beautiful meal together and wonderfully edifying conversation around the table, just as desert was served. My first bite of apple pie seemed unusually cold and clammy, but I didn’t want to cut into the discussion, so I picked at it with my fork and waited. A second, smaller bite was weirder still, so I slipped in the words, “Hey what’s wrong with this pie?” Others chimed in echoing the uncertainty, noting various features that departed from typical apple pie. Not warm, not crispy, no flake, apples hard, etc. Turns out a raw apple pie had been pulled from the fridge, cut, and served without anyone realizing it. What was more amazing was the comment of one Elder as he forked the final bite of his piece into his mouth. “Tastes great to me,” he smiled. We have laughed about that story for years, but it brings to mind a reality every pastor faces in sermon analysis. Hungry people devour whatever you put in front of them and are often not in a place to give good feedback about the meal the preacher has fed them.

At our recent Harvest University, I preached the final message of the conference on Psalm 90. I took a four-week series that I had preached late in the summer and condensed it into a single message. Like most messages that fail, the errors were in the preparation and could not be saved by delivery. I am taking time to share this with you in hopes that you will learn to give and receive better sermon evaluation, toward the goal of fewer bad sermons.

I had too much content.

The biggest failure was the original thought that I could make a four-part series into a sermon. There was some great stuff on the eternality of God and the brevity of man. Couldn’t I just hit the highlights and do a fly-by of the whole Psalm? “Yes,” if I made a new sermon carefully. “No,” if I tried to grab the best part of each of four sermons. The strength of separate individual sermon parts don’t make a good sermon any more than you can grab the best element from each of your last four birthday dinners and make one great meal. What I did was like a taco with rosemary potatoes, a banana smoothie, and crème brulée. Bad sermon.

It was like four tiny sermon touches, not one powerful sermon impact.

It seems ludicrous that a mechanic would try to repair a broken-down car with a motorcycle carburetor and an ATV braking system. Good sermon parts don’t make a whole. Many messages fail because a hurried prep has us grasping for impactful content that doesn’t complement the entire sermon. Every spoke must connect with the same hub. Every point or ‘move’ in the sermon must advance the big idea of the biblical passage. The series I drew from had four big ideas, and for that reason my failed sermon ‘fly by’ had four big ideas—which is not a sermon at all. More of a movie-trailer actually. Sermons can’t play like an advertisement for a whole series. Impact flows from clarity, which begins and ends with careful economy in selection of words and ideas.

I couldn’t edit on the fly.

Most plane crashes happen within a mile of the airport. In spite of air traffic control, incredible instruments, and many hours of training, some problems evade notice until you are in flight. Most of us know the frustration of taking too long to land the plane, or getting blown way off course by a bad takeoff. I knew I was in trouble in this sermon as I hit my transition from sermon 1 to sermon 2. I tried to fix it extemporaneously and made it worse. The big concepts of God’s eternality and man’s brevity had taken whole sermons to explain, and as my abbreviations missed the mark, I added a couple of on-the-spot stories that were poorly told, and by the end of those, I couldn’t even see the runway anymore. When you know you’re off course it is almost impossible to keep preaching and pull it back. I can make small adjustments on the fly, but I can’t fix a major prep flaw mid-sermon while I preach. That doesn’t mean I didn’t try. Little adjustments maintained the hope of a safe landing for a time, but as I often tell our young preachers, “a mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pew” (not original). The preacher needs massive, iron-clad clarity to pound a single biblical nail home to the hearts of his hearers. Most preaching failures are preparation failures and mid-course corrections won’t fix the problem.

Audiences don’t lie.

Not everyone in the pulpit is gifted by God to preach. Preaching is far more than dispensing content; it is a real-time engagement with a congregation. I can’t see everyone I preach to, with a large room and being multi-site, but I can see enough to take a poll every few minutes as I preach. One of the surest signs of a non-preacher is a lack of audience awareness. What helps a gifted preacher improve through the years is his awareness of when the people are bored, when the people are confused, and when the people ‘have it’ and are ready to move on. Watching the faces of those you are communicating with should educate you about what is funny and what is definitely not. Getting audience feedback is the surest way of knowing when you are missing the mark. Preachers who always preach badly don’t seem to know it. Good, growing preachers don’t just give messages, they get a message back from their hearers and heed it in next week’s preparation. A conference like Harvest University is unusually enthusiastic. I had them for moments here and there in this message, but I didn’t have them the whole time and I knew it.

Feedback is almost never helpful or on point.

In a post-conference email to our Pastors, I mentioned my intention of writing this blog. I was past the point of pleading for mercy and simply wanted to clue them in to this upcoming post. I should have seen that several would write back imploring my reconsideration, insisting the message was appreciated, inciting an appeal of my ‘bad sermon’ verdict. This kind of feedback, though sincere, can be death to your development as a preacher.  Of course God ‘used it,’ it’s His Word, duh? ???? The fact that your sermon, as long as it isn’t preached from the Koran, ‘will not return void’ should not obscure your awareness of a bad message. We have all played the part of Balaam’s donkey, but that doesn’t mean we should wear the costume each week in anticipation of the Holy Spirit rescuing our bad sermon. Most people are not even thinking at the complex level of our communication craft. Don’t be influenced by positive feedback from encouraging people who remind you of places where the sermon had flashes of light, when you know that was just the explosion when you hit the bottom of the canyon. Real preachers know the truth, swallow the frustration and embarrassment, and determine not to make the same mistakes again. I praise God for every sermon encouragement through the years, but it just isn’t helpful very often in shaping your craft. Get with some critical thinkers when you know you preached a bad one. Pick apart your flow of thought and where you lost the majority of your hearers, in order to increase your clarity and impact next time you get the privilege to preach.

Growing preachers always know the truth.

Nobody wants to flip upside down in the ditch in front of their friends at the bicycle race, and preachers don’t want to knock over the pulpit in front of their peers and fall into the audience. Through the years I have tried to feel the pain of bad sermons deeply as a motivator not to make the same mistakes again. You have to get through it, but you know you’re crashing and burning. Feel it, remember it, detail what you won’t do again. It should never be an easy thing with a preacher of God’s Word to miss the mark and fail to be at your very best. As a young preacher I wallowed all week and, looking back, that helped me for a time. I don’t punish myself as much any more, but I never excuse a bad sermon and you shouldn’t either. What went wrong? Where did I fail in my thinking? How can I make sure that doesn’t happen again? Our job is too important to allow excuses or settle for less than our best, which God demands and our people deserve.

Most sermon failures are present before you get to church.

Finally, because most feedback comes directly from the hearers and compliments tend to highlight matters that made your delivery interesting, you can begin to lose sight of where a great sermon really happens. Almost every sermon rises or falls in your preparation. Careful thought, clear outlining, prayerful seeking for a compelling message that goes beyond Bible explanation, hours of imaginative thought about content that illustrates the biblical wisdom, deep reflection for insight and application of God’s Word—these are some ingredients of powerful preaching. When you close your Bible and rise from your study the matter is mostly settled right then. In time you learn to stay at it until you know you ‘have it.’ Less and less you will get up thinking you are ready when you are not.  More and more you will see God honor your hard work in His Word . . .

But, every so often you will preach a dud . . .  If you are devoted to your task through the years, most people will choke down the occasional piece of frozen pie and hardly notice your error, but don’t let that fact confuse what you know to be true. Take your lumps, embrace the humility, and get back to work in the strength of what you learned.

I am preaching in Genesis 28-31 this week and can’t wait. Where are you in God’s Word?

#HarvestU2014: Pursuing Christ’s Promise

Harvest University, our annual ministry training conference, is happening right now. Some 2200 pastors and leaders have gathered from churches around the world for three days of intense training, equipping, and encouragement. I am so grateful for our church planting ministry, Harvest Bible Fellowship, and the awesome work of God that continues in our 15th year of planting reproducing Harvest Bible Chapels. To Him be the glory!

This video launched the conference and tells the greater story of that work. Tomorrow morning is our closing session, and you can watch the livestream here at 10:15am, CT: HarvestBibleFellowship.org.

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Disclosure: Let’s Get After It

Men know we need to have spiritually meaningful, life-giving connections with other men. But what we often don’t know is how to get there. Men generally want to relate in the context of an activity, but going fishing together is no guarantee we’ll actually talk about things that really matter. So what does it take for men to disclose? The keys to our transparency are confidentiality and reciprocation—and getting to a place of real disclosure is vital to being the men God has called us to be. There is a reason we’re to confess our sins to one another, and it isn’t to get forgiveness.

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