Dealing with the Stress of Ministry

And that kind of keeps me up at night. Yeah, it kind of keeps me up at night, not in a good way.

When there's a consistent like, hey, pastor, great job. Hey,

pastor, great job. Hey, pastor, great job. That was really great.

Great job, great job, great job.

And I'm like, are they seeing Jesus? Right.

Are they seeing Jesus in this or are they seeing me? Welcome to the Uncut Podcast.

I'm Pastor Luke. I'm Pastor Cameron. And this is the Uncut Podcast,

where we have honest, uncut conversations about faith, life, and ministry.

Music.

Cameron, how are you doing today? Doing okay. We had a good weekend.

We had, I think, a great gathering of the community of conduits yesterday.

We did. We did. And I got a good workout in this morning, and so I did not sleep

super well, but I'm here.

Here and ready to go. Ready to go. Me too. How about you?

Yeah, I feel like I had some fun moments over the weekend, and yeah,

yesterday was a good sermon yesterday.

Thanks. So it was really encouraging, and we're recording on a Monday, which is unusual for us.

And we're so i think we're both like rearing

and ready to go for the week our brains are fresh

yeah we have usually we record at

the end of the week and our brains are mush right brain is

fresh this morning yeah so um this

week we thought we would take some time and answer some we got a more than the

normal amount of questions than we we don't normally get that many questions

So we got a handful of questions last week after our podcast episode.

We talked about, can Christians be possessed?

We didn't get too many questions about that. We did get one question.

One question, yeah. I think we should address that. We should talk about that.

So if I remember, the question was...

Let's see, do I have it here? It was essentially, can you say more about,

because I made a statement in the podcast about one of the experiences that

I had while pastoring Conduit North.

I don't even know, maybe I didn't even mention that. I don't think you have.

It was in a worship service or at the end of a worship service at Conduit North

after we had planted that.

And a gentleman had come in and anyway, was

talking about my experience in dealing with

someone interacting with someone who was very obviously

possessed not just oppressed but possessed by a

demon and I had made a statement that we stopped praying for him yep because

he essentially said I want you to stop praying for me yeah and maybe it was

a little bit of like miss I I wasn't,

I didn't misspeak or it wasn't, I wasn't misspoken in it,

but essentially what happened is we had been,

we had myself and another pastor that were there with me.

And then a layman that was there with me, we were praying over him and he was

manifesting, like the demon was manifesting like changes in voice and posture

and like, uh, kind of like body writhing.

And And, like, you could actually, like, almost, I think I mentioned this,

like, almost smell the bad breath. Like, it was, like, it was...

Weird. Weird. But anyway, we were praying for that the demon would come out

of him, the demon would set him free, the demon would let him go.

And the demon was saying, no, I'm not leaving. No, I'm not leaving.

No, I'm not leaving. And what was interesting about, not interesting,

but is that it would go, our conversation with the man would go back and forth

between talking to him and talking to the demon.

Him, the demon. Him, the demon.

And the dean when we were talking to the demon right it

was you know we were um speaking in and through the authority of christ and

then we would talk to the man we would ask him do you want to be free right

do you want to be free of this right do you want to be free of this demon and

he said But if you want to be free.

You must call out to Jesus.

Like you must call on the name of Jesus. Yeah.

Because that's the only place that freedom is going to come from is through

the power in the name of Jesus.

Like we can't force freedom upon a person. Right. Right?

And this went on for like 20 minutes. Do you want to be free than dealing with a demon?

Do you want to be free? And it was, he was not able, could not,

or would not articulate his desire to be free from demonic oppression.

And so at that point we said, probably shouldn't have said his name.

Um uh we were

we're going to stop we're

going to stop this interaction if you don't desire

to be free from this oppression yeah and he said yeah let's stop and so it was

clear that he did not want to be did not want to be free from that now yeah

it sounds a weird thing like who wouldn't And who would want to be,

who would want to be in that. Right.

And I don't, I can't speak from experience as far as like demonic oppression is concerned.

But what I can say is it has been my experience that with sin in general, that it is.

We, it can become so central. Our sin can become such a central part of our

lives that we really can't imagine life without it. Yeah.

Right. We become conditioned to what is our normal.

Right. And we can't imagine something being a new normal. We're actually afraid

of it. Even if it's a really good thing. Exactly.

And so we see this in addiction a lot. Yes.

Massively in addiction. We see people who want to be free from addiction.

Right. But who are unwilling.

Right. to like i don't know how i

would deal with life without this and so i'm gonna choose

the hell i know yeah versus the

hell that i'm anticipating yep happens all the

time when people get sober for like uh the first time in a while and then they

get like is there like oh my gosh this is really good yeah but then you're like

well then why are and then why did they backslide yeah and And, well, a relapse.

And part of it's because it was also just really scary.

Yes. They didn't. They were like, this is new. This is different.

I don't know how life feels like this.

Yeah. So if you asked that question, thanks for it. Thank you for that question. It's a good one.

And that was the experience. That's what happened. Yeah. Yeah,

so there was definitely an element of, at least in that case,

of that person really not wanting. Not wanting to be free. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. So that was significant. Mm-hmm.

So we got a couple other questions.

Some were kind of, one was kind of more theological. Some were kind of more

kind of practical, behind the scenes.

So where do you think we want to go, Cameron? Well, there's the question of

the importance of Christian unity. Yeah.

Which is, could be taken many different ways. I don't know. I appreciate that question.

I can see your name, but I'm not going to say your name. So thank you for that

question or that statement, I guess.

I don't want to say send us another message and be more specific because I would

say that Christian unity is important.

Christian unity is indeed important. Important, yes.

Yes. But there, I suspect, I know who asked this question, so I suspect that

there is. you probably maybe have something a little bit more specific.

So if you could ask it in a little bit more specific way, if there's a specific

part of Christian unity or a specific part of Christian disunity that you're

seeing and you'd like us to comment on,

then maybe that would be, we'd be able to talk about it a little bit better.

I don't even know where to start really with that.

Well, I think we had had as a podcast episode marked at some point,

I may have got rid of it because it just sat on the back burner so long,

But we had like a titled topic of Christian unity does not equal conformity or something like that.

I think you put that one in there. I'm going to toss that on to you.

But, you know, I don't know. know. I feel like there is like a certain amount

of, um, I think sometimes.

Sometimes things get lumped into Christian unity that maybe aren't.

What do you mean? Like, I've witnessed from afar churches use, well, Christian unity.

We need to be unified as a way to kind of justify certain, like,

unhealthy leadership practices of, like...

It's like a leader can't be questioned because it would create disunity.

Right. Things like that. Okay.

Yeah, I've seen that too. So that's not necessarily, I guess like what would

you say is Christian unity though? Like what is it?

Therein lies the question. Are we talking about theological unity?

Are we talking about unity of practice?

Are we talking about just like a hey brother, hey sister?

Yeah. It's just a unity in the faith based on like we have one Lord,

one faith, one baptism. one God and Father of us all.

Like an ecumenicalism almost. Right, ecumenicalism, sure.

You know, what are we talking about? We talk about unity. I don't.

Yeah. So there's like these different levels of unity, but unity between you

and I, unity between us and the congregation,

between different congregations, Different congregations between the congregations

and the denominations and so forth. And what has the power to break unity. Yeah.

You know, like, here's a good example. Like, are you, would we say that we,

that conduit, is that we have a spirit or a relationship of unity with Hillcrest Baptist?

I would say we do. Yeah. Right. I would say that we do. Yeah.

And we're different churches and we have different types of leaders and we have

a different culture certainly in our churches.

But I would say I love pastor Mark and Dan and the rest of the pastoral team

and staff there and leaders there. They're great.

But we would, you know, like, yeah, we're Christians.

All of us are Christians. Would we say that we have a spirit of unity with the

church of Latter-day saints up on forest?

Well, why not? Well, because they're Latter-day Saints. Well, but they're Christian.

Right. Well, are they? That's my point.

They're in line with the point. So at what point, what's the barrier or the boundary of unity?

Because they would say that they are Christians, the Church of Jesus Christ

of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah Witnesses would consider themselves Christian as well.

Right hey look we study we all study the bible well different

you know yeah um whether or

not that's the same bibles so like what

is the dynamic of christian unity and we've talked

a little bit about the things

that we um the things

that we are willing to agree on and things that we are willing to disagree on

and still remain in one i think we've talked about it in terms of like if you

go to conduit like do we as pastors expect a you like a unanimous a unanimity

of theological belief right.

Um like you must believe everything that we believe in order to like successfully

be a part of the family here and our answer to that is no you don't yeah but

that has its limits yeah i would I would say that it definitely has its limits.

I'm not saying that conduit is a theological free-for-all.

It is most assuredly not a theological free-for-all. Yeah.

But what we would say here is that we have unity on the essentials.

Right. And liberty and freedom on the non-essentials. Right.

And in all things, love. Right.

So no Arianism. No Arianism.

No. No Gnosticism. No Gnosticism. them

um right none of those other isms right yeah

we have a high christology right you know we believe in the

trinity um we affirm the classic

historical creeds um so like

there are there are primary theological um distinctives and then there are secondary

theological beliefs and i i would go go so far as to say is that like that you're

gonna probably have a difficult time and not a great experience.

Being a part of certain churches, if you differ widely on even things that are

secondary in terms of theology. Yeah.

Depending on how important you feel those secondary things are.

To you personally and how significantly the church holds them.

Right. And the leadership holds them.

So I think if you want to re-mystery person, mystery person to our guests, but not to us,

who has asked that question, if you would want to kind of re-ask it and maybe

get down into the weeds a little bit more about what you mean there,

I'd love to tackle that question again, talk a little bit more about it.

Probably best to send it into our text line, 716-201-0507, and we will deal with it for sure. Yeah.

Yep. Okay. Cool beans.

All right. Next question. Next question. is a bunch of questions.

It's a bunch of questions.

So a lot of it...

It's kind of summed up by one question

of like what how how do

you handle the pressure and stress of ministry and then from there it seems

to kind of go down into like you know practically what's the life of a pastor

look like what does that look like so all right well let's let's deal with just

just like the very first question. It's the text question we got in our text line.

And how do you handle the pressures and stress of ministry?

I mean, I don't know. Like ministry really is not that stressful. Yeah.

Say more, Cameron. Can't you see?

All this gray hair is just because I'm very distinguished and wise. Yes, that's it.

Yeah, if you didn't know, ministry can be very stressful and can be a lot of pressure. Yeah.

And it's not always the things that you would expect.

I'll give you one example, and maybe it's a bad example, but I'll just tell

you, like, the whole, all of the questions are kind of like,

give us a peek into the mind of a pastor. Yeah.

And I will tell you, here's something that's been happening to me over the last about 24 hours.

I preached a sermon yesterday, one that I was really passionate about and really believe in, of course.

And felt that, for the most part, everything went well with the communication

and delivery and the way in which the congregation was receiving it.

And felt like I did a faithful job in it.

Got a lot of good feedback about it afterwards. Mm-hmm.

And that is...

That kind of keeps me up at night. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, it kind of keeps me up

at night, not in a good way.

Because it's almost like one, because there's two sides to that.

Number one is that like when there's a consistent like, hey, pastor, great job.

Hey, pastor, great job. Hey, pastor, great job. That was really great.

Great job, great job, great job.

And I'm like, are they seeing Jesus?

Right. are they seeing jesus in this are they seeing me yeah are they like great

job can mean a lot of things it can mean a lot of things right but um what i am deathly afraid of,

is people being impressed with me,

rather than like having an experience with jesus through the preaching of his word.

Because we were just talking upstairs about this with one of the staff members here,

about new people coming to churches and seeing all the freshness and like,

oh, this is great and we love the church and we love the staff and it was so

much better than our last church and da-da-da-da-da.

And I'm like, don't worry, I will disappoint you.

Don't worry. It's gonna happen.

And so a little bit of it is like the first part of it is like the pressure,

sometimes I almost don't wanna do too good of a job because I so desperately

want people to have an experience with Jesus rather than just be impressed with

the sermon. Yeah, I had that happen.

One of the last times I preached, and there was a lot of a positive emotional

response from the sermon.

And even in the preparing of the message, I was having a little bit of wrestling in myself of like.

Is this illustration that I'm going to include going to be helpful ultimately?

Ultimately, or is it going to make people feel something, and then they're going

to just think that that was it, and then move on?

And so I, yeah, I was like, people were coming up to me and saying that was

a really good sermon. I was like, actually, I don't think it was a very good sermon.

Yeah. From a, like a, I don't know what you want to call that.

Like a preacher standpoint?

From a preacher standpoint, like, you know, my professor would

have ripped that sermon up and down because it wasn't very clear i think people

had a really there was a couple moments in the sermon where people really connected

and i'm like what are you connecting with are you connecting with the emotion

are you connecting with christ yep and there was a lot of like,

ambiguity in myself of just saying like did you did you see christ though yep

or did you just see be a moment in the sermon that made you feel something.

Because those are two different things. Yeah, exactly.

I feel like, what I also feel about it is like, someone sent me a message this

morning on Facebook Messenger saying, "'Hey, my husband said that was the best

sermon he'd ever heard in his life.'".

I want that to feel good yeah but i'm also like okay well everything's downhill from here then,

you know what i'm saying yeah right like okay so what you're

like it feels like a ton of pressure to be like you gotta bring it like that

every single week or it creates this moment of like you know like did you do

anything ex you know exceedingly out of the ordinary,

from what you normally do?

I don't know. I don't think I did. You're like, do the rest of my sermons just suck? Right.

So that's kind of like some of the dynamic there. And if you were to talk to

my wife this morning, we were talking in the pew, and all morning yesterday

before I was preaching, I felt this like, I am so anxious to preach today.

Not in like, oh, I can't wait to get up there, but I feel like this is the first

sermon I've ever preached in my life. I am so nervous.

I could not sit still. I had this pit knot in my stomach as I was sitting there during announcements.

I was wringing my hands. I was all sweaty.

I was just anxious up in me.

And I don't know if I would associate that feeling with the way in in which

the message then was received by the congregation or I preached it or not,

or I don't know, but like it is a reality in there.

So like, how do you deal with the pressures and the stress of ministry?

You know, it's not always really, it's not always really, the pressure and the

stress is not always what you think the pressure and the stress is. Mm-hmm.

I think leading in ministry, and I don't just say this because I'm doing it,

there are a lot of experts who would say very similar things,

is that being a pastor is one of the most difficult leadership positions that

you could possibly hold.

Because as a pastor, you are, of course, a spiritual leader.

You are also a HR executive.

You manage finance. You manage facilities.

You're expected to have a compelling and forward leadership vision that is kind

of based off a model of like economic consumerism and like a business model type of vision.

Always pushing the organization forward. Always improving. Always expanding.

The bottom line is always increasing. You know, it's like, so you better be

a good executive, but you better be a good leader.

You better be kind of cutthroat in your executive momentum, but you better be

a gentle shepherd as well. Yes.

And you have to do all of this essentially with a large volunteer workforce

to accomplish the most significant mission that the world has ever known. Yeah. And so.

And be the most spiritually mature person in the room. Have all the right answers.

Family better be on point. Oh, yeah.

Doing it for what is in general, like comparatively, based on the responsibilities.

Skill sets, responsibility.

A low-paying job. Mm-hmm.

Um, so it is, there is a lot of pressure there and there is a lot of stress

to get it all, all, all like all straight,

keep it all straight, do a good job.

Job um and naturally you're

going to gravitate towards being you know

i think it's a it's a rare case where one person is good at all of those things

no very rare case um and so then the job becomes all right well how do i work

myself out of those positions yeah most of the time time with volunteers.

But, but I'm still responsible, ultimately responsible for the job that those volunteers do.

And that's not even getting into the dynamic of like, seeing people.

Destroy their lives or have their lives destroyed or walking through the darkest

times of their life or you know you're doing you know you're doing funerals

and weddings you know yeah sorrow and,

joy you're leading meetings you're counseling addicts and broken marriages and

you're They're seeing people choose things that you know are going to destroy their lives,

but we can't force anyone into wise decisions or surrendering themselves to the Lord.

And so you're kind of on the front lines of sometimes the worst days and worst

experiences of people's lives, but you're also sometimes on the front lines

of the best days of their lives.

And there's just not a whole lot of space to be yourself.

Just not a whole lot of space to breathe. Yeah.

I would say that's kind of like

a general flyby of what I feel about the pressure of stress of ministry.

I don't know how you would talk about it.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely a...

You know, because I think particularly, like, some of that is determined by

the type of church, the denomination that you're part of.

Like, I would say that that's a pretty true description of...

Most churches in the united states of that

kind of like um you know

sometimes a language that's been helpful for me is.

Like thinking about um pastor as ceo.

Pastor as um ted.

Talk pastor as um you know

you can kind of find uh or

pastor as um visionary startup you

know you can kind of find these other kind

of archetypes in culture and

church are in the in the world

and you can kind of see the ways in which we sometimes

tack on to on to

the pastor kind of these additional like oh

well it's not your pastor but you're also need to

be the ceo this like startup guru

you need to be a leadership like you

know guy you need to be you know um however

you kind of want to conceptualize that and that's not entirely

new but i think we've reached maybe a point where that's like

really starting to just like um i

don't know max out maybe um you

know i was listening to a podcast and they

were talking about the you know

just the way in which uh it's like shifted um and when you've got these different

um like i don't know like like this morning right we come come in this morning.

The Wi-Fi is not working.

Okay. So we're like calling people.

I'm on the phone with somebody from the church who is taking their time to help us.

But I'm also like, I'm climbing up on top of cabinets and I'm plugging things

in and plugging things out and trying to figure out where wirings are.

And that was one of the ways in which I started my day today.

I don't know how many times I've come into the building on a Sunday morning and someone

asks me why the heat's not working or why the kitchen's not

clean or you know like

just stuff like that stuff like that you know i've at

different times i've like i designed if you

go to our website i'm responsible for the

website pretty much like that the way it looks is the way

i made it look i didn't go

to school to design websites i never took

a web design class i went and studied greek uh

ancient greek not that

i was any good at it i'm not saying that um you know

and so there's this mishmash between

like what maybe do you do you think that that's like that those additional things

are distractions from the calling of being a pastor or do you think they're

just kind of like the context of what being a pastor looks like right right now?

I think, I mean, this is kind of like a bad answer to that question,

but I honestly think it's a little bit of both. Yeah.

Because I do think that it is a little bit of just what being a pastor is about right now,

or maybe not even what it is to be a pastor, but what it means to be the person

who is like in charge of the organization.

Like the logical question is like, okay, well, if you're not going to fix the

Wi-Fi, then who's going to?

If you're not going to fix the Wi-Fi, well then you're going to have to find

someone who is responsible for it. So ultimately then it is your responsibility.

But do I think it is fixing the Wi-Fi is central to the calling of pastor?

Well, no, of course I don't. Yeah. Right.

But the way in which the world in which we find ourselves today is a world that has Wi-Fi in churches.

Yeah. It is a world that has. Doesn't use hymnals, uses presentation software.

Right. It is a world that has websites for churches.

It is a world that has buildings that must be kept up in order to like honor

the investment. And so does it have anything to do with like shepherding?

I would say no. Do we, are we trying to do our best to align resources to fulfill the mission?

I think it's just a little bit more complicated than people maybe always think

of it. Because I think sometimes, yeah, people do.

That's actually a fairly common question is, what do you do all day?

Depends on the day. You probably just study the Bible all day long.

Your only responsibility is to create a sermon.

And pray. Right. We only work on Sundays. And only for a couple hours.

Yeah. The rest of the week, we just kind of like sit in a prayer closet probably.

So just like, I mean, I went to the gym this morning, so I don't usually get

into the office until like 11 on Mondays.

I walked into my office. My desk was a mess.

You know, paper and sticky notes and things left undone from last week.

Little notes. So I did a little bit of a brain dump.

Yep. I made a list of things that I needed to get done this week.

I responded to two texts for people that want to meet this week.

One of them is coming in to talk to you and I at 1.30 today.

Another, I don't have any space until Thursday, so I scheduled them into Thursday.

I made a list of people that I needed to connect with, someone who's in hospice

that I needed to go see this week.

I have a premarital counseling appointment at 4 o'clock today that i need to

make sure that i am prepared to lead them through but before that from three

to four i have a phone call kind of a counseling coaching phone call with someone who is seeking,

out wisdom from me so like i need to get

my head wrapped around that and be prepared for that somewhere

between now which is one o'clock you

know we have a half hour until our next appointment

right which will probably be an hour long i'm guessing that's going to lead

us to 2 30 and i have a half now i'm two hours past when i really should have

lunch right because i have a and and i can't let my four o'clock go too late

because i gotta get home yeah take my daughter to girl scouts yes.

Yeah so then tell me what i've done today right what

did you how did you move the needle for how did i move the needle forward well

and then tomorrow

is not much better tomorrow is

not much better because we will i'll get up early i'll go to the gym i'll go

and meet with my mentor as i do every tuesday morning for the last 15 years

yeah coffee for an hour hour and a half then we we will go at nine o'clock to

an ecumenical pastor prayer meeting and be there for probably an hour and 15

minutes, hour and a half.

We will immediately leave there, come down here.

We will have staff meeting at

noon-ish or around there. We'll meet for an hour and a half to two hours.

And then at Tuesday afternoon, I will probably try to start thinking about my sermon. Yeah.

Because that's coming. Yeah, already.

It's coming. coming um but but don't forget cameron we have wednesday night class this week,

correct so we also must also prepare a large bible study yeah for wednesday night yep um,

and if i want to have a day off then all of this work must be done by thursday

at the time that i leave yeah because i can't like i don't know i try to have

a day off on friday like right as in keeping with the sabbath um and.

Yeah i mean like and there's a there's a hundred other things that doesn't those

are just the things that need to be done this week yeah it's not necessarily

what moves the organizational needle forward forward right because we're like

talking about second service and like we're like Like, well,

we got to be working towards that and organizing people to be doing that.

Right. And men's ministry and women's

ministry. And we have a marriage conference coming up. And we have.

And I have my. So how do we deal with it, Cameron?

Well, you try to build a good team around you so that not everything is,

not everything. everything, you're not responsible for everything. Yeah.

It's very hard for people, most people to do.

Um, what I have had to come because here's the thing is I could very,

very easily work 70 hours, 80 hours a week without question.

That would be, I wouldn't run out of work. Yeah. I would not run out of things to do.

I refuse to do that. I refuse to sacrifice my family.

I refuse to sacrifice my physical health, my emotional health,

my spiritual health, my mental health.

I refuse to extend myself so far and run so hard for so long that I put myself

in a place where I'm now making decisions that I wouldn't normally make because

I'm overextended and overwhelmed and exhausted.

Exhausted so i have come to the place of being okay leaving things on the list

undone and unfortunately what that means is that sometimes those things are people-centric,

there are people that i don't get to yeah i

try to get to everyone but the surreality

is is that i don't um and there

are people that i would like to just that aren't in necessarily in crisis mode

or need something from me but that i would like to be in a more intentional

discipling relationship with yeah but that i just don't have a space and so

a little bit of it is like being okay,

with not getting it all done right making an intentional decision to say it

is okay i can't do it all so i must be okay with just not getting it done.

Yeah it's like i know the conversation you've had with me a couple of times especially like when,

uh because we can get into this place where it's like i gotta get it done or

i really gotta help that person and we can get into this place where we're holding

on to things that maybe we're not supposed to be and i know we've had this conversation

you've had to talk me down like Like, Luke, who saves people?

It's not you. It's Jesus, right?

It's like at the end of the day, like we can do nothing apart from Christ.

Yep. You know, your message yesterday. Yep.

Like, I think there's a reason why that message is resonating,

at least with you and I, and I think it's because we feel like this call that

we cannot let the demands of the urgent,

cause us to be Martha, not Mary. Mm-hmm.

Like we still have to put Christ first. We have to choose that.

And so that does mean scheduling fun into our weeks and scheduling like Sabbath

and rest and making sure that like, you know, not every conversation is about the church. Right.

Well, like people have said, like, I don't know. Like, I mean,

yeah, you got on into the office today at 11. Why didn't you get in at 7? seven.

Like, well, one, because I wanted to sleep. Two, because like me going to the

gym in the morning and taking my son with me and like having that time,

like it's incredibly important.

Incredibly important to me, more important than coming into the office at seven

is going to the gym with my son, period.

And so like, yeah, there could be more done, but But like that,

they're like my, what the gym does for me kind of is a part of what allows me

to do the other things that I do.

Yeah. Like at what expense?

Yeah. You know, like there's this, you know, being a pastor is a unique thing.

Like, you know, if you've got maybe an engineer, right? He's top class.

Like, all of his projects are fantastic. He does a great job. He's an engineer.

He's got his marriage is kind of falling apart. His family life is pretty bad.

If his family life and his marriage is falling apart, is he still a good engineer?

Yeah, he's still a good engineer. here. If you have a pastor whose family life,

personal life is falling absolutely apart and.

Is he still a good pastor, even if he, you know, is delivering the best sermons every single week?

I mean, like, may still have the gifts, may be able to shepherd someone,

but like, you know, if you've gained the whole world and lost your soul,

you've gained nothing. Right.

People, well, that's why people, you know, when, you know, that's why,

like, anytime there's a crisis in leadership somewhere, in church leadership,

like, well, it doesn't matter how well they preached.

At that point, it doesn't. It doesn't. Yeah. Because there's something,

something that more fundamental to that calling has been undermined in some way.

Yep. And so we have to guard that in some way.

And so, yeah, there's no lack of things we could be doing at any given point, for sure.

But yeah, I think it's just ultimately it's saying that Christ has to be the

one that brings the fruit as much as we are called to garden.

So. Yep. Yeah.

Well, I feel like that tries to answer that question. A little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

So our week to week or day to day is like, depends on what's going on, I guess, you know? Yeah.

Sometimes I do wish that people could shadow us. Yeah.

It would be a lot of sitting and watching. Yeah, a lot of sitting.

A lot of us trying to figure out, okay, what decision do I need to make about this thing?

Yeah, right. I mean, just the simplest decisions.

I asked you a question this morning.

What do churches, what do bigger churches than us, who have a lot of things

going on, a lot of programs going on, how do they disseminate their information

to people in a successful way.

Um without giving like a mini sermon for

announcement right without spending 25 minutes giving announcements

right because that's what i felt like i did yesterday actually

how long i went it was it was i went as fast

as i could right and it was all like none of

the information was fluff yeah it was like all

stuff that we really needed and wanted the congregation

to hear and for people to be to take part in so

i'm like what how do you how do people do this like

i don't get so it's even just like strategy decisions about

that but even if you think about the implications for the answer to that question

it creates another to do right well okay so now i've got more people in charge

of doing announcements at smaller scales yeah yeah or Or are you just like,

okay, so we need to create some sort of digital way to do announcements so we

don't have to take up so much time on a Sunday morning?

Like, okay, well, why are we concerned with taking up so much time on a Sunday morning?

Well, because we also manage about 40 volunteers who... Are waiting for the

sermon to be over. Are waiting for the sermon to be over.

Or, you know, like, in a room... So it's like, Lord, help us. Or like last week.

Like, something that probably very few, if anybody ever noticed.

Like I worked with Ellen last week, our worship director, and we were making

a transition to change the software that puts the lyrics up on the screen. Yeah.

Which was like a decision to save the church some money. Yeah.

And maybe find a software solution that works a little bit better and is more

collaborative and all these positive things.

But yeah, even on Sunday morning, we're like, okay, is this software?

Okay, we're going to go with this software and not use this software.

Like it better not break on us in the middle of the service.

Cause you know, and we've never used it before.

And so like kind of feels a little high pressure. And so all that, I'm like it ran fine.

And I'm sure that almost nobody knew that that was just a new software,

a new thing that we had like explored, tested and tried to set up over the course

of like two, three weeks.

Just so people could read the scripture or the lyrics or the announcements or.

It's like all the thing like what are we supposed to do you

know so so yeah that's

that okay that's what happens yeah um well

i think that pretty much covers it right for the week sure we're gonna leave

it at that today because why well because we have a 1 30 meeting yeah we have

to get out here so uh we do appreciate you listening do really appreciate your

questions um i keep Keep them coming.

I would love to hear more of what's on your mind, more of what you want to hear from us.

Our texting line is 716-201-0507. You can text your questions to us.

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Music.