Tag Archives: Ministry

Why I Never Thought About Leaving


The church I left at the end of June is just a year and a half old. I moved to Appleton with the pastor and his family in October of 2008 to start laying the ground work and looking for gathering space. When we found a place we started holding unofficial gatherings on Sunday nights in February of 2009 before our official launch on April 19, 2009.
When the adventure started, I never thought I would leave. My plan was to be at this church with this team for the very long foreseen future. I did ministry with my pastor for seven years and really never thought about the day that wouldn’t be the case.

But there’s an ugly side to why I never thought about leaving and it’s called pride. With just the pastor and myself on staff, I did just about everything except preach, cast vision, and do counseling. Whether I wanted to admit it or not there was a part of me that thought, “If I leave, the church will not survive.” Honestly, when God started whispering in my heart that it was time to go over a year ago, that was one of my thoughts. “God, that is crazy. The church isn’t even a year old, I’m comfortable here, I’m just getting settled, and I mean, let’s be real, this church needs me.”

Woah! Time out. That needs idea is a dangerous one.

God in His graced showed me that my church didn’t need me. And I hate to break it to you but your church doesn’t need you either. And to be really honest, I don’t think God needs us either. In His grace & mercy He uses us as tools to accomplish His purposes here on this earth. He graciously blesses us with the gift of being able to partner with Him in the spread of the Gospel. If He wanted to do it without us, I think He could.

That is something I need to remind myself of daily. And it’s one of the reasons I left the church. I recognized that for myself, where I was at, I needed to spend more time focusing on my relationship with God and not what I was doing for Him. What I was doing was becoming more important than being in relationship with Him.

I think for many who work in the church it’s a slippery slide from planting the seed and watering it to planting the seed and thinking we’re responsible for the growing. Before we know it we can get to a point where we’ve cut God out of His Church.

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe – as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
1 Corinthians 3:5-7

What helps you stay focused, remembering that it is God who makes things grow?

5 Comments Deep Thinking, Leadership

An End. A Beginning. Or Something In Between.

Yesterday was officially my last day on staff at The CORE. I don’t want to let the day go by without a post, but I’ll be honest…words will fail to sum up the myriad of emotions going on inside my head and heart right now.

As I only begin to look back and reflect on the last two years one major thing jumps out at me. It is that one thing that will ultimately define my time at The CORE, my time in Appleton,WI, and the ministry that was my life the last two years. That one thing is relationships. At the end of the day, when I look back, when I look for lessons to take away, when I stumble upon memories that make me both laugh and cry, at the center of it all I find people. The relationships I have developed here are the reason I will always have a root that is planted in Appleton. And the way in which God orchestrated and used those relationships to teach me lessons and to pull me closer to Him leaves me in awe of Him once again.

For me it’s a great reminder that it really all does boil down to God’s simple command: Love Him, love others. When we take the time to dig down through the messy layers that the machine of ministry can sometimes pile on, I hope and pray we discover that loving God and loving others is really why we got into ministry in the first place.

In the days ahead there is definitely going to be some processing of a huge chapter of my life closing. But there will also be plenty of dreaming about the new chapter that is just beginning. And somewhere in between is today.

Comment Just Life

When God Says Go

Before I say anything, I need to say this: Only by the grace of God and His strength in me am I taking this leap of faith. My deepest hope is that HE is glorified.

I find it very fitting that we started a series called “30 Days to Live” tonight at church. A night when I announced a decision that I can honestly say I never thought I’d be making at this point in life. I announced that I would be leaving my church. Our church is officially just over a year old and never did I think I would be leaving so soon, for a long time I didn’t even consider the thought of ever leaving. But, as is usually the case, God has different plans.

I made that decision two and a half weeks ago and it will no doubt rock my world. It will take me away from my church, from my “family,” and from some of the people I have done ministry with for seven years. It means stepping farther outside my comfort zone than I ever have before and truly trusting. I mean, sure, I’ve always said, “I trust God, He’s got it under control.” But, I’ll be honest, my life didn’t often reflect that. I held tightly on to as much control as I could. I made my plans. I followed my plans. I always had a plan.

All the while, I would admire and be slightly envious of those who had the courage to live their God-given dreams, to go when He said go, who fully and completely trusted God with their lives. I would think to myself, “someday, I’m going to live that way…someday.”

Well, the day has come. God has been stirring in my heart for quite some time now a discontentment, a discontentment that He wanted to use to push me forward. I successfully ignored this whisper from God until it got so loud that I couldn’t any more.

That was two months ago. Two months ago I started seriously and prayerfully considering whether or not God was calling me away from my church and onto a new chapter. Those two months were not fun. Wrestling with God is painful! But, He has given me clarity & peace. I believe with all of my being that God is telling me to go. I don’t know exactly where yet or to what, but the fact that He is saying go is loud and clear.

For most people, knowing you only have 30 days to live would change how you live, what you do, who you see, where you go, etc. I’m incredibly grateful that God is moving in my heart to take those risks now, to re-prioritize before it’s too late. Believe me, I know it’s going to be a bumpy ride. The next year will likely be an especially painful molding process. But, I’m so excited for the end result.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”             Ephesians 3:20-21

1 Comment Just Life

How Far Will You Go?

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost. – Luke 19:10

We say we want to imitate Christ. But, sometimes I wonder just how far we are really willing to go. We talk a good game most of the time, but when it comes to living it out, the “walking the walk” we fall far short choosing the easy way out too often.

Christ’s purpose was to seek out and to save the lost. Do we do that? Do we truly make it our personal mission and that of our churches to seek out the lost and share the saving message of the Gospel with them?

How far are we willing to go to imitate Christ in that way? How much is one soul worth?

Hmmm….just a little food for thought on this Tuesday.

Comment Deep Thinking

Who’s Qualified?


I was reading the latest Catalyst Monthly newsletter this week and came across an article from Justin Wise about burnout in the church. While the burnout part resonated with me because I think I’ve been there, the line that really caught my heart’s attention was this one:

“While the intent behind ordination is good and true, unfortunately it has built an artificial distinction between “professional” Christians and “regular” Christians.”

(I will apologize now for the soapbox I may climb on during the next few moments)

Even being on staff at a church, I totally get this because I feel it. I feel like many people look at me as only “semi-professional” because I don’t have a degree from a seminary that hangs on my wall. If I’m honest, this is something that way back in the cobwebs of my heart bothers me almost daily. The feeling of not being quite good enough, not quite as qualified as someone with that degree.

Perhaps part of the reason it bothers me so much is I don’t understand the reasoning behind that thought process. I could hypothesize about it, but I won’t…at least for now.

What about you? Have you experienced the “more qualified” mindset – from either side? What do you think the reasoning is for it?


1 Comment Deep Thinking

Brought to You by the Letter “Y”

Call it venting. Call it a rant. Call it “up on my soapbox” if you want. But, I have something I need to get off my chest, an observation I made last week at the Dirt Conference and realized is true for us most of the time.

We sit in the main sessions at conferences and listen to speakers who talk primarily about the WHY. They remind us to focus on the WHY and that in the end the WHY is what really matters. We nod our heads and utter verbal agreements to what they are saying.

Fast forward one hour, at most, to the labs or breakout sessions and it seems as though we have completely forgotten about the WHY. The questions that are asked oftentimes aren’t completely answered by the presenters. I think that’s because you cannot fully answer the WHAT until you understand the WHY. And the WHY is different for all of us. If you know who you are and WHY you do what you do the what naturally flows out of that. When I look around at churches or individuals who we would say “don’t get ‘it’” more often than not it’s because they have completely forgotten about or couldn’t ever define the WHY.

Everything that Jesus did while he was here on earth flowed from WHY he was here – redemption, love, and service. And most of his lessons focused on WHY. More often than not God gives us guiding principles, principles that focus on the WHY, not 3 step, 5 step, or 7 step solutions. Why then do we find a need to have one for everything we do in the church?

WHY did you put that image on the screen? WHY did you sing that song? WHY is your church using twitter? WHY that video? That sermon series? That event? That print piece? That font? WHY did you focus that light where you did at the intensity that you did? WHY?

Because bottom line, if we can’t answer WHY then the what will not be effective long term. Now I get that it’s easy to lose sight of the WHY. It happens to me too. I would just encourage us to challenge ourselves to always go back to it. We may just wake up one day to realize that working from the WHY has become a habit.

Do you stay focused on the WHY? What are some tips you can share for keeping that focus?


Comment Visual Worship