Tag: church

Family and Ministry: The Great Marriage & Ministry Sync-Up

by annarmorgan, posted in Family

John and Anna MorganMINISTRY COUPLE

If I had a dollar for every conversation I’ve had about pastors looking for great, married couples for their leadership team, I’d be well on my way to affording my first pair of Jimmy Choos.  Respected couples in leadership, both of them passionate about Jesus and ministry, are actually kind of rare.  One half of the couple may be ready for greater leadership, but the other half is not.

The Bible is a pretty lean source of information about married couples doing God’s work together.  If Bible writers couldn’t scrape up many examples, then if you struggle, I’m pretty sure you’re okay!  The examples I have found are not traditional male/female church roles.

The Bible says so little about Peter’s wife that we don’t even know her name. Even though she was anonymous, she wasn’t invisible, however. Paul told us that she traveled with Peter on his missionary journeys. (1 Corinthians 9:5)  They must have had a sense of partnership about spreading the gospel.  Legend has it that she was martyred with Peter, dying just before he was crucified upside down.

Isaiah was married to a prophetess.  The two of them evidently shared a unique ministry and relationship together.  Isaiah chapter eight describes how the Lord gave Isaiah a word.  The Bible tells us that Isaiah immediately made love to his wife, the prophetess, and they conceived and had a son.  Isaiah named his son after the prophetic word, a name that meant quick to the plunder.  His wife was definitely all in to be willing to make a prophetic statement to the nation out of her children’s lives! (Also, how awkward must that have been for her husband to write about their sex life and it wind up in the Bible?)

Acts eighteen gives us a glimpse of perhaps the most successful ministry couple in the Bible.  Priscilla and Aquila were friends of the Apostle Paul, tentmakers with him.  They were all leaders in the early church together.  Priscilla and Aquila together introduced a man called Apollos to the gospel of Jesus.  Apollos went on to be a major soul-winner in the early church.  This would be like leading Billy Graham to the Lord.

Scholars believe that Priscilla had equal status to her husband.  She wasn’t considered property or inferior.  This partnership extended into their leadership, and she was likely considered to be a teacher in the early church.  Some scholars even believe she anonymously authored the book of Hebrews.  Either way, the Bible gives us a tangible sense of their partnership. They co-owned their business and in the same way, co-owned their work for the church of Jesus Christ.

As wonderful as these couples were, the Bible shows us far more examples of solo ministries.  Jesus, Paul, Anna the prophet, and the list goes on.  Jesus said that more often than not, your family is not going to be supportive of your ministry efforts.  Every individual is on his or her own journey, and married couples frequently aren’t synced up.  They are moving forward at a slightly different pace or started the journey at different times.  This means that usually, one is pushing a little harder and one is pulling back a bit.

So what do you do if one is further on in the journey? Church girls in particular can get caught up in private analysis and worry about how ministry is impacting their marriages and families.  Are we doing it right?  Is this okay?  How do I know for sure?

HE LEADS

Sometimes he is a bit farther down the track.  Girls who marry men who are already leaders in the church are usually facing this.  John and I had lunch with a pastor last week that is getting married next week.  He’s been in ministry his whole life, and knows he’s going to pastor his dad’s church eventually.  His wife-to-be is a business administrator from out of state who is uprooting her whole world to marry him.

His eyes got a little wide and panicky as he described their conversations leading into the wedding.  She has lots of questions about what her role will be, what the expectations are for her.  He found those questions really difficult to answer since they had never even been in the same church.  She serves in her church now, but in an area she isn’t passionate about.  She’s ready for something new in her new church. He wants her to be happy, but he recognizes how long it will take her to build the same influence he has.  He asked us, “What do I tell her?”

They may struggle, at least for a while, because she is trying to sync up to something he is already doing.  It would be like she walked up behind her man while he is digging a hole, and grabbed the end of his shovel to try to help him dig deeper.  She’s in the way, slowing things down rather than helping.  She ends up feeling useless.  She may wind up on the sidelines because he feels burdened by her desire to help.  To him, this will probably seem easier for both of them, because he doesn’t recognize that he not only could use her help—he needs her help.  

If you are married to a man who seems married to ministry, chin up.  Things are not what they seem!  You are not like some second wife to your man.  You don’t have to hang out on the sidelines, waiting for a project you can help on!  God uniquely created and gifted you.  Those gifts may still be seeds, or tender little shoots, easily trampled.  But get some iron in your spine, because your husband needs you and who God has designed you to be—whether he sees it yet or not.  Don’t wait for him to figure out what you can do.  Look for the needs in church life and in church people’s lives.  If you just jump in and keep your skin thick, your gifts will make room for you.  Don’t worry about whether you fit a certain type of church girl.  It takes all kinds, including your kind!  Bring your babies and jump in.

SHE LEADS

Sometimes she is out front.  A friend of mine, who I will call Amy, serves the equivalent of a full-time job for her church.  She and her husband have been financially blessed, so she has been able to commit most of her time to building the church, just getting part-time jobs here and there over the years to fill in the gaps when it was needed.  Ministry is her whole life and she absolutely loves it.

Her husband is a good man.  He takes care of her, loves her, loves Jesus, and supports her.  Over the years, he has hovered on the edges of the work that she does at her church, sometimes serving, sometimes not.  He has struggled to understand how she could put so much time and energy into something she isn’t getting paid to do.  Now, after many years, he has begun to develop resentment toward their church leaders.  He doesn’t understand why they have not decided to employ her and give her the compensation she deserves.  It’s not that they need it, but he believes they should honor and show appreciation toward her financially.  He has pulled away from serving completely because of this frustration.

Amy is one of many women who find themselves pushing toward kingdom building while their husband seems sort of dragged behind.  They don’t work together in church because they couldn’t. One would be pushing the plow with all their might, working toward one goal, and exhausting themselves because they are also dragging their plow partner along.  (Who is resenting not being able to chart their own course and pulling away toward other goals.)

The girls who handle this situation best are pretty special.  The thing they have in common is that they are chilled out.  They refuse to give into worries about this, because worry leads to nagging.  Nagging erodes the marital bond.  They have decided to trust in Jesus for their husband’s journey.  They have intelligent, non-emotional, non-manipulative conversations with their husbands about God and the church.  These conversations start with stories from her day, or sharing her passions and goals.  She has great emotional intelligence.  She can read the moment, read his responses correctly, and knows when to listen instead of argue.

These girls have taken the pressure off themselves and off their husbands and have learned how to be patient.  I think in that the secret to being chilled-out is that confidence is at the bottom of it all.  I see a confidence that Jesus has it all in hand.  We may not see the work the Holy Spirit is doing, but we can trust it, both in ourselves and in our husbands.  “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT) They have learned to view the journey as a whole, instead of just seeing the moment right now.

These amazing women know their purpose: to build God’s kingdom.  They have chosen their place to do it.  They serve with strength and dignity, even when it means sitting alone at church in a room full of couples.  They seem to have discovered a secret about partnering with Christ in the meantime.  The twinkle in their eye and the purpose in their stride show off a beautiful soul at peace.

WE LEAD (MARRIAGE & KAYAKS)

These elusive power couples I began by referring to, have somehow managed to align their marriage and ministry goals.  They are leveraging their partner’s strengths to push each other toward the same place.  I’ve observed three things that couples that lead well together have mastered.

I’ve been in a two-man kayak a few times.  It was not cute.  I’m awkward, sweaty, sunburnt, sore, and irritated mostly.  On the occasions that I have ventured out with someone, it has taken most of our time and my energy for us to just figure out how to synchronize our movements.  If you don’t work together, you literally go nowhere.  It takes work to find a rhythm of communication and paddling perfectly in unison.

Marriage is like that kayak.  It can be a vehicle that takes us forward, or it can be a frustrating waste of energy.  For John and I to sync up, it takes good communication, and equal effort on both our parts.  Lastly it takes a jointly chosen destination.  Without all three elements working together, we will wind up paddling against each other.  For us, it’s church or bust.  We both live-and-breathe love church and the flawed but growing people who make it up.

  1. Good Communication

Good communication starts with mutual respect.  Respect is an attitude that you choose to take, not something your husband earns as some kind of reward for good behavior.  Before I open my mouth, I have to make a decision to speak to him with respect and love.  John and I have a positive-speaking culture in our marriage.  If I get negative about something, John goes really quiet.  It gets awkward enough that I know I’ve crossed a line, and I backpedal.  He doesn’t back every bad decision I make, but encourages the best from me.  Same applies in the reverse.

When we are leading well together, we include each other in major decisions, even if it’s just a heads up.  We navigate crises together.  Nothing gets hidden.  When we communicate to each other in public, we speak respectfully.  It can get easy for married couples to get overly familiar with each other and disrespectfully disagree in front of other people.  For us, this is a major no-no.  If I want someone else to value my husband’s leadership, then I’d better value it first.  Again, the same applies in the reverse.  He champions my leadership to other people.

For most of our marriage, John and I worked in the same church on different teams.  I don’t think you have to be on the same team to be in sync.  We were able to cross-pollinate each other’s ministry efforts by providing an outsider’s fresh perspective to challenges as they arose.  We were each able to give wisdom to the other because we were outside of the situation.  We stayed mutually interested, despite our different focuses.  When a couple has very different gifts or interests, then this kind of ministry partnership is probably going to be ideal.

  1. Equal Effort

You can’t co-lead if you aren’t co-working.  Your marriage kayak is going in circles when only one of you rows.  Too many girls let their husband take the lead and then coast behind.  He needs you, and you need him.  Your gifts are designed to complement each other.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating.  Babies are an amazing season.  If you give yourself permission to disengage from the church world when your kids are young and stay home most of the time, it will bite you in the butt later.  We all can figure out some way to connect to the church at every season of life.  The kingdom of God is like this massive train that chugs forward with our without us.  If you get off, for any reason, trying to catch up is difficult.  Your spouse will have developed stronger leadership muscles in that time, and you may find it difficult to run at his pace or emotionally deal with his pressure if you have been on the sidelines for a few years.

I love how my friend, Lindsey Stewart, is navigating this season of ministry.  She is mom to a gorgeous toddler and wife to a church consultant.  He travels all over investing in churches.  She made the decision to take her little girl and go on the road with Brandon, her husband.  It absolutely would have been easier for her to stay home with the baby and let him go do his thing.  She made a decision that ministry isn’t his thing, it’s their family’s thing.

Equal effort means that both partners are running in their own lane, using their unique gifts to do the works God specifically designed them to do. Sometimes we girls wish our spouse were passionate about something else or gifted in a certain way. God designed him around what He wanted him to do.  Strong-arming your shy guy into getting on the stage is going to leave you both frustrated.  But if we chill out and encourage our spouse in what they do well, and help celebrate the wins right where they are, that’s where the magic happens.  We find mutual strength and support that comes from understanding we are in this together, both carrying the weight.

The roles don’t have to fit the traditional expectations.  It’s one of the amazing things about the church today.  So many different ways to serve the church and serve people are available to us.

  1. Joint Goal

Couples that successfully lead side-by-side have aligned their lives’ mission.  She is not out doing girl stuff while he does guy stuff, with different sets of friends.  It’s not my thing or his thing.  It’s our thing.  John and I have allowed vision to grow between us.  It has taken years for us to see how we complement each other and where our dreams align.  Sometimes it means deciding to care about what your husband is passionate about.  The end results are goals that are co-owned, one hundred percent.

Good conversations about this can start with questions like: What do you want your life’s legacy to be?  I want more than a comfortable standard of living and early retirement.  What do you want?

If I can align my vision with my husband, then the challenges that arise along the way are far less stressful.  We both know and want what is waiting on the other side.  The church never becomes the enemy or the tolerated competition.  We are in this together.  Our marriage kayak has one destination, and we can get to it because it’s the direction we are both paddling toward.

If we get all three of these things aligned: communication, equal effort, and a joint goal—there is nothing we can’t do.  My prayer for you is that your partnership will quickly speed you toward a goal of building Jesus’ kingdom here. Here’s to the making of more Priscilla and Aquila partnerships!

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Offensive, Scandalous Grace

by annarmorgan, posted in faith

TRIPPING UP

Grace, the Stumbling Stone
Grace, the Stumbling Stone

I am klutzy.  I trip over the tiniest variations in sidewalks, over cobblestones, up and down steps.  Usually I can awkwardly recover before I go all the way down, but it’s still embarrassing.  My sweet husband keeps count of the number of times I stumble when we are out together.  I think I average 3-4 wobbles per outing.  I never set out to trip.  Usually when I do, it’s because I was distracted and not paying attention to my feet.  I hit a hazard that I just didn’t see, and boom—down I go.  It’s painful and humiliating.

Tripping is an accident that happens when I try to do too many things at once.  My husband doesn’t get annoyed with me when I fall down.  He doesn’t judge my ability to walk and shame me for falling.  He laughs a little when I stumble, but he always grabs my arm to stabilize me.  He gets concerned if I go all the way down.  He doesn’t walk away; he helps me back up.  I am, however, embarrassed and hoping no one else noticed.

Things are similar in our walk with Christ.  I don’t believe that Christians set out to sin; it’s an accident.  We trip over the place we didn’t see coming when we didn’t realize we were vulnerable.  Sometimes we just stumble and sometimes we go down hard.  Most of the time, these incidents are accidents, not a product of evil intentions.  The fact that someone hides their sin and got caught, however, is not an indicator that they purposefully, secretly, set out to sin.  It only means that they are embarrassed by it.  It’s a normal, human response.  This perspective should change how we deal with people.  Instead of pushing people away when they fall, we reach out to stabilize and to support.

The Bible says that grace itself is a stumbling stone.  When Jesus came, religious people didn’t see it coming.  They were caught up in appearances and in following the rules to earn moral superiority.   The free grace Jesus offered threw them for a loop.  “The Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; 31 but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. 32 Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. 33 As it is written: ‘See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.’” (Romans 9:30-33 NIV)

Jesus, grace embodied, is the ultimate stumbling stone.  There are parts of Jesus that can be really hard to understand.  There are things that God forgives that I have a very hard time forgiving.  It trips me up and I don’t even realize I have stumbled over grace.  Why would someone get a clean slate, free and forgiven, for major betrayals like adultery, or for swindling little old ladies?  Does God forgive a pedophile?  Does God forgive a murderer?  Is grace big enough to cover these things?  If Hitler repented on his deathbed and God decided to save him, my Jewish family would reject God because his grace is too inclusive.  Muslims who follow Sharia law reject Christianity because of grace.  It’s too loose, too free.  Things that we hold on to, God lets go of.  I’m happy for God’s grace to cover my junk, but sometimes grace looks like injustice when it covers someone else.  Grace can be a stumbling stone.

We each carry the weight of our own failures.  Most of us have secret places in our past, distant or recent, where we tripped and fell, but we keep them hidden because we are embarrassed by the errors.  These things can make us feel under qualified to take our place serving or leading in the church.  Do those things disqualify us from connecting to the church and sharing Jesus?

NAUGHTY NAUGHTY GIRLS

I noticed something truly interesting in the genealogy of Jesus.  Matthew wrote his gospel to the Jews, to prove to them that Jesus was the promised Messiah.  He rattled off the genealogy of Jesus at the beginning of his book because where Jesus came from mattered to Jewish people.  There are some truly illustrious men in that list—superstars like Abraham, King David, and King Jehoshaphat.  The ladies that got a mention, however, are decidedly less so.  They are kind of a who’s who of the naughty girls of the Bible, starting with Tamar, the girl who pretended to be a prostitute so she could score a one-night stand with her father-in-law, Judah.  She wanted her father-in-law to get her pregnant.  Shocking!  Then there is Rahab, the prostitute and treacherous turncoat, followed by Ruth, the shameless woman who snuck into a man’s camp in the dark and slept next to him to force him to marry her.  These are Jesus’s great-grandmas.  The virgin Mary has a lily white image, but even she was a bit of rebel if you think about it.  She would have had a sketchy reputation, having gotten pregnant and giving birth before marrying Joseph.  If Mary had been my daughter, I would have married her off as soon as possible and said as little as possible, hoping people didn’t add up the months.  Mary must have wanted to make sure that everyone knew Jesus wasn’t Joseph’s son.  That’s pretty edgy.

The Bible doesn’t explain why these are the women included in Jesus’s pedigree.  There must have been other wives that lived good, tidy lives who didn’t get a mention.  God must have included these girls in the recorded lineage of Jesus for a reason.  Perhaps it is to tell us that he doesn’t pass over girls who have made mistakes; who have stumbled trying to navigate life.  Even the girl with most checkered past can be a God-carrier.  The scandal and the babies that resulted from those scandalous relationships resulted in the most gracious perfect gift to mankind.  It makes no sense; it’s a stumbling stone, but our failures and our foibles don’t disqualify us from serving up Jesus to the world around us.

I know some of you may feel an obligation to challenge this.  There are some pretty stern passages throughout 1 Corinthians about people who sin, and some strong requirements for the people who lead in the book of Timothy.  Yes, those who lead are judged to a higher standard.  Yes.  But are those leaders any less entitled to the same grace we enjoy?  Or is their need for grace a stumbling stone for you?

WHEN LEADERS FALL

I’ve watched a few Olympic races.  Sometimes, the racer makes an error and falls.  The sportscaster will always replay the big moment in slow motion.  They show the misstep and the athlete going down, mouth open, arms and legs flailing.  Racers nearby get tripped up in the churning limbs, and the massive train wreck results in a jumble of bodies and injuries on the ground.

This is what happens when Christian leaders stumble.  Usually their error affects the people closest to them, and can cause real pain for the people closest to them.  When they stumble, they cause other people to stumble.  Untangling those train wrecks and nursing the injuries is not a small matter.  Every fallen leader has to carry the responsibility for this.  It’s the getting back up part that I am chewing on.  Jesus gives grace freely to each one of us.  It’s very clear that none of us are perfect yet, no matter what position we hold.  Do those mistakes disqualify fallen leaders for future leadership?  If we don’t actually get back up but stay committed to our funk, clearly it does.

In church, no one has any obligation to stay or to serve or to give.  People can leave at any time and go find another church.  People only follow us to the extent that they respect us.  If your life is a visible mess, people will not follow you.  Ergo, you are disqualified from leadership because you are leading no one, because no one will follow you.  I wonder if the qualifications for leadership that Paul gave to Timothy have more to do with this practical reality than anything else.  We all require the grace of Jesus to stand righteous—every one of us.  Our own righteousness did not qualify us for leadership to begin with, so it can’t later either.

God made a point by including only flawed women in his lineage.  I wonder if Tamar will be embarrassed when I meet her in heaven.  Out of her whole life’s story, the one snapshot that got included was her scandalous baby-making endeavor.  Her story makes me feel pretty good about my flubs being redeemable.  Our journey of grace doesn’t have to be a private one.  If we are willing, our grace journey can show others the way, providing a pathway people can follow.

People root for the underdog.  People love a comeback story.  People will follow a fallen leader that gets back up and learns from their mistakes.  God’s grace covered their sin the minute they put it under the blood of Jesus.  Will his grace be a stumbling stone for us, or a point of victory?

On Church and Change

by annarmorgan, posted in Leadership

NEW VERSUS NORMAL

In the fourteen years that I helped put together church services for Family Christian Center, we did some crazy out-there stuff.  Trying to describe to new friends what my role was like is almost comical.  People listen to me talk about the animals and their excretions, the Thriller zombies, and shooting arrows into screens and their first reaction is usually to laugh.  Some of the risks we have taken paid off with highly effective services, and some have made for great stories later.  HA!  Brooke, our fourteen-year-old, travels with us now after growing up at Family Christian Center.  For her, all these things that sound extreme to others are just normal life.  In her world, it’s just how you do church.  If you don’t have a city bus on stage, miniature horses, or human torches, she’s a little bored.  At least blow something up!  It sounds over the top, but she is growing up to a new normal in church life.

Everyone who grows up in church or gets saved in church has an idea of what they believe church should be like.  Usually it is very connected to the first spiritual experience we had in church.  The atmosphere where we first felt a God connection often defines our preferences for the rest of our lives.  We get resistant to anyone who tries to change what we enjoyed so much.  Sometimes it’s the number of songs being sung, or the length or content of the preaching that we get hung up on.  Interestingly enough, however, what seems traditional to you today was radically new to someone else in the previous generation!

The form of church services themselves has changed dramatically throughout history.  In the Old Testament, God spent entire books of the Bible explaining in great detail exactly how he wanted his people to worship him.  He gave them specific instructions about everything, from the ceremonies to the size of the room and the decorations, with no room for personal freedom or creativity at all in the expression of it.  As the years went along, it become more and more apparent that it just wasn’t working.  Throughout the books of prophecy, God expressed his dissatisfaction with the way people were worshipping.  They did the rituals well enough, but their heart wasn’t in it.  God wanted more.

THE IRRELEVANT DEBATE 

When Jesus came, something incredible happened to the way humanity interacts with divinity.  There is a fascinating conversation that Jesus had with a Samaritan woman that changed the way we do church forever.  It reversed everything that humans understood about the way God wanted to be worshipped.  Jesus began this conversation with some small talk and then abruptly switched gears by reading this woman’s mail and telling her he knew about her checkered past.  After she got over her surprise, she took advantage of the moment to ask what for her was a very pressing question.

“19 The woman said to Him, ‘Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.’ 21 Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. 24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.’”  (John 4:19-24)

This is an over-simplified explanation of a complicated history, but I think it will help you understand the premise for her question.  Bear with me for a moment.  Moses made the Tabernacle per God’s request when the Jews wandered the desert for forty years.  It was a portable church venue essentially—a tent.  Whenever they stopped for a few days, the Tabernacle was set up, and when it was time to leave, it all packed up and came with.  Once they settled in what is now Israel, the Tabernacle was permanently set up on Mount Gerazim because there was no longer any need to move it around.  The Jews would go up this mountain to worship God.  When David came to power generations later, he built himself an impressive palace in Jerusalem.  He felt guilty that he had such a nice place and God still lived in this old tent.  He decided to built a temple, which his son, Solomon, wound up building.  After they finished the temple, they moved the Ark of the Covenant, which housed the presence of God, from the tent on Mount Gerazim to the new temple.  Some of the Jews were very offended by this move.  After all, their ancestors had been worshipping on that mountain for generations!  They believed that the change was wrong.  These Jews continued to worship on Mount Gerazim, even after the ark was no longer there.  They became known as the Samaritans, and this difference of religious opinion divided them for hundreds of years from the Jews who worshipped in the Temple.  What this Samaritan woman was asking was this: Since you, Jesus, seem to be in God’s inner circle, please resolve this debate once and for all and tell us what God wants!

Jesus’s response was incredibly radical.  He told the Samaritan woman that she was asking the wrong question.  God couldn’t care less where they worshipped.  What really mattered to God was the authenticity of the heart behind the worship.  Jesus was saying that for the first time in the history of humanity, the form did not matter anymore.  This was a complete change!  The focus of worship was no longer on ritual and tradition, but based on emotional and spiritual connection first before any spiritual expression.  Jesus was saying that the way you worship, the mechanics of it, is irrelevant.  God had been given form and procedure for thousands of years, but what he really wanted was something that was heartfelt, not just a duty.  God wanted people who would worship him from their spirit, or from the very essence of their identity, and they would worship truthfully, authentically.  He changed the paradigm of the way worship would happen forever!  In essence, as long as our services are leading people toward connection with an genuine God moment, pretty much anything goes.  There is no formula, no set anything!

That day, something fundamentally changed about the way we connect to God.  It went from thousands of years of sameness to several thousand years of never the same.  Since that conversation, church worship has been consistently changing so that it always reflects a fresh creative expression of our hearts toward him.  Every generation since then has done church a little bit differently.  Today, the expressions of Christian worship all across the world are incredibly diverse.  Islam is the opposite.  No matter where a Muslim is in the world, they worship the same way.  They face Mecca, get down on their knees and pray five times a day—same prayers, same locations, the same way.  Jews are still caught up in form.  I read an article recently about how the Jews have been sneaking up onto the Temple mount to pray recently.  The third holiest Muslim site, a giant mosque, occupies that space currently.  They are willing to risk their lives trying to honor their worship tradition.

CHANGE IN CHURCH

It’s human to love our traditions.  Christians can easily get so caught up in what is familiar that it can become a lid to our creativity.  Instead of a foundation to grow on, it becomes a lid.  Even in the most creative environments, we easily get comfortable in what we have always known, connected to the ritual of doing things the way we have always done them.  It is possible to be so captivated by our history that we miss the freedom that we have to create fresh moments that help our people truly connect in worship.  To Jesus, the benchmark for quality services is that people have authentic God-connection moments.  We have no guarantees that what worked ten years ago is still going to work today.  Every new generation will worship God a little bit differently.

As a young pianist, my teacher emphasized to me that good practice establishes strong neural pathways.  The more I play a song correctly, the easier it is to do it the same way the next time.  The upside of this is that it gets easier to play it well.  The downside is that change becomes more and more difficult if I am playing something wrong.  My family listened to me play a song over and over and over and they would get incredibly sick of hearing that song.  If people are listening to the same song over and over, they get burnt out on it after a few months.

Churches that want to provide quality experiences for their people spend enormous amounts of time, energy and resources getting it right.  Our teams practice carefully to give the best experience we know how to do.  Some of us have gotten really good at it!  Unfortunately, if we do church the same way every week, the same two things happen.  The first is that we will find it harder and harder to change the way we get together corporately, and the second is that people begin to disconnect from their experience because it feels stale and overplayed.  If we allow this to happen, we will miss the new generation.  Bands that have been successful over many years learned how to reinvent themselves again and again.  Most artists aren’t able to do this and have a few years in the sun, then fade back into obscurity.  If we don’t intentionally reinvent the way we do church, particularly for well-established, older churches, we will wind up in the same boat.

Dying churches are full of older people and shrinking every year as they die.  It’s essential that we build change into our church cultures.  It’s very easy to slip into the habit of making decisions based on what we know will work, what we know our teams can pull off to minimize risk.  The bigger and older we get, the harder church leaders find change to be because of fear of losing what has been built over many years of hard work.  We find comfort in our routines, and what was once radical has become traditional.

So what needs to change?  Some things shouldn’t change at all.  Keep certain things central.  The apostles devoted themselves to doctrine.  We have to make sure we are getting it right.  It really bothers me that there are some GenX leaders are moving away from the idea of the Bible being inspired.  We don’t adapt the truths of the gospel around popular opinion. Right and wrong, sin and salvation, the cross and resurrection, the Holy Spirit and his power, the truth of the Bible—these things are foundational. The Sundays we build are only as strong as we build these foundations.

THE MILLENIALS ARE COMING

We have to watch this generation carefully to learn how they connect.  I’ve done some research and some personal observation to arrive at some thoughts about the value systems of Millenials, but these are certainly up for debate.  Purely to prime the pump of your thinking and to get the conversation going, here are my thoughts about what is valuable to Millenials, or GenY.

 

Connection to the past:  Millenials tend to get excited about old buildings being revived, old instruments revived, or old clothing revived.  Hipster culture has reconnected to folk music roots.  Churches are taking old cathedrals and renovating and reviving them.  Vintage instruments are wildly popular.  Reviving old furniture or homes is huge—there are multiple reality shows about this.  Millenials have a value for legacy and history as a point of personal identity.  Perhaps this is because of the homogenization of the cultures of the world.

Value for environmental responsibility:  We can’t ignore this as a church.  Millenials value this responsibility as significantly as they value fiscal responsibility or family responsibility.  This translates in to recycle bins in church, or community gardens and local markets in church parking lots, or composting in church kitchens.

Life is less compartmentalized:  Most people take their work with them wherever they go.  They take work to church, and they take home to work, building communities together that do life together on a broad spectrum.  We don’t go on vacation with the neighbors anymore; we go on vacation with work friends, with the community we connect with that has shared values and interests—and there is a little community for every interest under the sun.  The Millenials are mowing the parks of Detroit.  This should be a government responsibility, but they don’t have a problem crossing over this line.  As the church, we have to figure out how to make church less a Sunday event and more integrated into people’s daily habits.

Intimacy and community:  In a digital age where we are connected to hundreds shallowly online, Millenials crave the intimacy of face-to-face personal relationship. Their relationships have been reduced to a like button.  They desire genuine connection instead of anonymity.  They love being part of a team where everyone is comfortable with each other, not a stiff hierarchy where people are in competition all the time

Millenials aren’t interested in stereotypes:  They do cultural mash-ups all the time in music, in fashion, in art, and in relationships.  We can’t be afraid to cross all kinds of cultural barriers and be inclusive.

Honesty:  Millenials hate pretension or fakiness.  No one has everything a hundred percent together, and authenticity matters,  They don’t like being impressed or schmoozed, and can smell an agenda a mile away.  If we want them to come to our church, we can’t pretend we like them.  We have to actually like them!  They don’t like feeling pressured into community,  It has to happen organically, because people have something in common and genuinely like each other and want to share their lives.  Shared interest connect groups have been pretty successful for this reason.

High value for personal freedom:  They want the flexibility to do life uniquely their way.  Whether it’s in creative expression or in a work environment, micromanagement is the life sucker.  Google is the gold standard for work environments.  If we want to lead young high performers serving in our church, we have to give them some space.  They want to get the job done well their own way.

Cause-driven work:  Millenials want to know that what they are doing is a piece of a larger, important work for humanity. They want to know why their work matters, beyond just bringing home a paycheck. Hair salons are more commonly hosting free makeovers for underprivileged high school proms.  Restaurant owners contribute to community gardens where people can collectively grow fresh produce to give away to anyone who needs it.  Journalists tell stories that expose injustices to inspire change. The “social entrepreneur” is a new industry according to Forbes magazine, and it’s a multi-billion dollar industry.

Smaller venues:  Apparently the American shopping mall is in decline.  Outdoor village-like environments that feel like shopping at boutiques in the city are on the rise.  Millenials find connecting and doing life difficult in giant environments.  Huge venues for one-off events will never go away, but more intimate environments appeal.  They don’t like being crammed into a crowd or standing in a long line or sitting right next to (touching) a stranger.  Milllenials are building smaller venue multi-campus churches with a great community feel, many services and many options.

Financial responsibility:  This generation has grown up in the great recession.  They have seen the credit crunch and are far more wary of debt. They saw their baby boomer parents be under water in their home loans, owing more than their property was worth.  They are less willing to take on multi-million dollar building loans or pay a higher cost per square foot for a larger auditorium.  Openness about financial decisions is of much higher value.  This doesn’t mean they want to control the way their church is spending money, just that they don’t like secretiveness. 

Increased value for quality hand craftsmanship:  Millenials appreciate things that are not just mass-produced.  Pinterest and Etsy have boomed.  For a season, churches felt very corporate, and looked like business buildings.  I think that the churches of tomorrow will reflect this value for craftsmanship.  I’ve seen it in things like hand-carved beautiful wooden pulpits and guitar stands, or handcrafted lighting fixtures in church lobbies.

If these qualities are part of this generation, then we have to think through our systems and presentations from this perspective.  I’m not suggesting that we all need to grow beards and wear vintage Doc Martins.  We just have to think about our methods through these value systems, and reexamine our processes.  If Millenials don’t enjoy feeling pressured into an assimilation system, then maybe we should look at how we word our communication to new guests, or how frequently we are communicating to them.  Is it too heavy?  Does it feel like we genuinely want relationship with them, or is it overly formal and generic?

RETHINKING TO CONNECT BETTER

We need to rethink things.  If we don’t purposefully change by taking risks in areas we don’t understand well, we will stagnate.  It’s not about being cool and trendy.  We have to learn how to make the gospel come to life for every new generation.  Statistics have been telling us for quite some time that the vast majority of Christians made their decision to follow Christ as a young person.  This means that the most important God experiences in church are happening in the lives of young people.  They are important because they are the first of a lifetime of moments.  As the church, we must prioritize and design these moments and design around young people.

What’s tricky is that currently the baby boomers are for the most part leading the church.  To reach young people requires the older generation to let go of their preferences and their ideas about what is cool, and yield style and method to younger preferences.  Boomers, don’t get resentful about this.  I am GenX, looking between Boomers and Millenials.  It won’t be many years before the kids in children’s ministry will be telling me what is cool.  Give those Millenials thirty years, and it will be their turn to yield their preferences!  It is the way Jesus set up the church—each subsequent generation must change.

Just as significantly, we need the older generations.  Boomers have the leadership experience, the skills, and the emotional maturity that churches desperately need.  Just because we are changing does not eliminate the place that older generations have in the church.  Every part is valuable.  Don’t feel excluded or discarded because of the changes that need to happen.  Making space for the preferences of a younger generation does not eliminate our ability to participate in or to lead the process.  It just means that we reinvent our contribution.

We love our traditions and routines because they feel comfortable and familiar, like an old warm fuzzy blanket in front of a fire on a cold night.  They aren’t bad!  It’s just that no one else wants to curl up under your ratty old blanket with you!  It is your blanket, unique to you.  Traditions are the same way.  We can’t expect someone else to love them.  It’s incumbent on the older generations to be willing to change and give way to the styles and methods of the younger generation.  My husband John says when he was younger, his mentors were twenty years older, but now they are twenty years younger.  As leaders, church isn’t for us. It’s our opportunity to present Jesus to others.

Don’t be resentful, because give them twenty years and they will be in the same boat.  We can choose to love what’s fresh because it keeps us young.  More than that, it keeps our heart’s connection to Jesus fresh and active.  Let’s have a yes in our heart to whatever new thing our pastor wants to try.  Let’s keep measuring what we are doing, watching carefully for when systems are getting stale.  Sometimes more than a patch of a new leader is required, and we need an overhaul because that process just isn’t working any more.  We have no guarantee that because something is working now it will always work.

Above all, let’s ask God to give us his heart toward people.  The Bible says that Jesus looked at people and felt compassion.  He can keep us focused on reaching others rather than our own preferences.  If we get our head up long enough to watch people, culture, and trends, we will get genuinely interested.  People know when it’s real!  Let’s build teams that have inclusive spirits, reaching for new people and new ideas.

 

The Purple Velvet Hammer

by annarmorgan, posted in faith, Family, Leadership

TheVelvetHammer

My husband is a boxing and MMA fan.  This means that from time to time, to be a loving wife, I am subjected to a few hours of wincing and mild nausea.  Every so often, there will be a pair of girls who jump into the cage and try to tear each other apart.  It just feels awkward to watch them going at it—sensitive body parts flashing across the camera in between blood sprays, swinging hair and swelling faces.  I do not enjoy it.

I’m not the only one.  Female fighters aren’t really embraced by womankind.  Fighting is not really a feminine characteristic, unless its in defense of your babies.  Most girly images are soft and gentle and sweet.  Femininity and confrontation just seem to be an uneasy marriage.

Whether it’s a friendship that is going sour or a team member that is sliding further away from their commitment, we all face potential confrontations at some point or another.  We have two choices.  Walk away, or have the awkward and costly conversation.  Most of us girls lean away from smell of a fight and want to back away slowly.  The tension in those conversations is stressful and unpleasant, and we don’t want to make things worse than they already are.

It can be tricky finding the sweet spot between being a pushover and being a b****.

In Judges four, the Bible described two women who went to battle.  The first was Deborah, a judge in Israel.  In Deborah’s time, the people began to have a defeatist attitude.  They had been defeated by Jabin, king of the Canaanites, and as victims of these circumstances, their warriors began to be half-hearted and lazy.  They did not even attempt to defend what they had, much less move forward.  Deborah stood up as a prophet and rallied an army to go and win back their independence.  She literally went into battle with the guys, but she was still fully female.  She is referred to as a mother in Israel, not as Xena, the warrior princess.

The Bible describes four things that Deborah did as a foundation for her leadership.  We can use these principles today to help us find the right balance between strength and sweetness.

In the time of Shamgar son of Anath,

    and in the time of Jael,

Public roads were abandoned,

    travelers went by backroads.

Warriors became fat and sloppy,

    no fight left in them.

Then you, Deborah, rose up;

    you got up, a mother in Israel.

God chose new leaders,

    who then fought at the gates.

—Judges 5:6-8 MSG

Be willing to mother more than your own gorgeous rugrats.

The Bible says Deborah rose up as a mother in Israel.  She got involved in people’s lives at the level a mother would.  Deborah spent somewhere around 30-40 years sitting under a palm tree nearly every day, available to chat with people and help decide their disputes.  Mothers are involved—loving, looking after, training and directing.  They get incredible joy out of their children’s successes, and are willing to sacrifice for them.

For us to lead well, we have to be as involved as a mom is in people’s lives and be willing to be accessible.  The level of our confrontation needs to be at the level of connection we have to people.  As a leader, I have to be able to recognize at what level I’m leading an individual and moderate my confrontation to the level of my leadership.  If someone is distantly connected to me, the tension of heavy confrontation is going to tear the fragile threads that connect us.  For someone else that is in my world daily and I’ve invested heavily in, the complex web of our relationship can handle more pressure.  It takes time and investment to earn people’s trust.

Let God rise up new leaders around you.

Deborah’s leadership produced more leaders.  God chose new leaders who fought in place of the old, tired ones.  The people who came with us this far may not go the next leg of the journey with us.  Confronting half-heartedness in old leadership is risky—those team members may not make it through the conversation.  If we haven’t made room for new leadership, the thought of losing those old leaders may make us hesitate to confront where we should.  Making room for new leadership and trusting new leaders isn’t easy for us.

My Chinese sister-in-law, Ying, observed to me recently that “best friend” to Americans really means, “oldest faithful friend.”  We place high value on relationships that have stood the test of time.  The process of building and leaning on new relationships is long hard work full of awkward conversations.  Our attitude about that journey makes all the difference.  We can be open and engaging, or keep our world small and insular.

Be willing to rise up and confront sloppiness.

More times than I can count, I have been up late at night, thinking or worrying about a situation that needs addressing.  I can try to ignore it, but it just wriggles in the back of my brain trying to get my attention.  In my early years of ministry, I relied on my husband to do the confronting for me.  He would sense my distress or discomfort and would rally to my defense.  The thing is, when he got involved, it never actually helped people buy into my leadership at any greater level.  Those moments established his authority and his leadership—not mine, even though the conversation was with someone in my area of responsibility.

If I am going to wear the title of leader, I have to do what Deborah did, and get dirty with the conflict.  It’s up to me to sort things out, as uncomfortable as it may be and as unprepared as I may feel.  If we don’t confront at all, we will hesitate to give people responsibilities that really matter in case they mess it up.  If we over-confront, people resist our leadership.

I frequently get asked the question, “What should I confront or not confront in my new team members?”  Confront new team members and new leaders at the level of their commitment.  This requires clear conversations about expectations early on, from attitudes to preparation.  Tension arises when people don’t deliver on what they have committed.  Deborah confronted the warriors who gave themselves permission to become fat and lazy.  They were not doing what they had committed to do—defend Israel.

If someone committed ten hours and is delivering five, have a conversation about it.  If they have committed to come to a rehearsal prepared, knowing their songs, and they don’t; let’s talk about it.

Be the purple velvet hammer

So how strong should we be in those conversations?  How intense should we be?

Deborah leaned on the people’s commitment to God in her conversations.  The way we serve reflects on our relationship with Jesus.  I do not confront anyone without reminding him or her about why we serve.

I love the story of Jael, another fierce chick from Judges five.

Most blessed among women is Jael,

The wife of Heber the Kenite;

Blessed is she among women in tents.

25 He asked for water, she gave milk;

She brought out cream in a lordly bowl.

26 She stretched her hand to the tent peg,

Her right hand to the workmen’s hammer;

She pounded Sisera, she pierced his head,

She split and struck through his temple.

27 At her feet he sank, he fell, he lay still;

At her feet he sank, he fell;

Where he sank, there he fell dead.

 –Judges 5:24-27 NKJV

Jael was the purple velvet hammer.  She was gentle and hospitable, and when it came time, she handled her business without any excess drama.  We can be purple velvet hammers too—soft and pretty, but with an iron core.  We don’t have to confront harshly or argue.

The point of confrontation is not that I’m right and you’re wrong.  Good confrontation offers a truth, a tool that will help you become who you already want to be.  We can be gracious in these conversations because every one of us has blind spots that need someone else’s coaching to overcome.  As female leaders, our femininity can be disarming and help lower defenses so that the truth can be welcomed.  We can tell people difficult truths, but with a lovely smile and a hug.

Deborah’s song encourages us to be like the sun. It’s warm, bright, and nourishing, but it’s also unrelenting and incredibly strong.

But let those who love Him be like the sun

When it comes out in full strength.

 —Judges 5:31 NKJV

 

Girls, we can be both strong and sweet!

Why Getting Paid by Your Church Doesn’t Make Serving Easier

by annarmorgan, posted in faith, Leadership

When I was a little girl, I watched the woman who played the piano on stage and the ladies who led worship and knew that’s what I wanted to do.  Before I even knew that you needed money to live, I wanted the church to be my profession.  I started serving in church as a little girl in the children’s choir, and I never looked back.  For all of us who love the church and have been serving and leading for years, joining a church staff seems like a natural next step.  What could be better than spending all our professional time building what we love and serving Jesus with our lives?

It’s hard to consider getting paid cash money to do something awesome as a bad thing, but sometimes, the money doesn’t make your serving easier, but harder.  I have been privileged to chat with many people who have taken ministry jobs for the first time, and without fail, after the honeymoon is over, there is a transitional season that isn’t easy.  In fact, sometimes it’s so rough that people don’t make it.  I know more than one person who has come on and off their church’s staff multiple times because the transition was so difficult that they didn’t make it the first time around!

There are unique challenges for churches both from hiring from the inside and hiring from the outside.  When I first started in full-time ministry fifteen years ago, it required a move half-way across the country.  My husband was a college buddy of the pastor’s son, so we were an outside hire, not an inside hire.  Most churches would prefer to be able to hire one of their own if they can.  People we have gone the journey with and built trust and culture with slip so naturally into staff roles.  There is an easy dynamic of trust that happens when a church hires one of its own.  There are, however, inevitably some important mental transitions that we have to navigate if we accept a staff position at our own church.

These are some of these challenging thoughts that new staff, hired from within their church, will likely have to grapple with.  I have come across these struggles in leaders who answered the call to ministry both at home and in the churches that we work with. They are challenging and might give you pause if being hired by your church has been your goal.

1. A loss of freedom and control: the transition from, “I control the level of my serve;” to “My participation is mandated.”

2. A potential loss of morale: the transition from, “I get to; I want to;” to “I have to.”

3. A change in relationship: the transition from, “You’re my pastor;” to “You’re my boss.”

4. A loss in finances: the transition from, “If I could just get paid to do ministry, life would be just amazing;” to “What?! This is how much I’m getting paid to do this much work?”

5. An increase in responsibility: the transition from, “I’m a supporter;” to “I’m responsible.”

6. A loss of confidence: the transition from, “I’m the best volunteer we have; I rock this;” to “I’m super green, unsure of myself, and intimidated by successful leaders who are now my peers.”

7. An increase in pressure: the transition from, “I get celebrated as a volunteer;” to “I have to celebrate volunteers that I need, but I don’t feel celebrated.  In fact, I feel pressure now from my leader like I’m not good enough.”

8. An increase in frustration: the transition from, “Everything this church does is fantastic;” to “Can I get a little help around here??”

9. A decrease in sanctuary: the transition from, “This is my happy place;” to “This is a demanding place.”

10. A shift in motivation: the transition from, “I serve Jesus because he died for me;” to “Jesus is my career.”

(This one is subtle, but WAY important in how we view church.  When your sense of professional accomplishment depends on the church, it’s easy to let our motives slip from where it all began if we are not vigilantly guarding our heart.)

11. A loss of personal value: the transition from, “I feel valued and respected in my career by my pastor;” to “I feel owned and less valued because I work for you.”

All of the people I have talked to who joined their church’s staff have felt at least one of these things in the transitional season.  That season can last differing amounts of time for different people.  None of these feelings or thoughts of themselves are shameful, and none of them are disqualifiers if you have felt them.  They do, however, require that we process through them with Jesus and with our pastors.  If we let these thoughts and feelings fester, they will cause us to do and say things that will disqualify us.  Ministry is not easy.  Many, many pastors don’t survive it.  If we will work through these challenges and pop out the other side, things do get much better!  There is nothing more fulfilling than doing full-time ministry if we are called to it!

We just have to be very sure that God has called us, and to be very real with ourselves about the demands of the lifestyle.  Regular heart checks and motive checks are vital.  If our ministry motive is to build our personal profile or make our mark in history, we will wind up as ministry road kill.  These motives will cause us to fall, and our hearts to be trampled, if we don’t keep love for Jesus and his heart for his people at the center of what we do.

Many of the most effective leaders I know are also volunteers.  It doesn’t take a church check with your name on it to make your contribution valuable, and it doesn’t take a staff title to validate your ministry.  The apostle Paul worked many times without pay and maintained his business as a tentmaker, and he never viewed pay as any measure of his ministerial success.

“7 For you know that you ought to imitate us. We were not idle when we were with you. 8 We never accepted food from anyone without paying for it. We worked hard day and night so we would not be a burden to any of you. 9 We certainly had the right to ask you to feed us, but we wanted to give you an example to follow.” 1 Thessalonians 3:7-9 NLT

For all of you who are volunteering the equivalent of a part-time job or even a full-time job, bravo!  You inspire and encourage so many, even if you don’t hear it often.  There are significant rewards for the level of service you give.  I am one hundred percent convinced that when we make God’s kingdom a priority, he will make certain that our needs are more than met.  I volunteered thirty hours a week all through my teenage years.  God made sure that I got scholarships I didn’t deserve to more than pay for my college education.  I am so grateful!

I’m sure you are living in a blessed place because of your serve.  Those blessings may or may not be overt, but you can see them if you look for them.

“31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Matthew 6:31,33 NKJV

When we make a priority of building God’s house, he will build our house!

When Things are Bananas, Focus on the Fruit

by annarmorgan, posted in faith, Leadership

It’s inevitable. We all face seasons when life is less than peachy. Our leadership is producing nothing but lemons. All our pretty, pretty pleas for help must be lacking the cherry on top, because no one is responding. As hard as you try, you just can’t find that sweet spot; and all that hard work left you plum tired. Things are absolutely bananas!

Some time ago, I saw a funny-ish old episode of “Frasier” where the doctors Crane learn to ride bikes for the first time as adults. The brothers go to a local park to practice their new skill. Frasier is terrified of riding into hazards along the path. While he rides, he carefully focuses on the trees to make sure he doesn’t run into them. He’s so focused on them that sure enough, he rides right into exactly what he wanted to avoid! Whatever he focused on, he crashed into.

The same principle applies in life. When times are tough, what we are focused on makes all the difference. When we focus our attention and emotion on the potential hazards along the way, we crash land into the problems. Whatever we are focused on is what we are targeting. We can spend all our time running after fixing problems, and there is an endless succession of them! It leads to a terrible quality of life. When we are forced to continually react to and repair what is happening to us, we burn out.

We get through tough seasons by focusing on the right things. Jesus never called us to a life of misery! He said, “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:30) Life is better when most of our attention is focused on building vision rather than the problems. We need to keep the problems in our peripheral vision, but keep our focus on the things that move us forward. This means putting more energy and attention into what we are doing right than what we are doing wrong. Keep your eyes on the prize!

It’s easy to define wins if we are working toward a clear vision. We can only move forward if we have a target we are aiming for. It doesn’t matter how young or how old we are—if we don’t have a vision, it’s time to do some dreaming! If the dream seems derailed, then it’s time to pick back up and focus on what we can do rather than what we can’t.

While every person needs unique goals, there is also a universal mission that Jesus gave the church collectively. Our mission is to help make new followers of Christ while we move forward on our own journey. That journey is a multi-step process and takes a lifetime to complete. Each step forward in that process is producing what the Bible calls fruit. Every decision that is a step toward Jesus is worth celebrating! It doesn’t matter how far along we are, as long as we are moving!

Fruit comes in all shapes and sizes, but it is all fruit! My fruit will not necessarily look like your fruit. This doesn’t make either kind any less valuable. Jesus didn’t curse the fig tree because it wasn’t bearing strawberries. He cursed it because it had no fruit. It can be easy to devalue the fruit we are producing because we are too familiar with it. Sometimes we look into someone else’s garden plot and see the beautiful things being produced and get overwhelmed. We’ve been in it since the beginning—planting seeds, dealing with manure, watering it, and watching slow growth. It’s a whole lot of work! The fruit that comes out the other end can be very rewarding, or disappointing, if it’s not what we were hoping for.

Harvest seasons have historically always been time for celebration and thanksgiving. We have an entire American holiday around that theme! Next time you feel a little discouraged, look for your fruit. You will find it in the place you have been working hard and investing. It is incredibly valuable to God, and it’s a reason to celebrate!

Just For Girls, Just For Fun: A Look Into My Handbag

by annarmorgan, posted in faith, Leadership

Just For Girls, Just For Fun: A Look Into My Handbag

My top sixteen leadership-essential accessories that I keep with me in my handbag all the time:
(My handbag is pretty big.)
*left to right, top to bottom

1. Coverup, powder, mascara, lip color, eyeliner, and eyelash curler. You never know when you will need to stand in front of people and communicate. These things help your face stand out and look your best!

2. Hair spray. Useful for more than just hair! It also doubles as stain remover, bug spray, shoe polish, pet fur grabber (when sprayed on a cloth), run stopper, zipper stiffener, static eliminator, and lint remover.

3. Assortment of over-the-counter meds. Nervousness can kick in gut troubles of a wide variety, and being over-tired can cause headaches. When it’s Sunday and it’s game day, no one’s got time for that mess!

4. iPad & Bible app. You may prefer the paper version. I also have a small paper version that I used before the iPad days. This one is an absolute essential in church life and personal life both.

5. Planning Center app. This is the most useful app for managing church services that I have seen. I don’t know how we did church without it.

6. Starbucks Via packet. This is a backup for when there is no good coffee available and I really need to be alert. Sundays can be long days, and the Sunday afternoon nap is calling…

7. Tampon, Body/Clothing tape, & bobby pins. a. No explanation needed. b. We all have that really cute outfit that tends to slip on us. A little body tape will keep the gap between buttons closed while we wave our arms around on stage, keep the neckline above the cleavage, hold blouses over bra straps, & fix hems. Priceless. c. Quick hair repair or belt wiener fix.

8. Lip repair. After a long day of meetings where chances are I didn’t drink enough water, my lips are screaming. To keep talking, lube them up.

9. Ear buds. Put in your ear buds, throw on some worship music, and the world is suddenly miles away. When I need a break, or a moment alone with Jesus while in public, I reach for these.

10. Hand cream. This has become weirdly more necessary as I have gotten older. Shaking hands with dry hands is chafing and unpleasant. Shaking lots of hands requires hand cream.

11. Portable fragrance. Hugs are just not good when someone smells bad. We try to be like ducks on Sunday–gliding smoothly on the surface, but underneath paddling like mad. All that paddling can produce some scents that I need to address before getting up close and personal with people.

12. Superglue. There are endless uses for this. Shoe repair, small electronics repair, nail repair, clothing repair, jewelry repair.

13. Gum or mints. Whenever I’m going to be talking closer than two feet away, this is a necessary precaution.

14. Fisherman’s Friend lozenges and Throat Coat tea. For speakers and singers, these are invaluable. When I am fighting off a cold or infection of some sort, these can help pull a little more life out of my voice.

15. Hand sanitizer. Absolutely essential for all ministry roles. Ideally sanitize after every service to keep germ-free. Pastors and leaders get sick too often from hand to hand contact.

16. Evernote. I have had multiple occasions when I had to be instant in season speaking at a meeting somewhere. Evernote keeps all my messages carefully catalogued and easily accessible when I need to pull on something I’ve done in the past. I’m always prepared when I have Evernote.