Relationships in work are always the key to opening the door towards success or destruction.  Get too close and the level of work can take a back seat.  Someone might think they can get too much more for less because of the relationship. Get too close and it could ruin a marriage and a family.

But stay too far and mistrust and selfishness takes the driver’s seat.  Each side can have this feeling that the other one is out to get them. Stay too far and the common understanding of how each are important to the task tends to fly out the window.  One begins to believe they are the important part and deserves ___________.

Knowing we’re all on the team together goes a long way.  At Fellowship Church, we’ve placed a high importance on our team leaders.  Team leaders, for us, are those working with Ministry Directors whom work with the Senior Pastors.  Ministry Directors oversee a specific area of ministry like Family Ministries, Life Groups, Sunday Morning, Web Campus, and First Impressions.  Team Leaders are the field specialists so to speak.  I believe these team leaders are a key towards success or destruction.  They truly are the go-between from the rest of the volunteers/attendees to the pastors.

We ask that leaders are prepared to provide maximum energy, maximum help, and maximum effort.  They need to be excited about, promote and participate in the church culture.  They need to build relationships with team volunteers.  They need to seek ways to ensure the team of volunteers succeed.  They help train the volunteers.  And because they are doing the tasks week in and week out, they know better than anyone better and new ways to accomplish the ministry.  They then accomplish all these things with their respective Directors.

The team leaders and directors need to have a good working relationship for this all to work.  And the directors and senior pastors need to have a good working relationship as well for this all to work.

It’s not a perfect system and it’s not without issues.  It certainly isn’t a way to separate people from the pastors.  It’s goal is to allow the pastors more time and ability to meet the needs of the congregation. It allows us all to have better working relationships, which leads to success.  And success for us is connecting and leading people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. When we fail, they fail; and when they fail, we fail as well.

In the land of unseen church, there are magical people, who do magical things, who need no food and have everything they need because of their magical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  In some sense, this is how I thought pastors were when I was a teenager in our youth ministry.  Many people, if we’re honest with ourselves, think similarly now.  It’s not because we’re stupid, it’s just because we just don’t know.

Even before I became a pastor myself, I didn’t really know what pastors do all week, and isn’t it true that we often only expect that they “perform” and “feed” the congregation their spiritual food for the week on this one day, Sunday?  But pastors know that getting fed once a week just isn’t enough for themselves.  That’s why there are small groups, bible studies, online messages, books, phone calls, lunch meetings, emails, facebook and anything else that can grab our attention for Jesus.  Feeding the congregation their spiritual food takes a lot of preparation in gathering the food, studying the food, knowing all there is to know about the food, knowing all there is to know about the audience eating the food, so that during the cooking and final presentation, all the bodies will be prepared to do every good work for God.

How does that happen? Well, pastors have to eat too. Pastors have to feed themselves by allowing themselves to be fed by other pastors, people in the church, books, the bible, and by listening to God.  I listen regularly to other pastors like Craig Groeschel of Lifechurch.tv, Andy Stanley of North Point Community Church, Perry Noble of Newspring Church, Francis Chan of Cornerstone Church and Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church.  I try to hold myself accountable to a bible reading plan (for me, it’s reading the bible through in a 3 yr plan).  I use resources like youversion.com, Logos Bible software, and BibleWorks to study the bible. Check out my page on the books that I’m reading.  I’m also part of a great life group that meets on Wednesdays.  I also have a few relationships with guys and my leaders that I try to get in connection with on a weekly basis who challenge me to keep it all in a real perspective.  And of course, you can’t overlook a good relationship with a wife who is growing in her faith as well to help keep the balance even stronger.

Obviously it seems like it takes a lot more work than first thought to not only lead a body of believers, but also to grow in their own personal relationship with God.  Maybe, just maybe, all of us need to find ways to eat more often.  Not to minimize or let the pastor off easy, but for our sake of our growth toward a healthy spiritual walk, do everything you can to supplement the diet.

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to speak about Honor.  Honestly, there was a lot of prep for me because I really never heard much about the study of the word.  Studying honor from a biblical sense brought much light to it that I think a lot of our culture including church-goers miss.

Often we love to think that honor is a deserved right.  Someone that is worthy of respect, responsibility and a reputation because of their integrity.  Honor then must be something that one earns.  Certainly, there are people and God who do amazing things that “deserve” the notice, but this isn’t what I believe honor is about.

Honor is letting someone see how valuable they are and doing so by giving something of your life away or by changing something about your life to reflect more of the honorable person.

In the Hebrew Old Testament, one of the words is Kebed which is also translated as famine, thunder, a loud cry, someone who is dull in eye sight, someone who refuses to respond to a message and the liver.  The liver gets rid of bad stuff from the body, helps build protein that provides functionality to the cells, and produces the necessary chemicals to break down food to create energy to keep the cells going strong.

Sounds to me like honor is the catalyst to help people gain respect, responsibility and a reputation. Sounds to me like honor is more about empowering the receiver to have functionality and purpose.  Supporting the weak and encouraging the young is something to me that is honorable for someone to do.  Making the elderly people feel energized by taking notice and listening to them to me is something that is honorable for someone to do.

And it seems to me that the way to get honor is to give it. Don’t give honor and you’re just…well, you fill in the blank.

For nearly 1500 years, liturgy such as Ash Wednesday and Lent and other sacramentals were a norm in all Christianity until the Reformation in the mid to late 1500’s.  For me, I grew up totally unaware of such traditions.  Certainly our Baptist church had it’s own traditions and traditions aren’t necessarily bad.  Each denomination or religion can make fun of the other one’s traditions.  Some of them are just funny, honestly: Pancake races on Shrove Tuesday?

Living in New England, I’m more aware of how liturgy has a place in many people’s upbringing and how that plays out in what they expect from a church. I’ve come to see both some advantage and disadvantages of traditions.  Sometimes I think we miss out on some of the advantages of doing liturgy.  Other times, I’m glad we try to get people to think of God outside of liturgy.  That’s really what it’s suppose to be about anyways, right?

Advantages:

• Help people set aside true time and remembrance on what God has done in times past.
• Helps bring the spiritual and the physical senses together to create a holistic feeling of being close to God.
• The more often you do something, the better you can get people excited about it and be organized around the event.

Disadvantages:

• Can cause people to trust in the traditional liturgy to give them spirituality.
• Can become more of a rehearsed action that is separated from truly thinking about it’s significance.
• Can become the “way things have to be” rather than changing it up to ensure the message is understood.

I’m sure there are more advantages and disadvantages? What are some that you can think of?

Paul in the New Testament tells us that all christians are “members of one body” and that when one suffers, we all should suffer with them as well as when one rejoices, we all should rejoice with them.  I saw this graphic this week from Persecution.com.  It shows 52 countries that Christians are persecuted or at least spread of the gospel comes with consequences.  Check out their site. Find ways to pray for and support the Christians in these countries.