I’ll Be Toast on Thursday! You?
December 22, 2008
Thursday is Christmas Day, and I am as excited about it as anyone gets. I remind our church all through the year how many days are left till Christmas.
One thing I’ve learned over the years though. When we do our Christmas Eve Celebrations on the actual night of Christmas Eve, I am almost worthless on Christmas Day.
You can deny it if you want, but it’s true for most of us in ministry leadership. It’s called Adrenal Letdown, and you can read a little more about it here. I’ve found it very freeing to be honest with myself and others about it. I fought it for too many years and wasted too much energy trying to figure out why I felt so funky the day after intense ministry and people time.
How do you deal with your adrenal letdown? What will you do with it on Christmas Day?
Strange Things We Do When God Moves
December 16, 2008
I was initially going to title this post “Lakeland Revival Learnings”, based on the recent revival/renewal/spiritual stirring that took place earlier this year in Lakeland, Florida. The meetings took place under the leadership of evangelist Todd Bentley. They ended when Bentley (who was the primary speaker at the revival meetings) left back in August and the meetings have since fizzled.
Just this week comes further revelation about why the revival meetings ended and what was happening behind the scenes. You can read the story here.
Sadly, stories like this are not limited to Lakeland’s Outpouring. All too often, sticky issues such as pride, arrogance, and self-aggrandization come into play for those leading such a move of God.
I write about this not for sensational purposes, but for educational reasons. As Pastors and Church Leaders, we have got to figure out how to set ourselves up for long term effectiveness even when the Spirit of God is moving in His power and force.
For some reason, when the supernatural occurs, we think it makes US supernatural too. In truth, the supernatural is ALWAYS about Jesus, not us. We do not all of a sudden have a life that is without its limits.
Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision, had a famous phrase that as he traveled the world while his family was at home, he believed God would answer his prayer. That prayer was, “God, I’ll take care of your little ones around the world if You’ll take care of my little ones at home.” Somewhere, Bob got his roles mixed up. He wasn’t God, and his kids needed him at home.
You can say all you want about the massive and great work that World Vision does today and I wouldn’t slight you one bit. But Bob’s kids missed their father, and one of his daughters ended up committing suicide.
If God used you for such a move of the supernatural, what would you do to make sure that self-care was a high standard for your life?
A Video Tell-All On Us Pastors?
November 29, 2008
ht: Anne Jackson
Dispelling Some Myths About Depression
November 21, 2008
Anne Jackson, author of the soon-to-be-released Mad Church Disease: Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic
I REALLY encourage you to go there and read it.
Leading On Empty
November 12, 2008
If you’re following Pastor For Life, you know we’ve been somewhat chronicling the story of Pastor Wayne Cordeiro through his recent heart surgery and his return to the pulpit following this encounter. I am a regular reader of his blog …. MentoringLeaders.com.
I was quite surprised and blessed when my original article here was used in its entirety to report Wayne’s surgery to the MentoringLeaders.com family. In the process, I’ve been able to contact Wayne, and he has agreed to do an interview with PastorForLife.org regarding his recent crisis and return to ministry.
However, I am very excited to also lead you to a couple of recent posts at MentoringLeaders.com that give a sneak peek of his soon-to-be-released book titled, “Leading On Empty”. He writes it out of his personal experience with burnout a few years ago.
Having survived burnout myself as a Pastor, it’s not often that we who go through this crisis end up with the privilege of continuing to serve the same congregation. Often, that’s because the burnout ended up leading to a moral failure of some sort that disqualified a Pastor’s ministry.
I have come to learn that there are MANY of us whose burnout does not lead to any kind of moral failure. Yet still, church leaders often assume that if the Pastor is experiencing burnout, there must be SOMEthing that’s not right that would damage the trust of the leaders or congregation in that Pastor to regain health and lead again. Most often, nothing could be further from the truth.
Wayne is one of the few who is opening his life and his story so that other Pastors might find help and wholeness on the road to healing. I encourage you to check out the Sneak Peek 1 and Sneak Peek 2 of “Leading On Empty”.
AND, stay tuned here at PastorForLife.org for our upcoming interview to learn more from Wayne’s story.
Pastor Wayne Cordeiro Returns To New Hope
October 29, 2008
This past weekend, Pastor Wayne Cordeiro returned to the pulpit for the first time since his recent heart surgery. You can read about that here.
This is a great opportunity to observe how a leader returns to ministry after a life-threatening crisis at the same time as determining how he will (or for some, IF he will) do life and ministry differently. For starters in this particular situation, it seems that at the very least, Wayne is coming back slowly.
You can watch the message he preached here called “Things We Must Do For Ourselves” in a very innovative manner. In the beginning, he mentions that the church will hear the message in this way over the next 4 weeks.
While New Hope has many campuses and they do much by satellite and live video feeds, whoever brings the message (primarily Wayne) almost always does so live at their main campus with FIVE services every weekend.
Wayne has already mentioned that his heart condition was somewhat the result of pushing too hard by preaching five services every weekend for many years. So …. what’s a mega-church (giga-church is a growing new term for churches of New Hope’s size) Pastor to do?
Well, Wayne’s first message back was a mixture of video and live speaking. The bulk of the message he actually preached on video, which was done very creatively.
It was well-mixed with Wayne speaking the message and some illustrative dramatic and musical elements. Wayne introduced the video live, segued with some live comments in the middle, went back to the video, finished the teaching with a live special song with the New Hope Worship Team and then Wayne brought the conclusion of the service live.
This, in my opinion, is a great example of what I call “Finding Your Personal Pace“. It will be interesting to see how Wayne and New Hope will progress from here. I have a hunch we will see some incredibly innovative and well-led ways for a Pastor to recover from a crisis in his life such as this.
Folks, you can be the most positive minded person in the world, but you can’t escape the reality of personal crisis happening even in the Pastor’s life. How we handle that crisis can mean everything for ourselves and our leadership.
Do you know of another Pastor who has had to handle personal crisis from the pulpit? If it’s OK to share it publically, feel free to do so in the comments. Let’s learn how to do this together, so we can do it better in the future!
Adrenal Letdown
October 27, 2008
I’ve heard it said that preaching for an hour can equal the energy output of 3-4 hours worth of work. Multiply that for Pastors who preach at multiple services by the number of services they preach at each weekend.
Arch Hart, in his book, “Adrenaline & Stress”, lays out his study on the impact of adrenaline on a person’s body. He emphasizes the impact it has on Pastors in the book, as well as in many of his talks to groups of Pastors.
Over the last few years, with Arch’s help, I’ve grown to identify much of the awful after-effects of preaching as adrenal letdown. Preaching demands the use of adrenaline and I find that many Pastors either have no idea, or they completely deny, its impact. You know, we’re Superman/women/people, right? What might impact others negatively, God will protect us from! (In case you’re wondering, yes, my tongue is in my cheek as I write that!)
Arch contends that when you expend an inordinate amount of adrenaline, like we Pastors do when we preach, you are bound to experience a letdown of the adrenaline so that the system, the body, can recover and restore itself back to a normal state. There are various brain chemicals involved in the cycle, including serotonin, which can drop low as adrenaline restores, resulting in a feeling of depression at different levels.
How much time it takes to recover and what the symptoms of the recovery are can be different for everyone. For me, I find that on Monday, it’s common for me to develop a low grade headache right behind my eyes. I call it my “serotonin-low” headache. And there’s a general malaise that I often experience.
Have you identified the impact of adrenaline recovery after you preach? What are your common signs?
Pastor Wayne Cordeiro Resting After Heart Surgery
October 4, 2008
Wayne Cordeiro, Pastor of New Hope Christian Fellowship (a Foursquare Church, the tribe I am part of) in Honolulu, Hawaii, is resting and recovering from significant heart surgery he underwent at Stanford Medical Center in Northern California.
Part of his statement reported, “My right artery was 95-99% blocked and two other places were 85-90% blocked. Nevertheless my surgeon was able to stretch the blockages and got in three stents, so I missed a bypass by a miracle. I am sore but so thankful for the “mulligan” I got from God.”
You can read his entire public statement to his congregation here. I commend his honesty and integrity in communicating with his church family.
He shared his personal story about encountering burnout at Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit in August of 2006, and is releasing a book about it soon called, “Dead Leader Running”.
Wayne pastors one of the largest and fastest growing churches in America, averaging over 10,000 people a weekend and only 13 years old, with no permanent facilities! I can’t keep track of how many services they run a weekend and how many campuses they do the at throughout Oahu.
I do know that Wayne is one of the healthiest Pastors I know of. His regimen of exercise and taking care of his physical body, let alone his spiritual devotional life, are well known. There are myriad numbers of Pastors that have been through his “Leadership Practicums” and untold numbers of churches that have been impacted by his “Life Journal” method of Scripture reading and journaling.
Not only do my prayer and concern go out to Wayne as he recovers (I don’t think he’d ever read this to know, and I don’t know him well personally), but God answers prayer whether people being prayed for know it or not, doesn’t He? I want to ask you to pray for him as well, would you?
The influence Wayne has stewarded so very well throughout his journey has been tremendous, and not one of us would want to see that impeded in any way! Pray for the saints of New Hope as well, that they would allow for this period of rest and recovery that Wayne needs.
We here at Pastor For Life wish Pastor Wayne a healthy recovery and blessings of peace and comfort to he and his entire family!
Do You Need A Nap?
September 9, 2008
Think what you will, but everyBODY needs a nap, at least once in a while, if not almost every day. In reality, this post should probably stand on its own in the “Your Personal Pace” series. The topic is sleep, and you may think it a luxury. It may be a necessity.
Justify it to your heart’s delight. Actually, it’s probably to your heart’s terror and dread. I went for years bragging on how I could live on 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Until my body said, “No more!”
Read about any sleep study you can get your hands on. You need AT LEAST 6-8 hours of sleep every night. We all have to go without some of what we need, but we want that to be the exception, not the norm. If you lose some of it tonight, studies will also tell you that we can’t “catch up” on it.
However, we CAN follow our bodies. They’re usually smarter than we are and tell us what we need when we need it. The problem is we think we are smarter than the body God created us in. He uses MANY avenues to speak to us … how about our body? When we need rest/sleep, it is sure to tell us.
So, if you’re reading this with toothpicks in your eyes to keep them open, go take a nap. You want to find out how it feels to “Pastor FOR Life” and “Pastor WITH Life”, go take yourself a nap!
When I encountered burnout several years ago, one of the symptoms was insomnia. My adrenal glands, according to my doctor, were exhausted. They no longer knew when to spurt adrenaline into my system and when not to. So they did whenever they felt like it, and sometimes wouldn’t when I really needed it.
Over the years, I’ve used a number of sleep aids. Even to this day, I currently use Lunesta on a regular basis. (NOTE: Only use sleep medications with a doctor’s prescription. That’s not legalese, it’s common sense!) I also use an eye cover, as I’ve discovered that even a little light can wake me or keep me awake. When I travel, I use ear plugs.
If you’re looking for some good napping help, here’s a little primer from the Boston Globe:
The Road To POP
August 15, 2008
Mike Foster …. can you make it any more clear than this? I mean, come on, I’m not quite sure I get what you’re saying 
. Maybe you (reading this) can help me understand. Then again, maybe Mike’s made this CLEAR ENOUGH!!!
I am hardcore about taking personal responsibility for managing our emotional, spiritual, physical, and relational health. Why? Because I believe every passion, mission, job, or ministry has a road leading to POP.
What’s POP? It’s where you have depleted everything in your life and you simply breakdown. Your job, company, organization, and leadership role has sucked you dry. Btw, the worst culprits: churches and ministries. You give EVERYTHING and then you have left yourself bare, vulnerable, and in a toxic place. And then you POP!
Sometimes POP looks like destructive escapism like alcohol, drugs, or porn.
Sometimes POP means running off with a hot young thing you met on the internet 2 weeks ago.
Sometimes it means going into a maniacal rage in some company meeting, jumping on top of the table, taking your clothes off, and getting jiggy with it.
Tragically, sometimes POP means suicide or a massive heart attack that kills you.
POP means bailing on your spouse and your kids so you can go “find” yourself…with some other guy/gal.
And then after a month of us “doing the crazy” we come back to our life with huge regrets and a big mess to start cleaning up. Sometimes and sadly, we are never the same.
The story isn’t rare. It’s actually pretty common.
I’ve realized hard wirings in me that would lead me to the POP scenario. If I didn’t manage my life well I could find my self blowing up and breaking down…and quite quickly. In a matter of months or a few bad weeks and…..POP!
Let me be clear here. I’m not alone on this road. You’re on it too. Some of you are aware of it and are working on it in your life. Others are completely blind to the forces that are working against you. And if I ever meet you, and I see you heading towards POP, I’m going to call you out on it.
I’m going to smack you down and warn you. And I don’t want to hear your excuses and valid reasons of why you HAVE to lead your life sucked dry. Pure crap! You just don’t have the balls to make the hard decisions in your personal life. And if I was in a POP scenario in my life, I would expect the same from you.
Every person is on the road leading to POP. I just hope all of us figure out how to live our lives so we never arrive at that final destination.
Thoughts?
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