Church leadership

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The trap of unrealistic expectations and how to avoid it

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The trap of unrealistic expectations and how to avoid it

One of the biggest reasons people give up is unrealistic expectations.

And there are all kinds of these. Some of them are even reasonable. For instance, my wife has a number of quite understandable expectations of me that for various mysterious reasons may never be met. At least not this side of heaven!

All joking aside, though, unrealistic expectations can be an absolute killer. When I met with people coming into our church, I always made a point of saying they probably had some expectations that would never be fulfilled, if only because no church is perfect.

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How to deal with your non-perfect church

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How to deal with your non-perfect church

People get disgruntled. I’ve had a number of conversations in the last few weeks with people from different churches. All of them appreciated their church, but all were struggling with deficiencies. Some of the folk were in leadership positions and others weren’t.

At one level, dealing with this kind of thing is a no-brainer. As the old saying goes, if you ever find a perfect church, you’ll ruin it as soon as you join it.

But we need to start asking ourselves a number of questions when doubts arise as to whether we’re in the right place.

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The power of faith

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The power of faith

Sometimes you have to throw caution to the winds and just step out in faith. That was a topic of conversation the other day between a successful young church planter in Toronto and myself.

One of the enemy’s cleverest tricks is to keep our focus on what we can achieve by our own efforts.

I was taught a lot about faith as a young leader. The example of several men I personally knew who had taken extraordinary steps of faith in their walk with God took hold of me and challenged me to the core.

We can do a lot by our own efforts, but the kingdom will only really move ahead when we start doing what can only be accomplished by divine intervention.

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A teaching moment

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A teaching moment

The other evening Elaine and I were at a small group we joined at the church. The leader was planning to show a teaching video, but there were problems with the sound, and in the end he (being my age) declared, “I’m just going to teach this myself!” And I was glad he did, because he was outstanding. 

It seems to me there are three critical elements in the health of a local church: teaching, worship and community. Evangelism is of course essential, but what’s the point of evangelizing in order to bring people into a church where there is poor teaching, questionable worship and no sense of relationship? The best thing that could happen is for the convert to go in one door and out the other into a church in better shape.

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When the foundations are forgotten

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When the foundations are forgotten

My friend Don and I were leading a mens’ conference together a couple of weeks ago. Prior to the conference beginning, God had laid a word on my heart about returning to foundations. The Lord had also laid a word on Don’s heart based on the idea of a bulldozer clearing ground. You would have expected that the bulldozer was preparing the land for a totally new building, but on further inspection the machine was actually clearing the dirt off old foundations it was uncovering.

The message was clear: build on the foundations that have been laid.