Feel It! [Part 3]

In this series, we are looking at the role our emotions and convictions play in leadership and parish renewal. Good leaders lead themselves by cultivating the right emotions and convictions that will fuel them to keep moving forward even amidst adversity.

In the last blog, we looked at Jesus as our model as the first way to leverage our emotions. A second way is to Remember your calling.

In your story, there was probably a time when you felt inspired, challenged and/or convicted to make change. Those moments are sacred moments. God gives us those moments to strengthen us for the work of ministry and fuel us to move forward. Usually, they are connected to our call. This is a pattern we see repeated over and over again in Scripture: there is the call of Moses, the call of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Peter – just to name a few. Scripture records them because they launched these figures into their work. No doubt those heroes in the faith would have gotten emotional in telling their stories. Each of us have a moment when we felt called into our work of ministry that continues to help us feel the need to do more.

Father Michael tells his story in our book Rebuilt. You can read the full story in the chapter "Finding a Way Forward." His call into parish renewal came at the closing session of a pastor’s conference. He writes:

The message was profoundly convicting. The speaker spoke movingly of the local church community as the delivery system for much of what God wants to do in the world.  He described the job of pastor as one of the most important, consequential jobs on the planet. He talked about the prideful assumptions, amateurish approaches, and sad outcomes of many pastors that are hurting people and dishonoring God. I think he said, that if we’re not doing church with the purpose God has set for the Church, then God will remove his blessings. We will fail, just as God removed his blessing from the religious leaders Jesus so vigorously condemned in his day, the Pharisees. I think he said that a lot of us pastors are just “Pharisees at heart.”

I listened to him with an annoyance that became anger and then rage. These deep emotions swept away my initial discomfort, and I stormed off. I walked out and headed for my car. Who did he think he was anyway? I’m a pastor. I don’t have to listen to this. I marched off toward the parking lot. But the place was big, and I had parked a long, long way from the church. It turned out, by the time I got to my car I had cooled down enough to begin to see through the pride of my heart. I bitterly acknowledged the conviction that everything that guy had said was right and that it should have been directed at me. Rick Warren had just called me out.

My call to parish renewal also came at a conference. It had come after a difficult season in the parish. We honestly didn’t know if our work would continue. Father Michael and I went to the Drive conference at North Point Church. The whole conference spoke to us, but it was the closing session that hit me between the eyes. Andy Stanley talked about how the Church had become irrelevant in the lives of so many people. People think that the church has nothing to offer, but that our leadership by God’s grace could change it.

He then mentioned that a family in his church had recently lost their sixteen-year-old son in a car accident. He went to the family’s house where of course there was weeping and wailing and heart ache. However, in the midst of the chaos the father of the teenager took Andy aside and said, “Thank you for our church. Because of our church, I know my son is in heaven and that one day I will see him again.” Andy then turned to this group of pastors and church leaders and said, “Is there another organization in the world that can give that kind of assurance do a father that just lost his son? Do you think what you do matters?”

With that, I was in. I determined that I would give the rest of my life so that parishes could be more effective at reaching people and help them grow as disciples.

Like us, you probably have a moment or event when you were called into ministry, called into the work of parish renewal. From time to time you need to think and reflect on that moment as you would think and reflect on the Scriptures that describe the calls of God’s servants. You may need to write out your story or tell it to someone else. Feel the emotion of that time and let it fuel you to keep going and keep making a difference.

Rooting for you,
Tom