Category: 25 Years

  • 15. Kill Sacred Cows, Carefully

    15. Kill Sacred Cows, Carefully

    I remember walking into the first week of my position at a church where I was responsible for overseeing 5th-12th graders. I looked at the weekly schedule, programs, and events and quickly realized that the current structure of having three groups did not make much sense and wasn’t going to be sustainable. As I visited…

  • 14. You Can Never Make Everyone Happy

    14. You Can Never Make Everyone Happy

    I started in ministry as a people pleaser. I thought that my responsibility as a pastor was to make everyone happy and if I did that, they would have a strong relationship with God. One of my top goals in my early years of ministry was to do whatever it took to make peace and…

  • 13. Apologize Quickly

    13. Apologize Quickly

    One year, the church I was at had a fall festival where we had games for kids, trunks of cars decorated for kids to get candy, and food for families. The youth ministry had done an incredible job of serving and helping out and I had told them if they served, we would have a…

  • 12. The Power of Your Story

    12. The Power of Your Story

    Recently, I taught the lesson for our kids ministry and the topic was integrity – doing the right thing even when we don’t want to. I told a story about when I was a 8 years old, my brother and I played baseball in our living room and one time I hit the ball and…

  • 11. Have Fun

    11. Have Fun

    I love surprises and giving gifts. One night after our Wednesday program I met with 4 of my volunteer team who had agreed to go with me to Florida the next day to check out a camp that we were trying to learn from. They were all set to take vacation days off of work…