Time: A few years back I realized something about pastors. Most pastors fall into two categories. There is a middle ground but this is definately the minority of church workers. The first category is the workaholic pastor. Often more ineffective than effective this pastor easily racks up 80 hours a week. Find it hard to connect with his family- probably because they resent and possibly hate him. The other type of pastor is the 20 hour a week pastor. Coming in at 10am and leaving by 2pm and taking the sacred day of Monday off. Both are ineffective, both are horrible examples to the people they are leading.

I am most ashamed of laziness. I might be a lot of bad things but I don't want to be considered lazy. Since we started planting this church I find my time more and more consumed with important things to do. Really stuff that just has to get done. A weird thing happened last week. I felt my stuff starting to go numb. I didn't notice it at first...I was numb like I said. But I had little emotion. I was accomplish lots of stuff during my day but was receiving little satisfaction from my accomplishments. I'm typically a very emotional person but I was feeling little.

In the way that God so often works he sent me a book. Time Traps by Todd Duncan. I read this quote today and wanted to share it with the readers of this blog.


"Having to go so fast to keep up, we miss stuff- our existence is truncated. Some things simply cannot be done going full speed: love, sex, conversation, food, family, friends, nature. In a whirl, we are less capable of appreciation, enjoyment, sustained concentration, sorrow, memory." Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt in Time Traps by Todd Duncan

Reminder: I want to use my blog as a platform for a few minutes. I know there are pastors and other church workers that read my blog on a consistent basis and I'm talking to you. Really talking to myself and to you and wanted to give a reminder.

The reminder is this. If another church is preaching the same gospel of Jesus Christ that you are teaching- treat them like a friend and not an enemy. Don't even be indifferent to them. Support them, encourage them, give them money, give them support. As a church planter there is no greater blessing than I have received from churches that support me not just in theory but in actual support. Often these churches just pray for us and when we visit them they ask us to stand up and be recognized. Some of these churches provide us with people to help us run events and others even contribute money to our church even though we may be trying to reach the same demographic in the same cities.

Equal to the blessing these wonderful churches give is the pain of being undercut or rejected from other churches. We are perceived as competition as the enemy or at best we're perceived as a distraction for current members. I have news for them. I don't want their members. I don't even want the nominal christians in the community. I want people who haven't heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, I've got something to tell them. I've got a place for them in our church and God feels the same way.

But the truth is when church is viewed as a product and you spend years prepping your product and making it ready for purchase when something new comes along you get a little nervous. But I don't want them to be nervous I want them to passionately pursue lost people. And that reminds me what this is all about- not polishing our product called The Bridge Church but making bridges to be able to connect people to people and most importantly people to God.