4. Pastors not only have feelings, but probably feel deeper than most people.
It hurts when people leave your church. It hurts when people you prayed for and worried about talk crap about you. It hurts when folks treat you like you owe them something because they decided to give a good offering some random Sunday.
As a pastor, you lead with your heart and it is so hard to lead with it out in the open and for it to not get hurt.
5. New church plants, often envious of megachurches, make the mistake of trying to do everything like the megachurch does it.
This path is full of landmines. Furthermore, megachurches sometimes do other churches a disservice by teaching what ends up amounting to “how to be like us” seminars that rarely work.
Each church has to chart its own path and one way to fail is for you to listen more to your favorite megachurch pastor than you do to God. At the very least, do both, but always be open to God leading you down a unique path for your church in your town with the people God has called you to serve.
6. I’m still shocked at how clumsily churches and denominations continue to deal with issues of race and sex in church leadership.
It’s a mess, really. Most ethnically diverse churches still have a white pastor and too often have all-white senior staffs. Furthermore, it’s just outrageous how few women serve in senior and executive roles in churches in 2013.
7. Churches and senior pastors have no idea how to empower and unleash the businessmen and women of their churches.
The men at the Thursday prayer meeting I attend in Manhattan have convinced me of this truth. I was guilty of this when I was a pastor as well and businesspeople now tell me they are tired of being asked to just count money or help raise it when they could do so much more to help grow and build the church.
