Adam Weber is the lead pastor of Embrace, a 10-year-old church in Sioux Falls, SD that has grown to 6 campuses and 4,000+ people in weekly attendance. For the past four years, Embrace has been listed as one of the fastest growing churches in America according to Outreach Magazine. Adam is the author of Talking with God: What to Say When You Don’t Know How to Pray. Adam is married to his beautiful wife Becky and they have 4 kids: Hudson, Wilson, Grayson, and Anderson.
Key Questions:
How can pastors embrace vulnerability to ask for the help they need to prepare better sermons?
What do you sense is a pastor or ministry leader’s greatest struggle with prayer?
Key Quotes:
“I look at the prayers of Jesus and the teachings of Jesus, and they were super, super simple…Jesus used simple pictures and parables to explain things that anybody can understand.”
“Like life, marathons have twists and turns. Like life, marathons have stretches that are boring. Like life, there’s valleys and there’s hills—some places have mountains you need to climb.”
“Pastors are criticizing pastors and other churches, which I think grieves the heart of God.”
“What would it look like if instead of the church being critical and judgmental and instead of human beings criticizing everybody, what if on Sundays and all throughout the week, we were just on the sidelines just cheering?”
“Every week, I have two separate groups of people who hear my message before I preach it on Sunday. I call them the firing squad, because I want them to speak freely and honestly.”
“When I get up on Sundays, I can have confidence because this isn’t the gospel according to Adam, it’s the gospel according to the Lord, ran through a filter of eight people who have a solid, solid walk with Jesus. There’s so much confidence in that—just being refined and challenged and encouraged.”
“What you have to do as a pastor is you have to set aside your ego—you are not God’s gift to the world.”
“Whether you’re a worship leader, small group leader, I would encourage you not just to surround yourself with worship leaders who do worship-leading things. But instead, have normal human beings.”
“What do we do when we’re ashamed of something? If it’s a positive thing, we do whatever it is less. Instead of talking with God more, we talk with God less.”
“Instead of trying to make it through the week on our own strength and spending time in the Bible for somebody else and praying for somebody else, we need that for our own self and our own sake and our own soul.”
Mentioned in the Show:
Talking with God: What to Say When You Don’t Know How to Pray
Episode 57: Adam Weber: Lessons Learned When Our Church Experienced Extraordinary Growth
