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A Pastor ~ Something I have found with pastors is that much of their time gets sucked in to the daily problems of other Christians and it leaves hardly anytime for focusing on those outside of the church.
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* NOTE: CHARACTERS . . . are outliers. They disrupt things, which we as pastors often do not like, but can be really good for us. ~
click here ~ for information on CHARACTERS.
A Character ~ Yes, this is why I believe my dad's 4 churches he started have never gotten over 150 in attendees I believe.
The mega churches are able to do this through small groups and tons of programs and entertainment. The book "Letters To The Church" is a most interesting book. It's got some of the same things that are in ARRT. ~
click here ~
My brother Ken shared that he was going to refer me the book, but didn't want to, because I would agree and resonate so much with what was shared. :-) He was right, I did. Some people are very needy and it causes the church to focus inwardly instead of outwardly. It’s very hard to break this cycle.
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A Pastor ~ I talk with David Talley about it frequently as we work together. There are a few people who take up a large amount of his time and it leaves him with little time to focus on the bigger vision of the church.
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A Character ~ I faced this in being VP of Sales in my early 20's and then also in my own company. I discovered the answer to this problem from my children when they were young. Not only do they not teach this in seminary, but they don't teach this in business schools.
I have three degrees in business and you would think that they would teach this, but they do not. What's funny or really sad is that it would take 10 minutes to teach it and a life time to learn it but those who are in seminary, business college or any higher education think they know so much and aren't open to "outsiders" perspectives. This kills 97% of business and the damage done to the Kingdom is HUGE.
Oh . . . Steve, I don't know about you, but in my life what I find is that more I know the more I know I don't know. :-) Always most interesting to me when people, who say they are my friends or are trying to get to know me share with me "Character, you have everything figured out." :-)
It's even more funny when those same people double down and have a hard time taking personal ownership for their own thoughts and will blame me for . . . my presentation or for me knowing something that they don't know.
When you invest as much time into seeking wisdom and tons of knowledge comes to you, people will tell you a lot how smart you are. If you allow this to enter into your thinking . . . that's not going to work so well. At the age of 40, it was crazy how many people started to tell me how smart I was. Before that age, not even my mom told me.
I developed a system, in a way, a vaccine to this to help me to always realize how very little I know. Since I've never been to seminary I obviously couldn't speak to this at all :-) but my guess is that there is no seminary in the world which has a system designed to help pastors stay humble.
Now . . . obviously pastors probably don't need this, because they were probably naturally born humble . . . :-) . . . it's probably just business leaders and musicians, entertainers and others in front of a bunch of people.
Here is my system . . . "Watch and internalize this video any time we think we are smart." :-)