Article for Ministers: Sir, Reverend, Would You Have Them Hold the Mayonnaise

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There are times that I really get wrapped up with being important. I mean those times when I am so into the importance thing that the whole world finds it’s orbit around me. I know that you may find that hard to believe, that “importance” could have such a dizzying effect on me but it does.

In fact some time ago, I found myself being very important. Our church was hosting a preaching workshop. Rick Wyser was doing his very good seminar “The Six Should-Be’s of Preaching” and I was feeling particularly important. We had plotted and planned and had all sorts of free books, gadgets, computer programs and all sorts of other things to give out to the participants. Somewhere around fifty ministers came and we were having a tremendous time. Nothing motivates me like talking about becoming a better preacher, so I was definitely enjoying the element.

We started on Friday evening and went long into the night and were to continue the next morning and work through most of the day. There I was in front of all of these ministers opening up the day with prayer and some brief but very important comments. I had on crisp, dry-cleaned clothes and a sparkling new tie and had the look of, well, importance. Right before Brother Wyser came to the platform, I managed to see someone motioning to me in the back of the church and behind the person who was motioning was someone very unimportant-looking. I knew what he wanted and I knew that in my status of current importance that I did not really want to get involved.

However, because of my importance that day, I was chosen to meet a little man who began to germinate the thoughts of what you are now reading. He was dressed in ragged clothes, his shoes were literally coming apart on his feet. He looked as if he hadn’t been near a razor or a tooth-brush in days, who knows, maybe weeks. As I got closer to him, it also became very obvious that he had not been near soap and water in several days either.

I ushered him into the office and honestly I wanted to give him a few dollars and send him on his way. See, I was busy helping Brother Wyser and busy helping other ministers become better preachers, frankly I was very busy being important. However, his story was compelling, in fact so compelling, I shall never forget that day or his story as long as I shall live.

He had a severe speech impediment that made it a little difficult to understand him. He had gotten a job with some Texas boys who had taken him to South Carolina to work at a condo along the beach. He knew how to hang sheet-rock and could paint so that is what they wanted him to do. The key to this whole deal was that the poor fellow was one of those guys that this world is constantly taking advantage of and that is exactly what happened. He had worked for three weeks and only had two-hundred dollars to show for it and then they conveniently left him in a bar in north Georgia drunk as a hoot owl. When he finally had aroused from his drunken stupor all he had was the clothes on his back, the shoes on his feet, and the two-hundred dollars were now gone!

So I began to quiz him on his story. Maybe quiz is not the right word, I began to interrogate this man. His story was so outrageous and I was so busy being important and I needed to get back in there with the action. Where is your car? I don’t have one. How did you get here? I walked. When was the last time you ate? Yesterday morning when I cleaned up some trash in a Burger King parking lot and the manager gave me some biscuits. How long have you been walking/hitchhiking from north Georgia? Four days, please sir, I am not lying to you. I see a fence row that needs cleaning off, can I do that for some money? I need to get back to Texas. How are you going to get there? Well, somebody told me in Georgia and if I could get to Hwy. 84 and follow it, it would take me to Texas.

Up to this point, my importance had been progressively dissipating but now all the importance had been effectively squeezed out of me. I took him to the fellowship hall and loaded him up with a large bag of food from the continental breakfast from our meeting. I noticed that as I walked down the hall that he was literally limping almost to the point of being crippled. I inquired about this and he told me that his feet were blistered so bad that he could not hardly walk and that he was going to rest for the remainder of the day.

I ended up taking him to a motel on Hwy. 84 and putting him in a room and thought to myself how wonderful and how benevolent that I had been on my way back to the church. It took me about twenty minutes and I slid right back into my important mode. I forgot him, until the waitress at Larry’s brought my second run of BBQ chicken around 8:30 P.M. I had been having a great conversation with Brother Wyser and Brother Patterson about. . . . . . you know, preaching and other important stuff,but when I bit into that second run of chicken, the Lord graced my memory with that little guy. I asked Brother Patterson to take care of Brother Wyser that I had something that I needed to take care of. To this point, Brother Wyser nor Brother Patterson even knew about this little guy.

So with a full stomach and a very troubled soul, I went to this little guy’s room. The last time I had seen him had been around 9:30 that morning and it was now working toward 10:00 PM. He opened the door to my loud knock. He appeared almost fearful to me. Now as I think in retrospect he probably thought that I was coming to throw him out or take him downtown to the police station or some such as that. I asked him brusquely, “do you have any food left?” “No sir, I don’t. I ate the last of it around 2 o’clock.” “Are you hungry?” “Yes, sir, I am.” “I am going to Burger King to get you a Whopper Value Meal,” I said. I turned and started for my car and had gone no more than ten feet when I heard his voice again. “Sir, Reverend, would you please tell them to hold the mayonnaise?” I could not answer, I could only nod. I got in my car and he left the door open and watched me drive out of the parking lot and watched me go on down the rode.

The next twenty minutes or so as I drove to BK the Lord gave me a whole lot of insight into some things. Not an audible voice, but I heard the Lord as plain as day, tell me, “That is how you look to me when you get busy being important.” He reminded me of all the times at the great conferences that I asked Him for all the big stuff. Use me Lord to do the big stuff, the powerful things, the glamorous things, the high visibility things, let the miracles fall off of me, let my name be on the lips of all far and wide, please make me important, and by the way, God, can you hold the mayonnaise?

Where did I get that attitude from? From all of that blarney that I had been feeding my mind over the last several years, this leadership book, that time-management program, this self-development seminar, and on and on, ad nauseum. Now understand with me that I feel very strongly about all of these areas and some of the personal and professional development that has occurred within my own life could never have come to pass had I not known about the “how-to’s” and “what-for’s” of leadership development, goal-setting, and raw, rigorous discipline.

But there is something that is lost when our lives become dictated by the Covey “Habit’s.” We have a tendency to lose touch with humanity and the hurts, stresses, anxieties, and pressures that they battle with day-in and day-out. When we lose touch with those pressures that come from the pews, we become empire builders instead of kingdom builders. When I get busy intersecting flights, reserving hotel rooms, planning events, and just being important, I lose touch with what God wants for my life.

God does not want me to be important, He wants me to do His will and His will is never a mystery. His will is to do the best serving where I am when the need arises. Importance will rob you of a miracle. One of the most notable examples of this is Namaan. He almost did not get his healing because he was too important to dip in the muddy Jordan. I wonder how many miracles that I have circumvented miracles in my own life by being important.

Importance is summed up at the Last Supper when the Lord knelt down, girded with a towel, and washed all of the disciples feet. Maybe I had known it but somehow it had escaped me for all of these years that Jesus washed the feet of Judas before the supper ever began. He washed the man’s feet who was going to betray him. That is what importance really is. It is serving the Judas Kiss. It is serving the betrayer. It is ministering to the deserter.

Michael Card has a song entitled The Basin and the Towel. It goes like this:

An upstairs room, a parable is just about to come alive,

And while they bicker about whose best,

With a painful glance He’ll silently rise,

Their Savior Servant must show them how,

By the will of the water and the tenderness of the towel.

And the call is to community,

The impoverished power that sets the soul free,

In humility to take the vow,

That day after day,

We must take up the basin and the towel.

In any ordinary place or any ordinary day,

The parable can live again,

When one kneel and one will yield,

Our Savior Servant must show us how,

By the will of the water and the tenderness of the towel.

And the space between ourselves sometimes is more than the distance between the stars

By the fragile bridge of the servant’s bow,

We take up the basin and the towel.

And the call is to community,

The impoverished power that sets the soul free,

In humility to take the vow,

That day after day,

We must take up the basin and the towel.

When we bow to the basin and the towel, importance has a way of being totally removed from our lives. Servants are not very important. Servants have no rights. Servants move at the command and the whims of the master. Servants have no personal agendas they focus on the mission which supercede any personal agenda.

When we do the small things for the Lord, we advance the Kingdom. The whole attitude of importance revolts against the idea of doing something “hidden” in the Kingdom. Yet, when we fill this role of washing dirty feet, great power, great humility, great purpose slowly seeps into our lives. Increasingly, I am becoming convinced that spiritual greatness comes from serving and with heightening anonymity. Through the continual denial of the flesh, which is a monumental challenge in itself, and through the pouring out of ourselves into the lives of others with no expectations from those actions, that greatness does indeed seep into our lives. Therefore, live out and flesh out this principle of the basin and the towel because in doing so it strangles the very thin veneer of importance.

John Piper writes in Brothers, We Are Not Professionals:

We pastors are being killed by the professionalizing of the pastoral ministry. The mentality of the professional is not the mentality of the prophet. It is not the mentality of the slave of Christ. Professionalism has nothing to do with the essence and the heart of the Christian ministry. The more professional we long to be, the more spiritual death we will leave in our wake. For there is no professional childlikeness (Matt. 18:3); there is no professional tenderheartedness (Eph. 4:32); there is no professional panting after God (Psalm 42:1).

But our first business is to pant after God in prayer. Our business is to weep over our sins (James 4:9). Is there professional weeping? Our business is to strain forward to the holiness of Christ and the prize of the upward call of God (Php. 3:14); to pummel our bodies and subdue them lest we be cast away (1 Cor. 9:27); to deny ourselves and take up the blood spattered cross daily (Luke 9:23). How do you carry a cross professionally? . . . .

I trust that you take this in the spirit by which I have tried to write this. We still need discipline, we must have vision, we will fail if we do not plan, and we must continue to lead, but there must in all of this be ministries marked by utter dependence on God. The Kingdom of God is not advanced with importance nor professionalism but rather with humility.

Trying to Decrease. . .

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1. The weight of the object that is moving.

2. The speed of the object that is moving.

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Momentum can also be measured by its direction. This is called linear momentum because now it has direction as well as magnitude.

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In these lessons, we will address and discuss the outside forces that constantly threaten the continuance of momentum in the Church.

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Momentum is a powerful force. Just as momentum works in the natural world, momentum works in our ministries and spiritual lives.

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Momentum is defined as “mass in motion.” All objects have mass; therefore, if an object of mass is moving, then it has momentum.

The amount of momentum an object has depends on two things:

1. The weight of the object that is moving.

2. The speed of the object that is moving.

In terms of an equation, the momentum of an object is equal to the mass of the object times the speed or velocity of the object.

Momentum can also be measured by its direction. This is called linear momentum because now it has direction as well as magnitude.

Momentum occurs when a force that is greater than the resistance to the object is applied.

Momentum is a force more powerful than we realize and it greatly affects our lives. Yet, it’s not something that we consciously ponder or try to figure out.

As we address momentum in ministry, remember that it always takes an outside force for momentum to start, maintain, and to stop!

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Responsible leaders do not make irresponsible statements.

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An enduring leader withstands insult without anger.

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Why should we consider becoming accountable to someone else?

We cannot stand without accountability. 1 Cor 10:12
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God
Their spouse
Their family
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Those leaders above them
At least one other person who could be considered their spiritual mentor.

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Accountability keeps us from moral and spiritual failure.
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When a person becomes accountable to another, they make themselves accountable to someone other than themselves.

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The story goes like this...

The guy wakes up on Sunday morning and say's, "I'm not going to church today!" "Why not?" The good wife asks. "I just don't feel like it and besides, I'm not sure everyone there likes me. In fact, I'm sure that Sister Jones outright hates me!" The man retorts. "Well you have to go." Responds his wife. "Why's that?" He asks. "Because", she says, "You're the Pastor!"

Ever been there? Don't answer that. I can't find much scripture on this, but I honestly feel a spirit of Defeat attack me at least one day out of the week. This little guy must keep a tight schedule, since he always comes on the exact same day. Hardly ever does he come around on an off day. It's always the same day, Monday!

You may not understand this unless you've Pastored or been in ministry for a while. I've heard other ministers say this Imp who I will call Defeat, attacks them on Mondays too. So I suppose I am not alone on this one.

I'm not much of a quitter. Quitting is just not in me. Sometimes I wonder if I'm too stubborn to quit, or too stupid to realize it's time to quit. Like old Shammah. Defending a field of lintels against a whole troop of Philistines. Just him and an dead donkey's jawbone.

Was that guy tough or just not smart enough to get out of the way? We've preached him tough, but I really worry for the man. He didn't have much to work with there. Why didn't he just fall back (quit) and regroup? You know, get some help. I believe I have the answer...He was neither stubborn or dumb. He knew his purpose!

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The Newsletter of Preachit.org is written specifically for you and your Ministry team. We have prayed over our articles and sincerely hope that they help you in every way possible. We pray that each article you read, ministers to you and encourages you to keep doing the awesome Work of God. May God continue to bless you as you bless His kingdom.

Below are some ways to use this tool for your benefit. This is not a complete list as you can add to it as you see fit and how it fits your Ministry team. These are just some suggestions to get you started. Thank you for taking the time to read the PreachIt.org Newsletter and may it enrich your ministry.

1. Teach Your Leadership Team.

2. Put the articles in Your Church's Bulletin.

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Over the holiday season, I took my family shopping in Chicago. As we were heading home to Indiana, it was dark and you could see the lights of the city. As we topped the Skyway (a very high bridge), I looked out and viewed a sea of rows of lights from the street lights below. Thousands and thousands of illuminating beams of light in every direction. As I drove along viewing the endless rows of lights that make up the Chicago skyline, I couldn't help think about a man by the name of Thomas Edison. He's the guy who thought up the light bulb. Without him, we would still be in the stone age with regards to much of the technological breakthroughs of this century. As I thought about Mr. Edison, I couldn't help wishing he was there with me right then to see the spectacle of light that came from his dream.

Over 10,000 failed experiments went into the first light bulb being created. People all around him, inventors and investors alike said he was mad, even insane.

He believed in something no one else believed in.
He saw something no one else saw.
The light bulb!

You can buy them for around a quarter today. Imagine, a world without the light bulb. I could go on and on telling of all the inventions and advancement which came as a result of that one human hair dipped in carbon and encased in vacuumed glass.

It's hard for us to imagine a world without cars, computers, airplanes, Palm Pilots or light bulbs. However think with me for a minute. For thousands of years, the best mode of transportation was the horse. From the beginning of time the very best thing the human mind could come up with was a saddle to put on that poor beast of burden. They thought they really came up with something when a guy from England came up with something called the stirrup to keep a rider from falling off.

This last century has been filled with incredible advancements which we credit to the superior minds of our century. However, I'm not so sure we should give the credit so vainly to our selves. Yes, the Wright brothers really had something with that small glider. Yes, Henry Ford had a great idea with that assembly line. But, let's not be so foolish as to think that the medical, technological, manufacturing, farming, space exploration advancements have come from the human mind.

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He saw something no one else saw.
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Leaders Love Growth

Only those leaders who act boldly in times of crisis and change are willingly followed. (Jim Kouzes)

Within the church, God has placed men and women who love to see growth. It is what keeps us to our tasks. The lack of increase can kill the joy of our calling so we lean forward looking for any type of progress we can possibly measure.

Growth however, requires change. Going from where we are presently to a place of increase requires seeing what most people are not able or willing to see. Seeing change before it happens is called a vision. Few people are capable of a vision as most would rather stay in a climate that is comfortable. Comfort however can cause one to never imagine anything better. A Pastor or congregation who is comfortable with an attendance of 90 will never see a crowd of 300 because they are not desperate enough to make the kinds of changes it would take to gather that kind of increase.

Change means leaving a place that is familiar and going to a place that is unfamiliar. Few churches are willing to follow even the most seasoned pastor into a place of unfamiliarity. Here is why so many of our churches stagnate numerically. This is why the average church in America only runs about 85 people. Even in cities with populations in the hundreds of thousands, churches often find it hard to get over the 100 person hump.

Change requires casting a vision. Within the church it requires faith in the leader who is casting a vision of a place of revival we have not yet seen. As Moses of old preached of a Promised Land that was ahead, the current day Preacher must be willing to stand in a desert of nothingness and promise something far better than the status quo. As Joshua shouted, “Let’s cross over this river!” present day church leaders must be willing to look at obstacles as opportunities for miracles instead of places of failure.

No walled city ever came down without some great leader first standing far out front of the crowd and saying it could be done. No bridge was ever built nor building raised where some imaginative mind did not first dream it. No church ever grew exponentially without first, the Man or Woman of God casting the vision for it’s growth.

Where are the End Time revivalists who would tell our generation “Jesus is Coming”. Who are the men and women who will affect the kind of change necessary for a great Later Day outpouring? Where is the Pastor who will stand in a dormant church and declare “Revival, Growth and Increase”?

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The Role of a Mentor

As common as the word mentor is in society, and in the business culture in general, when it comes to many religious organizations and the individuals that comprise them, mentoris often still a mysterious term. Confusion and misperceptions abound, and yet mentoring has been around since the dawn of man.

Just the mention of the word mentor causes an insecure leader or pastor to manifest jealousy, others to cry out that "I already have mentors in my life", and a few to simply confess they still do not know why they would even need a mentor.

Nonetheless the reality remains the same . . . the leadership actions of most leaders validate their need of a mentor. Every new endeavor of life often brings to the leader a need for mentoring. In essence, business training seminars and workshops is a multi-billion dollar industry because it is mentoring in real life to those desiring to improve and advance in their skills and knowledge.

Please read on.

A mentor is not some mysterious know-it-all guru that floats in and out of your life dressed in a white robe and riding on a cloud. Neither is a mentor a genie in a bottle that appears with the answer when you have a need and rub him correctly. Nor is a mentor a replacement for the pastor and influential individuals in your life.

A mentor is someone with the willingness, temperament, skill sets, gifts, talents, compassion, understanding, whit, intelligence, experience, and general life balance that shoulders up beside you to enable you to succeed at a higher level in life. A mentor is someone who cares about you enough to invest him or herself into you.

Whether paid or unpaid a mentor places more value in your life, aspirations, and goals than you ever return to them. Their primary reward is in helping, steering, advising, and equipping you toward the success they believe you have the potential for.

Every great leader attributes their success largely and in part to the influencers that played a key role in their pathway to success. Those influencers are mentors.

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The Role of a Mentor

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Every great leader attributes their success largely and in part to the influencers that played a key role in their pathway to success. Those influencers are mentors.

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The Top Ten Leadership Principles of Jesus

1. Learn that leadership is servanthood. Servanthood begins with security. Jesus knew His position and was willing to not flaunt it. Jesus knew His calling and was willing to be faithful to it. Jesus knew His future and was willing to submit to it.

2. Let your purpose prioritize your life. Because Jesus developed priorities based upon His purpose:

He successfully dealt with distractions.
He wisely responded to personal rejection.
He willingly suffered pain.

3. Live the life before you lead others. Jesus never begged anyone to believe in Him. He knew that integrity cannot be proven; it must be discerned. He never wasted time with critics. He kept His attention on His goal. He stayed focused.

4. Walk slowly through the crowd. Leadership impact is drawn not from official position, but from authentic relationships. (John 4:5-30, 8:1-11) "You will never possess what you are unwilling to pursue." Jesus knew this.

5. Replenish yourself. Life is demanding. People are demanding. The more you succeed, the more you lead, the more people will demand of you. Replenishing yourself requires your attention. Faith walks out when fatigue walks in.

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