by Mark Driscoll
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You get to pick your friends. Your wife gets to pick her friends. Your kids get to pick their friends.
As a pastor, you will be blessed if even one of these friends is on your leadership team. You are likely young, naïve, and simplistic, and so you will disagree with me. You will work very hard to make leaders in your church into friends and pretend they are peers. It will blow up when you have to lead them, correct them, fire them, and/or they betray you. True friends may emerge from your young church plant, but only time will tell. Give it some years and see who sticks around and acts like a Christian. As a church planter, the odds are your real friends will be people outside of your church who are spiritually mature ...
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by Mark Driscoll
As church planters, Grace and I learned the hard way what a friendship is and is not. Somehow, I got the silly notion that everyone who picked me to be their friend was, in fact, my friend.
Subsequently, I ate lots of meals with people I did not enjoy, had people on my family vacations that drove me so nutty I could not wait to get back to work, and spent countless hours answering the phone, replying to emails, and responding to the demands of pushy, rude, selfish people who smiled while saying words like “buddy” and “friend.” What they meant by “friend” was something more akin to “bullied victim.”
The truth is, as a pastor, you and your wife have many kinds of relationships. What has been helpful for ...
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Posted in: Marriage and Family, Emotional Health, Relationship Building
Tags: friendship pastors, pastor friends, who gets to be friends with the pastor, how to be a friend to your pastor, how to pick your friends as a pastor, pastor pick friends, pastor choose friends, the pastor gets to choose friends, pastor choosing friends, how to choose friends, pastor, leadership, church planting, friends at church, driscoll kinds of friends, driscoll relationship lanes, enemies, old acquaintances, coworkers, teammates, distant relatives, neighbors, connections, close family, fellowship, spouse, 1-10 scale friendships, 1-10 scale relationships, driscoll frienship, driscoll pastor friends, driscoll pastor wife friends, friendshift, what is friendshift
Dr. Sam Storms wrote a lengthy article on Forgiveness. Here are his five “myths” and “truths” of forgiveness:
Five Myths about Forgiveness:
Contrary to what many have been led to believe, forgiveness is not forgetting.
Forgiving someone does not mean you no longer feel the pain of their offense.
Forgiving someone who has sinned against you doesn’t mean you cease longing for justice.
Forgiveness does not mean you are to make it easy for the offender to hurt you again.
Forgiveness is rarely a one-time, climactic event. It is most often a life-long process.
Five Truths about Forgiveness:
God in Christ forgave us by absorbing in himself the destructive and painful consequences of our sin against him.
God forgave us in Christ by ...
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Last month in Dallas during the boot camp, many wives attended the Wives' Track hosted by Acts 29 church planter's wives. We've been posting audio and transcription portions and continue the Planter Wives Answer series today on friendships.
Q&A panel, L-R: Stephanie White (Ft. Worth; wife of Rick), Susan Wesley (Houston; wife of Bruce), Lauren Chandler (Dallas; wife of Matt) and Kara Bruskas (Albuquerque; wife of Dave).
Q: How do you cultivate gospel friendships? What advice would you offer for women who have to do this long distance?
Kara: Since I am the relationship junkie of the group, I am definitely praying through doing it the right way. I see myself as having a few, rather than just one ...
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Posted in: Marriage and Family, Relationship Building, Planter Wives
Tags: church planter's marriage, church planter's wife, pastor's wife, lead pastor's wife, pastors wives, help for pastor's wives, advice for pastor's wife, advice for church planter's wife, practical help for a ministry wife, ministry wives, pastor marriage, pastor's wife, minister's wife, minister's family, elder's wife, susan wesley, lauren chandler, kara bruskas, stephanie white, dallas boot camp, church planter wife friendship, how to have friends as a pastor's wife, what can i share with my girlfriends? what should i share about my husband?
By Scott Thomas, President of Acts 29.
Adapted and excerpted from his message, “Fighting For One Another: Gospel Friendship.”
We face a problem in the church. We’re often too busy fighting with each other and we’re failing to fight for each other. We need to learn to fight for each other with every weapon in our arsenal.
Each of us stands functionally alone unless we have a brotherhood (a band of brothers, a community, a network) that we gather ourselves in and around. Peter reminds us: “be sober, be watchful: your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”
I’m sick of fighting with other believers and other pastors over menial ...
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Posted in: Relationship Building
Tags: four characteristics of a gospel friendship, gospel friendship, christian friendship, discipleship, coaching, scott thomas, fighting well, fighting for each other, christians fighting, good fighting, fair fighting, fighting for not against, 1 peter 5, how to be a friend, how to be a christian friend, how to be a gospel friend, how to be a helpful friend, true friendship, band of brothers, pastors need friends, pastor friendship, dallas boot camp, dallas, church planter training, church plant, training, leadership training
