One of the challenges of working in a local church, and from what I’m finding out about every level of leadership, is there is so much to do, no leader has the time to think about things. There’s no time to look at trends, numbers, and future opportunities and challenges. Every day is so crammed with things that must be done, there’s no time to think about anything else. This is doubly true for those who lead local churches. 

The doctor looked up at me as he placed a stack of papers on the desk in front of him. He sighed and slowly said, "Mr. Glenn, I can tell you with 100% confidence that your mother has Alzheimer's."

My mom used to tell me I couldn’t go swimming until I had let my lunch settle. According to her, it took exactly thirty minutes for my food to settle before I could get back into the water. If I got back into the water too fast, I would get sick, cramp up and die a terrible death. I’ve never fully understood her logic and sometimes, I’m not sure if that was even true. I think it was just her way of telling everyone to take a break and get a little rest. 

Local restaurants celebrate their “farm to table” practice of sourcing their food items from local farms. Sometimes, the restaurant will name the farmers in their menus. Dairy products are from this farm and eggs and chickens are from this farm. The restaurants are celebrating the absence of a middleman in the food preparation process. We know who grew this food and you, our customer, knows who prepared this food. 

If you’re a sports fan like I am, you pay attention to every aspect of the game. You want to know about the offensive game plan and the defensive schemes concocted to stop the offense from moving the ball. You want to know the stats – down to the most obscure detail. The difference between winning and losing is found in those details no one else watches. Talk to any successful coach. They can drown you with details of their team’s plays. 

He would wait for me at the end of every service. With his Bible open, he would talk to me about the text I had just preached. He would point out subtle nuances of the Greek text and of course, he would talk to me about how he had preached this same passage. Every Sunday we had the same conversation. 

Most pastors I know live for Sunday morning. They can’t wait until the congregation shows up and all the singing is done so they can stand up and share with the church all they’ve learned in preparing for the sermon. They want to tell the congregation about the uniqueness of the verbs used in this passage and how the ancient context informs the subtle nuances of the text.

A few weeks ago, a young pastor called me and asked if he could talk to me. We set a time to meet and as we sat down for coffee, he handed me an envelope. On the front of the envelope was this pastor’s name and his address at the church. There wasn’t anything else on the envelope. No return address. No initials on the back flap. Nothing. 

As we approach the end of the year, most of us are going to be thinking about what we want to get done in the coming new year. We’ll find a quiet moment and begin to write down our hopes and dreams for 2025. This, of course, will begin the process of setting goals for 2025. 

I didn’t grow up in a liturgical church and as a result, I was in seminary before I was introduced to the Christian year. The small Baptist churches I grew up in started preaching about Christmas the Sunday after Thanksgiving and we started with the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Imagine my confusion when I encountered Advent and realized liturgical churches didn’t preach the Christmas story until December 25. Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, was a time of preparation.  Those of us who tried to introduce the Advent calendar for our Baptist congregations were left bewildered when Advent would start on Thanksgiving Sunday. Most of us would end up trying to squish both sermons together like a leftover Thanksgiving Christmas sandwich. 

Wanted: Dead or Alive" posters are the staple of all the great westerns. Sometime during the movie, someone will pull out a folded piece of paper with the words "Wanted" stamped in large letters across the page. In the middle of the page will be a pencil sketch of a face that could have been anybody in America, but the bearer of the paper is sure it's a picture of the cowboy standing in front of them.

In a great movie, there’s always something that’s about to explode. The nuclear reactor in the sub, the boiler in the train engine, the engine on the airplane…the scenes in the movie jump from a rising pressure gauge, the sweating engineers, and the tense lip biting by-standers. While great in movies, these pressure cooking scenes are horrible ways to live and unfortunately, the scene I just described is the inner life of most pastors I know. If we could see the drama going on inside them, I’m afraid we’d see a rising pressure gauge and a sweating engineer trying to keep things from blowing up.