Office by Alex Penny
a blog about
loving the Lord your God
with all your heart, soul, strength, & mind
and loving your neighbor as yourself
You read a lot these days about pastors burning out. The statistics are ridiculous (like those found here), and I had become one of them. I had been consistently working 80-100 hour weeks for 10 years of planting churches. One day, I started fainting, visited the emergency room, had every brain test you could have done, and they ended up diagnosing me with a social anxiety disorder, panic attacks, exhaustion, and burned out adrenal glands. The strange part about this, is that if you had asked me if there was anything wrong before the fainting episodes, I would have told you life couldn’t have been better! I was completely oblivious to the fact that I needed some rest.
Great thought from “Activate,” by Searcy and Thomas (p. 66) on replicating yourself as a leader:
“…teach your leaders to grow new leaders by learning to replace themselves in four steps:
The next time your love and generosity is forgotten and you are scorned or misunderstood, remember that Jesus is perfectly loving and generous, and they killed him. Yet another opportunity to live in Christ.
Trying to gain wisdom is a vain pursuit.
Everyone knows it does not come easy. At some point, all humans have a limit to how many wisdom-building experiences they can pursue or endure. For example, it would be easy to look at the list of characteristics in Ecclesiastes 7:1-11 and get overwhelmed at the kind of life one needs to maintain just to be called “wise.” The thought of trying to become wise is far too daunting of a task. In fact, it is impossible.
In my sermon this past week, I promised I would share some reasons (or rather lame excuses) I commonly use for not sharing the Gospel. The good thing I’ve noticed is that as I grow in my love for the Gospel, the more willing I am to share it with others. So here is my confession and I’m asking God to keep changing my heart…
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Psalm 71:18
My sermon delivered at Infusion Church on September 12, 2010.
Title - Share: Proclaiming the Gospel to Our Neighbors
Series - Echo: Loving Our Neighbors to Jesus One Person at a Time
My sermon delivered at Infusion Church on September 5, 2010.
Title - Strengthen: Healing Your Neighbors
Series - Echo: Loving your neighborhood to Jesus one person at a time
My search for a great new church name is finally over.
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James 5:16Pray for your kids today before they go to school.
Pray for your wife before you leave for work.
Pray for your co-workers both in your head and out loud when they are in need.
Pray for your pastor.
Pray for your elected officials like our President.
Pray for your parents.
Pray for your brothers and sisters.
Pray for your enemies.
Pray for your neighbors.
This is my sermon delivered at Infusion Church on August 22, 2010.
Title - Search: Meeting Your Neighbors
Series - Echo: Loving your neighborhood to Jesus, one person at a time.
I am currently preaching through a series at Infusion called Echo. Echo is our discipleship process that is based on the idea of becoming missionaries for Christ. We start with Jesus’ command to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. For the series, we have challenged people to commit to loving 5 neighbors unconditionally (Jesus style) for the period of 12 months. I have received several honest questions and concerns regarding this challenge, and here, I’ll try to answer some of them.
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Philippians 2:5-7 (ESV)