Last week I had the opportunity to spend the week with 175 middle and high school students from Mosaic Church. It’s not something I would usually do. Was it worth my time? I don’t have a particular calling to students and I have no unique gifting with teenagers. But when our student ministry pastor asked me to consider going, I prayed about it, and decided that it was in fact, a good use of my time even though I’m in one of the busiest seasons of my working life.

Earlier this year I wrote about our churches decision to hire a company that specializes in Generosity Initiatives. We are now well into the planning on this process and I’d have to say that it has gone extremely well. Our tasks are on track. The project is moving forward and we have greater clarity overall. Generis and our rep, Chris Willard have done a great job.

I’m kind of an organized guy. I might be a little obsessed. I don’t have a problem though. I can stop anytime I want to. Really.      To me, knowing what you need to get done in a day, or a week, or a month, is really important. So I use a list app called Wunderlist. Let me tell you what I’ve found works for me.

Gospel centered vision + Spirit led implementation leads to health. Health leads to growth. Growth leads to lack of space. Lack of space leads to a call for more space. Call for more space leads to a need for more financial fuel. The need for more financial fuel leads to  . . . well, that’s where the real confusion sets in. Do you hire a generosity company or go it alone? How much will it cost? Is it really worth it? These are hard questions that every growing church faces.

I am one of those weird people that has been blessed with incredible clarity about my role on this planet. I know what I’m supposed to do with my life. Outside of my faith and my family, I’m supposed to help bring vision into reality. It’s that simple and easy (which is to say, it’s incredibly complex and difficult). I help bring vision into reality in my own local church as an Executive Pastor, and I help bring vision into reality outside of my church by coaching, speaking at conferences and now writing books.

Okay, you won’t make millions of dollars. That was a straight up lie. I’m sorry to have disappointed you.

BackstagePastors.com is designed to be a website for Pastors who spend most of their time off stage. This is the place where you’ll find super practical articles on all sorts of ministry related needs and issues. Right now it’s new, but I hope to see a large group of writers develop in this space. Discipleship Pastors, Missions Pastors, Operations guys, etc. etc. If you want to write about preaching prep or leading worship, you’ve come to the wrong place, but if you want to write about facilities and budgets and counseling and HR and  . . . you get the point . . . this is your place. Let me tell you how it works.

This fall, I’m excited to be partnering with David Fletcher at XPastor.org by teaching in his XP-Certification Program. David is one of the strongest and most trustworthy voices in the XP Community. His website has long been a great source of information for XP’s around the country and his yearly XP-Seminar has been the ONLY conference specifically created for second chair leaders in the church. Plus, he’s just an awesome guy that you can’t help but like.

Recently I had the opportunity to teach at an Acts 29 Network regional one-day conference in Philadelphia. Jeff Vanderstelt of Soma Communities was the main speaker. I did a breakout session for Executive Pastors.

Let’s be honest, most Lead Pastors are not great with details and most Executive Pastors are not great with risky church planting environments that need loads of new vision. But every now and then, you can get these two types of guys together to plant a church and something cool happens.