A Pastor Leaves His Church and His Church Applauds (but it's not what you think)

(I've been praying long and hard about this recent news and how to apply it to my pastoral leadership style...sry it took so long to post...enjoy!)

Check out this announcement. This pastor started this church in Virginia Beach and is making an announcement that he's leaving to start another church in Las Vegas.


http://www.vinceantonucci.com/2008/07/big-announcement.html




2 thoughts:



1) This announcement made me look at my leadership style. For Vince, his gifts are to generate excitement, gather people together, start up a church and reach people that aren't in church. For me, my style is to take an already existing church and transform it to reach people that aren't in church (I just need to work on the 'excitement' part...I'm so task-oriented; it's sad, I know).



2) Vince isn't leaving his church. His church is SENDING him. What would our churches look like if we had that atmosphere in our DNA for them to see that they're not losing a Pastor but that they are sending him out in the mission field?

I've always seen this about any congregation member that leaves my church because of a job transfer or whatever situation it is. They aren't leaving our church; our church is sending them into the field. We'll miss them, but I would hope that we've equipped them for the mission field they're headed to.

Profiles in Courage by JFK

This book gave me a deeper background of what courage with leadership means. I'm always drawn to the little guy rising up against the "big dogs" and winning.

It's also nice to read something biographical for a change.

My favorite quote:

"In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of coursage whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience - the loss of friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men - each man must decide for himself the course he will follow."

You've Got To Be Kidding Me: "A Gay Man sues Publishers over the Bible"

Heard a news story about a man, Bradley Fowler, who is suing 2 publishing companies, Nelson and Zondervan for publishing the Bible which contains anti-homosexual references. Fowler claims that passages like I Corinthians 6.9 cause the homosexual community to "endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence ... including murder."

There are so many levels to comment on. I'll leave my comments on two of them:

1) the guy was denied a court appointed attorney. It's really hard to take his claims seriously if there's not an attorney out there to take up his case.

2) it's one thing to translate the Bible and another thing to apply the Bible. There are so many groups out there that read the same Bible I read and arrive at a totally different application of the same verse. It isn't the publishers duty to apply the Bible for me and to tell me how to treat people. That's my job as I interact with the Bible.


If you're interested, below are the handwritten suites that were filed:

http://religionclause.googlepages.com/Fowler-Nelson-7-08.pdf
http://religionclause.googlepages.com/Fowler-Zondervan-7-08.pdf

Going to the Bathroom Has Never Been So Dangerous

Finished a book called "Bathroom Crime Puzzles". I bought it last year while I was in Houston, TX at a great bookstore called "Half Priced Books". (Here is yet another store I found that I can lose all my money in. It's kind of like Amazon.com but I get instant gratification after I buy the books.)
As you might have guessed, I read the short mystery crime puzzles and solved them while "taking care of business". It was a challenging read and took me a whole year to get through. At least I know that I'm not supposed to be a crime detective!

Vision

I recently came across a cool "power quote" that inspires me and keeps me motivated to dream and think about what could be....

"You must have long term goals
to keep you from being frustrated
by short term failures"

-Charles C. Noble