Jan 5, 2017 | Calling, discouragement, Fear, Leadership, Quitting, Stress
What can you do when you’re a pastor and have lost your passion? When your calling seems fuzzy, difficult, perplexing, and you wonder: “God, why did You lead me to this church?” Most pastors wrestle with these thoughts occasionally. A couple of difficult...
Dec 22, 2016 | Calling, Difficult people, Fear, Leadership
In last week’s blog, Leadership & Difficult People we stated that longevity in ministry requires pastors to occasionally make tough people-decisions. Dealing with dividers, boundary-crashers, triangulators (fancy term for gossips), square pegs in round holes,...
Dec 15, 2016 | Calling, Difficult people, Leadership, Uncategorized
I graduated from Oral Roberts University a starry-eyed 22-year old who was going to change the world for Jesus. No matter where God planted me and Laura, we were going to set records for Him. We would love people, and they would love us. It didn’t take long for my...
Dec 8, 2016 | Calling, Career, Contentment, Fatigue, Fear, Leadership, Rest, Stress, Work
This past Sunday we celebrated Family Christmas at our church. It’s an annual event where we honor people who lived out the Christmas story during the past year. We had a big crowd. So much energy in the room. Everything was perfect. Later that afternoon, sitting on...
Nov 30, 2016 | Calling, Career, Depression, discouragement, Fatigue, Fear, Leadership, Stress, Uncategorized
When it comes to the subject of emotions, pastors tend to fall into two camps. Camp 1 believes emotions are meaningless and don’t matter. Emotions are to be ignored. And at the extreme layer of Camp 1… emotions are your sworn enemy. Camp 2 believes emotions are...
Nov 23, 2016 | Calling, Career, Contentment, Leadership, Uncategorized
A tradition around many tables this Thanksgiving includes each person sharing a thing or two they’re thankful for during the past year. It’s been fun to watch the development of this tradition around the Opalewski Thanksgiving table. When the boys were young, it went...
