The Barnabas Blog

“You are now the leader and people are looking for you to make some major changes.” “Changes,” I asked? “Yeah, things need to be updated and improved on.” And then a litany of things was listed for me to change in the church that I grew up in and was now the pastor of. This “change” was couched in such a way that for me not to make the “necessary” changes that I would be perceived as a weak leader sort of a catch-22 situation. It was a very base appeal to my own personal ego and a beckoning to the nastiness of an unholy ambition that I have to keep restrained on a pretty routine basis. Time passed and I did not change a thing except that we baptized people at the beginning of the Sunday night service instead of at the end. Everything else stayed the same. The point of this whole blog is that sometimes those who are church leaders can be falsely wooed into making changes that will literally cripple and perhaps even split an already healthy congregation. Woe to the man who comes i...

It’s Monday! Welcome to Monday! It is that proverbial day when a lot of pastors scattered about the world have already loaded up their U-Hauls and determined that yesterday was their last Sunday wherever they may be serving. I would be very deceptive if I were to say that I have never had those days before. I think that those who say that they have never thought about loading up their U-Hauls are either seriously out of touch or not telling the truth. Think about it for a bit. Pastors are firemen who have to constantly attend to putting out brush fires on various fronts. They have to bolster sagging marriages. They put up with criticism. They counsel those who are experiencing financial calamities usually that are self-induced. They have to keep everyone encouraged. They have to look across the way and see places that are seemingly booming and deal with that gnawing self-doubt that promotes self-pity . Add to this the incredible, overwhelming burden of the harvest. Sometime...

This is the last of the series about what different things say about us. Our stats and our schedules say much about us. In addition those things that we allow to influence us says much about us also. Practically everywhere you look—websites, print media, television, radio—one of the dominant stories of the week has been the return of Tiger Woods to the world of golf. He is competing in the most prestigious event that professional golfing hosts—The Masters at the Augusta National over in Georgia. There is a vast array of responses that are appearing from those who feel as if he should just go away contrasting with those who hope he wins it all in what might be hailed as the greatest comeback of any athlete ever. The Tiger saga started several months ago when some of his very private moments hit the national scene because of his marital difficulties. Very little details were spared from the national scene through various news outlets. There appeared to be a morbid but quite naught...

In the same vein of thought with yesterday’s post about “What Do Your Stats Say?” another worthy question for us would be what does your schedule say? To be an effective person, you have to control your time. If your schedule has not been determined then days will get frittered away and wasted or they end up being consumed with the well described tyranny of the urgent. The man who masters his time will master his life. Go buy you one of the cheap Timex watches that have the number 1440 on it and then wear it. When you glance at the time you will forced to remember that every day has 1440 minutes. How you spend those minutes make all the difference in the world. Malcolm Gladwell pointed out the 10,000 Hour Rule in his book, Outliers, and how that concert violinists, professional pianists, and master chess players were those who had the discipline to spend 10,000 hours working to become what they were. You may think that 10,000 hours is a long time but when broken down it is real...

I have developed a ritual every Thursday morning of going to the local Barnes and Noble here in Dothan. I go in and drink their overpriced coffee and read their books. Several weeks ago, I was just browsing around and stumbled across a book and found myself hooked by the opening chapter. It was written by Michael Lewis entitled Moneyball. It has turned out to be one the best books that I have read in the last year. The book surrounds a philosophy that was developed by Billy Beane who was the general manager of the Oakland A’s. In the decade of the 1990’s, he had the formidable task of having the lowest operating budget among professional baseball teams but still faced with the challenge of winning. He would have 30 million dollars to work with as opposed to some clubs which had operating costs approaching 100 million dollars. Obviously those teams who had deep pockets could afford to purchase ball-players that were going to place them in contention for a championship but Beane ...