Post-Pandemic Blues?
Now is the perfect time to make a Holy Shift!
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"They had no Bibles, no cemeteries, no Bible schools.
No radios or telephones.
No printing presses.
No churches.
Nothing!
However, they turned the world upside down in one generation.
What did they have?
They had an experience with the living Christ.
They had the filling of the Holy Spirit."
"And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness."
- the early church in Acts 4.31 (ESV)
‘And God has made all things new, and reconciled us to Himself...'
(2 Corinthians 5:18-20)
I love people.
I believe every person matters.
That's why I do what I do.
And I wish I was a perfect pastor and leader.
But I'm not.
I continually fail.
Expectations sometimes aren't met.
I drop the ball.
Miscommunications happen.
And I always feel horrible when I screw up.
If I had a time machine, there are so many do-overs I'd love to change.
Rewinding my mistakes haunts me sometimes.
Yet the past is the past -- I can't change it.
All I can do is move forward and make changes.
One change I'm trying to grow in is apologizing when I mess up.
I made this change 8 months ago.
It's not fun.
Never easy.
And yet forgiveness releases pain and opens the door to reconciliation.
So last Fall I started doing something new.
Anytime I hear of someone from the past who posts online about maybe feeling a little hurt or experiencing a twinge of pain caused by me... I pick up the phone and call them.
If they won’t answer, I try texting and emailing them.
It's awkward, I won't lie.
Asking for forgiveness is extremely humbling and I feel like I'm fumbling forward through these phone conversations and voice mails.
But here's what I'm learning: grace is messy.
Love requires action.
And not long ago, I got to have an AMAZING conversation with someone from the past... and see how God is restoring things for a new future!
Paul writes that 'God has entrusted to us the ministry of opening the door of reconciliation.'
So that's what I'm trying to do in my own life and leadership.
I may not always be successful and the conversations may feel awkward, but they are always honest and sincere.
Opening doors.
That's what I'm gonna keep trying to do.
And maybe, in the days ahead, we can all experience a little bit more of God's love.
Who would have guessed 12 months ago that our lives would look so different today?
As we all begin rebuilding our lives and organizations post-pandemic, it might encourage you to allow two simple words to help guide creating your new normal:
Fail Harder.
As Facebook exploded, founder Mark Zuckerberg realized he had to release more and more of the work to web programmers and developers. He couldn't do it all by himself.
Sometimes details fell through the cracks.
Mistakes happened.
And that's okay.
Zuckerberg knew that effective leaders cannot micro-manage people. You must give them freedom and margin to hit the wall and learn.
Fail Harder. That's his mantra at Facebook.
Move fast and break things.
The same is true for you: your effectiveness at rebuilding your organization post-pandemic will INCREASE as the load on your plate DECREASES.
For leaders, this means enabling more and more people.
The start-from-scratch labor of love that my wife and I began a few years ago, Life Church, has grown to be one of the fastest-growing churches in Michigan.
As the founding pastor, my temptation is to try doing everything in the church. This would only lead to a bottleneck and stunt our organization’s growth.
What I have been learning as we bust through growth barriers is that as the leader I can have either control or growth, but I can’t have both.
When I let go of control, our church experiences more growth!
I believe that this post-pandemic season will lead us all into a stronger future.
We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.
As you release things in your organization that you’ve held onto tightly, you also unleash mistakes.
And that's okay.
Comedians get better and better every time they bomb on stage. There is no better teacher than making a mistake.
Wisdom is simply knowledge plus scars.
We cannot microwave leaders.
You have to give your team time to make mistakes.
Crock-pots cook s-l-o-w-l-y.
Thomas Edison famously said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
Failure is the incubator of leadership.
Failure says that we get to try another direction in solving this problem.
Leadership is formed when we choose to fail harder.
Whatever happened before is now in the past.
Following Christ is like an improv scene: you always get to start fresh.
Dream big.
Stand back up and stretch your faith further.
That’s the beauty of following Christ. Your vision is never too big for God. He forgives, He authors second acts, and He releases you from your past (see Romans 8:1).
Now be careful; don’t waste this fresh page.
Don’t be obligated to ordinary.
No one will ever follow you down the street if you’re carrying a banner that says, “Onward toward mediocrity.”
Instead, take risks.
Paint a big picture of what could be and should be.
And then do it.
Jonathan Herron is a former comedian-turned-author and the founding pastor of Life Church, the fastest-growing church in Michigan and 11th fastest-growing church in America according to LifeWay Research and Outreach Magazine.
His unique ministry approach has been featured online in Time Magazine, USA Today, The Detroit News, MLive and The Washington Times.
Married twenty-two years to his high school sweetheart, Herron has five adopted children plus a wiener dog with a nervous bladder.
I've been spending a lot of time reading and meditating on the Gospel of John, not just because we're tackling it this Sunday at Life Church, but also because the Spirit daily draws me deeper into its waters for my own spiritual well-being.
In fact, just yesterday as I was spending time with my counselor, without knowing that I'm chewing on John's Gospel, my counselor himself spent an hour pouring into me with many of the accounts and teachings from the Gospel of John!
In my life, when a particular passage or book of Scripture repeatedly comes to my attention from multiple sources in a short amount of time, it is God the Holy Spirit knocking me over my stubborn head with the Holy 2x4 saying, “Shut up and listen to Me!”
For what it's worth, here are a few lines of Scripture that grabbed my imagination and my heart early this morning...
‘Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.’ (John 1:17) -- If I don’t lead with love, nothing I say or do matters.
‘The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother… And he brought him to Jesus.’ (John 1:41-42) — Found People Find People!
‘On the third day a wedding took place…’ (John 2:1) — A foreshadowing of the Resurrection! Jesus rose from death on the Third Day and a New Beginning and ReCreation began!
‘You have saved the best till now!’ (John 2:10) — Because in Christ, the BEST is always YET to come!
‘Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.’ (Jesus in John 3:19) — Wow. Even though I walk in darkness as a sinful man full of pride and arrogance, the Light pursues me. If Jesus never gave up on me, who am I to ever give up on people?!
‘He must become greater; I must become less.’ (John the Baptizer in John 3:30) — Wow. Wow. Wow. In a look-at-me, TikTok-drenched world, this statement is the most counter-cultural thing you can say in 2021!!
‘True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth…’ ‘God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.’ (Jesus in John 4:23-24). Jesus emphasized this point twice. When Scripture is repeated, it’s God’s way of saying, ‘Pay attention — this is important!’
‘Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.’ (Jesus in John 5:14) — Yikes. If Jesus looked me in the eye and spoke those words, it would scare me straight! In fact, through Scripture, Jesus IS looking me in the eyes and speaking those words to me!
‘My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I, too, am working.’ (Jesus in John 5:17) — Jesus never stops. Jesus never gives up on people. Jesus perseveres. Jesus oozes with love and radical acceptance. There’s always more ministry to do, more people to serve, more lives to impact, more room at the table, and more Sundays to welcome Guests into Heaven. We gotta keep working!
