There is nothing more important to a church planter than his wife.  So keeping that in mind how do you sustain your marriage through the church planting years.  Hear are the ten rules you must live and die by to protect your most important asset.

1. Set the bar low, but set it somewhere – It is difficult to make time to spend with your wife, much less take a planned vacation.  No matter what stage your church plant is in, it will require 110% of your efforts.  Spending time with your spouse can be as simple as grabbing a cup of coffee together, without the kids, a short walk together, a date to the dollar movies.  Spending time together can light that refocus your passion and will also remind both of you why this church plant is worthwhile.
2. Turn off the iPhone (or Blackberry) – You have to make sure you wife knows that she is more important than your phone.  When I say turn your phone off, I MEAN OFF.  Even if your phone just beeps or flashes when a message comes in it can become the big pink elephant in the room.
3. When there is a critical decision in your church plant make room at the table for your wife - These big decisions can change the way of life for your wife and I believe she deserve the right to be heard.  Man, if someone had told me this during the first 5 years of marriage I would have made different decisions.  God speaks through our wifes, are we listening.
4. Engage your wife in her space -  This is one of most difficult things to do but I guarantee if you do this it will increase intimacy, communication and your wife’s passion for the church plant.  When you take interest in your wife’s passions the spotlight is taken from the church plant, because we all know that is what we talk about night and day, and onto your wife.
5. Answer the phone when your wife calls - Your wife knows that you are busy and that you field 100s of messages everyday so when she calls you it is important.  Stop what you are doing, pick up the phone and give her your full attention.
6. Don’t squeeze her in - She knows if you are just calling her to call her.  The drowning sound of a busy Panera Bread at lunch time or calling her 5 minutes before the meeting will communicate that she is not important.  When you call home make sure you are not rushed and that you have time to talk.
7. Treat your wife like she is more important than the first time guests at your church - don’t you ever let your wife feel that you pay more attention to complete strangers than you do her.
8. Share the spotlight - As church planters you will get lots of attention from your members and prospective visitors.  Set your wife up for success and bring her into the light.  Your wife is the volunteer of the year. She pulls more behind the stage stunts to keep your circus act a float than you give her credit for.  Publicly acknowledged her contributions.  This will help build her creditability with your people and will ultimately show her your dedication and love.  Some things go without saying…but not this!
9. Celebrate your wins - Spend time remembering all that you went through and where God has brought you.  You might have not always been in tune but your still playing together.
10. Make her feel special in front of her friends at church - must I say more??!!!

Take if for what it is worth…just don’t forget that you can’t do it without her for lots of reason but mostly because no one else will but up with you (all us church planters are crazy)!  For more church plant inspiration check out my interview with Dave Ferguson.

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There are lots of joys of being a dad.  There is something that is unexplainable when my daughter shows her reliance on me.  Recently my daughter woke up from her nap in a very different way.  She usually cries when she wakes up but this time she had a bit of angst in her cry.  Upon hearing her cry I quickly walked into her room and saw something that I was not prepared for.  My daughter stood at the corner of her bed with her little arms stretched as far has she could reaching for someone to save her.  I scanned her crib to survey the situation and I found her diaper lying in the middle of her bed and poop everywhere.  I forgot to put her pants back on her after I changed her diaper before putting her down for bed and the result of my mistake was a mess!  My daughter starts to whine louder because I did not remove her immediately from the situation.  My daughter was helpless.  Even though it was her mess she could not clean up the situation.  That is exactly how our lives are before we enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ.  There are three things that i realized from this poppie mess, I realized that we

1.  We don’t need encouragement – I could have really encouraged my daughter. “Come on Addison you can clean up your mess!”  Same goes for our lives.  Although encouragement makes us feel good it doesn’t help us clean up the mess we have made of our lives.

2.  We don’t need self help – My daughter didn’t need a 10 step program to cleaning up poop.  All though self help programs seem appealing to help clean up our lives…the fact is that they will always come up short because of one key work “self”

3.  We need to be rescued – There was only one way my daughter was getting out of that messy situation, I had to rescue her.  Just like my daughter the only way you will ever clean up your life is to allow Jesus to rescue you from a situation that is destined to produce failure and we can only be cleaned up if  Jesus has our heart.

No matter what situation you find yourself in the only answer is to allow yourself to be rescued.  To learn more about allowing Jesus to rescue your life click here.

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What if the Church could be the answer to Jesus’ Prayer?

We pray to Jesus asking Him to answer our prayers – what if we became the answer to His? In John 17:20-24, He prayed that we would be one, and One Prayer is an opportunity to see what can be accomplished when the Church works together. Jesus has a vision for His church and I fear that we are not answering His prayer. Look at what happens when a few hundred churches decide to join together as one. In 2008 here is what happened:

Pastors Enrolled: 609
Evangelistic Contacts: 65,563
Bible Study Participants: 44,618
Baptisms: 7,112
Churches Planted: 667

I can’t wait to see what God is going to do this year at One Prayer 2009.  For more information go to http://www.oneprayer.com

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What are you thoughts about the social Gospel?  This might sound like a question that needs no answer but I am suprised to see all the different churches that are so quick to meet the physical needs of people and ignore their spiritual needs.

Now, I am not saying that we, as a church, do not need to meet the physical needs of people.  I am the first one in line to volunteer at an outreach event.  However, we seem to neglect the fact that we need to share truth while meeting the phyiscal needs of people.

I read one time that it is truthfully said that you cannot tell someone about the bread of life when they are hungry for physical bread. Similarly, it is true that those who daily face real needs do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. A sensitivity to an individual’s physical need can often provide an opportunity to address the person’s spiritual need.  What do you think?  Leave a comment.

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I have partnered with another youth pastor on a website called www.staffyourchurch.com This is a career builder type website that will link ministers looking for jobs across the us. We …

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