How can such an amazing, exciting, honoring, respected position of “senior pastor” simultaneously be so difficult, stressful, lonely and destructive?

There is a weight that senior pastors carry that is unique to the rest of the team and impossible to describe with words. The rigors of daily leadership decisions and seemingly unending weekend message preparation has left many lead pastors feeling the burn! The following are four of the 10 rules to refreshment I shared this past year at The Orange Conference.

1. Realize that purposeful work creates refreshment.
One of the most important things I have learned about refreshment is that it doesn’t come from doing nothing.
I used to believe that in order to be “refreshed” I needed, as much as possible, to do nothing. The problem is, it’s very hard for me to do nothing. I can clearly remember getting very upset that I couldn’t do nothing. Then I would get even more stressed because I was even failing at doing nothing! What I learned is that refreshment does not come from escaping responsibilities and burdens. Furthermore, I learned that an absence of work WILL NOT automatically bring refreshment. Refreshment is not the absence of work, it is the presence of purpose!

2. Your input must keep pace with your output.
Some of my greatest refreshment on a weekly basis comes through my hobbies and creative outlets. In short, if you don’t have a hobby or outlet outside ministry, you are heading for trouble.

3. Learn to say “NO” even when you could easily say “YES.”
My model for ministry for the first 28 years of my life was that a pastor never says, “No.” You do whatever you can, for whomever you can, whenever you can. You always accommodate others, often at the expense of yourself and your family. There is absolutely no doubt that the reason so many pastors lack refreshment is because they never say NO!
Friends listen, if you never say “No,” and you try to care for everything, you will soon realize you do not have the capacity or bandwidth to care for anything. 

I had to spend about 40 hours and $4,000 with a counselor to discover this about myself.

My lack of refreshment centered heavily around something called “compassion fatigue.” Compassion Fatigue: Emotional stress or apathy resulting from the constant demands of caring for others.

In my efforts to care for everyone, l found myself not really caring about anyone. Here is what I can do so easily. I can force myself to be outgoing and extroverted all day at work or all weekend when people are on our church campus. So much so that when I get home, my ability to care about the things I really care about is gone.

Compassion fatigue is for real and we must all realize we do not have unlimited capacity to care.

4. Obeyed promptings bring refreshment.
In my estimation there is no better way to be continually refreshed than to have a constant string of “obeyed promptings” in your life. The Bible is clear, throughout Scripture, that the Holy Spirit gives promptings to people.

I believe that all those who have accepted Jesus into our lives also receive Holy Spirit promptings. If you are obeying the promptings of the Holy Spirit of God you are building HIS kingdom. This is not always easy but it is always refreshing.

If you do not obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit of God you are building YOUR kingdom. This also is not easy and ultimately not refreshing.

The truth is, there are only two kingdoms you can build—yours and His. And only when we build His Kingdom are we truly refreshed.

When was the last time you obeyed a Holy Spirit prompting?!?

This is the final in a series of posts about getting the Orange philosophy to pervade your entire team, from top to bottom. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

The third benefit of an Orange philosophy being squeezed into your staff this coming year is influence.

When everyone on your staff is headed in the same direction, your voice gets very loud in the ears of your congregation and community. When we are all saying the same thing from birth through college, people are eventually led to listen.

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one.
John 17:20–22

There is no greater way to influence families than for a church staff to pray, prepare, and present a unified plan to parents. Parents are hearing so many conflicting voices from our world today. If we can present a clear and compelling family strategy, parents will be grateful and equipped.

Here are four ways your team can increase your influence:

1. Do not try to do everything. By doing a little of everything, you will end up doing a lot of nothing. There is no way in our current economic times for a church to have influence while employing a shotgun approach to ministry.

2. Don’t just invite people to “come” to church, invite people to “be” the church. There should be family strategies that are external and focus on your community and not just your congregation.

3. Partner with other organizations in town such as community pregnancy centers, the YMCA, and other churches to promote family and faith. This is a visual illustration of the principle that Jesus said would allow people to believe that God has sent Him!

4. Remain faithful, as longevity instigates influence.

We’re continuing a series of posts from Todd Clark about squeezing the Orange philosophy all over your ministry. See Part 1 here.

The second benefit of an Orange philosophy being squeezed into your staff this coming year is … Chemistry.

When everyone on your staff is headed in the same direction, an infectious culture is created. A culture of chemistry is even more valuable than money to many staff members. Chemistry is in many ways synonymous with harmony which is to be prized and guarded at all costs because a house, or staff, divided against itself cannot stand.

Here are four ways to grow chemistry within your staff:

1. Create commonalities. The more your team shares in common, the more potential chemistry will be created. For instance, as often as possible do things together outside the office. If the only thing you have in common as a staff is the address of your church, chemistry will be hard to cultivate.

2. Spend a considerable amount of time in the hiring process. Make sure that any person you hire is not only gifted but also really gets what your church is about. Be sure that your team has a chance to chime in and meet the potential new team member before the employment offer is extended.

3. Read books together. When your staff reads together, your minds begin to bend in the same direction.

4. Celebrate team members. When team members are celebrated, their hearts are thankful, and that translates into endearment. People who feel endeared to a team will typically be very open to investing their lives in creating chemistry.

Today begins a series of posts from Todd Clark about getting your staff and volunteers to buy in to the Orange philosophy. Yes, you may get a little sticky, but it’s worth it!

Is it really worth the time and energy it will take in 2010 to “squeeze the orange” philosophy into your church staff?

The answer is YES.

When it comes to your staff the truth is, if they do not get the “sticky orange” philosophy all over them, they will never be able to share the sweetness with others.

There are three huge benefits to an Orange staff alignment, and I’ll be addressing them over the next three days.

Benefit #1: Synergy

Synergy is far more than momentum, as momentum can actually be very dangerous if you are not headed in the right direction. Synergy is focused energy. It is amazing how much we can achieve when everyone is complementing each other rather than competing with each other.

Here are five ways you can seek synergy on your staff:

1. Constant Communication – Engaging, informative, well-thought-out weekly staff meetings and creative monthly dream sessions.

2. Cultivate Chemistry – Spending time with each other outside the office just doing life together. Shared experiences enhance synergy.

3. Valuing Everyone’s Voice – It does not matter what positions people hold on your team. There should be a path where their voices can be heard and their ideas implemented. Your staff needs to know that any one of them can have a ripple effect on the future of your church.

4. Create slogans to further clarify your church’s mission and vision. These slogans, if sticky, will create synergy.

5. Ask members of your team, who may typically work alone, to cooperate on projects. When team members cooperate, the combined outcome should be synergistic for those staff members. Teamwork will make the dream work!

This past weekend I was at a retreat that was FULL of incredibly gifted artists. My chosen art form for the weekend was photography, but there was also dance, music, painting, spoken word, and fashion. Most of the participants were between the ages of 20 and 30; I am nearly 40.

One of my greatest learnings over the weekend was the dichotomy of confidence between these young leaders and myself.

On one hand, these young artists were so talented, but simultaneously many of them lacked any confidence in their giftedness. On the other hand, I am really untalented in the art of photography, but I exuded confidence.

I began to wonder … what causes me to be so confident, arguably irrationally confident, even in the midst of my mediocre talent?

I had to go back to my previous successes in life. For instance, from an early age I experienced great success in sports. I think that my success in sports created a confidence that I have later transferred to church planting, marriage, leadership, writing, speaking, and most recently photography at the weekend retreat. I think my early success created confidence that is portable.

Realizing this my mind immediately went to my children / our children.

Maybe one of the greatest things we can do for our children the children in our ministries is to celebrate their successes – any successes. Even if they are not succeeding in an area that we wish they would! Even if the success seems insignificant or irrelevant. Celebrate it!

Someday this seemingly irrelevant success in one area will become portable and create confidence in another area that really matters.

Funny how being good at sports in junior high can also make me a “great” photographer at 40!

Have you ever been in a meeting with a strong leader whose voice was so big that your voice seemed small? I was in a meeting like this recently with a highly respected leader who is very experienced and dynamic.

His voice was so BIG that the other voices in the room actually became very small. The irony is that his experience and position did not translate into leadership and inspiration. I cannot speak for others, but I actually left that meeting feeling devalued rather than valued.

On my drive home I was forced to ask myself … Is that what occurs when I, as the lead pastor of our church, lead meetings with our staff?

Does my experience and position increase or decrease the voices of others on our team?

This is really something to wrestle with because I believe one major reason a gifted staff person stays on a team is because his or her voice is valued.

I believe lead pastors who use their position and experience as a type of megaphone for the voices of others are wise.

Great leaders don’t always have BIG booming voices.
Great leaders actually increase the volume and voices of others they lead.
Great leaders often have intentional ways of amplifying the voices of others.

How is your voice leading your team? Does it make others’ voices louder or does it overwhelm them?

Something I have had to learn and accept as a lead pastor is there are many variations of Orange. When we started Discovery Church in Southern California six years ago, the only Orange hue we knew was North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, GA. The good news is North Point was a very vibrant hue. The bad news is North Point was a very vibrant hue!

I quickly came to realize that when you compare what you know about your church to what you don’t know about another church, you will always come up short. Furthermore, it is impossible to perfectly reproduce a hue. I and many other lead pastors have been on a journey the past several years in discovering which shade of “Orange” best fits our churches and cities.

Of course there are certain things that must be mixed together to achieve Orange: leveraged influence, a refined message, an elevated community, an activated family, and an integrated strategy. But when we mix these axioms together, inevitably each church discovers a unique shade of Orange.

These color variations are affected by staff vision and giftedness, key volunteers, facilities, and of course budget. There is no perfect hue!

Below are some links that highlight the many Orange variations found in churches today:

Discovery Church – Simi Valley, CA
Parker Hill Community Church - Scranton, PA
Ada Bible Church – Grand Rapids, MI
Community Bible Church – San Antonio, TX –
The Bridge Community – Decatur, IN
Northbridge Community – Pittsburgh, PA
Wiregrass Church – Dothan AL
Blythefield Hills Baptist Church – Rockford, MI

Thanks to Todd Clark for writing for Orange Leaders! Todd is the founding pastor of Discovery Church in Simi Valley, CA. Learn more about him on his blog or follow him on Twitter.