In the game...

You gotta stay in the game at all times. You are the one calling the shots, therefore you must be ready for the hard stuff. When everyone else is at a program and having a good time or after a program leaving to go home, this is the time to take responsibility. Stuff will not always come up, but it may. And for that you have to be on your A-game. When the fit hits the shan and everyone else is in utter chaos, you must be ready to act. I am not trying to scare you into a state of ministry paranoia, but I am telling you that you have to have your sensors up and ready to smell the madness before it happens.

And the younger you are, not necessarily in age, but definitely in ministry, the more you will have to answer questions to parents, staff, students, the big dawg pastor – you know. Many a time I have been challenged on the decisions that I made in a program setting for some reason or another. Whether it was a disciplinary thing or a change in the program, I was always been asked the question “why.” I have had peeps get in my face about stuff, like actually ready to fight. Yeah, some of you may never encounter that, but ministry tends to send emotions running high and sometimes out of control. You cannot let yours get the best of you. Once you do something dumb, there is no going back. It's like the Godfather told Sonny, “Never let anyone outside the family know what you are thinking.” you know who needs to know wussup. The rest of the peeps are on a need-to-know basis. And we all know how that one ends up most of the time.

And once again I urge each one of us to get men and women to speak truth into our lives... now. If you make up your mind what you are going to do in certain situations now, then when they happen you already know what to do. It will not catch you off guard. Your peeps have the luxury of having you to make the decisions. And this takes away your luxuryto get lacksidasical. You haver to be ready to get into the thick of things when they happen. When stuff goes wrong you have a couple of choices; you can run or you can run the show. Please choose the latter. Get in there and make some mistakes. Cobb had a tons of sit-downs with me. We were constantly evaluating and re-evaluating stuff. Much of the time I got stuff wrong. But the cool think was that Cobb usually knew what I was and was not going to do. It's like a chess game. And I hope that your coach is better than you when it comes to the game. He or she should have a pretty good idea how you are going to do stuff, and then coach you to the best of their ability to get you ready for the game of ministry.

Who is helping you grow right now through the madness of ministry. Please don't think you can do it on your own. It's at that point that you open yourself up for something to blindside you. If no one comes to your mind then I would suggest you start praying hard for that person or persons in your life. It will save you and your ministry and take out a lot of the guess work as you mature.