Guest Post: 5 Words to Encourage a Leader

This week, I am honored to share my site w/ my friend Aaron Maners. 8 years ago, Aaron and his wife Suzi planted Canvas Church in Jacksonville, FL. In their 8 years of leading Canvas, the church grew, became healthy and had its challenges that every start up goes through. I have personally walked with Aaron as a friend, mentor, coach and peer.

About 6 months ago, Aaron and Suzi stepped out into a new venture designed to come along side pastors, church planters and businesses who are seeking to expand their organization in a God-honoring way. I would highly recommend Aaron to consult or coach your church, church plant or business. Aaron is not only a colleague. He is a friend.

I recently asked Aaron to share 5 pieces of wisdom or advice that have been Life-Changing in his leadership through the years. His responses are fresh and I believe timely for many reading this today.

Enjoy.
Five Encouragements Some Great Leaders Said To Us When We Planted:

Matt Keller and I have been friends for a long time and when he asked me to put a few thoughts together concerning our experience as church planters, immediately I thought of the value of surrounding yourself with encouragement.  You see, Suzy and I have always been blessed to have tons of positive, faith-filled people in our lives, but when we felt that God was moving us from a career of 14 years of national youth ministry to planting a church, we were wonderfully overtaken by a tsunami of inspiration and support.

Specifically, I remember five statements five great men said to us, and almost ten years later, are still meaningful.

1. “Be true to yourself. Find your own ministry DNA and stick to it. It WILL be tested . If you try to become all things to all men, eventually you will lose yourself and become miserable as a pastor.”  (Danny Chambers, Oasis Church, Nashville TN)

I remember the evening I went home and told my wife these words that Danny had said. Right away we jumped in to the project of writing down and crafting the culture we wanted to see at our church.  That list was comprised of values of what we knew we wanted as well as what we wanted to stay away from.

At first, these will only be a framework or theory for your church plant, but eventually they will naturally fall out as your culture comes alive. This is why it is so important to continually beat the drum of the vision first to your team and then to your church. Occasionally, there will be people who enter your culture having come from other churches that didn’t do things the way you do them or didn’t flow the way you flow and many things might be new to them. Fashion your culture to be able to accept in MOST types of people and give it the strength and foundation needed to stand on its own.

2. “Never  look at just one offering. Look at the quarter and see how you are trending.”  (Rob Koke, Shoreline Church, Austin TX)

As a church planter, one of the worst things to experience is the first time that an offering is low and you don’t quite make budget.  Often times it triggers sleepless nights saturated with worry and thoughts of “…it’s all over, we’ve lost everything!”  Even though it feels like the sky is falling financially, it’s usually not the case. One bad offering, even one bad month doesn’t necessarily mean the death of a new church.

Instead, set in place great people who can help you watch and learn from your organization’s giving trends over a predetermined season of time. From that information, make prayer-filled decisions about the economy of your church and craft solutions accordingly. I can only imagine THAT God is so wonderfully excited about each new church plant, that He will remain totally faithful to His Word in being your provider.

3. “Dude, I believe in you!”  (Matt Keller, Next Level Church, Ft. Myers FL)

Yep.  He said “dude” like only Matt can and it charged me with excitement and vision. Sometimes, saying “yes” to God’s calling is easier than the navigating through the obstacles that present themselves along the way afterward and it is necessary to be reminded that people see greatness in us.

Each of us have people that have that amazing gift of being an encourager and we need to make room for those people in our lives both in times of successes and in times of failures or difficulty.  My hope is that one day, there will be a person or two that recalls how much of an encourager I was to them.

4. “You are my friend and I love you even though we live a million miles apart.”  (Scott Gurule, Generations Church, Tucson AZ)

Sometimes planting a church can become lonely.  Actually, I felt like I dropped off the face of the Earth when Suzy and I set up shop in a small suburb of Jacksonville, FL.  We felt distant from many of the people we saw regularly around the nation who were in our tribe of youth ministry leadership. We missed the green rooms at conferences, the late nights at restaurants as we explored other cities, and seeing each other at youth camps.

One day we woke up and realized most of our friends were in ministry and lived in other cities. We had to realize that we may not have a local golfing or fishing buddy but we did have people who loved us nonetheless and were there to be positive voices in our lives as we maintained a long distance relationship. Simply put, in ministry, you MUST have great friendships with people who can relate to where you are at in life.

5. “These folks (Aaron & Suzy) are anointed by God.”  (Billy Hornsby, Founder of Assoc. Of Related Churches)

With his arms around me and my wife, Billy so lovingly said these five simple words in front of the lead team of ARC, some of the greatest pastors in our nation.  He reminded us and echoed what the Holy Spirit had promised us and every other person who steps into ministry.  God has anointed us.  God has empowered us.  His Holy Spirit walks with us through all facets of life, love, and ministry and gives us all we need to make a difference in this world.

Thank you, Billy.  Sometimes we need to hear it again.

If we’re a leader, we need encouragement! So let me ask you 2 questions:

1. “Who is speaking encouragement into your life?”

2. “Whose life are you speaking encouragement into?”

Blessings,

Aaron Maners

To contact Aaron to work with your church, church plant or business email him at aaron@canvaschurch.net