What’s in this Episode?

If you feel like the demands of your church have you running non stop, then it’s time to fill up. You see, you can’t effectively lead the ministry when you’re running on an empty gas tank. Instead, you need lead on full, and not empty, so that you can continue to give 100% to the church. In today’s episode, we’ll show you how.

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Read the Transcript

Dick Hardy 0:00
If you feel like the demands of your church have you running non-stop, then it’s time to fill up. You see, you can’t effectively lead the ministry when you’re running on an empty gas tank. Instead, you need to lead on full, and not empty, so that you can continue to give 100% to the church. In today’s episode, we’ll show you how. Here we go.

Dick Hardy 0:23
You know, Jonathan and I have both been runners growing up through life, in high school and college, enjoyed running and I picked it up again here, a number of years ago. And I decided that after I picked it up again that I was going to going to run. I’d run in some little local races, like little 5K’s and 10K’s by I had never done a 20K. While there’s a major 20 k in Des Moines, Iowa called dam to dam.

Dick Hardy 0:49
You’re going to run from the big dam, Saylorville dam, up at one end of town on the north, all the way down to the series of dams downtown. And I said to myself, okay, I’m gonna just prepare for this. I’m going to train for this, the whole deal. So, the morning of dam to dam, so it’s really early in the morning and we stayed with the Hague’s. So, Gary was there with his wife and then Ed was there and his wife and I’m there with my wife, and they’re making a big breakfast.

Dick Hardy 1:17
And I’m saying to myself, wait a minute, I’m getting ready to run this race. I’m imagining myself, either throwing up all this food or having to stop at the porta potties all the time to get rid of all this food. I’m thinking, there’s no way. So I didn’t eat it all. I mean, I ate a little bit. And that was it. And Gary looked at me like, Are you crazy? You’re gonna do this 20 k run with no food, no food? I said, “I don’t want it to come out the wrong way.”

Dick Hardy 1:43
So I decided to do that. And I get about halfway through and you know what happens? I mean to tell you, I just absolutely drooped. Why? Because I was trying to run a 20K on an empty stomach. Let me tell you something. It doesn’t work. You can’t run on an empty stomach and you can’t lead your church on an empty stomach. Or on an empty life and all that’s within you.

Jonathan Hardy 2:07
Right.

Dick Hardy 2:07
You’ve got to have something in the tank. And that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about with you today, is trying to lead your church on full.

Jonathan Hardy 2:17
Yeah.

Dick Hardy 2:17
And not on empty. You know, there’s a there’s a great book out. It has been out a few years now. Wayne Cordero wrote on leading on empty and it speaks specifically to pastors trying to lead their church, while they themselves are not being filled, in order to be able to lead. So, it’s a big, big topic pastors face. At every place, it leads to burnout. We, you know, we talked about that here one of the previous episodes, but you can lead on full and that’s what we want to encourage you to do today.

Jonathan Hardy 2:44
Yeah, that episode was on avoiding burnout was on episode 52. So, check that one if you haven’t yet. But the key is you want to lead on full, not on empty. So, Dick, kick us off a little bit on how do you do that?

Dick Hardy 2:56
Well, the very first thing to do, now this is gonna sound so simple and you’re going to say thank you, Captain Obvious. But it’s to make your day off a true day off. I watch way too many pastors. Yeah, I’ve done it. You’ve done it. It’s a day off and yet “Oh, I’m just going to dabble with this stuff here, a little bit over there. And I’ll get to that here in about an hour.”

Jonathan Hardy 3:15
Just take care of you.

Dick Hardy 3:15
And the reality is you’re not taking the true day off. You’re not relaxing. You’re, now listen, to take a day off does not mean you’re lazy. This is a problem pastors have. Pastors sometimes have a distorted view of the work ethic. If I’m not working, I’m somehow lazy. The people in the church will think that I’m not doing my job. Listen, you could take that one all the way to the bank, but if you keep doing it, you’re gonna burn out.

Dick Hardy 3:47
Yeah, you’re gonna crash and burn and you’re not going to lead your church to where you need to lead it. Yeah, I remember when we were raising you and Aaron. That really, I worked five days a week, the way our church was set up. So, I would work Monday through Friday. And then Saturday was my day off. And then Sunday, they called it the board called it, neither a day on her day off.

Well let you know, let me tell you, if you’re a staff member, and it’s called neither day on or day off, you got to be there. So, I was working six days a week, and I just did that for years.

Jonathan Hardy 4:20
Yeah.

Dick Hardy 4:20
And, you know, we made it. But the reality is, if you could protect your time, you’re going to be, you’re going to be refreshed. Take vacation. “Oh, I can’t take vacation. I don’t have the money to take it.” Okay, I’m not saying you got to go, you know, to the Bahamas all the time. But you’ve got to take the time to pull away. I wish I could remember that statement.
Some older lady had said, you know, she had a little Retreat Center for pastors. And she said, “You can come apart before you come apart.” Oh, and she was really talking about you just need to step away. Yep, and then you’ll be better. Yeah, that’s the very first thing.

Jonathan Hardy 5:02
What about, you know, another kind of more popular thing here as of late, the last few years is the concept of sabbaticals.

Dick Hardy 5:09
Yeah. No, I’m glad you brought that up. Sabbaticals are huge. I recommend that churches put in place a policy that pastors, and you can expand it beyond that if you have multiple staff, but certainly your lead pastor and any if you have, you know, a youth pastor and so on, every seven years, they get a significant period of time off. Now, by that I’m saying a minimum of a month, not just two weeks. Two weeks is not a sabbatical.

Dick Hardy 5:41
Two weeks is vacation time.But four weeks to eight weeks where you can really get away. The church needs to fund it. So, you need to put money aside in the budget for for you to get out of Dodge. You can’t be just sitting around seeing everybody at Walmart, the store, and everybody’s talking church and everything with you. You’ve got to really step away. The sabbatical can give you a rest that you can’t get otherwise.

Dick Hardy 6:07
And I strongly recommend that you tap into that. In fact, we’ve got sabbatical policies in our leaders.church documents. You know, during this time right now, you’ve heard us talk about the fact that we’ve opened up a window of opportunity for you, with leaders.church, for you to tap into a new format that we’re creating. That’s going to start on September 4, and it’s going to be a tiered plan. You get standard, advanced premium, where at each step, you get increasingly more resources.

Dick Hardy 6:42
But of course, the pricing goes up accordingly. And it’s clearly worth every nickel of the value for you. But inside of leaders.church, you get things like sabbatical documents, and so, it today up through the 3rd, go to leaders.church/grandfather, because you’re going to be great grandfathered in at the old price. And you get everything that’s on the new pricing structure. So, I’d strongly encourage you to go take a look at that.

Jonathan Hardy 7:06
So, that’s a great key though, is investing in yourself, to leading on full by refreshing yourself.

Jonathan Hardy 7:14
Refresh yourself. Day off. Vacation.

Dick Hardy 7:17
And sabbatical.

Dick Hardy 7:18
Exactly.

Jonathan Hardy 7:18
I think those are, those are very important things. Now, a second way to lead on full and not on empty, is to invest in yourself at least one day, every week with, you know, some sort of teaching content, things that are going to be building you up. Obviously, hopefully, you’re doing this with your personal time with the Lord through prayer and Bible reading and Bible study. But beyond that, just to improve leadership-wise.

Jonathan Hardy 7:41
I mean, obviously, we know we need to be studying scripture. But we also need to be working to improve as pastors and ministry leaders. That’s another thing we’ve been talking about a lot lately, and you’ve been hearing us talk about that. But at least one day a week, every week, I would encourage you to carve out some time to invest in yourself. And so, you know, what are the things that are energizing you? What are the topics you need to be looking at? Who is it that can help you?

Jonathan Hardy 7:41
You know, how can you find that time to invest in yourself? Those are all the things you have to process and I would encourage every pastor listening or watching this to get it on the calendar to say this is a non negotiable. Because if I don’t do it, then I’m becoming stagnant. I’m starting to get on empty, and I don’t want to get on empty. I want to stay full. Phil, one of the pastors that is there’s a leaders.church member from Kentucky. He actually does this every day of the week.

Jonathan Hardy 8:38
He says, You know what, for 15 minutes a day, I have on my calendar, I’m going to carve out this time, and I watch (he watches) one of the leaders.church videos that we have inside the membership. He does that five days a week, because it’s a way for him to stay full. He knows he’s going to be giving out every single day of his time, his energy, his emotions. All these things, he’s pouring out and so, he wants to make sure that he is staying full.

Dick Hardy 9:04
Filling in his tank.

Jonathan Hardy 9:05
Filling his tank right back up.

Dick Hardy 9:06
Exactly.

Jonathan Hardy 9:06
So, that’s one of the things he does. I encourage everyone to do that. For me. I’m preparing my schedule to, I had a schedule prepared, and then COVID-19, and the kids came home from school.

Dick Hardy 9:17
Yeah, so you can even relate to that, pastor. I know you can.

Jonathan Hardy 9:21
Yeah. Though everything, I had all, I mean, you saw that.

Dick Hardy 9:24
It was phenomenal.

Jonathan Hardy 9:25
I had a spreadsheet of my how I’m tracking all my time every day, the time blocking and all that. And then that happened. And so, I have not done what I intend to do, which I’m hoping to start here soon, depending on what happens with school here for the kids, is carving out even up to 30 minutes a day. And now some people go, “Wow! Thirty minutes a day. That’s crazy.” The thing is, if I want to be full and I want to keep growing personally, and leading at another level, I can’t do that.

It just doesn’t, you can’t hope that to happen. You have to be strategic, and be intentional. And that’s what’s going to help you. And so, that’s our encouragement, is to invest in yourself.

Dick Hardy 10:06
Exacty. So what’s the takeaway from what we’re talking about, here, Jonathan?

Jonathan Hardy 10:10
Well, the takeaway is, you want to lead on full, not on empty. And two of the ways to do that is to make your day off a true day off. And then to invest in yourself at least one day, every week. That’s what’s going to help you to keep your tank full and stay recharged and ready to go to lead and operate at the level that God wants you to.

Dick Hardy 10:29
And we really believe to this end, that the leaders.church membership can help you exactly to accomplish what you want to accomplish. Just go to leaders.church/grandfather, and you’ll see all the options that are available, everything that is there for you. And on September 4, those are all going to be set at those pricing points. But for today, and up through midnight, September 3rd, you can get them for just $37, the original $37 a month, the original price for leaders.church. And honestly, there’s a 30 day money back guarantee in this.

You’ve got virtually nothing to lose. Go in there and kick the tires for 30 days. If you like it, keep it. If you don’t, let us know and we’ll refund your money. But there’s no contract, no long-term deal. You can stay as long as you want. Leave whenever you want. And it will help you. It will help you be better. It’ll help you lead on full and not on empty and that’s exactly what we want to have happen. Anything else Jonathan?

Jonathan Hardy 11:26
No, I just say thank you for listening or watching today. We will look forward to seeing you next time. Take care.

Jonathan Hardy 11:32
Hey, Jonathan here real quick before you go. Everything in your ministry rises and falls on your leadership. So, investing in your leadership is essential to staying healthy and growing the ministry and that’s why I want to invite you to join us inside the leaders church membership. This online streaming service for pastors gives you access to more than 300 videos plus training material to level up your leadership and improve your ministry skills.

Jonathan Hardy 11:53
If you’d like to do that I want to invite you to go to leaders.church/boost again that’s leaders.church/boost. Well, thanks again for joining us on the Church Tips podcast. We’ll look forward to seeing you next time.

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