What’s in this Episode?

Have you ever had a moment when you thought to yourself, “yeah, that really was a pretty good sermon I just did.”? if we’re not careful, this can be a dangerous place to be. In fact, it’s arguably the greatest single force that holds people back in ministry. Well, in today’s episode, we’re going to share what that is, and how to ensure it doesn’t get the best of you.

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Read the Transcript

Dick Hardy 0:32
You know, for those folks who are in the United States, you know, that every four years there’s an event that comes around called the Iowa caucuses, and what the Iowa caucuses are, this is the first in the nation test of political strength for candidates who are running for president, both on the Democratic side and the Republican side. Well, I was involved with the republican party over the years when I lived in Iowa up to the age 46. And I remember I went to my first caucus in 1980, knowing nothing about anything. And then it continued every four years to go to the caucuses. And I had the privilege of meeting presidential candidates along the way. My most notable one was George W. Bush. And I became what was called, this is kind of laughable, Chair of the Iowa Families for Bush. Now, there was no group called Iowa’s families for Bush, but they made me the chair of it, which meant the media would regularly want interviews. Well, if I really look back on that, honestly, you know what that was doing to me when they wanted to talk to me, it was feeding, what? My ego. And ego gets in the way of all sorts of things and you get a distorted view of who you are when the press is calling you and they think you’re important. Well, the minute I left Iowa, the press stopped calling me. Nobody cared when I lived in Missouri. So point was, I thought I was important. My ego was being fed, but I really wasn’t important. And pastor, I want to tell you something, you allow the enemy to attack you at your base nature, that, where pride steps in, ego is going to eat your lunch. And that’s what we want to talk to you about today. That one single powerful thing that can really hold you back from being all you need to be for the Lord.

Jonathan Hardy 2:27
Yeah, it’s the ego is the ego. And we’re all susceptible to it.

Dick Hardy 2:31
Everybody, no matter who you are.

Jonathan Hardy 2:33
Yeah, it doesn’t matter how old you are, doesn’t matter the size of your church, doesn’t matter where you live in the world. Everyone can be susceptible to that.

Dick Hardy 2:41
And even if you think well I don’t have a problem with ego You know, my church is small. My this is that. Believe me, the enemy knows where to strike at you. And he will use one way or another to make you believe that you’re important. In and of yourself. And you’re not. You are with the Lord. But that’s where we need to make that distinction, that distinction. So let’s talk about it. We want to talk about these three. There are three things here, Jonathan, that we want to really drill in on, that we think will help you when you go to work on that one single element that’s designed to trip you up.

Jonathan Hardy 3:20
Yeah. So the first thing is to invest in yourself and, and by pouring into yourself, what you’re doing is you’re helping yourself realize maybe, what’s the word I’m looking for? Unconsciously! That’s the word. Just drawing a blank. Unconsciously. But it’s you’re helping yourself realize that you don’t have it all figured out. And when we realize we haven’t arrived, then that’s going to help us minimize that ego. It’s and help us not have that. Let that ego creep up, and really come to get us when we’re constantly pouring in ourself, investing in ourselves and trying to keep growing.

Dick Hardy 4:00
I’ve got to tell you something Pastor, the minute you think, Jonathan used the term that you’ve arrived, the minute you think you’ve arrived, you’re dead in the water. I’m telling you, no one arrives. I don’t care how old you are, how young you are, how old you are, how smart you are, how much Bible college or seminary, you have. You never arrive. And that’s part of the beauty of the journey of faith, specifically, the journey of ministry that God has taken you on. You never arrive. Continue to invest in yourself. Take advantage of the resources that are out there. The there are consultants available there are masterminds available that you can be part of. Jonathan and I, periodically, have been part of groups where we soak up all that’s available from people who have gone the journey before us. When you do that, you will find it’s going to benefit you and it’s going to benefit the church.

Dick Hardy 4:53
You know, the second thing I think that all of us need to do is to really open our mind. Now, you know, if you come from a generally theologically conservative viewpoint, which Jonathan and I do, that can sometimes be a dangerous turn to open your mind as in the sense of oh, you’re going to let all sorts of wacko stuff come in. That’s not what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about here is opening your mind to the newness, the goodness, the things the Lord has available for you, that you maybe haven’t been aware of previously. I mean, in short, you gotta let go of your ego. In short, you’ve got to realize that you don’t have it all figured out, as we just Jonathan just mentioned, and if you’ll if you’ll set your ego aside and say, you know what, I have a lot to learn. And I can learn from people who have gone before me, I can learn from consultants, I can learn from masterminds. Honestly, I can learn from things like leaders.church, you know that today is the very last day that you can jump into the leaders.church membership at the old price. Tomorrow, if you go to the website leaders.church/grandfather, you’ll see that you could get all the access to everything that’s going to be offered tomorrow to people at varying pricing points and increased value for each one. But you get it all for the old pricing point, which is $37 a month or $370 annually. Go to Episode 49. I encourage you to go watch or listen to Episode 49, where we talk through this extensively of why we’re doing what we’re doing, why we’re positioning leaders.church to be of much greater value to you as a church. And as a pastor, you’ll be able to get that tomorrow at the new pricing points. You can get it today at the at the original $37 which honestly it’s…

Jonathan Hardy 6:43
It’s 47% off. So it’s almost half.

Dick Hardy 6:45
Oh yeah, that’s just beyond a steal of a deal. You need to get that by midnight tonight. And by doing so, you’ll be opening your mind to the new things that are available to you to help you be better as a pastor.

Jonathan Hardy 6:59
I think another thing about opening your mind that’s helpful is, is we can open our minds to other pastors and people who have, whether they’ve blazed the trail the same as us, or even if it’s been different. And it doesn’t matter the size of the church, but um, you know, I remember having a pastor one time I was interacting with, and he was pastoring a church that was a certain size, there was another church that was significantly smaller in size. But he was like, you know what, I can still learn from them. And so we have to remember to open our mind to that, just because we’ve maybe reached a certain threshold, you know, attendance wise or whatever, that doesn’t mean we can’t still learn from from people that maybe haven’t hit that threshold yet. And so it’s kind of like we learn from everyone.

Dick Hardy 7:44
Yeah, it’s that whole concept of mentors. Having a mentor that’s older, a mentor who’s a peer, and a mentor who’s younger. Yeah, so just be, I mean, obviously, we think of the older one is being the mentor, but the younger one can and so to your point, Jonathan, you can learn from a lot of people.

Jonathan Hardy 8:00
Yep. Then, the final thing that’s going to help you overcome this is to, to use what you learn, and not sit on great ideas. Don’t just don’t just hear something, you know, you’re maybe trying to invest in yourself, you’re opening your mind. And then you’ve got some things you can do now. The worst thing you can do at this point is to sit on it, and to not move forward. You know, you can’t be a perfectionist and just wait for everything to be perfect, because perfect scenarios and situations don’t really have to happen. I mean, there’s always going to be things and so we’ve got to look at what we’re dealing with. You got to study the situation, we’ve got to learn and then we have to act and implement and that’s a huge thing. Some people do really well, they, even you, you can take something and jump quicker when things aren’t perfect at all, and implement whereas I like to make sure I got my ducks in a row first, process it, then implement. So we’re all different. But the thing is we have to be implementers.

Dick Hardy 8:59
And I want to tell you, you know, I wish I had it at my fingertips, but there there has been research done with people who are older, and on their deathbeds, and the question was posed, what would you have done differently? What’s something you would have done differently? And people would regularly say things like, I would have risked more. In other words, they had an idea. But they didn’t step. They didn’t act. They they had learned something, but they didn’t go forward with it. I’m just telling you, whatever stage in your life, you’re a young pastor, a middle aged pastor, older, doesn’t make a difference. Be willing to act and take and use what you’ve learned to go forward.

Jonathan Hardy 9:41
Yeah. Well, I was going to tell you that, Doug, he’s a pastor, a lead pastor in a church in Texas. They did something kind of, this reminded me along these lines, where they had a staff retreat, they used some of the leaders.church membership material, and they said, hey, we’re gonna start trying to implement, so they weren’t just going to come up with ideas, they were like, we’re going to implement ideas. And so they went, they had this retreat, great retreat, they use a lot of the stuff. They showed the resources actually to the whole staff. And I don’t actually know how many people are part of that team, but it was a staff retreat. And, then they left. And he basically said, hey, this added a ton to our retreat and gave them action steps to move forward. So then from that point forward, then they started to implement ideas.

Dick Hardy 9:42
That is so good.

Jonathan Hardy 9:47
So that’s just one example of what the power of implementation is. You have to… you can’t sit on these ideas, you have to move forward. And so that was one of the things that he did that I thought was just excellent.

Dick Hardy 10:38
Yeah, that is so good. You know and David, Pastor David down in Florida did a similar kind of thing. We get stories like this all the time. That really encouraged us as the provider of this content, but I wanted to encourage you, because you can act, you could take these things, and you can move forward with them. So give us a summary here, Jonathan of these things, that one single thing that has the powerful effect to hold you back.

Jonathan Hardy 11:03
And that’s the ego. That can hold us back if we’re not careful. And so how do we overcome the ego? Well, we invest in ourselves so that we keep on learning. We open our mind, again, keep on learning, and then use what you learned. So now that you’ve learned stuff, we evaluate, we evaluate, we look at all this stuff, we say, okay, now let me act and move forward. And so that’s a huge thing. One of the things I would encourage you to act on today is, as Dick mentioned, the leaders.church membership. This is the final day that you can get the 47% I mean, you’re talking to almost a half off that you get for life. As long as you’re a member, you get that rate for life. So, you know, two months from now, two years from now, whatever, you’re still paying the same rate, even though prices have increased, and you’re getting a discount. So you’re grandfathered in. That’s why we’re sending you to leaders.church/grandfather. So you are grandfathered in for life.

Dick Hardy 11:55
And I want to tell you, when you jump into the leaders.church membership, one of the beautiful things we’ve tried to create for you is there’s no contracts, no commitment, it cancel anytime, stay as long as you want. We’ve had some members, we’ve been at this a little over six years, we’ve had some members have been with us six years, and other people come in for a few months. You do whatever you want that fits you. And then honestly, in these first 30 days, there’s a 30 day money back guarantee, you git zero to lose. You get in, kick the tires, just not for you, let us know, we’ll refund your money. If it is for you just go as long as you want to go. We want to invest in you. We want to help you move forward, because your church deserves it. You deserve it. Now God’s called you for is time to lead this body of believers called your local church to levels you never imagined possible. And it can happen when you invest in yourself. You remove the ego, you move forward and you learn and I’m excited for the potential for you. I really am.

Jonathan Hardy 12:50
Well, 92% of people say that the resources has helped increase their leadership capacity. So the question I have is, why not that be you? Why not? I’m assuming you would want to increase your leadership capacity to? And if that’s the case, then we would love to have you join us inside the leaders.church membership. Well, what else Dick?

Dick Hardy 13:07
That’s it! Thanks very much for hanging out with us today. Make it a great one today and be blessed.

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