Clothes That Don’t Fit

Okay, I am loving The Monkey and the Fish. It is elevating on my list to a must-read for church leaders. (And I don’t know the author, so I’m not saying that to pimp for him.) Here’s another short section, showing why you need to read the whole book:

Somehow, somewhere along the line, when it came to being a pastor and leading a church, I’d put on clothes that didn’t fit… I’d done what a lot of young pastors still do. We go to the seminars that other pastors are teaching, to learn how to keep growing our churches and how to put together systems and organizational structures and strategic plans to make everything work… So we start putting on all these clothes that fit in one cultural context but not necessarily another… We wear these clothes, even though they don’t fit, because we don’t really know of any other set of clothes to wear… And everybody says, “You look good. You look fine.” But something inside you says, “It doesn’t fit. Something’s not right.” But if you’re like me, you keep wearing them…

I asked myself, “What really motivates me to do the things that I do?”… In part, it…was a large church, a megachurch with some high-tech goodies and hip people making a difference. Despite my good intentions, that was an important measure of my success. I’m sure other factors such as my need for acceptance and significance played into this mix as well… I finally came to an epiphany. What I needed was a new wardrobe, a closet of new clothes!