Pastors (and all leaders) need to know the hard facts…its not smart to hide from reality. But at the same time, I am learning that pastors are confronted way to often with loads of crummy news and few solutions.

Recently at Revolution, I had to force us to draw up an organizational chart to help us understand how we organize and how we get stuff done. I was just getting covered up week after week with problems that, for the most part, other team members and staff could have solved on their own.

Whether you are on staff, a volunteer leader or an attender at your church, here is what you may not realize when it comes to your pastor: every problem your bring him makes a demand on his faith to believe God.

As the pastor, its my calling to constantly say it, spray it, wheel it and deal it when it comes to the vision that God has for our church.

A strong diet of problems weakens my faith. When my intake is primarily problem centered my focus starts to narrow to wondering and worrying about everything that could go wrong.

As a pastor, when you deal with the funk and the junk all day every day, it really starts chopping at your ability to have faith and believe God for big things. After all, its hard to believe for the BIG stuff when even the little junk is not being taken care of. Example: its tough to believe God for a new building or a great outreach initiative when your team keeps you involved in things like how to keep toilet paper in the bathroom stalls.

I want to encourage you to protect your pastor’s faith and empower you to bring solutions! Guard your pastor and his optimism! Let him dream about the vision and where God wants the church to go instead of bringing him all the junk that is keeping it from getting there.

NOTE: Do not keep your pastor completely in the dark – He needs to know what is going on, but he also needs to know it is covered! Make yourself extremely valuable and even irreplaceable by bringing solutions, not just problems.