For pastors who have a dream and who are walking in obedience but still don't have the resources they need, don't worry. Keep walking in obedience.
I wrote the book [Today Matters] because I have a passion to help people personally grow. Really what it is, it's a personal growth book.
We over-exaggerate yesterday. We either think it was better or worse than it was - you know, the good old days. We over-estimate tomorrow; we think we can do more than we can - always. And that's why we put off everything till tomorrow.
We are so blessed, we get hundreds of emails a day that say, “John, I’ve worked this plan for one year and I can really see my growth.” So what I would love is for readers to do that for a year and then email me.
In my leadership conferences, pastors ask, "Do you have a vision for my church?" Many times they want me to give them a picture of where they should go and what their church should look like. When these pastors do this, I always feel bad.
The rallying call to people is to give them hope. When you have hope, that's huge.
God has never given a dream that could be fulfilled at step one. So start walking, be obedient, and watch God fulfill that dream in your life.
I grew up in the home of a pastor, and my earliest memory is that God really had a plan for my life and that I was special - this is really weird - but I felt that.
I tell a person, "If I could go home with you tomorrow and you and I could spend the day together from maybe 8:00 to 6:00, and we went out to a restaurant at 6:30, I could tell you with a high degree of accuracy how successful you're going to be." That's huge because I'm just going to look and see, what kind of attitude do you have, how do you relate to people, how well do you prioritize your life? I'm going to see all of those things in the process of a day.
When you finish reading the book [Today Matters], take the daily dozen and list them in order of how well you do them. For example, the one that I would put at the highest for me is attitude or relationships because I'm really strong at both of those. At the bottom would be health. What I tell people is, "Take one month and work on one of the daily dozen for a whole year." And so it's really a one-year personal growth plan.
Without a vision our community will perish without Christ, but without a vision the church will perish as well.
People are not going to give you a vision, but God can.
