Coaching Clergy Through Crisis

Coaching Clergy Through Crisis

July 16, 2024

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Lou Huesmann

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 7/16/24. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer:         While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Jamie Mitchell:  Welcome to another Tuesday edition of Stand In the Gap. Today I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell, director of church culture at the American Pastors Network. This past spring I got word that my high school football coach, John Alberta, passed away. He had taught and coached at my high school for 50 years. Remarkable is that he attended that high school. So since he was 15 years old, except for his four years at college, he served at the same school upon his death. So many memories flooded to my mind about him high school and what made him a great coach. There was one central idea. He was able to draw out of you more than you thought you could do, and convince you that on any day you could be a winner. He was able to get us to do things and try things that at first we never believed were possible or we just did not want to do.

Jamie Mitchell:  I think that is a great mark of a great coach. How about you? Have you had great coaches and are they needed in your life? Have you been a good coach to your kids, your spouse, your coworkers, fellow believers? And I’m not talking about counseling. Coaching is different. I’ve come to believe that we all need a coach in our lives and to not have one is real liability. And even more so when facing crisis, a trial life upheaval, I think more beneficial than a counselor that we can benefit in a great measure with a coach. Sadly, most coach list or better coach starved people on the planet are pastors. Either they don’t think they need it, not open to it, or there is no one available to them. And again, most times I do not believe pastors need counselors when facing difficult times. They have the knowledge, the understanding, the experience. They help fix other people. They need somebody to draw it out of them and then give them the confidence to do it. Just like Coach Alberta. Lou Huesmann is a pastoral coach with a ministry called Pastor Serve. He served as a senior pastor for almost 40 years, and now he comes alongside of ministers of the gospel and coaches them through transitions, crisis, conflict, and sometimes failure. And today we want to consider a needed topic, coaching clergy through crisis, what to do and who to go to. Lou, welcome to Stand in the Gap Today.

Lou Huesmann:  Thank you, Jamie for having me.

Jamie Mitchell:  Lou, you heard my opening. I allude to the idea that there’s a difference between counseling and coaching. What are those differences? And when you’re working with clergy and crisis, how do you help distinguish the difference?

Lou Huesmann:  Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s often misunderstood. I used to work in an emergency room at one point, and so I’m familiar with treating people in crisis and counseling is similar to treating a burn wound. It’s one of the most painful because it’s one of the slowest healing. When your skin is burned, the layers below it have to also heal. So the medical procedure involves scrubbing the top layers to remove the dead skin, to expose the living tissue. So healing can take place. It’s painful, very painful, but necessary to heal from the inside out. Now, many pastors are among the walking wounded and the role of counseling is to reopen unhealed wounds and then scrub them to heal them. So counseling is an as needed relationship. You only use it when you’ve got these types of situations taking place. But coaching is an ongoing relationship.

Lou Huesmann:  Generally speaking, a coach does not need to be an expert in a client’s field. It’s the difference between being a student of the game versus a star of the game. Coaching also draws out so that the client discovers the answers, what they discover they end up owning and what they own, they tend to implement. Also giving answers is about me. And so that’s not the relationship I want to be in. I don’t want to be someone who gives answers. Facilitating discovery though is about the person I serve. So coaching in a ministry context is really about voice recognition. It’s helping those you coach better recognize the voice of Jesus. John 10, five says, my sheep know my voice. So the goal of coaching is to empower pastors, spiritual leaders, followers of Jesus to better live into God’s purposes and plans for their lives.

Jamie Mitchell:  Oh, that is so, so good, Lou. When I talk to pastors about these kinds of things, I always say, look, there are those who do surgery and there are those who do physical therapy. The surgeon takes out the scaffold, does some cutting. A lot of times that’s what a counselor does, but it’s the physical therapist, the person who helps you walk better, get your strength, get your direction. That is so needed. Lou, you used a phrase that I picked up and talking about discovery and that kind of thing, but the words you used that I thought were so good, and I used them in my opening, drawing out, the coach draws out and we got a couple of minutes left on this segment. What do you mean by that in a coaching model or a coaching motif about drawing out of a person?

Lou Huesmann:  Well, in a coaching, from a coaching perspective, you have to believe that God is at work in a person’s life. And so what you’re looking for is those places where God may be at work in a person’s life, and to help them to see the places where God is moving and how God might want to provide clarity for them. And so you’re not coming in with an agenda for them or a program or a way of doing things like a mentor might do, but rather you’re coming in looking for something that God has already begun in their lives and you’re listening for those movements as you’re talking with them, you’re listening for those pathways of the Spirit’s movement. And then what you’re trying to do is to help them focus in and get clarity. And that clarity is something that once they get it, they tend to act on it because it’s their clarity.

Lou Huesmann:  It’s not the clarity that you’ve given to them, it’s their clarity. And like I said before, when they arrive at that clarity, they end up owning it. And what they end up owning, they end up implementing. So they’re more inclined to act on it because they have come to that point of clarity on their own. And so coaching draws out clarity. Coaching draws out awareness of what’s going on in my life, awareness of perhaps places where I’ve been reactive, places where I’m struggling, and then getting specifically focused on what the issue might be. And oftentimes it’s not the promise, my response to the problem that is really the issue. And so that’s where drawing out can be really, really helpful. In coaching,

Jamie Mitchell:  I use this phrase all the time when I’m talking with people, clarity is never our enemy. Now, maybe painful at times when we get clarity, but clarity is never our enemy. Friends, I think you can see today is going to touch on a subject that your pastor, you as well, you’re going to gain something today, but your pastor needs to hear when we take a break, why not call ’em, text them, email ’em, tell ’em to listen today to stand in the gap when we return. What are some common crises and how to coach a pastor through those crises. Join us back here in just a few moments for another segment of Stand in the Gap today. Well, we’re talking about the unusual unique topic today, coaching Clergy in crisis. Our guest is Lou Huesmann from Pastor Serve. Lou, you’ve distinguished the difference between counseling and coaching and the idea of drawing out what we already know and we need clarity on. Let’s make some application in regards to some specific issues and how you might approach these issues as a coach. So let’s start with a very common that most pastors that I talk to face all the time, and that’s relational conflict specifically with a congregant or a church leader. Is that as common as I think Lou? And how would you coach a pastor through a relational conflict?

Lou Huesmann:  Yeah, it is very common. And pastors there we’re called into churches to help them work through relational conflict, whether it’s board issues or whether it’s between staff or staff and congregation. And so because of recognizing that this is so common that you do have to be ready to deal with it. And the place that I always begin is resolving relational conflict begins with self-awareness. So what you’re trying to do is to help the people who are in that conflict to find self-awareness, to get self-awareness. And that begins with helping people become aware of the anxiety that’s being triggered in them. And by anxiety, I don’t mean just necessarily fear, but reactivity and those triggers are often in the form of the need to be in control, the need to be right, the need to be approved by others, the need to know or have the right answer or to prove you belong to a group.

Lou Huesmann:  And so you’re helping them to understand what’s triggered them to be reactive that’s created this conflict. And then the next step is to help them identify any of the four anxiety responses. How do you react when you are triggered? And the four typical anxiety responses are fight, which is conflict flee, which is distancing in a relationship. And then the third one is over or under-functioning and pastors are notorious for over-functioning. And then the fourth one is triangulating, and that’s where you blame someone or something else for your problem. So you first of all are helping them to become aware of the triggers and then secondly, what is the anxiety response that they’re engaging in? And so then as a coach, what I try to help other pastors do or we do ourselves in a situation marked by reactivity, is to take the posture of listening and curiosity, not the posture of solving problems.

Lou Huesmann:  And that involves asking good questions, which of course involves managing your own anxiety in a situation. You try to help people become aware of their own reactivity, what’s triggered it so they can own it. And then we try to discover, help them discover a better way of relating, and that can then lead to a reframing of the original conflict. So what happens is they then no longer see the other person as the problem, but rather they see that oftentimes it’s their reaction to whatever triggered them. And that really helps to bring down the temperature. So the presenting problem, the conflict can often be an occasion to see the ways that God is desiring to form our inner life. And that’s what we often see is that in the end, people can see that God is wanting to transform them. So it’s possible to have conflict and do it in a healthy way. It’s not about power or control or demanding that others agree with you. It’s about seeing my own triggers and reactivity and allowing Jesus to show a better way of relating.

Jamie Mitchell:  That is so good because so many times when I have been in conflict and I could really believe that the person on the other side is the major source of the issue, it’s not until somebody would ask me the question, how have you contributed to this? And getting me to talk about it. And then all of a sudden I start realizing, well, it’s not a 90 10 thing. It may be 60 40 or maybe 55, 45. I have a part in this. When I began to look at the problem, I didn’t see it. Hey, here’s another issue, Lou. What if a pastor is facing, some might call like a midlife crisis or a loss of ministry passion, and they’re feeling out of sorts with the ministry, not sure if they want to keep being involved in ministry. They’re kind of in an upheaval about their career. How would you go about guiding them through issue?

Lou Huesmann:  Yeah, we’re seeing a lot of this post covid because the covid season was so difficult for pastors, and I’m sure you’re familiar with that in your conversations with them. So pastors are tired. A lot of ’em that I talked to, they describe themselves as somewhat numb. I had one pastor tell me, he said that I feel like I’m just floating above life. Those were his exact words that he’s not really feeling or experiencing anything. So consequently, a lot of that has been brought up the idea of transition. Should I transition into a different type of ministry or transition out of ministry? And midlife can often bring up that question as well of transitioning. And so an example I’ll give to you of a pastor that I worked with, he was at midlife. He had a loss of passion for church planting, had been involved in a very, very difficult church planting situation.

Lou Huesmann:  It had gone well, but it was still challenging as most church plants are. And so one of the things that we did was we began to work on identifying his values, his guiding principles, and those came out of recognizing the places where God has shaped him and created those values in the way that God has shaped him through people and through circumstances. And out of that, then we began this investigation into the question, how has God shaped him to make a contribution to the world? And that comes from a very developmental model that I picked out from Bobby Clinton’s book, the Making of a Leader. And then I was coached and trained in that where you basically look at your calling in your twenties and thirties, your contribution in your forties and fifties in the hope that you will then hit your convergence in your sixties and seventies. And convergence is where all the shaping events and your own maturation and your spiritual gifting, all that comes together in your sixties and seventies for your maximum fruitfulness. So oftentimes midlife is a time to really sort through that contribution and really get renewed clarity on that to then move into convergence. So I really try to listen for those types of things that are going on and then work with pastors to really clarify their values and their calling, their contribution in the hope that they can then move towards convergence.

Jamie Mitchell:  It’s interesting that you brought up some of those age gaps there because as I’m thinking as you’re talking, I’m thinking about some of these issues how we are when we got into the ministry and we were looking at it as a 30-year-old and saw our whole future ahead of us, and we had some idealism in there, we looked at the ministry totally different. Now that we’re older, we have a little shorter runway. We look at the ministry totally different. But I guess Lou, what happens a lot of times is as guys are in ministry, they don’t realize that they’re changing or that time is slipping away or that they’re actually going from one stage of life and ministry to another. You must see that happen where guys get kind of caught off guard because of the changes that have just happened to them.

Lou Huesmann:  Oh, indeed. And the midlife time is often a time where a person comes into a greater realization of their limitations, and that can be very unnerving where they think that what they were going to be doing at that stage of life is not a reality. And so that can become very, very disconcerting for them and can produce the midlife crisis or just the flaming out in ministry.

Jamie Mitchell:  From the coaching experience, you have one or two real testimonies of having seen the coaching experience really work out in a pastor’s life.

Lou Huesmann:  Oh yeah. And to continue the story that I began of working with the pastor who was a midlife and really reevaluating what he had been doing with regard to church planting, as we worked on clarifying his calling and contribution, we were able to better see the situations and the opportunities that might give expression to those values. So we had kind of a portfolio of possibilities that he might look at in terms of using his giftedness and really seeing those values of who he is be fully expressed. And so as a result of that, he then began to phase out of church planting, and he started a nonprofit ministry to help pastors and ministry leaders to find rest and spiritual restoration. He realized that that was something that had been totally absent in his church planting, is just the rhythms of rest and spiritual restoration. And so he began to do these retreats for pastors and really found that that was a real sweet spot for him, but also found a real resonance with pastors as they were finding him to be a source of spiritual restoration.

Jamie Mitchell:  Wow. Friends, we have just scratched the surface on this issue of pastors and others as well, getting coaching, not counseling, coaching, drawing out what they probably already know about themselves and getting some direction, seeing the possibilities, and really seeing God’s will unfold in front of them. Interesting. A lot of us already know how to answer our problems. Either we forget or we’re unwilling to do it. And that’s where a good coach comes in when we return. Is there triage in coaching clergy? You know what triage is. You’ve gone to a hospital emergency room before you see the doctor. Is there some things you need to do? Join back in just a few moments here at Stand In the Gap today. Well, we’re continuing our discussion today on coaching clergy through crisis. Lou Huesmann is our guest. He serves with Pastor Serve. We’ll hear about that in just a little while.

Jamie Mitchell:  And he has dealt with many situations and helped coach people through those life situations, hopefully to a better end, a better result, a fruitful result. Now, full disclosure, Lou and I, we’ve been friends for some 31 years. Back in 1993, we attended a installation service of a mutual friend. We’d never seen each other, never met each other. We knew each other’s names. We met each other. We became friends. He preached at my church, I preached at his church. And I’m having him on here, not just because he is a friend, but I respect what he has been able to do and his thoughtfulness of asking the right questions of people and of pastors to draw out that information that we already have inside. And Lou, I don’t have to guess this, I know that you have faced a lot of different situations with pastors, but every situation is very different and unique. But there must be some things that you can do immediately when engaging with a person and a pastor, kind of like a triage nurse at the er. They get some immediate information, statistics, vital signs, what’s crucial to their care, some basic things. What are those immediate things when you’re either talking with somebody or meeting with a clergy in crisis that you want to find out about that person?

Lou Huesmann:  Yeah, that’s a great question. And I think it begins with building relational rapport that really is at the foundation of all of this is relationship is connected to trust. And when you’re working with people who are in crisis, you want to build trust very quickly so that they have someone to lean on and someone to trust in the midst of the crisis. And then right along with that is listening well, and that’s linked to curiosity. And so often I think pastors get trained to have answers as opposed to listening well and being curious. And curiosity can be expressed with questions like, well, tell me more. What’s next? And what else? Or what’s the real challenge here for you? And you’re just listening, you’re bringing open-ended questions to them and listening. And along with this, you can’t be afraid of silence. And again, pastors are trained to talk, but not necessarily to be silent.

Lou Huesmann:  People really need to hear themselves thinking in order to find clarity. And oftentimes what might seem like a really long pause and that maybe it’s time to speak, is really the time when perhaps the greatest work is being done because the other person is really reflecting on what they just said and they’re getting ready to add something onto it that could be that moment of breakthrough for them, that moment of clarity that God is bringing them into. So along with that, especially in crisis, my posture is that I want to have a non-anxious presence. And what I mean by that is a non-reactive posture toward them, toward what they’re saying or what they’re feeling. I have to be able to show up in a non anxious way in order to be able to help them. It’s kind of like the instructions on the airplane where they say, in the case of air pressure going down, you first of all need to put the mask on yourself before you put it on your children.

Lou Huesmann:  And I think that’s kind of the way this works as well. You need to be able to have your own reactivity under control in order to be able to help them in a time of reactivity. And so that’s vital to lowering their reactivity is my reactivity being under control. I have people tell me quite often that my being calm has reoriented them to being more calm in their situation. For some reason, I give off a sense of calm. They pick up on it and they end up being calm. And this in turn allows them to be themselves. And that’s really important. Steve Kos, who’s written the book on managing leadership anxiety, he asked this question, how many people in your life can you be exactly yourself around? Lemme repeat that. How many people in your life can you be exactly yourself around? And often for pastors, the answer is very few. And so my desire is for our coaching relationship to be a safe space where they can be exactly themselves and also be present to Christ and his love for them, and to be potentially in crisis at the same time, but to have all those dynamics going on. And that’s the place where you really see the spirit of God show up and bring some transformation.

Jamie Mitchell:  Louis, we’re talking about coaching clergy through crisis. That word crisis, it brings about the word urgency, concern something is heightened. And so when you say building rapport and building a relationship and taking your time and calming everything down, obviously if somebody comes to you and they need some coaching through crisis, they need a response quickly. I’ve coined the idea a lot of times I tell boards and churches and pastors that it’s the 720 hour difference. The 720 hours is 30 days. You need to get to a situation within the first 30 days of it happening. It then begins to move out into the congregation, starts to affect many people. Obviously you want to take time to build rapport, and it may take time in coaching, but getting to clergy sooner than later is important. You’ve seen that I would gather in your working with churches that the quicker that a church can get some help is always the better case. Is that correct?

Lou Huesmann:  Absolutely. And oftentimes that’s the problem is that churches will often think that they can handle things themselves. And I think that’s another dimension to this, is that you often need an outside voice, an outside set of eyes to be able to see things that you might not see. Because oftentimes reactivity is contagious. And so when you have reactivity going on in a congregation, whether it’s a pastor or the board or congregants, then it becomes contagious and it spreads. And as it spreads, it just picks up a life of its own that is greater than what actually the initial trigger was. And so to the extent that you can have someone come in, like a group like pastor, serve a coach, some outside person to see what’s going on, then you can basically calm things down pretty quickly by just being that non-anxious presence that gives assurance that we can work through the issues, we can listen, we can process this together, and it just begins to calm them down right away as opposed to coming in and being yet another source of anxiety.

Jamie Mitchell:  And crisis brings fog, it brings a blurry vision, and you need somebody to move the fog out and to sharpen the eyes a little bit, Lou, you’ve been sharing, I get the sense that a lot of what you do, or maybe one of the priorities of coaching is to foster self-discovery and not so much giving a person the solutions, providing answers, but having them find the solutions themselves. Is that a lot of what a good coach does? And again, why is that a benefit? We have about a minute or minute and a half left in this segment,

Lou Huesmann:  And I would use the language of self-awareness. You use self-discovery, and I use self-awareness, and that’s connected to self-regulation. And that stands in contrast to reactivity, which is linked in turn. The self-regulation is linked to social awareness. That is how I’m relating to other people, and then how I manage those relationships. And then you can see how this can play out in a congregation. Sadly, churches can be filled with people who know all kinds of Bible truths, but lack the self-awareness and relational management tools and skills that lead to healthy and mutually transformative relationships. I mean, think about how often the Bible addresses our relationships. The pastor can be an agent of change by the way he shows up in those relationships. So coaching facilitates this because it draws out and clarifies mentoring, pours in, but coaching draws out and clarifies. And that’s what’s so significant about coaching

Jamie Mitchell:  Friends, as you’ve been listening today, my guess is that your pastor probably is facing some personal issues, maybe some ministry issues, family issues, or maybe just issues within themselves of loss of confidence or uncertainty about the future or a self-image in regards to feeling insecure about some things. And if they had somebody to talk to, somebody who would ask them the question, draw it out of them. Remember, counseling is for the moment. It’s for the immediate, but coaching is for the long term. It provides a pathway forward and then keeps you moving down that path. And that’s what we’re talking about today. There are clergy who find themselves in conflict. They need good coaching that will not just get them past the problem, but towards a purposeful end. Now when we get back, we’re going to talk about long-term care. I want Lou to share about pastor served. We’re talking about how to coach your clergy, your pastor, towards a fruitful future here on Stand In the Gap today. Lou Huesmann from Pastor Serve has been talking with us today about coaching clergy through crisis. Now, if you want to know about Pastor Serve, you think your pastor may benefit from connecting with them, Lou, where can they go and get some information? What does Pastor Serve do? How would you know if you’re a candidate to gain service from your ministry and organization? How can a pastor get coached by you?

Lou Huesmann:  Okay, thank you, Jamie. So Pastor Serve has been around for about 25 years. It was originally one of the original organizations that was begun to really work with pastors, and specifically it was begun out of the vision of Jimmy Dodds, who’s the founder, and CEO, who was a pastor who realized that his front stage life, which is the world that pastors that show to everybody and often gets the most acclaim and produces their notoriety, that that front stage life was not consistent with his backstage life. And that language comes from the language of the theater where oftentimes the backstage can be an absolute cluttered mess while the front stage looks all flashy and good. And so Jimmy was really spurred on by recognizing the need to have to close the gap between the front stage and backstage. And so he began Pastor Serve 25 years ago.

Lou Huesmann:  So you can see what Pastor Serve is about by going to pastor serve.org. Pastor serve as one word.org. And basically our mission is to come alongside pastors and people in ministry. That includes couples. So we have people that work with spouses of clergy, do couples counseling. We do care, we do crisis management, we do consulting. So there’s a whole range of services that we provide for pastors and for churches. And we’re available and we give people introductory session at no cost. So you can try out coaching because a lot of people just go like, well, I’ve never experienced it before. And so we want to make it very easy for people to begin and to just experience what coaching is about. So yeah, who needs it? Every pastor, everybody in ministry needs it. Every staff member needs it, not just the head pastor, but we see churches that provide funding for the staff to be able to have regular coaching as well. And that’s really, really helpful. If someone wants to contact me, they can contact me by just doing my first name, Lou, LOU, Huesmann, H-U-E-S-M-A-N-N, at pastors serve.org. And I can respond to you as well.

Jamie Mitchell:  Well, that is great. I’m glad you mentioned about paying. Let me just say to all of our listening audience, all of our pastors, all our church leaders stop looking for things on the cheap. We get what we pay for. And I always say to pastors and churches all the time, listen, pay a person who’s going to come in and consult or coach or help you and invest the money that way. It’s a wise investment of money. Well, Lou, we have a few minutes left here and I want to wrap up things today. I want you to talk about long-term care. Once you guide a pastor through what they are facing, they get that clarity that you talked about, maybe even a plan forward. They also need long-term care. You may conclude your regular meetings with them. What must the pastor have in their lives to maintain personal health ministry help to build on what you’ve worked with them? And a second question, if we have time, how can their church family help? A lot of congregants are listening today. How can they be supportive in this process?

Lou Huesmann:  Yeah, it’s interesting you picked up the word care, because that’s essentially what they do need. They do need someone who cares for them on a regular basis. Back to the founder pastor of Jimmy Dott, he wrote a book called Survive or Thrive Fix Relationship Every Pastor Needs. And the six relationships are a mentor, coach, boss, friend, counselor, and trainer. That doesn’t have to be six different people, but some of those can overlap. But it’s typically someone outside your system who is safe and with whom you can process what’s going on in your own heart, not just in your ministry or your life’s circumstances. So one of the things that I really think is important is for a coach, or excuse me, for a pastor to have a coach in an ongoing relationship, and the adage that I go by with them is that you don’t get to clarity alone.

Lou Huesmann:  You don’t get to clarity alone. So you need someone who, with whom you’re going to have a regular appointment. Typically it’s a monthly appointment and you’re going to show up, and the question is going to be what’s on your mind? What’s going on right now? And that begins to set the agenda. And that’s so important for them to have that regular monthly appointment that they know someone is caring for them by listening to them. And I have monthly appointments with a lot of pastors. Now, shifting to your congregational question real quickly. I encourage pastors and staff members, as I said previously, to have a coach. And I think it’s important for churches to build it into their budget as part of ongoing professional development. If you’re just looking at helping them with counseling when they hit a crisis, it’s kind of like just waiting for your tires to get a flat tire.

Lou Huesmann:  Why not go ahead and do the maintenance? Check your tire pressure, make sure you have tread on the tire and do regular rotation of the tires instead of just saying, oh, but we have AAA. We can always call on them when we have a blowout. Instead, prioritize it. And I would go even further and say, expect them to be in a coaching relationship instead of placing all the initiative on them to go after the coaching. And again, if you want to talk more, I’d be happy to talk with you about it. And you could email me as I’ve already given you the email address.

Jamie Mitchell:  Lou, one last thought as a congregate may be listening today. And he says, or she says, well, I’d love to see my pastor get a coach. And matter of fact, I think he has a coach. But most of the people who are unquote coaches in my pastor’s life are just yes people, or just people who just tell him what he wants to hear. But a coach really challenges a person. Isn’t that probably the better way to look at a coach’s duty to the coachee?

Lou Huesmann:  Absolutely. And you think about it in the area of the sports world, if a sports coach affirms the player, that’s not going to bring out the best of them. What you’re wanting to do is to challenge them to be the best version of themselves, to be the version of them that God made them to be, which often involves taking some risks, moving into some unknown areas, and going beyond perhaps their previous experience into some new areas where they can be stretched, where they can grow, and they can become the person that God wants them to be. So yes, it definitely involves taking some risks. And if the person is only surrounded by people who just affirm, and that’s why friends are not necessarily the best coaches or just ministry colleagues in your denomination, you need someone outside who will look at things without the bias lens and is willing to step in and to possibly say some of the tough things that a person needs to hear that will really cause them to step into some new places that God wants to lead them into.

Jamie Mitchell:  Lou Huesman, he serves with Pastor Serve. Thank you, Lou. God bless you for the work that you and Pastor Serve does to encourage pastors, friends, the American Pastor Network is concerned about your pastor, their spiritual health, their effectiveness in ministry, their boldness in preaching and proclaiming God’s word. Yet we know that they face difficulties. They need help. We’re a phone call away. All it takes is courage to ask for help. So today, live and lead, encourage especially in asking for somebody to coach you until tomorrow, thanks for listening to Stand In the Gap Today.