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Ministry Staff

I don't usually yell from the stands. I normally stew quietly about the latest coaching blunder. But that day I was yelling.

I'd come to see Cristen, a girl from our church, play. I promised her last Sunday that I'd be there. She'd dominate, we chanted. Today, the freshman squad; tomorrow, the WNBA.

So with time expiring, the game in hand, and my superstar still warming the bench, I could stand it no more. "Put Cristen in," I shouted. It was clearly the right call to make. What could the coach be thinking?

That thought occurs to me with some regularity now. You see, I've been an associate pastor for 12 years. My community is growing but my church not so much, and as I sit in my office one door down from my senior pastor, I sometimes say to myself, "What could he be thinking?"

It is a basic instinct to distance ourselves from decisions we disagree with, but that quickly undercuts the relationship between associate and pastor. I'd rather be seen as the guy in the white hat, not the hatchet man; ...

March
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