Leadership Lessons from Crepe Myrtles

Last spring I cut the side of my face, right my left ear.  After the bleeding stopped I learned a great lesson about life, leadership, and relationships.  Along the front of our church we had a beautiful life of crepe myrtles.    They looked breathtaking: bright red, full of blooms and just a year old.  They had grown at a very rapid pace, partly because we had an unusually mild winter, partly because the temperature has been quite comfortable for them, but mostly because we have had a lot of rain extending late into the summer.   For those who are not familiar with Arkansas weather patterns, we usually have a lot of spring storms, bringing with them massive rains. Flash-floods - you know, National Weather Service alarms on your phone, kind of rains.  This usually happens from around April until the middle of June.  Then something crazy happens - the rain stops.  I mean, turn the spigot off, it’s never gonna rain again - stops.  But not this year.  It has rained and rained.  It is currently the last week of July and we had what we call a spring shower, meaning sideways rain and those phone alarms, all of them sounding at the same time.

That amount of rain has produced the most beautiful flowering trees I have seen since the bougainvillea’s in Florida.  It has also produced a problem.  The flowers are so big and so heavy they have pulled the entire plants over multiple times.  Like a good church planter, jack of all trades, I have gone out personally and propped them back up. We had church members tie string to them and secure them to stakes; we have had a landscaping company do their magic, all to no avail. The blooms just grew too big and too heavy for the tree to handle.  But what is the answer?  I cannot cut them off, they are too pretty for that, so what to do? Look at these one year old trees, they are amazing!

We have been going through a season of “pruning” as a church.  We, like the crepe myrtles have seen amazing growth.  We seemed to hit everything at the right time and everything we touched turned to gold.  We had a kicking band, one that could hang with any mega church in the country, and we were only a few months old.  We had a production team that was professionally trained and brought a level of excellence that only a mature and established church should have.  We were blessed to buy a facility, at just two years old, on a major highway, next to Sam’s Club, in one of the most heavily traveled parts of Hot Springs.  All that created a perfect storm – exponential and immediate growth.  We could do no wrong, that is, until a storm hit.

Back to the crepe myrtles…they are beautiful, growing, budding, blooming, and now bending over from the weight that their base was unable to handle.  Then that storm I mentioned earlier hit.  The sideways rain, wind, and so much weight in the blooms from the water caused all of them to bend to the ground. Two of the trees broke off completely.  I was devastated, upset, mad, and frustrated all at the same time.  How could something so beautiful, so perfect, growing so quickly just break off from a twenty-minute storm?  The answer was actually pretty simple, so simple you probably already know it.  The storm was not the problem.  It was the fact that it had outgrown what it was able to support and sustain.  So I did what any person in my shoes would do, I ignored it for nearly another week. Maybe it would just correct itself, right?  Because that is what always happens!  Umm, no.

People are now making comments about it.  “When is someone going to do something about these trees?” (My thoughts exactly… just saying…)  “Why does no one care about the health of these poor trees?”  Then it hit me; unless I am willing to cut off the beautiful, perfect blooms the trees will eventually die - they cannot stand under that much weight.  But that will make the trees ugly, they will be all straggly like a teenage boy who has just grown six inches and outgrown his pants and sleeves. His nose and ears are too big, his arms and legs are beyond what he can handle now – it’s just awkward for everyone. But it had to be done, and it was horrible.  It was hot outside, the trees look like they are butchered, they are ugly and bare. It hurt my pride, but then I noticed the strangest thing.  

One of the trees had broken off in this past storm, the other a week before in a previous storm. The tree from this week still has the broken and bare stem, but new growth has already come in.  

The first tree to break from the storm just a week earlier was already so full of new growth that you cannot even see the broken place anymore. Isn’t that just like life?  Had I had the strength to cut off the growth that was, ultimately, not healthy, even though it was pretty, the trees would never had broken in the first place.  But, even after breaking, they are still growing and will be healthier AFTER the break than before.  Just like a break in your bones, after the break there is more calcium built up to heal it and protect it, and it becomes stronger than the undamaged bone around it. Just to prove my point, here is the new growth, just two weeks old.

No I realize this will not get me a spot at Catalyst or Exponential, but I believe this is a much more common issue we face as church planters and leaders in smaller, growing churches than anyone wants to admit.  We all love the stories of the big churches that made it:  the ones that did nothing wrong, that every decision was perfect, and that had the huge launch and base of staff on day one to handle the growth and weight resulting from it.  But what about the rest of us?  What about the ones, like us at Encounter, that had huge success early, grew faster than we could sustain, and have now had to trim some “blooms,” good, talented, amazing people, so that we could intimately be stronger and healthier?

So, in full disclosure, we have just gone through that season as a church. We hit three years and started to clarify our values, our vision, who we are as a church, and what is our mission and strategy to get there. Through it I found, as someone much smarter than I said, “Clarity is the great separator.” As we clarified our culture as a church, as leaders, as followers of Christ, the tension began to rise, the weight began to cause some to sag, and hang over.  There was obvious pushback and resistance.  I tried to do what every good church planter with separation anxiety and people addiction does, I propped them up, added help, put support in place, only for them to fall further, and in some cases break. What I have learned in all this drama is it would have been better, healthier, and easier to just have trimmed earlier, before the damage was done to the trunk.

Sometimes the blooms need to be trimmed from your life, sooner rather than later.  I’m not talking about all of them, I’m referring to the fast shooting, flash in the pan, very pretty, very flashy, very heavy, and very needy people.  The ones with daddy issues that need a position, the ones with momma issues that will not accept discipline, the ones with issue issues that just want to be the center of attention. The reality is, Church Planters, we have all seen them, because we all need them.  They come in the door, mostly because they know you are either new or small, and they have all the answers.  And because we are desperate for growth and numbers, we welcome them into the fold.  Why would we not? They are talented, gifted, everyone loves them, and they are so beautiful. But then you realize that they really are extremely needy, they are distractions to the real mission at hand, and they have suddenly made everything in ministry about themselves. Feed the bloom, look at the bloom, honor the bloom, protect the bloom.  But then suddenly there comes a moment that you realize that they will not be around long, because every bloom fades, and their “beauty” is no longer worth the damage it is causing to the rest of the tree.  

At that point, you can do what I did, prop them up, add help, flood more resources, and influence their way, or you can acknowledge the reality that they are a weight that will continue to drag the entire ministry down, and cut them off.  Sure, it will hurt, sure it will be noticeable.  You can’t cut a bloom without others noticing, but you have to decide between how the church looks or how healthy it really is.

At this point you will hear the thing that makes me crazy, “Pastor, I was wondering when you were going to clean that up.  I knew they were dragging us down, but I didn’t want to say anything.”  If you are that person, here’s a hint: say something.  Not to everyone, not as gossip, but to the person who can make the decision, say something.  Don’t be “that person”-  the one that after the fact has all the answers.  Be a gate-keep for your pastor, help and protect them, as well as your church.

I was told once that the difference between a starter and a finisher is that one is a gatherer and the other is a selector.  Gatherers are great starters; they make sure there is plenty of room at the table.  Everyone is welcome, but that cannot sustain you over the long haul.  There must come a point that you become a selector. Before you get upset at me and start yelling favoritism, Jesus modeled this to us.  He had the multitude, the seventy, the twelve, the three, and then the one, John, the “disciple that Jesus loved.”

How do you do this?  How do you go from allowing everyone a seat at the table, access to you and your family without boundaries, and unlimited influence? Who should be at that level?  I believe there are just a few, the first is your family.  We have a rule in our house, “Family Comes First.”  Some have made accusation that we favor our girls, and I want to publically say, “You are right!” 

I was told by Gary Clark, the Campus Pastor for Hillsong London and one of the senior leaders for Hillsong Church, that the reason Pastors Brian & Bobby Houston have promoted their kids over the years is quite simple: “After everyone else leaves you, they will still be there.”  I have seen that no one else suffers, cries, and pays for the church more than your family.  My kids have sacrificed as much as Deidre and I have, to be in ministry today. When people leave the church, and leave my life, they also leave my family’s life.  We have had senior people, leaders, whose kids were my girl’s best friends, leave. That means, not only did it affect me, and I felt it, but it tore them wide open too.  They pay the same price, and sometimes even greater, than we do as pastors – for that - I will keep them close.  They will be the ones changing my diapers one day, that gets them a place at the table.  So, my wife and my kids get the closest and most important seats at the table in my ministry and my life.

The other group of people who should be allowed to have this level of influence are those in Covenant with you.  I’m not talking about in a weird, cultish way.  Not yes men and women, but people who really have your back. I have found there are three levels of relationships. There is a Committed Relationship – you are committed to each other.  Maybe you are engaged, or in church terms, you are a consistent attender.  You tithe and give, you are committed.

Then there are those in Contractual Relationship.  You signed the marriage license, you signed the ministry agreement.  There is a piece of paper involved, you are under contract.  But then there is a Covenential Relationship.  You have a commitment that goes beyond a commitment or a contract, you have come into covenant with each other.  Here’s how you know there is a covenant, when something goes array, they are more concerned with your well-being than with the details or how it will affect them. 

Two years ago, my oldest daughter, Emily, then sixteen, had her first fender-bender.  She called me frantic, scared that I would be mad, scared because the police had been called and she was sure she was going to jail.  When she answered the phone and I heard her voice my heart sank. I knew something horrible had happened.  She started in on the details, but all I cared about was that she was ok.  My first question was not about the truck, the other driver, the police, or the situations that caused it.  My first question was, “Are you ok?”  The rest we can figure out later.  How much my insurance was going to increase, and how I would get the truck repaired, and what the legalities were would come later.  Right now, was she ok?  That’s covenant.

If the first words out of a person’s mouth in times of stress are about them, or what you should have done differently, or wanting the details so they can “pick a side”, they are not in covenant.  There will be room for blame and correction later. Right now, “Are you ok?”, “I’m here for you,” is all you need to hear.  People who are that committed to you and to your ministry deserve a seat at the table. Everyone else may be good people, and they may be one of the seventy or the crowd.  You can feed them and send them out, but they do not deserve a seat at the table until they have proven to be in covenant.

So, my face was bleeding; it actually happened because one of the limbs hit me when I cut it.  This is where the tree trimming comes back into the story.  When you identify, trim, and remove those who are consuming resources but not producing, looking pretty but not in covenant, you can then clear the way for those who want to be with you to get close.  You will get some scares, and there may be pain, but the results will be worth it.

Bishop TD Jakes says we are nothing more than bus drivers. “Our job is not to pick the destination, the route, or even the passengers.  Our job is to drive the bus. Some will get on, some will get off, some will buy a season pass and be frequent riders. Don’t allow them to distract you from your God-given mission and course, just drive the bus.”  Paul said it like this, “I press toward the prize in the high calling in Christ Jesus.”  He wasn’t getting distracted, he was just pushing on toward the goal set before him.

So to all my church planting friends, keep the faith, keep the shears close, and your covenential friends closer.  Do not be afraid to cut the blooms when necessary, it may be the only thing keeping you from being able to grow to the next level.  In the words of Chris Hodges from Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, AL, “Church health is more important than church growth, because everything that is healthy - GROWS!”