Church planting can be rough. It is hard under the easiest of circumstances but you add in mistakes and it can get downright nasty. I made some huge mistakes over the past three years. But, through God’s grace and lovingkindness we made it through and He has blessed us.
I have made many more than these but these will do for now. 
Here you go. Enjoy.
1. Promoting the wrong people or the right people at the wrong time. Big time failure on my part. I have often said that I make a terrible human resource guy. I see the good in everyone. But, with that I promoted people that were not ready or were really not behind the vision of our church. I have learned so much in this area.
2. I wasn’t mean enough with our vision. I was more concerned with people “understanding” me or the vision, but I should have been more concerned with God and being obedient to what He told me to do. As leaders, we have to do what God has commanded us to do or we loose His blessing over our ministries.
3. Didn’t train my full-time and part-time staff adequately for their role in the organization. Hiring is tricky. I would hire talent…not character…and not a good fit for us. If, you find someone who can do their job it is awesome, but finding someone who understands how they fit into your organization…and they can do an awesome job…it is priceless. My job was to train but instead I just assumed that if they could do their job then they would find their role. Bleh. Not true.
4. Keeping the main thing the main thing. Jesus and reaching the lost is the driving force and the main reason for our church. If, we slip into maintain mode then we are not fulfilling our purpose and meaning for existence. There have been seasons where I have allowed “mission drift” and it hurt us.
5. Allowing people entrance into my life that didn’t pay the price for relationship. I will only invest my time into two types of people now. People that are actively serving, leading, loving, giving, and building our church and people that need Jesus or have been hurt in church. Religious people you will have with you always. Pastors have to be careful because we attract people that want our earnings and not our learnings.
6. My eating habits and exercise routine was out of control. I started working more and more and taking less and less personal time. On top of that I stopped exercising altogether. Stress was tearing me up and it was getting to me physically. I thought if I just pressed on that it would get better, but sometimes it is better to stop and rest so you can gain more.
7. Didn’t plan for growth. We doubled almost overnight. And, as a leader I wasn’t ready for it. I didn’t have a plan for making more room, developing more leaders, and casting vision into the third and fourth generations of new people joining the church.
8. I was to quick to hurry up and get somewhere. Where is this illustrious somewhere? Is it an attendance number? A budgetary number? I think that we would all be happier if we would just slow down and enjoy the journey. I missed some amazing times with my plant team. I missed major milestones and didn’t celebrate huge victories because I was in a hurry to rush off to the next big win.
9. Didn’t study like I should have in the beginning. When it is just you working and no one else is around to help…you have a tendency to do everything and neglect the most important stuff. I needed to keep my priorities on prayer and the Word. Sadly, I didn’t. But, thankfully that has changed.
Has anyone else made mistakes in ministry and leading?
