Keys to keep the church simple

Remember Hue and Vanessa ? Hue is a pastor in Chicago, dad of 3 and full time manager. In this context, how their church and their leadership look like? Let's talk about it!

So Hue, the church you lead with your wife Vanessa is called Restoration. Could you tell us why exactly?

Hue: When we felt that God had called us to plant a church, we were praying for the name of the church. And as I was praying, the name ‘Restoration’ came, just as people who have been restored by God. You know, I was saved later in life, I was 33 years old and I just felt that God had called me because he had restored me. And through the season of restoration, now he's calling me to go out, bring restoration to others. And I just felt that the name, based on Psalm 126, just seemed very simple. To be honest with you, there were already a lot of Restoration Churches in the US, but this is how God had called us, called me specifically, uniquely, and I just decided to stay with it, instead of trying to come up with something unique.

Speaking about simple, we met a few weeks ago and you told us your church is growing, thanks to God. And when a church is growing, there are a lot of needs and maybe temptations to create new programs, new departments, special meetings or events for special audiences. How do you keep church simple when it grows?

First, we just felt for this season we want the emphasis to be on Jesus. That's number one. And all the programs that we would create have to fit and be in line with our vision statements, which is to glorify Jesus in everything and everywhere. Secondly, when someone comes to us with a suggestion or an idea about some programs, we try to encourage them. If this is something that God has put on their heart and they may have a vision for it, we encourage them to actually take the lead in that. And we let them know that we are behind them. So with Vanessa, we don't feel the pressure to start any program at all. I think it's a good way for us to help people understand that this is a body, a family, and we all want to get involved. I think a lot of people in our church have this mindset because I am bivocational and everybody knows that, they know I don't have a lot of time and a lot of things going on.

Do you have some examples?

Sure! We have people, God has called them to do a prayer walk. So they took it out, took the lead in that and, they have been galvanizing the people. I've put them up front to speak about the hearts of why we do a prayer walk, just to walk around, you know, and say ‘Hey, we want to pray for you’, help them to understand that we can hear from God and speak encouragement and speaking prophetic things over those strangers on the street.

Someone else just really felt for the season to gather with all the moms with young kids. So she took it upon herself and I said ‘you know, when the church is available, you can use it’. So on Thursday morning, 9 AM, those with young kids that want to come together, just hang out and spend time together. So those are some of the examples of how to have the different activities within the church. And as the church is growing, it's a good way for us to help raise up leaders because in the process, I can talk to those people about the things that are necessary: how to plan, how to administrate, how to lead, keep in mind of the needs of the people. But at the same time, make sure it fits with our vision statement because we just don't want to be spending our energy to go over the place, because there are so many churches here. And we want to stay true to what God has called us to do and be OK with that.

Like we already said in the first article, you have a full time job, three kids and you are a pastor. How do you manage to take care of the people, to make time for pastoral appointments?

I would just speak in my context and my situation. We all need to pray to make sure that we are in the vocational job that God has for us. To be honest with you, I thought about switching jobs a long, long time ago when I was young, because it was such a boring job in insurance! However, looking back, I'm very glad I stayed with it because I just felt that was not the time for me to switch and I shouldn't switch and I knew God was in it. Now I know why, because it gives me the flexibility to plant, to lead a church, to meet with different people during different times. I can meet with business people during lunch or before their work schedule. For example, I just had a prayer time at 7:30 this morning. And also, in terms of leaders, we do try to meet with them and find a time that works for everybody. For example, we usually have our elders meeting on Sunday after church, because that's when everybody's at church already. I don't want to do it on Saturday because that's a family time and we do think that family time is very, very important.  We want to make sure that we don't take away from that time. 

Especially when you and most of your leaders live in a big and busy city like Chicago!

Yes, it is very, very challenging to find time and everyone is very, very busy! We understand that and we want to find a way to work with the context that we're in, especially with those people with kids, because we want them to prioritize time with families, time with kids. It's important: your family is your A-Team, your first team, your inner circle team. And if we're not leading that team, well, then it's difficult to lead anything or anyone. I try to encourage our team to lead our families well. And from that place, God will give us the time, the space and the authority to lead other people. But also, sometimes, I challenge people to be a little bit more disciplined with their schedule. Not everybody needs to stay up until like 2 in the morning so they can't get up at 6 in the morning for a coffee. I don't know if challenge is a good term to use, but we all can be encouraged to be more disciplined and more organized with our life and in order to grow in our capacity and to be able to do more for God. 

In this context of big city and busy lives, how do you manage to make disciples?

The first and foremost thing for us is about relationships. So we have to build relationships with new people and for that, we need time. There's no way around that. So we have to make time and I encourage all of our leaders to meet with someone, like once a week, whether it's just a coffee or a call to check on them, just follow up with text or see if they want to meet up for a walk or a tea somewhere. And obviously for Vanessa and I, we cannot meet with everybody, but we do want to put an emphasis on our leaders and meeting often with those that God had add to the church, that we want to raise up to become leaders. And we ask our leaders to do the same thing to others. 

As a pastor, is it hard to prioritize some people over others?

Probably I shouldn't say this as a pastor, but because we don’t have enough time to meet everybody, we want to be wise and discerning between those who need our time versus those who just want our time. There are always people who just want your time and they are not really growing or wanting to grow, they just want to speak. Discipleship is very important and it can only come through relationships because we're making copies of ourselves. That's what discipleship is. And the only way for someone to understand and be raised up as a leader is they see how you live, get to know you and have a relationship with you and learn from the things that you are walking through.

Still in your urban/busy context, is it hard to have people involved in the church? I mean some of them can be busy parents with small kids, or at the peak of their career… Are you sometimes frustrated because there is a lack of people involved?

I think everyone should get involved in the church, but not everybody needs to be involved in the same capacity. There are people with large capacity, but we do recognize for some people God has called them in a specific field. If there are people who have got his call to start their own business or be a business owner, they would require a lot of time in that. We don't expect them to be at church 5 hours before getting involved in all the different things. There are different capacities and different seasons and we recognize that and we have grace for that. The main thing we encourage everyone is building a relationship with Jesus,  growing up in the revelation of Jesus. 

Another thing: if someone is a leader in a profession or in a field doesn't mean he has to become a leader in the church. For example, if someone is an executive in a big company, we don't expect that person to also be an elder at a church. We recognize and understand the timing and the season and we have grace for that. We do encourage church leaders to stretch in their capacity, but recognizing the season where elders may not be able to do much. Also, when you have a new kid, when you're going through a tough job change or you're going through a busy life cycle, we recognize and we understand that and we don't want the church to be causing more stress. It should be a place where we will come and get refreshed and be envisioned. But on the flip side, it just should just be a season. You know, we all need a season of being refreshed, we all need a season of being encouraged. But if we just show up  and don't really serve or do anything, then it becomes a lifestyle. And that's not what Scripture is saying. 

Serving or leading in the church, after a very busy week, can be challenging too. How do you manage to find the good balance in that and avoid overwork?

We want to make sure that everything that we do is long term. Maybe I can use the term as a marathon, it's not a short thing we're going to do for a year or two years and people will get burnt out. We want to make sure that people can do this as a lifestyle. And for some people, they ‘run’ a little bit faster. Some people that could run a little bit longer can run slower, some people need more breaks, some people need less breaks. So we want to be aware of the different people, just like everyone has different gifts and different capacities, we want to be very discerning and be wise about that. Also, I do ministry with Vanessa. I’m not alone. We have the same vision in the leadership and she does a lot. For example, if Vanessa writes an email to someone or to the leaders, it’s the same as if it was me sending the email. We are aligned and we minister together as a team and people from the church know that. She has the same authority. 

Do you think the fact that you have a full time job, even if it's flexible, beside your pastor leadership, changes the culture of the church and maybe the expectations of the Christians?

Yes, I think it helps me to understand the demands of the workplace because it's easy to prioritize church. I don't want what I do and what I'm passionate about to place that pressure on others. And just because maybe I am able to organize and be flexible, I don't want to have the same expectation of everyone else and especially my leadership team that I lead. So it helped us to have a very balanced lifestyle and we want to have a healthy lifestyle because we think long term. This is not a 5 years plan and after that, we're going to quit, step back and do nothing. No, this is what God had called us to do, so we're going to do this for a long run, we need to find the right balance to run the race. That’s why we need to be wise about our family and our kids. You know, there are times when we intentionally reschedule meetings or dinner time with others or just cancel at the last minute because we just felt ‘no, we need to spend time with our family, or with our kids’. This is a priority. The Kingdom of God is a priority above everything else. But it doesn't mean that it's at the expense of everything else. 

What do you mean?

I mean there is a cost that comes with that, but we don't want our kids to pay that cost. We don't want them to grow up with this mindset that their parents are always about church and not about them because they are very important to us. And we want to make sure that they know they are very important to us. And the only way to let them know is spend time with them and do the things that they want to do. And a little bit more from the work life standpoint: I recognize this is a season for us to do both. So I need to be able to find the time to do both and balance both. I know that not everyone has the luxury of being in my position. So there are people who have very demanding, consuming jobs, which can be very stressful. And I don't want my leaders and my people to show that I'm meeting one out time, not able to focus, you know, a long day of work and a long day of commuting, a stressful day because the things that we do for God, we want to put our best foot forward. And we cannot do that if we're so worn out by what just happened today. ‘It's OK, you know, if we don't meet today, we can meet tomorrow’.

You said there is a cost, but also priorities. How do you keep this balance between the cost, the sacrifice and the priorities?

Oh, I wish there was an easy answer for that! When you do things for his Kingdom, there is the cost and there is the privilege. We talked to our kids about the importance of serving. We talked to our family about the privilege of doing the things that God has called us to do, in terms of impacting people, leading people, helping people, pointing people to Jesus, helping people walk into the calling that God has for them. They know that we're not the people who would just sit around and do nothing, or let them sit on their video game, like 5 hours a day. But how to find the right balance? When I find myself being easily agitated or angry with my wife or my kids, that's what I know I need to stop. And when I find out the same thing with our kids, whether they're maybe a little bit more frustrated, more angry, or they're not doing the things that I know they enjoy (playing some music, reading scriptures, spending time together, playing games…), I try to read the cues. Vanessa is a lot more sensitive with those things. 

How do you react when the cues seem to say you’ve been too far ?

Sometimes, we have to stop and pause, and for example say to people we were supposed to meet ‘sorry, we have overbooked our schedule, so we need to spend time with our kids’. I never had a situation where people do not understand. It’s like when you run: if you feel pain in your knee, you don't want to just keep on running because it may cause much more damage than just your knee. So you want to cut, pause, check out your knee, maybe do some stretching, ice it and then get back on the road because if you keep on running, after a little while, your leg may be gone and there's no more running like period. 

So we want to keep our eyes and our focus on the long run and, and maybe just have healthy maintenance, constant maintenance check. Because like I said, our family is important and we don't want to lose our families in the process of doing things for God. I will say this for all pastors: sometimes bad things happen, but I will never ever be afraid or ashamed to say that God's heart is not for us to lose our kids in the process of doing things for the Kingdom. 

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