You Can Be Number 14

The Bible mentions 500 leaders by name and gives some details about their lives. Scripture only tells us how the lives of a hundred of those leaders ended. Of those 100, only 13 finished well.

Clarity is in the business of fighting for number 14. You ought to write in your journal: 14. Why do we do clarity for number 14?

Why are you here today? Number 14. Because at the end of the day, what's going to matter is every one of the churches you represent is not going to be here any longer.

But the kingdom of God will stand. When it's your time to meet Jesus, you want to be number 14. Ended well with your spouse.

I'll never forget the day that I apologized to my family. I came home and resigned that church plant. We have the same table out on the porch and I wrote handwritten notes to my family and I sat them all down, from my oldest to my youngest, my wife.

And I read out loud an apology to my wife first, my oldest son, my youngest son, and my daughter. I didn't realize this at the time. My oldest son was sharing with me not too long ago about the note I read him when he was 13 years old.

I didn't realize the impact it made on his life. But I made a decision that day that I'm not going to live my life on ministry success and stages. I didn't realize I was choosing number 14.

It's time for us to change the culture of American ministry leaders. It's time for us to be more concerned about being number 14 than adding a third and fourth service. It's time for us to be concerned about our team's well-being than it is to put one more butt in a seat.

It's time for us to realize that to be successful ministry leaders is to take care of our souls first, and to make sure we have a healthy team culture, and make sure that our spouses love us and not hate us. I get the great privilege of living in the same town with my adult children now, who are friends. Even last night, I'm in a hotel room and I'm wanting to go to bed and I'm getting irritated because my oldest son just wants to shoot the breeze.

Who does that? You have a family, dude, just go be with your family. And I go back to that moment where that table sits in our retreat center.

I tell that story at retreats, that moment when I chose those whom I truly was called to in the first place: the ministry of my family. So I'll close this. Are you number 14?

Will you be number 14? People around you need you to be number 14. Your grandkids need you to be number 14.

Those little kids at home need you to be number 14. And that church you minister to needs you to be number 14.