The PF Women Team at our Annual Team Retreat ~ 2018 Today on Seth Godin's blog, he said: It's tempting to decide to make a profit first, then invest in training, people, facilities, promotion, customer service and most of all, doing important work. In general, though, it goes the other way. Yes, it does. If you are waiting to make a profit before you do these things, in my experience you're not going to make a profit. So many organizations, ministries and churches are struggling with financial issues. I know your pain. As anyone who follows our story knows, our ministry was in a ton of debt four years ago when I came on as director. Since that time, we've gotten out of debt and turned a profit every year. God has done amazing things through out team, for which we give Him the glory! I find that what Seth is saying here is absolutely true, with one disclaimer. For Christian leaders, spiritual disciplines must always be first. Before we started i...
2) Don't let your kids have pacifiers. It will screw up their teeth and besides that they will never be able to break away from them, and may even start kindergarten with one.
3) Be sure to keep everything strictly in the boundaries/boxes of: God/Family/Work/Church/Everything else, and in that order, regardless of what may be happening at the time. Even if someone in the church is in a head on collision and is instantly killed, stay at your kid's birthday party to prove a point - your family comes first! After all, the person's dead anyway, so what can you do about it? Your kid will always remember the birthday you stayed despite the tragedy. [Sigh] On the other hand I've also received the terrible advice...if you're at your kid's school concert and Sister McGillicutty calls your cell phone to ask about something that is a non-emergency like Sunday School curriculum, answer the phone no matter what when you see that it's her on the caller ID, because she's an influential person
4) Children are meant to be seen and not heard.
5) Your husband is to lead you in your relationship with Christ and you are to look to him as your prophet, priest and king.
6) It's important to have your children potty trained by the time they are two years old.
7) If you tell your church people you have been to counseling they will never again respect you.
8) Don't ever share your struggles in the pulpit unless you have achieved complete victory over them.
9) Don't have the church people in your home. That is your refuge and must be protected, and besides that, familarity breeds contempt and it will give them even more to criticize you for.
10) The longer you are in ministry the less pleasure you can have.
11) If you are going to be a successful minister's wife you are going to have to suppress yourself.
12) Don't spank your children. It will harm their self esteem. (I'm talking discipline administered in an appropriate manner that gets a message across but does not harm the child -- NOT abuse.)
13) Sex is mostly about meeting your husband's needs, and as long as you keep him happy and meet his needs everything in your marriage will be fine.
14) Don't dance. It's worldly.
15) Don't pierce your ears.
16) Don't wear make up.
17) Don't wear pants in the sanctuary.
18) If you don't get up at the crack of dawn every morning to meet with God you will never be spiritual/a woman of God/achieve your destiny.
19) Don't talk about sex publicly. It will greatly limit your ministry, not to mention it's inappropriate. (
20) Don't go to the movies. It's worldly. (Reality check: I live in the world. Yes the Bible says be in it but not of it, but the fact is there are a whole lot of things in the world.
I've received a heck of a lot of bad advice over the years but these are just some of the first that come to mind. What about you?
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Don't attend amusement parks or any place associated with the world. (In our family, this was almost everything.)
No games with cards or dice. (Not even UNO. If a church member stops by, we don't want anyone to think we play cards.)
Pastor's shouldn't drive new/updated cars.
KEEP the pastor's family poor and begging the board for every crumb. (This was a feeling I had as a PK)
Don't offend "Bro. and Sis. So-In-So" or their children because they are good givers and we don't want them to leave.(In truth, they probably are the cause of the Lord not richly blessing the ministry!)
I grew up trying to follow most of those rules. There was such a double standard. Like #20-We didn't attend movies, but we'd rent it when it came out on video. (huh?) What I realized as I grew up was that our family was one of the few families strictly following these rules.
Well, with the baptism in the Holy Spirit came a real freeing in my life (a wild and crazy husband doesn't hurt either lol) All rules need to be measured against the Bible. If it is not part of God's rules, then it is optional...stop making the rest of the world feel guilt! The body of Christ is full of people looking at the outward and forgetting about the heart. You know, some of the most sold out Christians I know do not look like the "norm". Believers, if they truely love God, need to stop requiring others to live by standards that God does not even require!
Okay, I'm done! :)
Ruth
A friend of mine and I were recently discussing how bad the church is talking about the subject of sex. My own point of reference was going to a youth rally as a teenager and the speaker held up a candlestick and spoke in her rough, Bayonne New Jersey voice, "you see this? Every time you have sex you snap years off your life" as she proceeded to snap the candlestick into smaller pieces. At 31 years of age I'm still as stumped about the message she was trying to convey when I was 13!
MrsHeindiii, you're kidding! Thanks for the great laugh this afternoon. You painted a vivid word picture...I can envision that lady standing up there doing that. Well being that I've been married almost 23 years and have probably had sex thousands of times by now, I guess my candlestick is not only snapped to pieces but probably melted away somewhere into oblivion. I should be dead by now. LOL Man, it's crazy the false teaching and legalism that's out there...........
I digress. My worst advise was "you are way to silly, you will never be able to counsel people, they won't take you seriously."... Actually, my humor puts them at ease.