Deanna Doss Shrodes

Recently I taught a workshop for pastor’s wives and I asked the question, “How many of you have had someone in the church approach you and say, “God told me we’re supposed to be best friends... ?" Laughter immediately erupted and lots of heads were nodding and hands raised.  I went on to say that this pressure comes in various forms – not always the same verbiage – and can be anything from… “God told me we’re supposed to be best friends…”  to “I really want to know you more and get closer to you...”  to “God laid you on my heart and said we're supposed to be close friends...” Sometimes it comes in the form of someone relentlessly asking for private coffee/lunch times for the purpose of pursuing those things. (Note: there's a difference between spending time such as this for mentoring, discipleship, etc. and developing a close friendship.) I asked the pastor’s wives gathered in that class if they had experienced anyone actually leaving the church...

The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Emotionally, the pull is intense to stay home, reflect and practice self-care. She is sad because she tried to become a mom, and still isn't one. She's grieving over the child she lost. Or the mother she lost.  Or the mother who abandoned or abused her, making this day such a painful reminder of all she never had .   Or she has a toxic mom and responded by drawing healthy boundaries that led to them hardly speaking, or maybe never speaking again.   Whatever the case, the spirit wins out when it comes to this lady. No matter how daunting the situation, she doesn’t give in to the overwhelming urge to hide out until Monday.  She wakes up. She shows up. She makes a difference. Who is she? She's a woman in ministry for whom Mother's Day brings painful reminders or complications. Regardless of her own circumstance, she reaches out in genuine love to minister to God’s people. Notwithst...

"People aren't against you. They are just for themselves." Photo Credit: freedigitalphotos.net I've read this saying on leadership and life hack pages a number of times. I don't know who first said it, or I'd credit them. (And yes, I've Googled it.) I believe this statement is true in many cases where people wrongly diagnose themselves as "under attack." Many times leaders aren't under attack -- they're just surrounded by apathetic or selfish people . There is a difference. I wouldn't really call that spiritual warfare, it's just a sucky situation.  When you're leading a team, it's important to find people who are in love with something besides themselves. Look for people with the least selfies on their Instagram . Granted, it isn't always easy to find people who are selfless, sacrificial leaders. Discovering leaders or up-and-coming leaders who are determined to do what is best for the team, the company...

Leaders have to face various obstacles along the way to our destiny in order to prepare us for the greatest things we will do. I Samuel 17 is about David facing Goliath and in verses 34-37 it talks about him killing the lion and bear in preparation to face his giant, Goliath. David had a great destiny before him in not only becoming the greatest worship leader/psalmist who ever lived, but also a king and a man after God’s own heart. David wasn’t sadistic, and he certainly wasn’t killing just to kill. The lion and bear were coming in to steal a lamb from his father’s flock. He had to protect the flock. And so he destroyed the lion and the bear. When I went first into the ministry, I never realized how much I would deal with bears and lions. I just expected to love people. And I imagined, they would just love me back. I was quite surprised that much of my work would involve warfare. Not only did I get tired, but sometimes I thought I wouldn't survive the struggle...

I've never written about this before. Photo Credit: fotologic, Flickr My closest friends know, and I have shared it before in one message that I preached. But I've never written about it openly. I was encouraged by a mentor many years ago when it first happened to not make this issue a focal point. Applying my mentor's wisdom, I kept my God-given message the main thing, and prevented this from becoming a needless distraction. Many years have passed now. I can briefly reference this for a purpose, yet not allow it to over-ride my life's mission. If if you are a pastor and you're a woman, Florida is seriously the place to be. It's a mecca of sorts for women preachers. So progressive. I'll never move. This is my eleventh year pastoring here and nobody has ever given me a bit of a problem as far as being a woman in leadership. At the same time, I work very hard at what I do, have steadily proven myself for well over two decades, and don't expect s...

This week's posts are going to be a series about mentorship. I'm not going to do all the posting. Tomorrow we'll have a guest post you don't want to miss. It's from someone I've been mentoring. So tomorrow, we will hear from a mentee's perspective. Right now I mentor less people up-close-and-personal than I ever have. It's a temporary season I'm in, and there's a good reason for it. Back when I started in ministry a little over 25 years ago, people would occasionally approach me and although they didn't always use the word mentorship, that's what it was. I was flattered, and humbled and overwhelmed when they came to me, a very young woman at the time.  I was green and needed a lot of experience, and I took every opportunity I could in an effort to learn. I had a great passion to help people. Through the years I gained more experience and learned a lot of things in the process. I learned that: Many people don't want a ment...

I cleaned up our patio yesterday from the New Year's Eve party we had 56 days ago. True story. The chairs were still in the same little circle around the fire pit and the blankets right where everyone left them. The wood next to the fire pit needed to be reorganized and the blankets washed. I even found a stray napkin and cup in the yard.  They had migrated all the way over to the tangerine tree.  While I was at it, I finally took the Christmas lights off of the bushes in the backyard. This was in between the normal household chores yesterday and doing some cooking in advance for our leadership meeting tonight at CC. I didn't get a moment to take care of the patio til' yesterday. It's been on my "to do" list that long. I say this for the benefit of everyone who says to me, "how do you do it all, Deanna?" Well, there's just one practical example for all of you who wonder, of one thing on the list that never got done until later.  I'm fixin...

Have you ever worried about whether your children will share your values when they are adults? It's a common concern among parents. There are several ways to shape your children's values, but in this post today I'm going to share the number one way. The first and the best way to shape your kids' values is not to share them, but to live them! That's right, live your values. Live them all the way. Live them passionately.   An ounce of living is worth more than a pound of speech. Last night we were coming home from having dinner with pastor-friends when my cell phone rang and it was our oldest son Dustin. He was just getting off work from his job at the hospital where he serves as a patient flow coordinator, which basically means he oversees transporters and gets people where they need to go in the hospital. He said, "Mom, I have to tell you about this conversation I just had. It's going to blow your mind! Things were so busy tonight in the ho...

Many people ask me this who are new to leadership or ministry, or those who are headed to a new location and with it a change in responsibilities or opportunities. My advice is always the same.  I would encourage you to not seek a role. Just focus on making a difference.  In doing so the role takes care of itself. Have I ever cared about roles?  Yes. It was a waste of time. Hindsight is 20/20.  Today I could care less about roles and quite frankly sometimes I'm sick of them.  I'm terrible at role playing, but never tire of making a difference. I believe it's the same for most people whether they know it or not.  Roles tend to be prescribed and since God has made us all so uniquely, rare is the person who fits the prescription exactly. Just something to think about.

Evaluation is not always easy but it's always profitable if our heart is open.  Yesterday I promised to share some things I do to get the right kind of feedback to bring improvement in preaching.  Here are three things I do: Evaluate Myself Without a doubt I'm my own toughest evaluator.   Back when I started 25 years ago I would listen to  obsess over cassette tapes of my preaching every time.   (Yeah, remember cassette tapes?  I remember 8 tracks too, although we didn't have them as sermon tapes.  Classic!!)  Then CD's came into existence and I started evaluating those, and now I review the messages online when our sound person e-mails them to me. I will often put a message on my iPod and listen to it later while I walk or exercise.  I think, "let me detach and pretend I don't know myself and am listening to a stranger.  What would my first impression be of this person talking?  Would I be inclined to keep listening?...

I'm about to step into a controversial minefield.  I know that.  It happens.  It's why my husband has called me, "Sassy" for 25 years.  I tend to dare to say things that nobody else will verbalize which is why I keep getting invitations to teach about sex.   Don't worry, I'm not going to talk about sex in this post.  I'm kind of tired of talking about sex, at least this morning.  ::smiles:: How many preachers do you know who are basically the same this year as they were last year?  I know most people are better than the first time they preached.  That would pretty much be everybody.  But this post is about significant improvement and reaching your full potential -- not just a little tweaking here and there or the fact that less people are going to sleep when you preach. I'm just going to cut to the chase and say that most male preachers never improve much because the person they trust most has lied to them.  And they are...

One of my goals is to communicate a life changing word to people every week.  I am one of those rare women who preaches every week and most times more  than once a week.  I have a lot of opportunities to practice but by far my most important experience isn’t actually in the pulpit. My most important tool of growth in communication happens afterwards, and that is in evaluation.  I have come to believe that the reason most speakers never move forward is because they simply don’t honestly evaluate.  The vast majority of people are scared of evaluation and their fear keeps them from ever moving from where they are to where they want to be. I’ve been mercilessly evaluating every single message for 25 years.  My messages aren’t just evaluated by me – I always request other people’s brutally honest evaluations.  There’s a difference between evaluations and accolades.  The majority of speakers I know request accolades because their insecurity or ego ne...

Do you have the courage to live out your identity and calling even if it isn't accepted by others?  I'd like to suggest one of my personal techniques today which is to INTRODUCE YOURSELF to people who already THINK they know you.  Warning:  they may rebuff this attempt but that doesn't mean it's not successful!    Yesterday my friend Sandy Aguilar, leader of IMPACT Leadership Resources had this to say on her Facebook page:  "What's it take to really change???  Repetition, repetition, repetition...repeat the new you that you choose...whether anyone else does or not."  I believe the major key is in the last six words of that quote -- "WHETHER ANYONE ELSE DOES OR NOT." Did you ever have someone in your life who keeps wanting to put you back where you were?  To who you USED to be?  To old habits you USED to have?  To old things you USED to do?   For some reason they try to keep you in the past. I lost a friend that way a...

I'm always making friends outside of our church.  Of course I want to introduce people to Jesus, but I befriend them whether they ever accept Jesus or not.  I believe that's what Jesus wants us to do, what His Word indicates we should do. Many of the people I befriend do come to Jesus, though.  I know that's not because of me, it's because of the Holy Spirit drawing them, however I do acknowledge that it's important to obey God in loving people, and being a positive impact on their lives. I'm so happy that  today my friend raised their hand. It was more than just the physical motion of an upraised hand. I've exercised with this person before and we've raised our hands, but today they were raised not in exercise but in total surrender to God.  They re-dedicated their life to Jesus during the altar time this morning!! This particular friend is someone who has been slowly moving toward a relationship with Jesus over the past year.  When I first m...