Albion Wesleyan Church

09/06/2026

Good morning and welcome to Albion Wesleyan Church. We are glad you could join us this morning. Today's scriptures: Psalm 119:33-40 / Romans 10: 9-10 / Ephesians 5: 8-16 / John 14:15 / Matthew 22: 34-40 / John 15:1-10 / James 4:7-10

08/31/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1GmrzxnXxE/

For six weeks we have been building the sustainable pastor. We started with the order Jesus set in Mark 3:14, being with him before being sent by him, and then we got practical: a rule of life, a guarded weekly Sabbath, real vacations and real retreats, and the constellation of relationships no pastor should lead without. If you have taken even one of those steps, your ministry is on firmer ground today than it was in July.

But I cannot close this series with a schedule. All of it, the rhythms and the Sabbath and the retreats and the relationships, aims at something deeper than a well-managed calendar. Because it is entirely possible to build every structure this series described and still miss the point. You can protect your day off, take your retreat, meet with your mentor, and quietly run your ministry on your own strength the whole time. Paul asked the Galatians the question that haunts me as a leader: "Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" (Galatians 3:3). That is not a question for backsliders. It is a question for hardworking, committed, disciplined people, which is exactly what most pastors are. It is possible to have the appearance of godliness while running low on its power.

Read more: https://www.crossroadsdistrict.org/team-updates/having-the-spirit-and-the-spirit-having-you

08/30/2026

Good morning and welcome to Albion Wesleyan Church. We are glad you could join us today. We are excited to celebrate our kids today and have a service centered around them.

08/25/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19FZofPSjR/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Last Monday I asked you to map your constellation on one page: colleagues, mentor, coach, soul care, counselor. I also made a promise, that this week we would take the helping relationships one at a time. Here is why that promise matters. When I talk with pastors about the constellation, almost nobody argues with the idea. The stall comes later, and it is rarely unwillingness. It is confusion. Mentor, coach, spiritual director, and counselor all blur together in our minds as variations on "someone who helps me," and when the roles are vague, none of them gets a phone call. So let me put edges on each one, and then lower the bar for finding them.

Read more: https://www.crossroadsdistrict.org/team-updates/coach-mentor-director-counselor-who-does-what

08/23/2026

Good morning and welcome to Albion Wesleyan Church. We are glad to have you with us today. Today's scriptures: Matthew 16:13-16 / Isaiah 51:1-2 / Psalm 138:1-2 / Romans 12:1-2 / Romans 12:4-8 / 2 Samuel 6:14

08/18/2026

Last Monday I told you this issue would open with a number. Here it is: 4.8 out of 10.

During our listening year, we asked the ministry leaders of this district to rate their relational connection to one another. The average answer came back 4.8 out of 10. Alongside it came a second number: thirty-seven percent of our lead pastors could not name an accountability partner. And one sentence in the findings has stayed with me longer than either number: they know the DS, but they do not know each other.

I have read that sentence many times now, and it has never once felt like a compliment. It describes a district where the relational lines run to the center instead of to each other, like spokes on a wheel with no rim. A wheel built that way carries weight for a while. It does not carry it for long.

Let me be clear about what that finding means. This is not a personal failing. It is a gap in how we have been built. Nobody drifts into isolation on purpose. The schedule fills, the role separates, the drive between towns is long, and being everyone’s pastor makes it strangely hard to be anyone’s friend. Structure produced this, and structure can change it, which is why closing this gap is one of the first things our plan intends to do.

Read more: https://www.crossroadsdistrict.org/team-updates/48-out-of-10

08/16/2026

Good morning and welcome to Albion Wesleyan Church. We are glad you could join us today. Our scriptures today: Matthew 15:1-20 / Jeremiah 17:9, 10 / James 3:3-8 / Genesis 6:5-8 / Matthew 5:21, 22, 27, 28 / 1 Corinthians 6:18, 19 / Hebrews 13:4 / 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 / Galatians 5:19 / Ephesians 5:5 / Romans 13:9 / Proverbs 12:22 / Proverbs 19:9 Colossians 3:9, 10 / Psalms 101:5 / Matthew 12:36, 37 / 1 Peter 2:1 / Colossians 3:1-17 / 1 Corinthans 11:23b-26

08/11/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19PV92NPpL/

Last Monday I asked you to name your Sabbath day for the fall and to tell your board you are keeping it. This week we go longer than a day, because a weekly Sabbath keeps a pastor steady, but it cannot do everything. Some restoration only comes through extended withdrawal, and Scripture is not shy about saying so.

Luke tucks it into one sentence that is easy to read past: “But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray” (Luke 5:16). Pay attention to the tense. Not “he withdrew once, early on.” He would withdraw. It was his habit. And Luke places that sentence exactly where we would least expect it, right after telling us the crowds were growing and more people were coming to hear him and to be healed. At the moment momentum would lead us to stay, Jesus left. If the Son of God built long withdrawals into a ministry that lasted three years, I do not know how the rest of us plan to skip them across a ministry that lasts thirty.

Elijah shows us what happens when a leader tries. First Kings 19 finds him a day’s journey into the wilderness, fresh off the greatest public victory of his life at Carmel, asking God to let him die. What God does next should shape how every pastor thinks about exhaustion. There is no rebuke. There is no leadership lesson. There is sleep, and food, and more sleep, and more food, and a word of plain mercy: “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you” (1 Kings 19:7). Only after the rest does the word of the Lord come at Horeb. God treated the prophet’s depletion as real, and he treated rest as the remedy.

So let me distinguish two practices that pastors routinely blur together. They do different work, and neither can substitute for the other.

Full blog link in comments ⬇️⬇⬇

08/03/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18two4Rj8s/

Last Monday I asked you to draft a one-page rule of life for your next ninety days. If you did it, I suspect I know which line gave you the most trouble. It was not the morning prayer time. Most of us can protect twenty minutes before the phone comes on. The line that gives pastors trouble is the whole day.

Sabbath is the only spiritual discipline that made the Ten Commandments. Not solitude. Not fasting. Not silence, or study, or generosity. All of those are commended in Scripture and none of them were carved into stone at Sinai. Sabbath was. It sits in that list with the same weight as the commands against stealing and lying and coveting. And it is the one command in the list that pastors have become skilled at explaining away.

We have our reasons, and they sound reasonable. Sunday is a workday. The sermon does not preach itself. Hospitals do not keep a schedule. Someone has to be reachable. Every one of those statements is true, and not one of them is an exemption.

Full blog link in comments ⬇️⬇⬇

08/02/2026

Good morning and welcome to Albion Wesleyan Church. We are glad you could join us today. Our scriptures this morning: Matthew 14:13-21 / Matthew 6:25 / Matthew 19:23-26 / Revelation 22:17