They Said It. It Wasn’t Me.

If you’re following my blog using an RSS feed reader, you’ve missed quite a bit of interesting conversation over the past couple of weeks. The comment stream has been interesting. Here’s a taste of what you’ve missed:

• “I think the church does a great job of raising up leaders from within, but man is it a grind. At times, I feel more like a blunt instrument than a person in trying to participate in multiple community service projects or serving on ministry teams.” – Phil
• “The fact is that churches notoriously, chronically, and historically have hired–’called’–the wrong person to lead, serve, and work on Kingdom issues. Unfortunately, I know whereof I speak.” – Mac
• “When we cling onto an idea, revelation, whatever you want to call it, we become consumed with (personal) agendas. Success is about investing in others, putting ourselves (and our agenda’s) aside and following God’s agenda.” – Pudge
• “Another reason we fail is we don’t believe the idea, relationship, change or momentum will work. We thought it was a good idea at some point maybe even a God idea however somewhere along the way we just lost faith.” – Bradley
• “People who are going through the motions hurt a business, but only the owners or stockholders are hurt- when ministry is populated with people going through the motions, Satan delights, and an important part of the Kingdom work suffers.” – Hal
• “This post comes across as extremely arrogant and centered on NewSpring and NOT God’s love for your staff. I mean, is this about loyalty to Perry? Who the heck is he anyway? He’s just a dude.” – Adam
• “I still have passion in my soul for what I’m doing. If I lose it like I did at my last job, which will cause my effectiveness to diminish, I hope I’m moral enough to step out. Somehow I don’t think it’s right to collect a check off the church for a constantly diminishing performance.” – Jeff
• “I had a very wise man once ask me, ‘If I was new to the area would I go to the church that I was serving at?’ When I answered no, he gently let me know that I was stealing from that church and it was time to move on.” – Ryan
• “I think the reason why NewSpring is where they are, and going where they are going, is because you are just that. A balls out church who wants nothing more than see people come to know Jesus Christ.” – Los
• “This is why i like reading your blog. You guys say and share the things that many others are scared to.” – Daniel
• “The statement about resigning was an accountability check to our staff. In anything we do in life, after a while it becomes a routine that we do out of memory, and we do not even realize we are doing something until someone asks why we do it. As the leader of our church Perry is called to hold us as a staff accountable because he will be accountable to God for leading us.” – Will
• “Want to like Christians? Feed them meat and hold them accountable…. of course, you better expect smaller congregations as well.” – Tony Y.
• “I find it fascinating how so many people are missing your point, Tony. I also find it fascinating how several people claim to have followed your blog/ministry for so long yet are NOW thinking you’re arrogant and smug.” – milepost13
• “I think that it’s important to say that long comments don’t get read in this twitterized world. If you really have something worth saying, make it short or no one reads it.” – Jamie
• “Church leadership acting as CEO’s of nonprofit organizations complete with ‘hiring and firing’ abilities, is a relatively novel development in the history of Christianity and is way outside of the Biblical framework.” – Caleb
• “When I was a youth pastor, I was in a Hampton Inn and threw a role of toilet paper down the hallway and knocked off a sprinkler head and flooded out two floors. They also had to evacuate the hotel. That’s the short version.” – Tim
• “Church bloggers should stop writing blogposts that waste people’s time.” – Jim
• “I think I heard you say once that many churches don’t have marketing problems, they have ministry problems.” – Jeremy
• “Good marketing unites everything you are doing from environments out to make one memorable impression for people. Obviously the point is to get people to stop long enough to hear the Gospel. Stop worrying about your advertising and start worrying about your environments, how your serving and loving people and the impression you make.” – Peter
• “Regardless of where he ends up on this issue, one of the purposes of THIS particular post is to get people thinking, talking, and/or dialoguing about the issue. Just because you don’t agree with him, or with his methods, doesn’t give you the right to lambaste him.” – Xandyr78
• “I remember when I sat in the NewSpring membership class and Jake Beaty asked everyone why they initially came to NewSpring. All of them (about 100 people) said because someone invited them. No one said they came because of a billboard or flyer. Word of mouth works.” – Johnathan
• “You can’t ‘sell’ what you don’t have. Thus you don’t have an inviting, safe, relevant church that encourages spiritual growth and Christian community just because your marketing efforts say you do. Disingenuous descriptions are really just lies.” – Kirt
• “I’ve been feeling increasingly uneasy about our staff’s reliance on announcements and cool print pieces to gain momentum and get the word out, rather than creating memorable experiences that people talk about.” – Danielle
• “A great example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater… all the accouterments work, have worked and will continue to work, you just can’t let all that consume and distract you from the mission. Balance.” – Don
• “Empowering takes more work on the front end.. guiding, coaching, encouraging, realigning when needed, etc but once you have empowered someone to own it, the results are exponential. I find that I will never get out of the details if I only delegate.” – Jenni
• “I’m so glad that someone finally ‘outted’ Gary Lamb and his tapestry of lies.” – Chris
• “Hopefully there will also be an iron sharpening iron time in your dream team once the honeymoon is over.” – Karin
• “Say Tony, while the good Lord was telling you about how I should be there, did he happen to mention anything about the Patriots beating the spread this week?” – Noah
• “Tony isn’t teaching meat because he fails to mention scripture in relationship to his post.” – Sam

By the way, if you use a feed reader, you can keep up with new comments on my site by subscribing to my comment feed. Enjoy.