Reading Glasses For Your Church

Do you have Presbyopia?

I do. The videos on the Intentional Churches YouTube channel clearly show that I suffer from it. 

I didn’t always have it, but it came on pretty suddenly in my 40s. And if my research is correct, it will progressively worsen until my mid-60s and then stabilize. 

At least, I hope. 

So what is presbyopia, you ask?

Presbyopia is the medical term for the loss of the ability to change the focus of the eye. This loss affects how well the eye can see close-up objects. Presbyopia occurs when the eye’s natural lens becomes less flexible with age, so you need reading glasses. 

Now, you may wonder what my loss of focus has to do with a church leader blog, and I will say, “Pretty much everything.”

Bart and I have served in the local church for over fifty years combined, and since starting Intentional Churches, we have been in the room with thousands of church leaders. These experiences have taught us that a great temptation for church leaders is to lose focus on our primary mission. 

We get it. Hundreds of things can grab your focus: worship services, children’s programming, fundraising, community outreach, facility challenges, budgeting, attendance, pastoral care, conflicts, etc. 

These all seem super important, and someone in your church probably feels each is THE most important thing you should focus on. You feel pulled in many directions and need to navigate the relationships and emotions of people who deeply care about your church.

And if you are a leader who cares about people (and we believe you are), working through that takes work. 

Even with all of that, let me say this bluntly: Your focus as a church leader must remain on making more and better disciples. 

Just like I put on reading glasses to focus, a church leader must put on Jesus’ lenses and focus on what he said our job is: “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19, 20 NIV)

To encourage you to keep this your focus, I encourage you to check out my conversation with co-founder Bart, whose kids have a weird insight about us and what has happened to us after working together for years. (You’ll have to listen to discover it.)