How Much Do I Share When I Speak–if It Concerns Others?

My story is about learning how to say “God, you are enough.”

When I share my story, I do so to challenge women to open up their hands, and say, “God, you may have given me many blessings, but ultimately my life is based entirely, and solely, in You. You are my Source. You are enough.”

And I do that by sharing my story of loss–my son who passed away, my fiance who walked out.

Yet those losses only make sense in a wider context–namely, that of growing up with rejection because my father left. His actions made me who I am, and God ended up using it all for good. Yet I cannot tell my story without his.

When I asked on my Facebook Page a while ago what the biggest challenge is for people when it comes to speaking, a number mentioned, “figuring out how much to share”. That is a challenge, and it comes in two forms. Let’s look at both:

Sharing when your story involves others doing things wrong

That’s my case. And how do you share about things others have done that have hurt you? What if a large part of your story is abuse, for instance. Do you name your abuser? What if a large part of your story is your husband’s–or ex-husband’s–pornography addiction? Do you talk about it? It impacted you. It made you who you are today. But do you mention it?

Here are some thoughts to consider:

1. Are you in a reconciled relationship with that person?

If you are in a reconciled relationship, ask them if you can share. Say that you will put boundaries around it, if necessary–like you will only share that story out of state.

If you are not in a reconciled relationship, and it is unlikely to ever be reconciled, then I think, personally, that it is okay to share. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to in my own life. To not share means that I miss out on telling what God has done, and often through my story people in the audience are touched. You can do it tastefully, but I do believe that God wants to work in people’s lives, and if we keep things under wraps, we take away some of that opportunity.

At the same time:

2. Are there others who would be affected by this?

I spoke recently to a woman who had been in a horrid marriage where he had used porn and had sexually abused their children. When the abuse became known (the mom hadn’t known) she immediately left her husband, sued for custody, and got a restraining order.

She went through a horrible time of grieving and of trying to repair broken relationships. Now she wants to warn other women about the dangers of staying in a marriage when you know something is terribly wrong but you can’t put your finger on it. What should she share?

This is a harder case, because her story is intricately wound up in that of her children. While she does not owe her husband the right to privacy, she does owe it to her children. Talking and praying with them about what is all right to share, and when, would be crucial.

God still wants to use her story, and praying that He will open doors to minister, even if it’s not done on a large stage, is important. But it could be that with healing,  her children are willing, even eager, to have her share. Nevertheless, I think their feelings and needs are paramount here.

3. Can you share without sharing details?

Finally, at times there are opportunities to share without spelling everything out. So, for instance, if your uncle sexually abused you, but you are now reconciled, or your uncle’s children are prominent in the church and don’t want it known, you could talk about how as a child someone you trusted violated your trust. You don’t need to name the person.

You can, however, focus on the details of how this made you feel, which is really far more important than what was done. Remember, people in the audience will relate to you around feelings, not actions. It is very unlikely anyone in the audience will have gone through exactly what you did. But everyone in the audience understands betrayal, and shame, and fear. Talking about those emotions is far more important than the exact details of what was done.

Now let’s look at the second scenario about deciding what to share:

What I Share Can Affect My Reputation in other Circles

I’m the sex lady. I never meant to be the sex lady, but I became the sex lady with the publication of The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex. And my husband and I speak at marriage conferences, where we always do the sex talk.

That’s not really that big a deal–until the conference is in your home town, and your mother-in-law is in the audience. Do you really want your friends and family knowing all your funny and personal anecdotes (don’t worry, we don’t get too specific, but we are funny!). That’s just awkward.

And I’ve had to learn that awkwardness is one of the sacrifices that you make for God. It’s one of the things that we offer Him, as a sacrifice of praise. Because the speaker that touches people and that leads them more and more to God is the speaker who is real. When we cover up our foibles, and our fears, and our mistakes, we aren’t real. People can’t relate to a “perfect” version of Christianity. They relate to God doing something in the struggles of ordinary people. If you don’t share your real-ness, your ordinary-ness, you protect yourself at the expense of ministry.

Sometimes God wants to humble us.

At the same time, there are lines. Jessica Harris, for instance, wrote this on my Facebook Page:

I am a high school teacher who speaks about pornography addiction, so it’s hard to keep my ministry life and my school life separate! haha. The last thing I want my students to remember is that I was the teacher who used to watch porn.

I am blessed that my speaking engagements have been outside of my immediate circle of influence, so there’s no worries of ‘cross contamination.’ Some of my school parents know what I do and tell their kids, “Did you know we know a celebrity?” And I say, “No, no. To them I am just Miss Jessica.”

She wants to be real. She wants to minister to people. But she also is right in that this could cause awkwardness at her day job. In this case, keeping them as separate as possible is likely a good idea! And keeping your boss in the loop about what you are doing, and about the steps that you are taking to separate the two, is also likely a good idea, so that nothing would ever happen that would take your boss by surprise.

It is a difficult thing to decide how much to open up. Am I just seeking attention? Do I just want to hurt this person who hurt me? Am I trying to find my own healing through speaking, and am I hurting others in the process? These are all questions we need to honestly ask ourselves and pray through with God.

Ultimately, though, your story is your story. If your story leads people to God, then pray that God will open doors and show you how to share it effectively and with integrity, even if it means that you do offer him a sacrifice of your own pride.

Want to learn how to share your story the most effectively, so it leads people to Christ–and not just focusing on what you went through? My audio download, Crafting an Effective Signature Talk, teaches you how to do just that!

How Not to Get Jealous of Other Speakers

Last week I turned on Facebook, and found that a woman that I’ve been following, and who has been my peer and my friend, just got a new TV show.

I was happy for her. I really was.

But I have to admit that my first reaction was a gulp. And a sigh. And a twinge of jealousy.

I’ve been working hard! Why does she have a TV show and I don’t? Now, granted, I’m not even sure I would WANT a TV show, and I certainly haven’t been pursuing getting one, but that experience is quite common: when we are trying to grow our ministries, it’s hard not to compare ourselves to others who are doing something similar. And each time they succeed, it makes us feel that little bit more like failures.

The interesting thing is that we may even have succeeded in a key area–maybe we’re getting more bookings! But we hear someone who was just on the radio, and we think, “why aren’t I on the radio?” Suddenly our successes, even if we were happy about them, pale, because we’re looking at someone else.

I’m starting up my speaking training again, after a bit of a hiatus, and I thought one of the better places to begin was with this:

God has a plan for you. He has work that He has specifically prepared for you to do (Eph. 2:10). He has people that He has specifically put in your path because it is you He has designed to reach them.

God DOES have a plan for you.

So what is your role in all of this?

Listen to God. Be faithful with the gifts and blessings He has given you. If He’s given you money, invest in ministry. If He’s given you gifts, use them wisely. Don’t hide them. Be available. Serve Him.

But never, ever think that He is demanding a certain level of success from you. He is not angry if you haven’t progressed. He is not thinking “she shouldn’t be doing this.” He is happy when we try to spread His word!

That doesn’t mean He may not one day push you in a different direction. And some of us may only speak for a short period of our lives. But in God’s timing that is never wasted. He is using it.

Our focus, then, should always be on God and listening to Him, not on trying to attain some measure of success.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t aim to become more professional, or try to seek out better bookings. That’s part of being faithful with the gifts that He has given you. How will people hire us if we don’t get the word out? So, yes, we need to be learning about marketing and about being professional.

But there is no level of success that God says we must have in order to serve Him. And there is no level of success that says, “you have arrived. You’ve done good!” When we think there is, we’re measuring success in the world’s terms, and not in God’s terms.

I know it’s hard not to become jealous when other speakers seem to succeed so much more, and when other people get a ton of bookings and you just don’t. But that’s the time to go back to God and say, “is there something that you want me to learn in order to be a more effective speaker? Are there more risks you want me to take for you?” And if the answer is no, you’re perfectly okay.

There will ALWAYS be people who are more successful than us. Think of the most successful speaker you know: I am almost positive that she has a list a mile long of the things she should be doing to grow her influence and ministry, too. There’s always more we could be doing, and there always will be, until Christ returns. Until everybody has heard the message, and until everybody is completely transformed to look like Christ (Romans 8:29), there will always be more to do.

Think about it this way: Peter is so much better known than his brother Andrew. And yet if you read the Scriptures, you’ll find something interesting. The only times that Andrew is mentioned, he is bringing people to Jesus. That’s all he’s known for.

His ministry didn’t go down in history to the same extent that Peter’s did. Andrew didn’t preach on Pentecost and see 3000 saved; Peter did. But Andrew is still remembered today for bringing people to Jesus.

Lord, may that be true of us, too.

Want to hone your message so you’re sure you’re being effective in leading people to the foot of the cross? Crafting Your Signature Talk audio download takes you step by step through the process!

What Does Trusting God with Marketing Look Like?

I have a confession to make.

I’ve always been a wimp when it comes to trusting God with marketing.

You probably are, too. Most of us suffer from this illness. We sit back and say:

I trust God to grow my ministry.

How is that wimpy, you say? Well, let me illustrate by telling you a story.

I started my main marriage and parenting blog in March of 2008. I decided it was time to get on the blogging bandwagon if I wanted to build a platform for my writing in the area of marriage. And so I began to blog. Pretty soon I was getting around 200 readers a day. But then, about two years into blogging, I hit 400 readers a day. And I couldn’t budge it. Occasionally I’d get a big surge where I hit 700 readers, but that was it.

At the beginning of November, I attended a marketing conference with my agent. I asked, “how many readers do publishers want for a blog? What should our traffic be if we want our blog to be considered a good platform?” And the answer came back, “1000 a day. Or 30,000 a month.“

30,000 a month? That was huge! I was excited when I hit 12,000. And I had a book coming out in March (The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex). I wanted to get up to that point by March. But how could I do that? That’s more than doubling my traffic in just three months, when I had spent years trying to get my traffic going. I had guest posted. I had left comments at other people’s blogs. I had participated in link ups. And nothing.

But I decided to try something radical. I decided to pray for actual numbers. So I said,

God, I need 30,000 people by the end of February. I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but I pray that you will bring me that traffic.

In December I was discovered by reddit, a bookmarking site. I had 60,000 visitors in December.

But that was a fluke, I thought. I’ll never hit anything like that again!

Here’s my traffic since then:

Now, if you’re trying to simply get speaking engagements, you absolutely do not need 1000 people on your website a day. I needed it because I was trying to build a platform to sell a book, and that’s something different.

But here’s what I learned, and this is what I really want to impress on people: Sometimes we mistake the wimpy for the godly.

For instance, which is more godly to say?

I put my marketing entirely in your hands, God. I know you have my ministry in Your hands, and so I trust you.

Or,

God, I believe you have brought me to this place. I believe that You want me to grow my ministry. So I pray that you will bring people to me, and that you will give me opportunities to reach more and more. I pray that I will have (3 retreats this year, 2 paying engagements, a book contract, whatever it may be for you), and if that’s not Your will, reveal it to me soon, because I want to spend the time that you have given me in the best way for Your kingdom.

You see, I prayed the first prayer for years. But what I was really doing was giving God an out. I was saying, “If you want me to grow, I will, but if You don’t, I won’t.” It wasn’t a prayer of faith; it was a cop out.

And when we pray like that, I think we’re less likely to actively market ourselves, because we figure that God should do it for us. And if God doesn’t, then it wasn’t meant to be. But what if it was meant to be, but God needed you to wrestle through, and trust Him, and step forward?

I think it demonstrates far more trust in God if we step forward in faith in our ministry, believing that God has brought us to this point, than if we hide in the back, and say, “God will make it happen if He wants it to.”

This is not a “name it and claim it” thing I mean, because I don’t believe in “name it and claim it”. But I do believe that if God has called you to something, He wants you to do it. He wants you to be a full participant. He wants you to believe in that calling. And if He hasn’t called you, then it’s good to wrestle that through and figure that out anyway.

Lately I’ve been so busy with the release of my book that I haven’t posted very much, and I’m sorry about that. I’m hoping to get back to things soon. But I thought that I would leave you with these things that have been spilling around my head, and ask you: what do you think? What does trusting God with marketing mean to you?

Use Your Words: When Your Speaking Ministry Stresses You Out

Today on Use Your Words we talked stress. Usually I give  you some pep talk about marketing, or planning a talk, but I thought it was important to touch on something all of us deal with, but rarely talk about: how draining ministry is. And speaking ministry has its own unique stresses!

Every Tuesday I host a BlogTalkRadio show for 30 minutes, and you can listen live at noon EST. But if you didn’t make it, you can always listen to the shows after the fact. This week’s is right here.

To summarize, though, what are the sources of some stress?

1. Engagements with High Costs and Few Benefits

Picture this: you’re just starting out, and you’re so happy to receive any engagement that comes your way! You want to spak. You want to build word of mouth.

So when an offer comes, you jump at it. Then you realize that it involves driving six hours, billeting at someone’s house, speaking the next day, and driving home.

You drive. You’re exhausted. You arrive at the billet’s house and you have to be nice and make small talk, even though you’d rather just sleep. When you get to the engagement, only 30 women are there, and they’re not the kind who are likely to lead to a lot of word of mouth. At the end of the night, they give  you $50 and a potted plant.

You’re discouraged. That was a lot of effort for relatively little reward. Of course, God can bring rewards out of anything, no matter how small, and so you feel guilty for being a little bit resentful. But it was awfully far to drive, and awfully draining.

Do this too much and you will burn out.

Solutions: Do free engagements certainly, but try to do them closer to home. Read about cold-calling local churches. Be strategic about doing workshops at conferences, which are likely to lead to more word of mouth. If you are going to drive far, try to combine several engagements at once. And once you do start to get more engagements, it’s okay to ask for a hotel rather than a billet!

2. You Can’t Admit Your Struggles

My husband and I have been speaking at marriage conferences for six years now, and one of the hard things is that when I’m mad at him, it’s hard to tell anyone or get counsel, because people may think that our marriage is in trouble (even when it’s not). When you’re in ministry, you have to look like you have it altogether, or you may damage your reputation.

That’s exhausting, and spiritually dangerous. Remember all the big name preachers who are caught in scandals? People don’t wake up one day and make a huge mistake out of nowhere. It starts with little things they compromise on, and then it grows. And why do those little things appear? Because they don’t have anyone to talk to about their doubts and struggles, and they don’t have proper accountability.

Churches are working together to get pastors more accountability and anonymous help, but we speakers are a lonely bunch. We don’t have anyone doing that for us.

Solution: Make one of your primary prayer requests that God will send you 3-4 women with whom you can be completely honest. They don’t even need to live in your hometown! Send email prayer requests around, and ask them to hold you accountable.

3. Overbooking Yourself

When a speaking request comes for nine months in the future, you jump at it and say yes. Later you’re asked to speak somewhere else a week later, and you say yes to that, too. But when the week comes around, life has gotten in the way. Your kids are busy. All of a sudden there’s a family wedding you didn’t know about when you took those engagements, and you’re going to be driving all over the place trying to squeeze in shopping for a gift and dress fittings, etc.

The fact is that life does intrude, and we have to be wise.

Solution: Cluster your engagements. Try to do a whole bunch at once, so you’re away from the house for an extended period, but then be home for 6-7 weeks straight. When you speak every weekend, or once a week, your mind is never completely at home. You’re never able to completely relax (or even completely unpack!).

4. Worry When No Engagements Come

You’re doing everything you’re supposed to do, but your calendar isn’t filling up. Is God really calling you to this? What about money? You’re not being paid enough and you wonder whether you should still be doing this.

Solution: Keep up to date with God. Wrestle with your calling. Ask God if it was temporary, or if it’s long term. It is okay to do something for five years, and then God may call you to move on.

I said much more in the recording for Use Your Words, which you can listen to here.

Another resource I know you’ll find helpful is my audio download, How to Get Better Bookings. If you’re sick of driving huge distances for little reward, learn how to build word of mouth to get the kind of engagements you need! It’s available here.

Telling the Gospel to Those Who Haven’t Heard It

I’m sorry that my posts have been infrequent lately–I’m trying to take some time with family this summer, because my year coming up is going to be so busy!

But I have some things on my mind that I thought I would share with you.

One of the things that happens once a speaker has been speaking for a while is that we tend to get known outside of our traditional circles. For instance, while I speak mostly to evangelical church groups, I also write a family column in our local paper. And so lots and lots of non-evangelicals know who I am, and they know I speak.

And so every summer, when many ministers take vacations, I get asked to guest preach at small rural United Churches near the town where I live. For my American friends, think a combination of Episcopalian and Methodist. Very mainline.

I never charge my full fee. I consider this a real honour, and a real responsibility that God is giving me. It is one thing to speak to an evangelical audience and challenge them. It is another thing entirely to be asked to speak to a mainline church to people who may never have heard the gospel properly.

That is a humbling thing indeed.

I’ve been praying all week about what I will say, and the message that I have settled on is about drifting: you cannot drift towards heaven. It has to be something deliberate.

I’m going to open with the story of an experiment that took place off of the Brazilian coast. Two identical wine bottles were dropped, with messages inside, off of a boat. One drifted east, washing up one hundred and thirty days later off the coast of Africa. The other drifted northwest, landing in Nicaragua one hundred and ninety days later. They started in exactly the same place. They ended up half a world away from each other.

We can never drift closer to something we care about. We only ever drift apart.

And so I am going to talk about how we cannot drift through life; we need purpose, and we need to know where we are aiming. And I’ll take it from there.

One thing I have found when speaking before mainline audiences is that they are passionate about things like faith and purpose. They aren’t as comfortable with Jesus. But if you can open with the things that they are passionate about, you can then bring in Jesus afterwards.

As always, I find that bringing in humour, and even props, helps people to listen better.

And so even though this will be one of my smallest audiences this year, and even though it may look rather insignificant, I am considering this one of my most important speaking engagements. And if you all could take a minute to pray for those who will be listening, I would so appreciate it!

Have you had this sort of blessed opportunity, to present the gospel to those who may not have heard it? What did you do? Let me know!

Is It “Unspiritual” To Charge a Fee When You Speak?

photo © 2008 Horia Varlan | more info (via: Wylio)

I’ve been conducting speaker training for two years now. Most of you who come to this site truly want to speak in the Christian world. You want to speak in churches, at camps, to youth groups. You want to make a difference for God. You want to share the message that God has given you. But you can’t do this without receiving some sort of compensation, because you need to be bringing in some income.

Does that make you unspiritual?

That’s an important question, and it’s interesting that it seems to come up pretty much solely concerning female speakers. Male speakers, after all, are paid all the time. They’re called “pastors”. But many ministries to women exist that do not really believe in compensating their speakers.

In fact, I read a thread from one of these ministries where people were appalled that one speaker asked for about $150 to cover her gas, rather than the traditional $50 or $75 that the group paid. How could she think of doing that?

And yet, my question would be, how could she not?

I’m afraid that many women speakers are battling this idea that to ask for money makes us unspiritual. I find this puzzling, because at these Christian events, the people have paid caterers. They have bought decorations (and thus paid stores). They have, at times, rented halls. It was not unspiritual to pay for food; it is only unspiritual to pay for food for your soul. Very strange.

But I’m also opposed to it for two reasons: the first is scriptural. The second is practical. Let’s tackle them both in turn.

1. The worker is worth his wages.

The Bible clearly states in 1 Timothy 5:18 that “the laborer is worthy of his wages”.

In other words, those who are involved in ministry should be paid. They should not be expected to do it for free. Certainly those in the New Testament church sold their belongings and gave to the poor, but that was their choice, and they were giving to their own community. I often take the money that I receive from speaking and give it away, but I give it away to the charities I support. If I go to a church that is two hundred miles from where I live, I do not know that church or its ministry. I want to support the ministries that I do know. To expect a guest, who is not part of your fellowship, to pay your fellowship for the privilege of speaking (which is what it amounts to if a group does not pay adequate travel expenses), is unreasonable.

Now some groups don’t pay because they don’t have the money. I’ve spoken at both churches and groups who apologize profusely for not paying, and I don’t mind that at all. They have little money, and so they can’ t pay, even if they want to. What bothers me is the groups that make it an issue of spiritual pride that they do not pay, so that no one becomes puffed up. I think this is a misunderstanding of Scripture, and can be damaging to their own group.

2. If you don’t pay, you damage your own ministry

Here’s where I really see the problem, though. Becoming a gifted, effective speaker is something that takes work. Yes, we are gifted, but that gifting needs to be trained. It needs practice. I have always been a gifted speaker, but I am so much better today than I was eight years ago because I have had so much practice.

Who are the best speakers out there today? Those who are actually speaking to groups that hire only good speakers. When a medium-to-large size church hires a speaker for an evening, that speaker knows that he or she has to really prepare. She has to be engaging. She has to be a little bit funny. She has to be able to speak well. She has to have an effective, well-crafted message. And so she works hard to be that.

The groups who insist on not really paying speakers are also saying, “we don’t believe that speakers should have practice or a lot of training, because that’s worldly.” Certainly they may give some training themselves, and I know groups that do train their speakers to a certain extent, but the best speakers are those who have spoken to a variety of groups, not just one type of group. They are speakers who have had to adjust to different personalities or circumstances. Speakers who have had to develop different talks, or gone deeper into the Word to find new material and new thoughts.

I used to speak for a group that didn’t really pay, going to a number of different circuits and speaking to a number of different individual groups under their umbrella. And I can tell you that the quality of speaker there differed tremendously from the quality of speaker at most women’s conferences I attended, simply because once people got good, they left.

Some women are comfortable speaking for no money, because that’s their ministry, and if God is calling you to that, that is perfectly okay. But we need to understand that it is not unspiritual to be paid for one’s work, and in fact, being paid for one’s work usually brings better quality.

I still speak for free occasionally when I feel God prompting me to. I often speak for little or no money when it’s a real opportunity to share the gospel to people who haven’t heard. But I don’t speak for organizations who refuse to pay speakers well as a rule, thinking that this is spiritual. It’s not. What they’re really looking for in speakers are people who are completely dedicated to their particular ministry, and not to ministry as a whole. That cuts down the number of potential speakers drastically.

It also puts an undo burden on the speakers, asking them to be away from home–from family responsibilities, from children, from their own churches–far more than the organizers of these events are. The speakers travel; the others don’t. And they are asking the speakers to take the money out of their family’s pockets to pay for these speaking trips, because it costs money to drive to different groups. They say this should be done in the name of “ministry”, but I question whether it is ministry to ask children or husbands to sacrifice without compensation. That can cause a lot of family friction and hardship.

I come back to the Bible: “a worker is worth his wages”.

My conclusion? Listen to the Holy Spirit and be open to speaking for free. But you are not unspiritual if you ask to be paid. You are simply being faithful to your family and enabling yourself to grow as a speaker, and that is a good thing.

What do you think? I know this is a controversial subject, and I’d love to have some of you chime in!

When Your Ministry is Attacked Online

photo © 2009 Nathan Siemers | more info (via: Wylio)

Recently a blog held a contest for the “25 Best Faith Blogs”. Somehow a ton of pagan blogs got on the list, along with a bunch of Christian mom blogs, and a voting war started between the pagan blogs and the Christian ones. It got kind of nasty. The Christians that I saw were trying to stay above the fray, and trying to minister the best they could, but things were dicey, because here were these women who were blogging for basically no other purpose than that they wanted to encourage other moms, and on all their heart-felt posts about motherhood, they were getting slammed in the comments by pagans, who had just found their blogs through the contest.

For many of these Christian moms it was a hard lesson about the internet. Up until then they had flown under the radar, attracting readers who were already Christian, and not really generating negative comments. Now, all of a sudden, they were being attacked for their faith.

I experienced something similar last week. Every week I try to upload a Vlog on my marriage blog that has something to do with marriage. Two weeks ago I uploaded one on what to do when marriage doesn’t meet your expectations. My advice? Remember that marriage is more about holiness than happiness, and instead of expecting your spouse to do all these incredible things, turn to God and ask Him to make you a great wife. Go to Him for your encouragement, and get your eyes off your spouse’s failures. Here it is if you want to see:

Well, the video went by with a few hundred from my blog watching it, when all of a sudden one morning from out of nowhere I had a dozen comments on it, all a variant of “dump the jerk!”, although several used much more colourful language. I deleted them all, but the thumbs down had been hit repeatedly. (If you can go and hit “thumbs up“, I would so appreciate it!).

I asked other friends to go by and thumbs it up, but the two incidents together taught me something.

We can’t be out in social media without being noticed. And sometimes that notice will be very negative.

You can’t stand for truth and not have people lambaste you. So what do  you do?

In some cases, it’s better to keep the comments and not worry about it. If you were starting a blog where debate was the main purpose, then by all means, keep the comments. But that’s not what I chose to do, for several reasons:

1. My website is an advertisement

If people see that I’m consistently “thumbed down”, or attacked in the comments–even if they agree with what I write–they’re going to think that I’m not as persuasive or not as professional as they’re looking for. People tend not to like conflict. So be careful!

2. My website is a ministry

People come to my site and click on my links for advice–and godly advice at that. If people are writing things that diametrically oppose what you are saying, then they could be leading a hurting person who has stumbled upon your website in the wrong direction. And that’s why I deleted them.

Anyone who is online has to have a comment policy, and so here are just some thoughts:

1. Consider comment moderation

Most blogging platforms allow comment moderation. If your website is a ministry, then you may not want really bad comments on your blog–or even profane ones. Turning on comment moderation means that you have to click “okay” before a comment is published. It’s more time consuming for you, and it means that people’s comments don’t show up right away. But it’s likely a good idea.

2. On some platforms, turn off comments altogether.

I’m thinking of turning off comments on YouTube, though I haven’t done that yet. There are some platforms where it’s just too easy to be “discovered” by accident by people who don’t agree, and it’s too easy to be put down. So I’m considering turning them off, since the main purpose of my videos is just to minister, not so that people will debate in the comments. The debates happen on Facebook or on my blogs.

3. Allow comments, but respond thoughtfully

Another option is to keep the comments there, but respond appropriately to all of them. This may be seen as the “Christian” way to do it, because you’re answering their questions and doing further ministry. But the problem is that most people who comment never come back to see what you’ve said. Most just leave a negative comment and then are never heard from again, so you’re not really ministering to them. You’re simply giving them a platform for their views.

In some cases, allowing those comments may, indeed, be useful, especially if you can counter them in a loving and logical manner. But in others, the presence of comments is just hurtful.

4. Defriend if necessary

If someone on your Facebook Page is becoming a menace, or someone is constantly attacking you on Twitter, block them. you have the ability, and it’s okay to use it. Just because you’re out there does not mean that others have the right to attack you, or drain your emotional energy. It is YOUR platform. It is YOUR Facebook Page, your blog, your Twitter account. You are not obligated to give them a platform to say what they want to say. They can go make their own blog if they want to do that. So don’t be afraid to block people if you need to!

When you step out in faith and put your words out in the internet, people will at some point criticize you. It’s only natural. People don’t like messages about truth, and honour, and commitment, and dignity, and integrity, and holiness. So don’t take it personally when you are attacked. Just realize it’s part of the job, they did worse to Jesus, and He’ll handle it with you! And put some safeguards into your sites so that they don’t become places where bad advice in the comments is allowed to fluorish!

Don’t Give Up!

I wrote a post earlier this week about what to when you feel like giving up. I wrote it in the context of one who is overburdened and tired of the effort.

But there is another aspect to feeling like giving up; there is also the one who does not feel like they are ever good enough. You try, but you just don’t arrive.

Do you ever feel like that? You feel called to speak; you feel as if God has gifted you; but then you hear other speakers and you think, “I could never do that.” You look around and there are other women younger than you, who haven’t been speaking as long, and they have much bigger bookings than you do. Should you really keep going? Are you just kidding yourself?

I came across an article by an artist recently where she quotes artist Ira Glass, explaining why so many people quit after trying their hand at something creative for a time. He writes,

Isn’t that smart?

The reason that you are so critical of yourself is that you have actually thought about what goes into speaking. You know what you want to sound like. You know what kind of response you’re looking for.

And so you see, ever so vividly, when you don’t live up to your own expectations.

That is not the time to give up. That is the time to think about these things:

1. God is the only One who should tell me to give up.

If you’re wondering if you should quit, ask for release. If you don’t feel that release, then go with your initial calling. And this brings up another point: when you do feel called to speak, when you feel a message from God, write it down in great detail. Write it down so that when you second guess yourself, you can go back and see it and remember.

2. You are only called to be yourself.

Don’t compare yourself to others. We all speak in different ways and have different messages. I may have one way of delivering a talk that I think is effective; another way may work for you.

God may be calling some people to one type of ministry; He may be calling you to ministry, but in a different way. You only have to be yourself.

3. Seeing where you can improve is a good thing

When you see areas for growth, that is good! That doesn’t mean you’re lousy at what you do; it just means that you’re turning in enough to what makes a good speaker that you can identify areas where you need to improve. That means you’re closer to your goal, not farther away from it.

So don’t give up! Clarify your calling, and then persevere in it. I know it can be lonely and disheartening sometimes. That’s why we’re building this online community! But keep at it, and God will bless you in His calling.

When You Feel Like Giving Up

I wrote this post while speaking at a weekend retreat recently.

It is a Saturday afternoon as I write this, and I am sitting on a dock in eastern Ontario, watching six geese fight it out on a lake. The air is filled with the sounds of birds, and the crystal clear lake seems to be smiling at me. All is peaceful.

And yet my heart was not peaceful for the last week. I know I have written about this before, but I struggle so much between the two extremes of wanting to rest and wanting to work. At times I go on a working jag, and I spend all my free time writing and fixing my blog or setting up Facebook or planning my next speaking campaign.

Other days I just want nothing more than to knit and think up new things to put in my crockpot.

I was having some of those latter days last week. I have been traveling so much this spring that it is wearing on me, and I found myself saying to God, “Can’t I just stay home? Can’t you let me off the hook sometimes?”

Of course, God just smiled, because it wasn’t Him who overcommitted me to so many engagements this spring; that was my own folly and my own pride.

And last Friday I pulled up my bootstraps and got myself in my car as I drove two hours to a retreat where 150 women were awaiting me, excited.

As soon as I arrived I felt convicted. These women were so excited to be together, and for me it seemed like more time away from my family, when I just wanted to knit. And to top it all off, I had forgotten one of the four knitting needles necessary to knit the pair of socks I’m working on at home. So I couldn’t even knit in my downtime to relax.

But the first thing that happened as I arrived was we were each asked to take a “blessing”–an inspirational thought printed out. I chose one, and it said,

I have given each of you a gift, for you to use to bless others. Go and bless those I give to you.

I smiled. I had been saying to God, “is it necessary for me to speak? Do I really make a difference? Is this really what you want me to spend my time on?” And He said a big, loud, “Yes!”

I had a wonderful feedback from the weekend, and the idyllic setting helped me to just quiet my heart. I spoke Friday night, and Saturday morning, and Saturday night, and Sunday morning, yet I had all Saturday afternoon to rest and think and pray and type.

It’s Saturday now, though this post won’t be up until later. And again I am struck by God talking to me about purpose. I told the women this morning, as I have mentioned on my personal blog before, that the two big lies that our culture believes are, “You deserve to be happy“, and “you would be happy if you just tried a little harder.” And even though I know these things are lies, I tend to fall into them. I tend to think that the purpose of life is for me to relax and have fun, and hence work interferes with my purpose.

But work is our purpose. I am not saying that we all need to be superwomen, but there is a balance, isn’t there? Our lives should mean something. We are put on this earth to get to know God, to learn to serve Him, and to introduce others to Him. There is great joy in that. Everything else is secondary. Part of getting to know God, of course, is also learning to abide in His rest, to appreciate quiet moments, to find joy in solitude. It is not that we need to be super busy all the time. And yet getting to know God also involves finding what we were created to do.

For whatever reason, and I don’t mean this in a proud way, I was created to communicate truths about God to people. I feel hopelessly inadequate for the task. I do not spend two hours in contemplation everyday. There are days when my prayer life is rather abysmal. And yet God still pushes me out there, and He still does wonderful things through me–or perhaps I should say despite me.

Most of you reading this blog also feel called to speak. You know that God has given you a message, and has gifted you to deliver that message.

Don’t take that for granted. Don’t think “I’m only doing this until retirement,” and then I can rest, or “I’m only going to be this busy until the kids grow, and then I can calm down.” Perhaps your life will be less busy, but don’t ever let it be less meaningful.

I think we believe too much that we work hard now in order to rest–as if resting is the goal of life. We would be happier and more at peace, I think, if we took periodic rest now so that we could know God, feel God, and thus be energized to live for Him, not just now, but forever. We are not to work ourselves out of work; we are to rest enough that we can focus on God and continue to work, in whatever capacity He calls us, until we go home.

So I will keep asking God to make more more excited about work, and to help me take the rest I need when the opportunity presents itself. And I will stop telling myself that my goal in life is to have limitless time to go on vacation and knit. Knitting is wonderful, but I can do that while I work. If only I remember my needles.

A version of this post was first published on my personal blog, To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Use Your Words: Clarifying Your Goals

Every Tuesday I’m on the Christian Women Affiliate radio network on BlogTalkRadio to talk about building your speaking ministry! You can listen for FREE, so do tune in, or listen after the fact to the archives.

You can find this week’s show here.

Here’s the low-down on this week’s show!

Basically, you need to know where you’re going, or what you’re aiming for, before you launch, or it’s hard to measure how you’re going to get there.

And we can measure our goals in three areas: financial, professional, and spiritual. Let’s take them one at a time.

1. Financial Goals

There is nothing wrong with having to make money. Many of us need to contribute to the family income simply because the economy is bad. We’d love to speak, whether or not we were getting paid, and we’d love to just serve God, but we need money. And we can’t dedicate the kind of hours we need to to have an effective speaking ministry unless we’re making an income. Otherwise we’ll have to get a job elsewhere.

So understand what you do need to earn in terms of income, and then figure out how many speaking engagements this represents. And a little warning: it’s very hard to make $50,000 a year speaking, especially when you’re just starting out. If you charge $300 for an evening, and $600 for a Saturday, you’re going to have to speak every single Saturday during the year, and then 60 more evenings, to even reach that goal. Nobody can do that. It’s too much and it will burn you out.

You can make that kind of money if you’re selling a lot on your book table, and if you get good enough to raise your fees. But just be careful that you’re not launching into speaking thinking that it can deliver an income to you which is unrealistic. Some people think, “if I can charge $300 for an evening, then it’s like I’m making $300 an hour!” Don’t think of it like that. That $300 has to cover your prep, your travel, your networking, and your speaking.

Also factor in expenses, and charge them separately. If you have to pay for a hotel, or pay $150 for gas, driving four hours there and back, then $300 isn’t enough. You’ll start to wonder why you seem to be making no money at all (and that’s because you’re not!).

If income is an issue, think of easier ways to make it! Write magazine articles, or write for websites. Write for parenting magazines. Write for charities, or write on contract for non-profit organizations. It’s okay to need to make money!

2. Professional Goals

I decided early in my writing career that I wanted to write a book. But I knew that finding a publisher was going to be difficult, especially since I didn’t have any published credits to my name. So for four years I invested in writing magazine articles for some of the biggest Christian publications. Then, when I approached book publishers, I had something to share with them.

If you want to reach a certain niche, or if you want to publish a book or start speaking at a certain conference, remember that there are often several steps you need to take first in order to get there. If you want to speak for women on depression, for instance, it’s easier to speak to women in general for a few  years first, and get well-known, before you try to hit that target niche. Speaking to a niche market is hard enough; you won’t get hired until people have heard of you first.

Similarly, if you want to publish a book eventually, it’s better to take three or four years to build your platform. Get well-known on the internet. Start speaking. Invest in the kind of things that give you name-recognition.

Note that this building period may be not what you envisioned. It may feel as if you’re not pursuing your goals; but you are. Just break them down a little bit.

When I made the decision to write a book, my income actually dropped. I was making more money writing magazine articles than I ever did writing my first few books. But I wanted to go in that direction so that I could build a speaking ministry. So I sacrificed a little bit, for a few years, so that I could get where I wanted to be.

3. Spiritual Goals

Always keep in mind the REASON that you are speaking and writing. God may bless some of us to become wildly well-known; most of us will not. In the end it’s His decision. But what you don’t want to do is to spend a lot of time and energy being tremendously successful at something that doesn’t matter.

There are ways that we can speak and write that may make us more popular. We can compromise on certain issues. We can become flashier or edgier. We can become more politically correct.

Don’t water anything down. Certainly we need to be culturally relevant, but always keep in mind the main reason that God has put you in this ministry. What is the message that He wants you to share? And then keep coming back to that message. Let it resonate out of every pore of your being. When you are doing that, your ministry will be so much more effective!

If you want to listen to me dive deeper into this subject, listen in to the radio show here.

And if you want to go even deeper into how to think about goals, and how to clarify where you should be putting your efforts, my download “Treating Speaking as a Business” will help you tremendously! It comes complete with a handout that helps you clarify your goals, and assign them priority numbers (in fact, it does it for you!). It couldn’t be easier, and it will save you time and money. Find the download here.