Rules of thumb for the church

Bivocational pastors need all the helpful resources they can find. I want to share one with you that I wish I had owned when I served as a bivocational pastor. It is What Every Pastor Should Know: 101 Indispensable Rules of Thumb for Leading Your Church by Gary McIntosh and Charles Arn. These individuals have written several books addressing administrative tasks every minister faces and both serve as professors at their respective seminaries. I had the opportunity to talk with Gary at a conference where we were both speaking about this book and told him how helpful I thought it would be for any pastor and especially for those who serve bivocationally.

As the subtitle suggests, the book includes 101 rules of thumb that pastors should consider when leading their churches. Let me share a couple that I believe would be beneficial for a bivocational pastor to consider. Number 6 says that "churches that are effective in reaching their community train at least 10 percent of their people in friendship evangelism each year."

This speaks to at least two concerns I find in every smaller church. One is the need to fulfill the Great Commission, and the second is the concern about the small number of people who attend the church services. Obviously, if we were doing a better job of obeying the Great Commission it's likely we would have more people in our services! Since the most effective evangelism is done through friendships it stands to reason that we need to intentionally teach our members how to do friendship evangelism.

One sermon every year or two isn't going to cut it. A class on friendship evangelism also isn't going to be effective. We need to be more intentional about training people, and we need to begin slowly.  One mistake I often made as a pastor was to begin something new with great expectations and then become discouraged when those expectations were not met. Start slowly.

The book suggests training 10 percent a year. That may seem too slow to some, but it is doable given the time constraints many bivocational ministers have. If you do this for five years you now have one-half of your congregation trained in friendship evangelism. That should make a difference in most churches. The authors give some tips on how to conduct this training.

A second tip mentioned in the book is number 35, "One of every five adult education classes should have been started within the last two years." I know what some of you are thinking: It's hard enough to get teachers for our existing classes, and they've been around forever! That may be the problem. I've read elsewhere that an adult class will stop growing after about 18 months. New people are reluctant to go into a class where everyone already has relationships with each other. New classes need to be started to reach new people.

Early in my Christian journey the pastor of the church we attended asked if I would help start a new class for young adults. Our present class had about 40 people attending, and it had stopped growing. We did start that new class and almost immediately had 15-20 people enrolled without taking anyone from the existing class. To grow an adult Sunday school program you add classes. Again, the authors provide advice how to begin these new classes.

This book addresses many of the administrative tasks a pastor has and provides targets to consider when facing these tasks. Again, I wish this book was available when I pastored. It would have saved me a lot of time. I think it will be a help to you as well.