The permission giving church

For too long there has been a disconnect in many churches regarding ministry. It has long been thought that the ordained minister in the church is the minister. Every ministry was done by the trained professional while the congregation watched, took notes and made sure the minister knew when he or she had failed. However, that is not the biblical understanding of ministry. Ephesians 4 makes it clear that the congregation is called to do ministry, and the ministerial staff's role is to equip them to do ministry. For this to occur, the congregation must be given permission to do ministry.

Here is how this would work in the ideal church. A member of the church would feel that a specific ministry was needed. Perhaps it would be a ministry to unwed mothers, or single mothers or to those caught up in addictions. In a permission giving church, this member would discuss this with the pastor or staff who would then help that member begin such a ministry. Maybe this specific ministry has never been done in the church before, but that doesn't matter. If the person presenting the ministry has the spiritual gifts and the passion for the ministry, then he or she must be given permission to begin that ministry. The pastor's role then, according to Eph. 4, is to equip and resource this individual.

Think of the impact this mindset could have on the church. New ministries could begin in the church that are lay-led by people who feel a passion for the ministry. How might this impact the growth of the church? More importantly, how might this impact the growth of the Kingdom of God?

One of our responsibilities as pastors is to help people identify their spiritual giftedness. Many believers cannot tell you how God has gifted them for ministry. There are many resources that can be used to help them identify their gifts. Once those gifts have been identified, the next question has to do with their passions. What would they like to do in ministry? What gets them excited? When the giftedness and passion match needs in the community, they can be encouraged to begin their ministries.

Some pastors will feel threatened by this. Having been trained in seminary that they are the minister, some pastors will not want to give up ministry to untrained lay-people. Perhaps they will make mistakes. So what? I don't know any pastor who has done everything perfectly in his or her ministry, so why not give permission to our laypeople to make mistakes as well. My guess is that they will make fewer mistakes if we are faithful in our equipping roles.

I encourage every pastor reading this post to begin challenging your people to pray about how they can best serve God. I like to remind people that their baptism was their ordination to ministry. Let's quit simply asking people to serve on various committees in the church and begin asking them to consider how God has gifted them for ministry and what they feel passionate about. Let's encourage them to work in those areas of giftedness and passion. 

Why pastors lose passion for the ministry

One important key to success in any endeavor is passion. If one does not have passion for what he or she does it's unlikely they are going to enjoy the level of success they could have. I spent eleven years working on an assembly line. It was a good job that provided well for my family, but I never felt passion for anything I did. I enjoyed the people I worked with, I mostly enjoyed the work I did, but there was never any passion. When my shift ended I was glad to go home.

Ministry has been different. Yes, there have been difficult times and even times when it has been unpleasant, but I've always felt passionate about this call God has on my life. Since much of my ministry has been done as a bivocational person passion has been something much needed. I cannot imagine doing bivocational ministry and not feeling passionate about what I was doing.

In my book The Bivocational Pastor: Two Jobs, One Ministry I include a chapter on the importance of passion in ministry. That chapter includes some reasons why some pastors lose that passion, and I will be pulling some thoughts from that chapter to this post.

One primary reason many pastors, bivocational and fully-funded, lose passion for the ministry is fatigue. Pastors are notorious for not practicing good self-care. We overbook ourselves, leaving no room for margin, and then struggle when unexpected events demand even more of our time. I'm reminded of the acts on the old Ed Sullivan show that featured an individual who kept several plates spinning on slender rods. He had to run from one to another to keep them spinning. That describes the way many ministers approach their ministries. We run from one thing to another trying to keep them all going. For the bivocational minister especially, trying to maintain balance between our ministries and other jobs plus managing everything else we need to do can be very tiring and a major drain on our passion for ministry.

Another factor that can drain us of our passion is pressure. Ministers face many pressures related to ministry. The pressure of loneliness, the pressure of expectations, the pressure of relationships, and the pressure of feeling inadequate for the job are just a few of the pressures we may feel.

In the book I discuss how to identify if you are losing passion for your ministry and some ways to recapture that passion. Our churches quickly reflect the personality of their pastors, and if the pastor has little or no passion for ministry, neither will the church. If passion is missing I highly recommend the ministry seek someone to talk to. This might be a denominational leader, another pastor you trust, or even a counselor. Your church deserves to have a pastor with a passion for serving them so make sure you maintain that passion.

When only a few seem to care

Seldom do I lead a conference that I am not asked the question, "How can I lead my church forward when only a few people seem to be willing to do anything?" Usually, when the question is asked several heads begin to nod indicating they face the same problem. When I began my pastoral ministry I faced the same issue, and what I learned continues to be the advice I give to those who ask the question.

You have to ride the horse that wants to run. Whipping a dead horse won't make it go any faster. You have to dismount from a dead horse and find one ready to run. Climb on that one and let it take off.

What do I mean? There are some people who will never engage in the work of the church. Unfortunately, some of them will be in positions of leadership. No matter how much you challenge them, how often you cast the vision to them, no matter how much you urge them to become involved, they are not going to do anything.

At that point, you have to find those persons in the church that share your vision for ministry and who have a heart to see the church develop a more effective ministry to the community. When you find those individuals you begin to invest your life into them. They may not be in current leadership roles, but you can help prepare them for the time that they will be.

What do you do with the others? You love them, you pastor them, but you invest yourself in those who are going to work with you to lead the church forward. As the Pareto Principle teaches us, we invest 80 percent of our time in the 20 percent of the people who will provide the greatest return on that investment.

Admittedly, this will probably cause some problems for some pastors. People will accuse you of having your clique in the church. Church gossips will talk about how much time you spend with your "friends" while ignoring others in the church. When such talk begins remember that while Jesus had many disciples he spent most of his time with twelve. In some instances he purposely reduced that number to three. He understood that some people would do more for the Kingdom than others, and he reserved the majority of his time and his greatest lessons for those few. We need to do the same.

It doesn't take great numbers to do great things. A few passionate people who own the vision and have been trained to use the gifts God has given them will accomplish more for the Kingdom of God than a hundred of people who want to ensure the church has a worship service every week. Identify those people and pour yourself into them...then watch and see what God will do.

What expectations have you accepted?

One of the books I'm currently reading is Instinct: The Power to Unleash Your Inborn Drive by T. D. Jakes.  Although I've only began reading it I am enjoying the insights he brings to the subject.  He makes a comment about people's expectations when he writes, "People adapt to their own expectations.  In other words, we often behave based on our perceptions more than the reality of our actual circumstances."  As I read that I realized that this describes the situations that exist in many of our churches.

Someone once commented: If you think you can or think you can't, you'll be right.  Often, what determines what we achieve is based not on reality or our circumstances but on our perceptions of what we can accomplish.  Self-limited thinking is what holds many people and churches back, not a lack of opportunities that might be before them.

A few days ago I had a post on this blog entitled "But we're just a small church."  Churches with this mindset often cannot see the opportunities for ministry they have because they've stopped looking.  In their minds, they are just a small church with such limited resources that they couldn't do anything anyway so why bother seeking out ministry opportunities?  They allow their church facility to fall into disrepair, they settle for poor leadership, both pastoral and lay, they offer outdated programs and ministries, they tolerate uninspiring worship services, all because they long ago stopped thinking they could do any better.  They adapted to their expectations of what small churches are, and those expectations became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It doesn't have to be like that.  Your church sits in the midst of a huge mission field that needs Jesus Christ.  God has placed you there so you can be the hands and feet and voice of Christ to a community that desperately needs to encounter the living Son of God.  Within your congregation are people with spiritual gifts that can be expressed in new and exciting ministries launched by your church.  Leadership can be trained and developed.  New ministries that actually touch the lives of people can be started.  Regardless of what your church has been in the past, it can have a brand new beginning and become what God has intended it to be all along.

For any of this to happen, it will require a new set of expectations on the part of your congregation.  They can no longer settle for what is but begin to look for new possibilities and believe that they can do something about those possibilities when they find them.  Your church must begin to believe that it has been placed where it is for such a time as this, and that God wants to do amazing things in and through your congregation.  You need to expect that something good is going to happen every time your doors are open and every time you represent Jesus Christ to those around you.

Expectations by themselves change nothing, but having the right expectations will provide you with the proper foundation to begin doing new things that will make a positive difference in your life, your ministry, and your community.

Focus your ministry efforts for greater effectiveness

One of the things I've been telling those who attend my workshops and conferences is that the smaller church will often accomplish more by doing less.  Sometimes a smaller church feels it must compete with the larger churches in the community to attract people.  This is always a mistake because the smaller church simply does not have the resources to offer the same ministries as a larger church.  Such a shotgun approach to ministry also misses another fact: God has a unique vision for your church.  Our churches are not called to duplicate the ministries of other churches but to discern the vision God has for each church and begin to fulfill that vision.

Several years ago a leader of a smaller church called saying their church was going to launch a youth ministry and wanted my advice on how best to do that.  My advice was to not do it.  The reason was that in that community there were several much larger churches with youth ministries that attracted hundreds of young people every week.  As I said to the caller, "Your church has three kids.  How will you compete with what the other churches are doing?"  He understood and clarified my comments by asking, "So you are saying we should look for another ministry to offer the community?"  Yes.

There is certainly nothing wrong with a church having a youth ministry, but in many cases the reason smaller churches want a youth ministry is they see it as the way to preserve the future of their church.  Trying to start a youth ministry is a problem if the church has no youth for a base group and no one in the church is gifted and passionate about doing youth ministry.  It is much better to build a ministry in your church by identifying and using the gifts of your members, helping them find what ministries they are passionate about doing, and seeing if that will meet a need in the community.

This takes us back to the vision discernment comment.  God will not give your church a vision for ministry if there is no one in your church with the spiritual gifts to make that happen; he will not give your church a vision for ministry if no one in the church is passionate about doing that ministry; and he will not give your church a vision for ministry if it does not meet needs in your community.  Where these three things come together is where you will find your God-given vision.

In most churches there is usually a lot of activity, but at the end of the year what advancements have actually been made?  I think back to my own pastoral ministry.  There were some years we could look back over the preceding months and see positive things that had been accomplished.  Other years we were just as busy but had no real results at the end of the year.  We had done a lot in those years but accomplished very little of lasting value to the Kingdom of God.  Just staying busy is no guarantee of a successful ministry.  We need to focus on the things that will really make a difference in people's lives and on fulfilling what we believe to be God's vision for our church.

I often say to church leaders that if their churches stopped doing 80 percent of what they are now doing, no one would ever know the difference.  That percentage may vary between churches, but the fact is that much of what we do really matters very little.  Let's begin to focus our resources and efforts on the things that really will make a difference to the people in our communities, and in December, when we look back over the year, I think you'll see a big difference in what you accomplished.

Do you really love your church?

One of the first things a smaller church wants to know about their pastor is "Do you really love us?"  This question comes out of the importance of relationships in the smaller church, and it comes because of the way many pastors are unwilling to invest more than two or three years in a smaller church before moving on to a larger one. 

When I went to Hebron Baptist Church in 1981 their average pastoral tenure was about 12 months, and it had been that way for many years.  After I had only been there about six months I learned that some of the leadership assumed I would soon be leaving them for a better church which was the term they were using.  No one could have guessed I would stay there twenty years.

A challenge I had was to convince the church how deeply I cared about them.  After all, if your family was abandoned every 2-3 years by someone it would be very difficult for you to believe them when they said they loved you.  And, in the smaller church, it is very difficult to accomplish very much until the pastor has built relationships with people, and the basis for such relationships is trust and a belief that this person truly does care about us.  It took me about seven years to build such trust because of the self-esteem the church had over having been abandoned by so many pastors over the years.

There are legitimate reasons to leave a church to accept a call to another one.  There are also many illegitimate reasons.  I cover both in my book The Bivocational Pastor: Two Jobs, One Ministry, and I also discuss the benefits of remaining in your church for an extended period of time.  The benefits for the pastor, the pastor's family, and the church are many and should be carefully considered before making a hasty decision to seek a new place to serve.

I once read that many years ago a pastor wrote in his diary, "This morning I prayed hard for my parish, my poor parish, my first and perhaps my last, since I could ask no better than to die here.  My parish!  The words can't even be spoken without a kind of soaring love...I know that my parish is a reality; it is not a mere administrative segment, but a living cell of the everlasting Church."

What a beautiful expression of love by a pastor for the church he was serving!  This is the kind of love each of us should have for the place where God has called us.  This is also the kind of love the smaller church desires from its pastor.  Does this describe the love you have for your church?  If so, have you told this to your congregation?  They would love to hear it.

Maybe it's time to eliminate sign-up sheets in church

I was recently visiting a church when the pastor held up a sign-up sheet for some activity the church was having a few weeks later.  He made the comment that if enough people didn't sign up for whatever they needed the church office would have to call folks.  I had the sense that people did not respond to the sign-up sheets very well in this church.

When I pastored in the 80s and 90s we used sign-up sheets a lot to recruit volunteers for the various activities in our church.  Most of the time our folks were willing to volunteer, but towards the end of my pastorate I found that fewer and fewer people would sign up on the sign-up sheet.  They needed to be asked directly to help with the activity.  I think this is even more true today which is why I believe we need to eliminate the sign-up sheets for most activities.

Yesterday, I read an article that promoted the idea that the church needs to cut back on their volunteers and become more intentional about developing leaders.  There was a lot in that article that resonated with me.  Especially in our smaller churches we are always looking for volunteers to do the various tasks in our churches, and those volunteers are getting harder to come by.  Whether it is due to time constraints, a lack of interest in the particular activity, a lack of commitment to church activities, or some other reason, people are less willing to step forward to volunteer today.  They hope someone else will volunteer for the task, and they won't need to.  This can get very frustrating to the few who are willing to volunteer as it seems they are expected to do all the work in the church.

How much better would it be if our churches became more intentional about developing leaders in their churches rather than depending on volunteers?  This about this scenario for a minute.  A small church needs a director for their Vacation Bible School.  About three weeks before the scheduled VBS someone finally volunteers to be the director.  In a short period of time he or she must become familiar with the material, coordinate and train the other workers, make sure the needed supplies are available, plan the promotion, and handle all the other administrative tasks that needs to happen for this to be successful.  Is it any wonder this person is not interested in being the director the following year?

Instead of asking for someone to volunteer to be the VBS director, what might happen if the church leadership sought a person who had the spiritual gifts for the position, had a passion for VBS, and believed in the possibilities that VBS offers?  Such a person could be intentionally approached months ahead of time and asked to serve in that position and then provided the training he or she would need to be prepared.  This would provide them with plenty of time to obtain the material and study it.  They would then be responsible to recruit and train the various workers and teachers they would need for VBS.  Which scenario is likely to result in a better Vacation Bible School experience?

Apply this same thinking to the other ministries your church offers, and I believe in almost every case to intentionally recruit and train leaders to lead these ministries will be far superior to putting a sign-up sheet on the back bulletin board hoping to get enough volunteers.  Not only will this result in better ministries, it will also raise the level of leadership in the church which will have far- reaching benefits for the church for decades to come.

Chances are your small church would have to make changes in its by-laws before this can happen.  Many of these volunteer positions are likely to be assigned to a nominating committee to recruit, but in my opinion, nominating committees are much like sign-up sheets.  Both served a purpose at one time in church history, but that time has passed.  Let's stop depending on volunteers and become more intentional about recruiting and training leaders in our churches.  The benefits of doing so are likely to be impressive.

Preaching hope

I missed the initial broadcast of Billy Graham's "My Hope America" but had the opportunity to watch it last night.  Several things came to my mind as I watched the broadcast.  The first was the simplicity of the message.  One of the things that always fascinated me about Billy Graham's messages was how simple they were.  They were clear, simple, and direct to the point.  Mankind is lost without Christ, but because of the cross a relationship with God is available to anyone who will simply invite Jesus Christ into their lives.  And, like in this most recent message, he wasn't bashful about insisting that Christ is the only way to God.  You may not agree, and you may even want to argue, but Graham would just respond, "The Bible says...," and you would be left to deal with it.  Anyone was free to reject what he said, but no one could walk away and say they didn't understand his message or how he was asking them to respond.

A second thing that I thought about was the level of respect he has maintained throughout his long ministry.  We live in a time when religious leaders are not held in the highest esteem by many people, but Graham has always been respected.  He has modeled a life of integrity that has earned him the right to be respected.  This is something that each of us in ministry must seek to emulate.  If we can finish our ministries respected by the majority of people who have known us we will have done well.  Such respect does not come naturally.  Scripture teaches that we are to avoid even the appearance of evil, and that requires that we set boundaries for our lives and activities.  Graham always carried himself with dignity and avoided the kinds of scandals that brought down other ministers with high-profile ministries.  He was able to do that by identifying the core values that would guide his life and ministry and then faithfully living according to those values.  We should do no less.

In his younger years his voice rang with authority and his eyes flashed with passion when he preached.  I enjoyed the clips of him preaching in some of the great crusades he led.  I was privileged to attend several nights of the crusade in Indianapolis in 1980, and I still remember the power of his voice.  I listen to so many preachers today who seem timid when they speak.  Their voices lack authority and passion.  Graham had both when he preached, and I think it is because he believed what he was saying.  He didn't apologize for anything he said because he believed he was right.  We need that kind of bold preaching in our pulpits today.  Although his voice was not as strong in this recent telecast, the passion and authority is still there.

Finally, I thought about how true his words were.  Jesus Christ is the only hope for America, and for our world for that matter.  Our salvation will not come out of Washington DC.  It will not come through the United Nations.  It cannot come from technology, science, the business community, or from other religions.  The stories of the two young people that we saw throughout the telecast illustrates how every path other than the one that leads a person to the cross of Christ proves to be a dead end.  There is no hope at the end of those false paths.  It is only when one takes the narrow path that leads to the cross and salvation can one find the hope we all need to live our lives.

Friends, you are the messengers of that hope.  No one else has the message that you and I have to share.  Mankind is lost because of sin, but God loves us so much that he sent his Son to be the sacrifice for our sins.  All who will may come and enjoy a relationship with God, but such a relationship is only available through Jesus Christ.  That may not be PC enough for some folks in our pluralistic society, but that is their problem, not ours.  God sets the conditions for a relationship with him.  We are free to accept or reject those conditions, but we are not free to change them to suit ourselves.

It is time this message of hope is heard once again throughout the churches of our nation.  It is time for a clear trumpet to be heard throughout the land.  We who have been called to serve as pastors and ministers must preach once again with passion the message of hope that is the Gospel.  When we do that we will once again see our altars filled with people seeking God, and when that happens a revival will break out that will bring hope back to America.

What is the real mission of your church?

What is the mission of your church?  I know what the correct answer is, and most churches would give that, but what is honestly the mission of your church?  Now, before you answer that I want you to look at your church calendar and your financial statement because it is in that calendar and checkbook that we find the real mission of every church.

Sadly, most churches do not have a mission beyond providing services to their members.  They have been so inwardly focused for so long that they can no longer see the needs of people even within the shadow of their own steeples.  Reggie McNeal once wrote, "Member values clash with missionary values.  Member values are all about church real estate, church programming, who's in and who's out, member services, member issues (translated: am I getting what I need out of this church?)  Missionary values are about the street, people's needs, breaking down barriers, community issues (translated: am I partnering with God's work in people?)  He believes "the North American church is suffering from severe amnesia.  It has forgotten why it exists."  That's quite an indictment of the church, but unfortunately it is true for many of them

The bottom line is that a church is either focused on maintenance or on mission, and many have chosen maintenance.  There is much less risk when a church chooses maintenance.  No one has to learn anything new.  There is less chance of upsetting people with messy changes that often accompany mission.  Everyone can remain in their comfortable ruts, and this includes the pastors as well.  Pastors sometimes complain about the lack of mission within their congregation, but the truth is many pastors prefer maintenance as well.

The challenge for the church today is to recapture the passion the early church had for the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.  When we read the story of the church in Acts it was this passion that allowed them to overcome extreme persecution and become people who were known as the people who turned the world upside down.  It is this passion that have enabled underground churches in China and other Communist nations to flourish despite their government's attempts to destroy them.  It is likely this same passion that led people to start the church you attend today.

The mission of the church is the same for every church regardless of size.  Your bivocational church of 40 people shares the same mission as the largest mega-church in America.  That mission is the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.

Part of our problem is that many Christians understand this.  They know what their mission should be, but they avoid doing it because if they committed themselves to this mission it would require too many changes in what they are currently doing.  They are not willing to make the necessary changes to live into the biblical mission of the church.

To become a church on mission will require extensive change for many congregations.  They will have to be willing to give up some cherished programs and preferences in order to minister in a way that will transform people in our postmodern society.  Mission will have to become the driving force behind everything they do, and anything that does not contribute to that mission will have to be abandoned.

Let's ask the question again.  What is the real mission of your church?

This post is adapted from a chapter in my book The Healthy Community: Moving Your Church Beyond Tunnel Vision.

Accomplish more by doing less

A common problem among many smaller churches is that they are over-structured.  Often, their structure reflects a time when they were a larger church, but as they have declined over the years nothing ever changed about their structure.  They have the same number of committees, many of which are really no longer needed.  They have the same number of leadership and teaching positions, many of which are no longer needed.  They are over-programmed for the number of people who participate.  As a result, many of the people are exhausted from all the activities going on in the church, most of which are really not very productive.

Church leaders should spend some time at the end of the year looking at all the activity that has occurred during the previous year and then see how those activities changed the church and impacted the community.  Many churches will find that their church looks much the same on December 31 as it did on January 1 despite all the activities that occurred in the church in the months in between.  Activity for the sake of activity is not a productive use of the resources of a small church.  Trying to compete with the larger churches in the community is also not wise.  I know every church believes it must have a youth ministry, but it is really foolish to try to build a youth ministry with the three young people in your church when two other churches in the community have youth groups that exceed 100 kids each week.  You are not likely to grow your church through your youth group.  So what should a smaller church do?

Find one or two things that your church can do with excellence and pour your resources (people, time, and money) into those one or two things.  If these are ministries that other churches in your community are not doing that is even better.  Eliminate as many of the maintenance tasks you've asked your members to do as possible, eliminate the activities that are not productive, and streamline your approach to ministry.  Identify the vision God has for your church and stop trying to copy what other churches are doing.  Focus your attention on that vision and allow everything else to fall away.  Challenge your people to work in the areas of their spiritual giftedness and passion, and if there are tasks that do not match those things in your church membership accept that as a sign that those tasks no longer need to be done in your church.

This will not be easy for many smaller churches because it will mean the loss of some sacred cows that have almost risen to the status of idols, but we've got to stop doing things that no longer matter in the 21st century.  Ministry is a stewardship item for which we will one day give an account to the One who called us to the task.  We must be wise in how we use the resources He has provided us for the ministries to which He has called us.  Our congregations need to hear this message and be challenged to put aside those tasks that no longer help us achieve our purpose as a church and recognize that for most of our smaller churches our greatest effectiveness will be found in doing fewer things but doing them well.  When a church can find a niche ministry it can do with excellence it will find greater enjoyment in ministry and will see real results at the end of the year.

The bivocational minister and passion

For twenty years I served as the bivocational pastor of a small, rural church in Indiana.  During most of that time I worked in a factory on the assembly line and various machining lines.   We also took ownership of a small business which I managed, and on top of all that I decided to earn a college degree.  Yea, I was busy.  There were also times when I was operating on autopilot.  I often felt like a robot.  Push a button and out would pop a sermon.  Press another button and I would show up in a class.  A third button would put me running a machine.  I was doing everything I was supposed to do, but there was no passion in anything I did, and that is especially dangerous when it comes to ministry.  Unfortunately, I have met many pastors who also lack passion for what they do.

There are many reasons pastors lose their passion for ministry.  We face challenges that threaten to overwhelm us, people who oppose what we are doing, frustration due to a lack of immediate results, fatigue, a sense of loneliness in ministry, and the various pressures that go along with ministry.  However, those by themselves are not enough to rob us of passion.  Andrew Blackwood once wrote, "In pastoral work the most serious obstacles lie within a man's soul."  It is not the problems themselves that take away our passion, it is how we choose to respond to those problems.  I have found two things to be essential to maintaining passion for ministry.

The first is to reconnect with God's call upon our lives.  When I stop long enough to remember that it was God Himself who called me to this work, it puts ministry is a completely different perspective.  He could have called anyone, and certainly there are people who would have been more qualified and capable, but He chose me.  Furthermore, He called me to bivocational ministry.  During my years as a pastor I would remind myself that perhaps one day He would call me to a different ministry, which He eventually did, but at time I was doing what God had called me to do.  When we can rejoice in that call of God on our lives it becomes much easier to maintain passion for what we are doing.

The second thing that is so essential is to maintain our passion for Jesus Christ.  As ministers it can become easy to get so involved in studying about Christ and telling others about Him that we neglect our own relationship with Him.  We become professional teachers and managers and forget that everything we do should flow out of our relationship with Him.  If we allow that relationship to grow stale, our ministries will become stale and our passion for that ministry will quickly fade.

Congregations can tell when we lose passion for what we are doing.  In fact, they may notice it before we do.  It shows up in our sermons, the way we go about our ministry, and our personalities.  If we lack passion it won't be long before our congregations will also lose their passion for ministry, and soon both the pastor and the congregation are just going through the motions.  There is little life in such places.

Don't let this happen to you.  Stay mindful of God's call on your life and maintain your passion for Christ.  If you do these two things you will find it much easier to deal with the challenges of ministry and maintain your passion for the ministry He has given you.

For more on this read The Bivocational Pastor: Two Jobs, One Ministry.

How do church leaders keep the fire?

I am currently reading The Pastor: A Memoir by Eugene Peterson as part of my devotional reading.  It is a powerful book that looks at Peterson's life, his sense of call to ministry, and his insights into church ministry.  In my reading yesterday I came across this line in the book: "The pastoral vocation in America is always in danger of becoming flabby with consumer religion and lazy with cliches."  I had to stop my reading in order to reflect on that statement for awhile.  It is certainly a true statement at least for some of us.  Perhaps this has not been a challenge for you, but there have been times in my own personal ministry where it has been true.  Anyone who has been in ministry for a period of time can easily coast through the responsibilities that are expected of us, and the temptation to do so is strong.  We soon learn what will earn us the applause of our congregation, and if we are not careful we will be satisfied with that rather than seeking to hear "Well done, good and faithful servant." from our Lord.  What do we need to do if we want to avoid falling into this trap?  In the midst of pastoral ministry how do we keep the fire, the passion, we need to serve both our God and our congregations?

It will require a great deal of intentionality on our part.  We must understand ourselves well enough to know what will add fuel to our ministry passion and what will dampen it and then seek to do those things that add the fuel.  While you will have to determine what works best for you, let me briefly share some of the things I've found helpful in my own life and ministry.

Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to hear that I read a lot.  Most years I will average reading about one book a week.  I read for information and illumination primarily; seldom do I read a book just for entertainment.  In addition to my Bible I will read another book as part of my devotional time.  Sometimes it will be a book like Peterson's.  Sometimes I will read books on apologetics and occasionally I even read commentaries.  One year I determined to read through my various commentaries on the book of Romans.  This is all designed to help me go deeper in my faith, to help me understand not only what I believe but why I believe it, and to put down theological roots that will help me when the storms come.

Spending time with other ministers, not to talk about your war stories but to discuss some of the questions you've encountered in your ministries.  For bivocational ministers this is often difficult to do, but it's important enough that we need to find time to do it.  I was recently with a group of pastors, all bivocational, who spent a couple of hours talking about some of their recent learnings about ministry and to ask some questions of one another about various doctrinal beliefs.  It was a good time of fellowship and growth for all who participated.

Every pastor, both bivocational and fully-funded, must spend some time at continuing education events.  Not all those need to be ministry-related.  I have often attended a popular motivational conference that is more business oriented than ministry oriented, but much of what is shared at these events are easily transferable to ministry leadership.  I realize that a lot of what we hear at motivational conferences don't seem to last long, but neither do the meals we eat.  That's why we need to eat regularly, and that's why we need to experience these kinds of events more than once.

One of the things that I find helpful in my life is listening to podcasts while driving.  Because I spend so much time in my car I keep several podcasts on my I-Pod to listen to when traveling.  Most of these are ministry related but not all of them.  I could just listen to the radio, but listening to these podcasts is often a much better use of my time, and they help me stay focused on the call God has on my life.

Avoid the traps Peterson mentions above.  Find those things that will help you go deeper in your faith and maintain the passion we need for ministry and commit yourself to those practices.

Scaling back

As I work with smaller churches across denominational lines there is one issue that is common to many of of them: they are much too structured for their size.  In many cases, they currently have the same structure they had when they were a much larger church.  The church may have shrunk in size over the years, but they still have the same offices, committees, boards, and organizations.  Trying to staff these positions each year becomes a major challenge.  Often, some positions go unfilled even while people in the church may hold five or six different positions.  What I tell these churches is that smaller churches can accomplish more by doing less.

Too many smaller churches are trying to compete with the larger church in town by offering ministries and programs they are not equipped to provide.  These churches believe if they don't have the same ministries as that larger church they will lose their people to that church.  They're probably right, but it's likely they will lose those people anyway.  See, it's not just a matter of offering a program; it's doing it with excellence.

Several years ago a smaller church asked how they could develop a youth ministry.  My recommendation to them was that they not.  I told the church there were two churches in their community that had youth groups of over 200 young people that met each week.  This church had three youth.  I asked how they thought they could compete with the ministries of the other church.  A person in that church corrected me saying there were actually four churches in their community with large youth groups, and I was right in saying they couldn't compete.  My challenge to them was to find a target group of people in the community that were not being served by another church and develop a ministry to them.

A smaller church should identify two or three ministries their church can do with excellence and focus on those ministries.  Everything else should be let go.  Concentrate your resources (time, energy, finances) on two or three things and drop everything else.  You will find that you can build your church on doing those few things rather than trying to be everything to everybody, and you'll find that ministry is much more exciting.

You also should look at your church structure.  Do you really need all the committees and boards that exist in your church?  Quite frankly, you could probably abolish 80 percent of those committees and boards and nobody would ever tell the difference.  If your church is like most, the majority of time these groups add very little, if anything, to the overall ministry of the church.  The benefit of doing away with non-productive boards and committees is that more people would be freed up to do actual ministry that makes a difference.  If a committee is needed for a specific need, create a ministry team to address that need, and as soon as their work is complete, the team is abolished, but eliminate the many standing committees that are doing very little.

In order to do this your church will have to become a permission-giving church.  Instead of making people jump through various hoops by getting approval from this committee and then two more, a permission-giving church has a clear vision for its ministry and anything that fits within that vision receives automatic approval.  This encourages people to become more creative in their thinking and challenges them to pursue their giftedness and passion for ministry.  As more people become involved in ministries they have created more people are reached for Christ and for the church.

How can your church begin to scale back?  As we approach the autumn months, this is a great time to look at how your church is structured and what changes you might want to make in that structure.  You'll find that the more simplified your structure is the better it will be able to serve others.  You will find more help on this issue in my book Intentional Ministry in a Not-so-Mega Church.

Does your church have the right leadership?

In his book Make or Break Your Church in 365 Days: A Daily Guide to Leading Effective Change Paul Borden writes, "Often a major reason that congregations are in decline or on a plateau is that the wrong people, for whatever reason, are in positions of leadership."  This sounds much like Jim Collins in his excellent book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't where he writes of the importance of having the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.  He explains why this is important.

If you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away.  The right people don't need to be tightly managed or fired up; they will be self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great...If you have the wrong people, it doesn't matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won't have a great company.  Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

In a business environment it is somewhat easier to get people where they need to be.  In a church it can be more difficult especially if you are dealing with long established traditions and people who have served in their positions for many years.  A frequent issue I hear from pastors attending my seminars is the poor quality of their lay leadership who consistently blocks every effort to introduce change to the congregation.  What can a pastor do in such situations?

In my opinion, the most important thing a pastor can do to turn around a church is to cast vision.  The second most important thing is to develop leaders.  You begin with those you currently have in leadership positions.  Some of them may have excellent leadership abilities but have never been trained by those pastors who preceded you.  Such persons would respond very well to your leadership development efforts.  Others have no interest in growing as leaders.  They are positional leaders only and quite often extremely unwilling to step aside and allow others to have those positions.  These are people you love, pastor, and work around.

As I say in my seminars, you have the ride the horse that wants to run.  Identify the persons in your congregation who have leadership potential and invest in their growth.  Eventually, positional leaders will no longer be in those positions, and you will have trained leaders prepared to replace them.  When that happens you will often find your church becomes healthier and growing.

In my denominational tradition many churches have nominating committees that recommend persons to fill positions for the upcoming year.  I would prefer these committees be eliminated, but that is a post for another day.  When such a committee is utilized in the church the pastor must be involved in that selection process.  Some pastors ignore the work of that committee entirely, and in some churches they don't want the pastor to be involved.  Either is a big mistake.  Pastors will have to work with the people selected for these positions for at least the next year if not longer, and they need to try to get the best people selected.  Pastors also often know things about people that make them not good candidates for leadership positions.  Because of confidentiality issues they may not be able to reveal that to the committee, but the committee needs to trust the pastor who suggests a certain person may not be the best candidate for a particular position.

Leadership identification and development are key components of a healthy church.  Both needs to be high on the priority list of every pastor who needs to invest a significant portion of time of his or her time in these areas.  The wrong people in leadership positions will cripple your church and hinder its growth more than almost anything else.

Do you have the right people in leadership positions in your church?  Are they in the right places to best utilize their gifts and passions for ministry?  Who do you have in the leadership pipeline that are being prepared for future leadership needs your church will have?  What are you doing to intentionally help your current and future leaders develop as leaders?

The passion of a leader

One of the things I often notice while spending time with pastors is the lack of passion many of them demonstrate for what they do.  I can understand that to a point.  Ministry can often be rough.  Most people enter ministry with expectations of what it will be like.  They have a desire to truly make a difference in people's lives.  Most ministers work long hours and too often are rewarded with little to show for their efforts.  In some churches they are quickly beaten down by the low expectations of those they have been called to serve.  Too many find their seminary classes didn't do much to prepare them for ministry in the real world.  Their recommendations for needed change are frequently voted down.  Many feel isolated in their work.  For some there comes a time when they doubt that anything they are doing is really making a difference in people's lives.  They decide to settle for the role of a chaplain, and in some churches, a hospice chaplain.  The spark is gone from their eyes and their sermons while they look ahead to retirement.

Probably most pastors go through this at different times in their lives.  I did.  The thing that always brought me out of such times was to remember that I had been called to this work by God.  The One who spoke this world into existence and who has sustained it by His hand spoke to me and called me to lead His church.  That's pretty incredible and should be enough to keep us passionate about what we are called to do.  Sometimes the pressures of ministry may cause us to forget this, but the key is to not stay stuck being willing to settle.  We need to remember our calling, and that memory should re-ignite in us a passion for what we do.

Paul Borden, in his book Make or Break Your Church in 365 Days: A Daily Guide to Leading Effective Change, writes

A passion fueled by truly righteous indignation does a number of things in the hearts of pastors.  It causes us to want to make a difference for God, no matter the cost.  It produces a vision that says the status quo is unacceptable and there is a preferable future.  It provides the courage to risk and do what needs to be done, even at the expense of our reputation and paycheck.  It causes us to minister in places where we would typically not like to live and work long hours because without an investment of time we know little good will happen.  Passion comes because we are doing what we do for the cause of Jesus Christ, not our political or social agenda.

Do you have this kind of passion for the ministry you've been given?  Are you leading your church or your ministry with passion, or are you merely going through the motions?  Are people lining up to follow you because they are inspired by the passion you demonstrate?

If you have lost your passion I urge you to do whatever it takes to recapture it.  Take a sabbatical.  Get a mentor, a coach, or a spiritual director to help you identify what has taken away your passion and what you need to do to get it back.  Set aside time for a personal spiritual retreat.  Put it in your calendar right now and make that an appointment with God.  Read biographies of people God used in remarkable ways.  You'll find many of them went through dry times in their own lives and ministries and came through them spiritually stronger and with even greater passion for their work.  You cannot effectively lead without passion, so do whatever it takes to get the passion for ministry back.

We can't grow disciples if we do not learn to delegate.

Early in my bivocational pastorate I tried to do everything at the church.  I was worn out and about ready to leave the ministry when our judicatory had its annual meeting.  I scheduled a time to meet with a denominational leader to discuss what was happening in our church and my own frustrations and temptation to leave.  When I finished speaking he did not hesitate with his answer.  He said the problem was that I had become the church.  Not only was I wearing myself out by trying to do everything I was preventing others from being the church God had called them to be.  He was right.  I might complain that few people in the church would help with the ministry, but the truth was that I never asked.  The next Sunday I announced the title of my message, "Confessions of a Tired Pastor," and began to share with the congregation the conversation I had the previous weekend, my own sense of weariness, and my apologies for limiting them in their own spiritual growth as disciples.  I then announced that as of that moment I was not doing anything for which someone else had responsibility.  No longer would I go behind people and do the things they failed to do, and I would be asking others to step up.  Quite frankly, delegating tasks to others does not come natural to me.  I can do most of them quicker than I can train someone else how to do them, I know they are done if I do them, and I dislike asking people to do things.  But, not delegating prevents others to grow as disciples and it limits the ministry in our churches to only the things we can do ourselves.  No pastor should want to be guilty of either of these.

Delegation is more than just assigning tasks to people.  For delegation to be successful it has to be done while taking into consideration a person's unique spiritual giftedness and passion.  For instance, no pastor would want to ask me to become a choir director.  My musical abilities are extremely limited, and I am being kind to myself.  I have a great voice in case of fire or shipwreck, but you don't want me to lead singing.  In a similar fashion you would not want to ask the church grouch to lead the church greeter team.  One of the most important things a new pastor can do is to identify the gifts and passions of the people in the church so when it comes times to ask people to do certain things the pastor will know who is the best person for each task.

There are several good reasons why we need to do a better job at delegation.  One is that it provides our church with more ministry points.  If the pastor is the only minister in the congregation then the ministry of that church is limited to one person.  But, if the ministry has been delegated to a number of people the church has just multiplied its ministry by that number.  Second, it helps prevent fatigue for the minister.  Involving many people in the ministry of the church reduces the burden the pastor must carry.  Thirdly, it helps with disciple-making.

Growing disciples is more than just offering a number of Bible studies in the church.  Disciples need to learn the Scriptures, but in order for them to become disciples they must have opportunities to put into practice what they are learning.  Discipleship is education + service.  Delegating ministry opportunities to others enables them to grow as disciples.  Refusing to delegate stunts that growth.

If our churches are to be serious about developing disciples we must learn to delegate.  If we are serious about wanting to grow our churches we must learn to delegate.  If we who are in the ministry want to enjoy more productive ministries while maintaining a measure of balance in our lives we must learn to delegate.

Maintaining passion for ministry

Approximately 50 percent of seminary graduates leave the ministry within five years of graduation.  One of the primary reasons is that the demands of ministry just become too much on the minister, his or her family, or both.  I've not seen any kind of breakdown for bivocational ministers versus fully-funded ministers, but my assumption is that they would be similar.  I have known a number of bivocational pastors who have stepped away from ministry after 3-5 years of serving a church because of the pressures they felt.  Some have told me they didn't believe continuing to serve as a pastor was fair to their families.  Usually they say they are going to sit out for a couple of years and then return to ministry, but many of them never do.

It would not be fair for me or anyone to criticize the decision of a person who leaves the ministry.  I do not know what is going on in their lives or in their homes.  I do know that the Bible says the gifts and calling of God are without repentence, so I don't believe God changes His mind about whether a person is called to ministry or not.  What I believe is that the primary reason that people abandon the ministry after a short period of time is that they lose the passion for what they are doing.
Andrew Blackwood once wrote, "In pastoral work the most serious obstacles lie within a man's soul." That means the battle to remain or leave the ministry lies within us.  Ministry is tough and often thankless, and unless a person finds a way to maintain his or her passion for ministry it can become a burden to carry.  So, how does one maintain that passion?

First, we must return to our original calling.  I found it helpful when things were not going well in ministry to remember God's call on my life.  This was not a career I chose for myself; this was a ministry to which I believed God had called me.  When I remembered that it became easier for me to remind myself that God could sustain me in this work.  For bivocational ministers it's also important to remember that God has called us to this unique ministry.  Not everyone can do what we do.  Our work and calling is not inferior in any way to that of a fully-funded pastor.  It is God's call on our lives to serve this particular place at this particular time.  Think about this for a moment: Out of the billions of people God could have called, He chose you to serve in your place of ministry.  I find that reflecting on that is both humbling and re-assuring.  It strengthens me for the battles and pressures I face, and it helps renew my passion for ministry.

The second thing that we must do is maintain our passion for Jesus Christ.  I've written about this elsewhere, but I continue to be amazed at how easy it is for a minister to become so consumed with what he or she is doing that we forget God.  We neglect our own spiritual development.  We ignore our need for private times of worship and reflection.  If we lose our passion for Christ it follows that we will soon lose our passion for the work to which He has called us.  We simply must set aside time to strengthen and grow our relationship with Him.

The final thing I'll mention is that we must set aside time for family and for some personal R&R (that's rest and relaxation for all you non-Navy types).  If you work a 40 hour week on a job and then spend every waking minute doing ministry, you'll lose your passion for the ministry rather quickly.  So will your family.  Get a life!  Have a date night with your spouse.  Enjoy your children while they are growing up and participate in their activities.  Make friends with people outside the church and spend time with them  When you work, work hard.  When you play, have fun and don't worry about the work.  If you do that, when you return to work you'll find it much more enjoyable and you'll find it much easier about doing it with passion.  For more on this subject you may want to read my book, The Bivocational Pastor: Two Jobs, One Ministry.