Tag: ministry

  • Letter #15–Honesty

    Dear Small Church Pastor,

         That old saying “Honesty is the best policy” holds true in most aspects of life, especially in the small church setting.  Be honest with your congregation.  If you are having a rough time dealing with something life is throwing your way, be honest about it, and avoid the mistake of pretending everything is going great when you’re around your congregation.

         Small congregations have an ear to their community, and they’ll know if something isn’t going well in that community.  They may not bring it up, but they’ll know.  You might be surprised at how understanding they will be when you admit you’re struggling about something.

         No pastor is impervious to trials and setbacks.  No pastor is walking on cloud nine every single day.  So don’t pretend you are all the time.  Your congregation knows everyone is open to satanic attack, and they know everyone will have hard times, too.  Remember that they ask for prayer about things they’re going through and seek guidance and help in the hard times.  When you let them know your own prayer requests, you form a stronger bond with them through your honesty.

         Something else about honesty, never—NEVER—sugar-coat the gospel.  It’s great to preach about the love, mercy and grace of God.  Everybody loves those sermons.  But if you do not include God’s justice and punishment on evil, you’re doing your folks a great disservice.  Be honest about God’s judgment on wickedness, just as you are honest about God’s unconditional forgiveness for all who repent and seek that forgiveness.  Those who are under your spiritual umbrella need to hear about heaven and hell, not just heaven.

         If you are a small church pastor and feel God is leading your ministry to change something about how they all “do church,” tell them.  Explain what God’s guidance on this matter is and what the benefits are.  Include them in the decision-making process about any changes that are led through the Holy Spirit.  Have open, sincere conversations with them about God’s leading in your life as their pastor. 

         One last item today on this vast topic—avoid anything that remotely looks like manipulation when it comes to leading your flock.  Honesty in communication with them will dispel any idea the devil tries to plant in their minds that you’re attempting to get them to do something you want to do and they haven’t bought into yet.  Honesty in communication will also help you build more trust between them and you as their pastor.  When they can believe what you say, they should follow your lead as their pastor.

         When a congregation believes the pastor is honest with them, they tend to be honest with the pastor.  That honesty on both parts will benefit all concerned in the long run.

    Sincerely,

    A Small Church Pastor

    (PS—More about honesty later.)

  • Letter #14–Waiting

    Dear Small Church Pastor

         In the letters “Timing” and “Seasons,” I mentioned the concept of waiting on God.  Allow me to expand on this concept. 

         Our natural self does not like to wait.  The culture in which we exist prides itself on speed, all things immediate and following the quickest path to any destination on our GPS maps.  Fast food restaurants abound with their drive-through windows, and we become anxious or, possibly, somewhat annoyed if we don’t have a response to the text we sent forty seconds ago.  Essentially, we are addicted to not waiting.

         However, our propensity to want things now, right now, is our undoing when it comes to the things of God.  God’s timing and the seasons he brings into our lives do not go according to our addiction.  God is not bound by time, space or anything else.  We don’t have clocks and calendars for His sake.  When God set the sun into motion and this planet revolving around it and spinning on its axis to create day and night and the seasons, I believe He did that for our sakes, not His.  And no matter how much we would like to do it, we cannot speed up God’s created flow of time that influences our lives.

         The idea that God is taking too much time to work out the answers to our prayers originates in our addiction.  The urge to take control of a situation to see if we can influence how fast a resolution to a problem is discovered originates in our addiction. 

         Try as we will because of our addiction to quickness, we cannot alter for good any of God’s intended purposes that are being worked out in His timetable.  I don’t mean to insult you, but neither of us is smart enough to take command of a situation and work it out faster and better than God can.

         Here’s the rub in this matter of waiting—our natural self, our fleshly self, our sin-influenced self does not want to wait to get what it wants.  That even applies when we are dealing with spiritual matters.  The carnal self wants spiritual matters to yield to its desires, wants, whims and plans, and it wants them to yield NOW.  Waiting is the absolute antithesis of our sinful self.

         Because it is directly opposed to our “self” and its wants, waiting is an activity that must be enabled through something other than “self.”  Waiting will have to come from a source that is greater than us.  It must come from the only source of which I am aware that can overcome our addiction.  That source is the Holy Spirit of God.

         Those fruits of the Spirit described in Galatians 5 include longsuffering (patience) and temperance (self-control).  It is only through the help of the Holy Spirit that you will be able to develop the self-control (being tempered) necessary to possess patience (being willing to wait) when it comes to your ministry.  These two qualities are a couple of the evidences that the Holy Spirit is in control of your life.

         If you are facing problems, needs, or anything else that causes you to seek God sincerely in your prayers, you will need to wait for God to answer your prayers.  The best way to be able to wait for the answers is to seek God’s help in developing your patience and your self-control.  Ask God to help you develop and demonstrate the fruits of longsuffering and temperance.  Ask Him to fill you so full of His Spirit that these fruits become part of your daily life.  Ask God to help you wait on His answers.

         While waiting, resist the temptation to take back control of any situation you have given to God.  While waiting, tell yourself regularly who the boss is and what He has called you to do.  While waiting, quote aloud what you might call “waiting scriptures” like Genesis 8:1 & 12, Genesis 49:18, Psalm 5:3, Psalm 25:5, Psalm 27:14, Psalm 40:1 and the famous verse Isaiah 40:31.  While waiting, write down every time God has answered a prayer at just the right time.  While waiting, tell someone about how God has fulfilled His promises to you.  While waiting, occupy yourself in ministry to others.   

         Above all, set your mind and will on waiting through the help of the Holy Spirit.  You’ll have to choose to let Him, but God will help you wait.

    Sincerely,

    A Small Church Pastor

  • Letter #7–K.I.S.S. Revisited

    Dear Small Church Pastor,

         In the first installment for K.I.S.S., I suggested you include the members of your congregation as ministry partners in order to simplify your life.  I pray you are encouraging your membership as they develop the gifts and talents resident in your congregation in order to accomplish that aspect of keeping ministry simple.

         Allow me to make a second recommendation toward achieving a more simple life for yourself and your congregation.  When preparing sermons or Bible lessons, focus on Jesus.  Focus on who Jesus is, what he has accomplished, what he taught his original disciples, and what he promised to do for, in and through them.  Focus on the gospel message and how to live out the teachings of Christ.  You will find that centering your message on the good news that there is forgiveness through faith in Jesus will simplify your ministry.

         Satan will try to get you sidetracked from this central message.  Remember he is the source of confusion, division and strife.  Satan will try to get you involved in arguments over controversial doctrinal points.  He will attempt to bring factional “us versus them” thinking into your congregation, and, if he can, he will use you to create unintended factions within your attenders through what seems to be innocent questions.

         Always remember Satan is a deceiver, a manipulator and a thief, and he wants nothing more than to steal, kill and destroy the works you and your congregation are doing for the kingdom of God.  In order to achieve his insidious purposes, he works through people to bring up “What do you think about…” kinds of questions.  He uses, “I heard…,” “I’m confused about…,” or “My friend/uncle/brother/neighbor/etc. says….”

         It’s during these seemingly innocent times that your spiritual enemy is working to complicate your life and ministry by getting you to “major on the minors” in life.  To combat these deceptions, I encourage you to always use scriptures in answering any question that might be a controversial subject.  My normal response to any doctrinal issue that arises is, “Let’s see what the Bible says about this.”  Always remember that the Bible holds the truth about any situation that arises in life.  What I think about a situation does not matter when it comes to what the Bible actually says.  Taken in its proper context, scripture always has the correct answer to any question, even the ones the devil tries to use to complicate ministry.

         When those controversial subjects arise, and they will arise eventually, attempt to steer the conversation back to the simplicity of the gospel.  If that fails, allow the Holy Spirit the opportunity to speak through scriptures to those who are posing the questions.  Remember Paul’s advice to his protégé Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:20 to “…avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.” KJV (“Avoid godless, foolish discussions with those who oppose you with their so-called knowledge.” NLT)

         Allow me to give an example of this concept for maintaining simplicity in ministry.  A missionary we know operates in a country where the population is over 99% non-Christian.  He never compares Christianity to that national faith, nor does he debate the ideology of the other faith’s founder to that of Jesus.  He only talks about Jesus and his teachings.  His ministry is very successful, reaching over 9 million people monthly through various media avenues.  That success is influenced by the fact that he keeps his ministry focused on Jesus only.

         Focus on the simplicity of the good news about Jesus as much as is possible in every facet of your ministry.  If some divisive topic rears its head, go to scripture for guidance and rely on the Holy Spirit to deal with those topics as only he can by moving in the hearts and minds of those involved.  Remember:  KISS.

    Sincerely,

    A Small Church Pastor

  • Letter #6–You Failed at Something

    Dear Small Church Pastor,

    Congratulations, you failed at something.  Odd statement, isn’t it?  It has been my experience that failure when we attempt to do something in ministry reveals some very important information to us and about us.  Let’s look at some of that information for just a bit and see what we can learn and how we can be challenged by it.

    First, you were willing to try to achieve something, regardless of what that something was.  That means you decided to venture out of your comfort zone and attempt to accomplish something out of your usual, normal routine.  You were willing to take a chance.  You were willing to risk failing, with the hope of success.  It takes courage to do that.  Congratulations on being courageous as you minister in, for and through your congregation.

    Second, you put yourself in a position to learn what will work and what won’t work in a given situation.  It is said that if we never learn anything new, then we have stopped growing and have begun the process of stagnation, which is followed by death.  I once read that Thomas Edison tried over 10,000 items before he discovered how to make an electric light filament.  When asked about all those failures, he simply replied that he now knew 10,000 things that would not work.  Congratulations on becoming informed on what not to do.

    Next, you put yourself in the position of needing to examine why what you tried to do did not work.  Self-examination is a challenging process.  We have to determine if we had the right plan or proper resources or sufficient wise guidance or dedication to see the project through to the end or any other number of variables that might have played into our failing to achieve our goal.  We have to determine if we heard from God or was this activity something we just wanted to do. Self-examination requires honesty, humility and the willingness to correct mistakes.  Congratulations on looking in the mirror and accepting the reality it reflects.

    Finally, you moved out of the 90% who watch life happen and became part of the 10% who make things happen.  You took action, instead of sitting around and complaining about some situation.  You took action, instead of resting on your past successes.  You took action, instead of waiting for “someone” to resolve a problem.  You took action, instead of letting fear of people, fear of rejection or fear of failure keep you glued to your chair.  Congratulations on taking action.

    Failure is not a destination, unless you stay down and stop trying.  Failure in ministry is not permanent, unless you decide to make it permanent.  Failure is a springboard to new wisdom, new planning, new goal-setting, and new determined action.  Failure is the preparation for success as you continue to minister in, for and through your congregation.

    Congratulations, you failed at something.

    Sincerely,

    A Small Church Pastor

  • Letter #5–Relationships

    Dear Small Church Pastor,

                Build supportive relationships with other small church pastors.  You’ve already read my suggestions to involve other people in your ministry.  You need the help of your congregation as you minister to them and with them.  You simply cannot do everything alone.

                There is another source of help available for you, if you will make contact with that group and build meaningful relationships with the people in it.  That group is made up of all those other small church pastors in your area.  Those folks can help you, and you can help them.

                When you begin to reach out to other pastors, avoid the temptation to center your conversations on the bad stuff you encounter.  Satan would like nothing more than for you to tear each other down by constantly dragging up past or present hurts and disappointments.  Do not avoid problems, just don’t only rehearse and nurse them.  Use your time together to talk about how to reverse them.

                Ask questions to gain knowledge and insights the other pastors have.  Talk about successes and future plans together.  Listen to what’s in their hearts and share what’s in yours.  You can help each other.  You can encourage each other, pray for each other and remind each other that each one of you is not working in the kingdom of God alone.  You are on a great and powerful team, and good team members work together to win the game.  You are in the most important “game” of all time—the contest between the kingdom of light/good and the kingdom of darkness/evil.

                Getting together with other pastors is an action you are going to have to intentionally make.  You must intentionally choose to associate with other pastors for mutual support.  If your fellowship/denomination has regular opportunities to gather for support, take advantage of them.  (If not, create some.)  Go to the trainings, conferences, meetings and luncheons every chance you get.  I understand you can’t attend every meeting available, but you can stop making excuses for not attending and go to some of them. 

                One last thought before I close—I used to be like Moses and thought I had to deal with everything by myself, because I was the pastor.  A fellow minister stepped up as my “Jethro” and helped me to realize that not seeking help, advice and encouragement from others was a bad decision on my part.  I’m glad I listened to him.  I chose to set aside my pride and self-sufficient attitude and get help with what I was facing.  I sometimes forget his advice, but when I follow it, I am a better pastor.

                There is help out there for small church pastors.  Part of that help lies in other small church pastors.  Build supportive relationships with other small church pastors.

    Sincerely,

    A Small Church Pastor

  • Letter #4 (K.I.S.S.)

    Dear Small Church Pastor,

                K.I.S.S. (Not the rock band.) Keep.  It.  Simple.  Stupid.  It’s been said so much that it has become a cliché.  But it’s still a great rule of thumb for ministry.  The gospel is the simple and uncomplicated news that anyone can be restored to a right relationship with God through faith in Jesus because Jesus is the Messiah.  The enemy of your ministry will do anything he can to prevent you from staying on track with that simple, uncomplicated message.

                As pastors of a small part of God’s flock, we feel responsible for any and all activities, programs, outreaches, hospital visits, encouraging phonecalls, discipleship training, prayer meetings, youth outings, special songs on Sundays, or any other “good works” that occur in, for or through our congregations.  As the shepherd of that local flock, you definitely are the leader of the flock and should be aware of what’s going on in, for and through the flock.  But you have not been called to do all the good works yourself.

                Each sheep in your flock has been given gifts, talents and strengths by the Holy Spirit.  Part of your job is to help the sheep discover the attributes God has placed in their lives and to use them to fulfill the work of the whole body in the local church.  The body won’t achieve its calling from God if the only part working is the heart.  You do not have to do everything by yourself.

                Satan tries to get you to become so busy directing all the activities of the congregation that you lose focus of what your job as pastor really is.  He tries to complicate your life with so many meetings, reports, trips, and responsibilities that you forget to focus on the good news you are to keep before them as they mature as disciples.

                The truth of the matter is that you are to help your people become mature disciples so they can take their place in ministry within the local church body beside you as the whole congregation moves forward for the kingdom of God.  The truth of the matter is that you cannot do it all by yourself, and I, personally, believe you will overload and undermine your ministry if you try to do everything alone.  Sometimes we small church pastors become so distracted in our ministry that we fail to realize this.

                We become overwhelmed by ministry because, without recognizing what is happening, we have allowed the devil to complicate what we do for God’s kingdom.  I’ll say it again—you do not have to do everything by yourself.  One effective way to uncomplicate your ministry is by including your congregation in ministry.  And teach them to keep their own ministry uncomplicated, too.

                The gospel is simple.  Ministry does not have to be so complicated that we lose sight of that simplicity. 

    K.I.S.S.  (More to come about this topic later.)

    Sincerely,

    A Small Church Pastor