Category: Ministry

Christian Living, Church Life, Ministry

Link: Top 10 Things Pastors Would Like to Hear from Their People

Chris

In case you didn’t know it, pastors are insecure. They look and sound confident when they get up in front of everyone, but they often struggle with depression and the constant wondering if they are making a difference. When was the last time you complimented your pastor or let him know he was doing a good job?

Over at PastorMentor.com, Hal Seed posted an article today, “Top 10 Things Pastors Would Like to Hear from Their People.” Most of them are far-fetched. Some of them are honest hopes and dreams. (I hope you can tell the difference.)

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Book Reviews, Ministry

Book Review: “Every Leader’s Everest” by Jim C. Molloy

Chris

molloy_everyleaderseverestAs a leader, do you know what your greatest struggle is? Various answers may be running through your head. “Getting people to follow.” “Knowing how to make good decisions.” “Coming up with some kind of vision or direction for the people I lead.”

While all of these are genuine concerns, they are not your greatest struggle. It is not an external force, but an internal one; one that lies within you and threatens all that you hope to accomplish. Jim Molloy reveals the worst enemy of leadership in “Every Leader’s Everest.”

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Ministry

Why I Won’t Take A Christmas Eve Offering

Chris

Over the past couple of weeks I have started looking ahead to 2012 on the calendar. This involves printing a hard copy "master" calendar for the church and keeping track of services, meetings, fellowships and other church activities. While I’m jumping forward, I am also polishing up our December calendar of Christmas events.

This week I received a request from a well-meaning organization to promote giving hope this Christmas by donating three dollars to send a Bible to needy countries around the world. In the introductory letter for the promotion, one of the suggestions was to dedicate our church’s Christmas Eve offering to their cause.

I didn’t think about what was being said the first time I read the letter. But when I looked at it again today, I was shocked. My concern was not that I should give extra funds to this cause, but that churches make a regular practice of taking offerings on Christmas Eve.

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Book Reviews, Ministry

E-Book Review: “Hanging Up the Leisure Suit”

Chris

What did your church do for Easter this year? Was it the same sort of program, if not the same program that they did last year? Does your midweek adult Bible study service look the same as it did fifteen, twenty, or thirty years ago?

Don’t get me wrong, if something that your church does works and has great results year after year, it may only need the occasional tweak to keep it effective. But many of us are repeat offenders. We repeat, repeat, repeat, and we keep on doing repeating, with no end in sight, just like this run-on sentence, and with no results, because we are just plain stuck.

If you think you might be stuck or if you’re are confident that you are, there is hope for you. Tony Morgan just released the second installment in The Leisure Suit Series of free e-books: “Hanging Up the Leisure Suit.”

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Ministry

Why I Waited a Year for My First Vacation

Chris

This past Sunday I did something for the first time in over a year. I missed a Sunday at church. I’m not really sure when I last took Sunday off, even before we took our current pastoral position last August. But I do know that it was an awkward day for me.

You might think me a little unbalanced for not having a Sunday off in over a year. One member joked that the church must pay me so much that I feel too guilty to miss a week. That was not the reason, of course, but I was very intentional about it. While I did take a few days during the week a couple of times over that year, it was very important to me to be in the building every week.

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Christian Living, Ministry

Why I Decided to Use a Common Phrase from Christian Lingo

Chris

For ten years I have sent countless e-mails, left many voicemail messages and walked away from thousands of one-on-one conversations in the role of a pastor. I try to be mindful of every word that I speak.

I am always cautious of any phrase that seems like a gimmick or might be taken as insincere. If you have spent much time in Christian circles, and especially in ministry, you know that there are many phrases that have their day in the limelight. I prefer to have a point, a purpose in mind, and don’t like gimmicks. As a result, there is one phrase that I have avoided using . . . until recently.

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