I am mining the archives of a number of websites for articles that may be helpful to the pastors and other leaders of smaller churches and encouraging to their members. This article appeared in the July/August 2006 issue of Outreach magazine.
What are you running these days?
It’s the question church leaders hear—and dread—usually at conferences or seminars, anywhere Type A personalities have gathered to talk about ministry and their churches. Unfortunately, in our American church culture, the measurement of how good you are as a person and as a pastor seems to rely on your answer to the question—that one telling number we define ourselves by.
I still remember a pastor who had brought me in to lead an an evangelistic meeting for the small church he led. While I was there, I spent several days as a guest in the pastor’s home. In the late afternoons, he and I would sit on the family’s front porch and invariably people strolling by would stop to talk, often expressing their appreciation to the pastor for his counsel or encouragement. One morning, we walked into a nearby diner for breakfast and this personable preacher stopped at every table (I’m not exaggerating!) to talk and laugh with someone he knew.
This man and his family were making a profound impact on the people in their small community. But when the days’ meetings were over and we sat on that same porch in the quiet of the evening, the preacher’s gregarious voice grew soft and subdued as he talked about the discouragement he felt in his ministry. Many of his seminary classmates had gone on to serve much larger congregations. By comparison, he felt as if he’d failed. I sensed a similar feeling of inferiority among some members of his congregation. Keep reading
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