Thursday, May 28, 2015

Maturing in Ministry: Two Articles


3 Ways to Identify Your Ministry Convictions

Most church leaders will claim they have a conviction to develop leaders and a conviction for biblical community—to help people grow together in community. But it is one thing to say you have certain convictions and quite another to display those convictions in your everyday leadership. If something is a conviction in ministry, you cannot imagine ministry without it.

So how can you tell what your convictions really are? Here are three ways.... Keep reading

12 Reasons Not To Blame Others For Our Ministry Failures

I don’t blame anyone but myself for my failures in ministry.

Why are people so surprised by that?

In last month’s podcast with Carey Nieuwhof (click here to listen), I described our church’s history, including a short period where we had sudden growth, followed by even faster and deeper collapse.

Carey asked me if I had a handle on why the collapse happened, so I told him two of the mistakes I made that contributed to it. He was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t blame anyone (like the big church down the street) or anything (like changing demographics) for the problems, but took the responsibility upon myself.

To which I responded, “If you don’t own it, you can’t change it.” The interview went on and I thought no more about it.

But that little exchange and my short answer to it have received far more feedback (all positive, thankfully) than any other aspect of the interview.

Why?

I think it’s because we live in a blame culture. And that culture has invaded the church. In fact I know it has because I regularly hear pastors of Small Churches blame everyone from their denominations to other churches, to the corruption of the culture for their church’s lack of growth and/or health.

We must stop doing this. Here are 12 reasons. I’m sure there are more, so if you know of any, feel free to add them in the comment section. Keep reading

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