A hundred things I tell young pastors (61-80)

61. Resiliency. There is no shame in being fired by a church or run off by a group within the church. The shame comes when you let that discourage you from future ministry.  Read Second Corinthians 4:8-10 again and again until you “own” it. Then get up and get back in the game. Your team needs you.

62. If you are terminated–or “encouraged to leave” a church in a way that leaves you angry and bitter–read Luke 6:27-35 repeatedly until you make it your own. Then, to rid yourself of the anger and bear a faithful witness to your detractors, do the actions the Lord commands here: do good, bless, pray, and give to them.

63. Encourage pastors who have been terminated. (A pastor recently ousted from his church asked me, “Why don’t other pastors want to help me?” I said, “Tom, when you were pastoring, how many unemployed preachers did you help?” He said, “I didn’t know it was the problem it is.” I said, “They don’t either.”)

64. Problems. Teach your lay leadership (preferably in small group settings) how to deal with problems that arise in church, how to confront a troublemaking member, and what to do about a pastor who has gone rogue. (When nothing of that sort is happening in your church is the perfect time to teach this.)

65. Make yours an encouraging church.  Train your people to write notes of congratulations and appreciation to people in the news who do good things.

66. Give away Bibles.  Put a large box in the foyer and ask your people to bring unused Bibles from home which you can give to those who do not own one.  Then, with the aid of some select volunteers, go through and inspect each Bible. Cull those with no backs and fronts, those that have been mutilated, and those published by cults.  Insert material on the Christian life and your church in the pages, then announce to the community: “This Saturday, free Bibles in front of our church from 2 to 4 pm.” See what happens.

67.Publicity.  In anticipation of a musical program, send some of your singers to a public forum where shoppers congregate to do a short impromptu concert.  You’ve seen the “mobs” on Youtube.  Do this spontaneously in a store, a mall, or on a sidewalk.  If the song is not long, too loud, or too disruptive, you do not need to ask for permission. Afterwards, have the singers fan out and talk to people. See what the Lord does.

68. Vision.  Remember that church members who have a burden for a particular segment of society (those in jail, the old folks, the needy, unwed mothers, etc) must not give you their burden and ask you to act on it. The Holy Spirit grants burdens as a gift to the faithful.  When we make ourselves available to Him and take that burden seriously, In His own time, He leads us into a ministry to meet that need. The order looks something like this: A burden comes, followed by a vision, followed by a call, which is followed by a ministry (if you accept the call), which is followed by a several things including fruit, imitation, opposition, and duplication.

69. Constantly remind the staff and a few key leaders to be on the alert for disruptions to the Sunday services. Whether an intruder with a gun or an ill person off his medication, leadership should receive periodic training in how to deal with such. (If you train them once and never mention it again, they will forget it. Keep it before them.)

70. Money. Never sign checks for the church. Never. And for that matter, do not handle money at all. When someone approaches you following a service to say, “Here’s my offering. I missed the plate,” ask them to hold on a second, then you call some leader to take charge of their offering.

71. Before you arrive at a new church is a good time to ask the leadership to bring in an auditing firm to review the church’s financial practices and make recommendations.  By doing this before you arrive, people who have held key positions for decades (treasurer, bookkeeper, finance chair) will be less likely to take it as a personal insult and become defensive. (If the church has an annual audit, a review is unnecessary. If the church has never had an audit, the initial cost would probably be prohibitive. A review is cheaper, and may accomplish your purposes.)

72. Staff. Try to find the balance between being the boss of the staff and each one’s friend.

73. Never fire someone abruptly. If their work is unsatisfactory, make sure they know in what ways it’s not acceptable, and how they can improve. If they simply cannot do the job you are asking of them, you are doing them a favor by releasing them, painful though it may be.

74. Before doing something abrupt like firing a staff member or church employee, make sure you get sufficient counsel from your mentors and that church leaders are on board with this.

75. Do not reject raises in your salary. While doing so may feel noble to you, it tends to keep the rest of  your staff at lower wages, since the church is not going to pay a staffer more than the pastor. Accept the raise, then if you choose, you can become more generous in your contributions.

76. In a Sunday service, try to avoid naming lists of people you wish to thank or appreciate without having the list in front of you. Otherwise, count on it, you will leave out someone.

77. As the pastor, you are the mood-setter for the congregation.  Whatever you radiate on Sundays and in private conversation with members, they will pick up, too.

78. Words. Never say anything to a church member about someone else you would not want plastered on a billboard at the edge of town. If you assume they are keeping this in confidence, you will live to regret it. (With your spouse and your mentors you may speak your mind; to all others, tread carefully.)

79. Daily pray the prayer of Psalm 141:3. “Set a guard upon my mouth, O Lord. Keep watch over the door of my lips.”  Another you might want to add is Psalm 19:14, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable unto Thee, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”

80. Keep good records for everything you do in ministry–whom you saw, your appointments, everything.  A few times in a long ministry, you will find yourself digging through it in search of a vital bit of information (“when did this happen?”) and be so glad you had the records.  (I once had a woman call to ask, “When did you marry us?” She gave me two possible dates when it might have occurred. I found her wedding on my calendars and informed her that not only were her two dates incorrect, she was on the wrong year!)

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