Minister's Toolbox

I participate in a weekly meeting of pastors in our region called, Gatekeepers. Every week, we get together for a no agenda meeting incorporating sharing, prayer and mutual encouragement.

One of the pastors this past week spoke about a sermon he preached recently on the subject finishing well.  It is difficult to find pastors or leaders who make it to sixty and are still filled with passion and drive to do ministry.

If you take an honest look around you, it is difficult to find older ministers who are finishing well. During the podcast, I share the basics of how to stay passionate about ministry. I put them into a downloadable PDF file that you can access here.

I also promised my free eBook on how pastors should use social media.

Al Elsdon is referenced during the podcast. You can hear an amazing testimony of his WWII experiences here. 

 We also offer a free download here. 

Diet is Latin for the general assembly of Worms, a city in Germany. In 1521, Martin Luther, (a Catholic priest and professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg) was called to give account. His bold and thoroughly unexpected stand against corruption in the church offended the hierarchy at the highest levels.

Few of us grapple with issues that will impact the future of the world. Still, we grapple with issues that threaten the purity, direction, and effectiveness of our own churches.  

We can easily fall into the habit of trying to please people. To keep people happy, we compromise our standards a little at a time. During the podcast, I offer ideas on how to deal with disagreeable people.

On the show today, I mention a great link for you history buffs about what happened at the Diet of Worms. Listen here.

You have more material than most professional authors. You spend multiple hours per week writing sermons to bless your congregations. Each sermon is potentially a chapter for one or more books.

You can write, design and publish a book in a matter of days with the simple tools of today’s technology. During today's podcast I share the simple steps you can take to publish it at little or no cost.

Thousands of new authors give up after receiving a boatload of rejection letters. With Amazon, those days are gone.

You can write your book in Microsoft Word and download it to Amazon. In moments, you will have a formatted book ready to publish.

In addition to a paperback and Kindle, you can also create an audiobook for free as well. 

Since we are talking today about writing books, I would be remiss to not mention my first book entitled, When A Good Church Goes Bad. It contains both my testimony and help for anyone who has been hurt by their church experience. It is a great book for people in your church who have taken to the back row and refuse to get involved because of a negative church exp

On today's show, we spoke about many free resources you can use to publish your own book. Create Space is the first I mentioned, a division of Amazon.

For book covers, you should bookmark Canva to do free design work. To hire someone to do it for you, there is Fiverr and also 99 Designs.

For audiobooks, there is ACX. If you need to purchase a microphone, I recommend the ATR 2100 which can be plugged into your computer.

You can read the first three chapters of my new book here.

Change is at the heart of what we do as church leaders, but you remember I said this is a bit ironic. The irony is, that by and large, church leaders are typically people who don’t change at all!

What if you were an alien from another planet who visited your church. What would you see and experience? Would the report you give to your superiors reflect New Testament Christianity?

Principles must remain unchanged, but methods ARE changeable to intersect with the culture we want to reach. We can easily get stuck on doing things because they have always been done that way.

During the podcast, I look at some things to examine in your ministry that may need an update.

Getting stuck in traditions you prefer rather than traditions scripture teaches is the fastest way to get old as a minister and old as a church. 

Winston Churchill said, “To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often.”

On today's show, I spoke about my book, When A Good Church Goes Bad. You can learn more about it here. If you prefer Kindle, go here. Go to our free downloads page here. 

I am always amazed, particularly at national restaurant chains and how they operate. Millions are spent to get a franchise, build a building and open for business. Before you walk in the door, literally millions have been invested by seemingly astute businessmen.

What amazes me in many of these establishments is first: the employees. In many fast food places, you can see dirty floors. You can see into the kitchen and notice sweating workers with shirts unbuttoned handling food.  All that money and you will never return because someone did not think it was important to clean the floor or train the staff to present themselves properly.

During the podcast, I contrast restaurants with local churches. 

What happens when your guest uses the bathroom and finds a dirty floor and the most inexpensive toilet paper?

We spend sometimes hours crafting the best sermon, but if your guests or members either cannot hear you or the sound is distorted, what happens next?

I also share how you can order my new book When A Good Church Goes Bad by clicking here.

If I asked pastors what their most important ministry is, many would say family. A great answer, but wrong. Your most important ministry is to the Lord. 

Now before you roll your eyes and think, “O brother, that is obvious,” listen to the podcast and allow me to explain myself. This is crucial to your present and future ministry.

 David ministered to the Lord. That single dynamic caused scripture to identify him as a man after God’s own heart. Time and time again, we see him in battle, pulling away from the army and inquiring of God.

During the podcast, I mentioned that you could order my new book, When A Good Church Goes Bad on Kindle. Click here to order.

Have you noticed that reports of the miraculous are much more plentiful in third world countries than in the U.S. or Europe? 

For our part, we pretty much dismiss most of it as ignorance, superstition and unimportant.

A philosophy governs society and permeates our educational system. It affects how we view ourselves and the world. To a large extent this philosophy deeply hinders gospel efforts by both churches and leaders. The worse thing is, the vast majority of us are not even aware of this.

It occurred several hundred years ago and now thoroughly dominates the lives of millions of people. The Enlightenment proposed that science and logic give people more knowledge and understanding scripture.

I discuss how this philosophy has hindered the effectiveness of our members during the podcast.

I mentioned that you can listen to the first chapter of my book, When A Good Church Goes Bad, but now that it is published, you can read the first three chapters here.

Numerical growth is one gauge people use to determine the effectiveness of any ministry. It is a legitimate gauge, providing we are talking about actually reaching lost people.

Throughout the United States and other parts of the world, growth tends to be cosmetic. Only about 5% is due to new converts.

Without realizing it pastors can unwittingly become the ringmasters of a circus. Our time is spent trying to keep the crowd happy by the next trapeze or clown act, not realizing that much of the effort is fruitless. Pastors burn out and waste a lot of church resources trying to keep the excitement level up, but is that what Jesus honestly asked us to do with our ministries? Last time I checked, there was something there about making disciples, but I could be wrong.

There are dangers in striving to make our church the biggest, the best and the greatest. During the podcast, I share about how to keep things real.

We mentioned MileIQ on the show today. Here is the link if you would like to try the free app. 

You can now read the first three chapters of my book When A Good Church Goes Bad for free here. 

Most pastors do a lot of things in ministry. By the end of the week or year, we look back and wonder if all the preaching, counseling, budgeting, seminars and meetings were actually productive.

Ephesians 4:11-16 states that there are five specific leadership callings in the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. We talk about what this means in present-day terms during the podcast.

At the end of the day, the number one question we all must answer when we stand before Christ and give an account of our labors is: did we train the people God gave us to do the work of ministry?

If you want to see Christianity in action, sneak into a restaurant sometime and observe how Christians act. In general, Christians often are the most disagreeable and demanding patrons! Something is broken in how we train people for ministry.

I wrote a study guide designed for individuals or small groups. The guide will help people in your congregation discover and then function in their gifts under your supervision.

On today's show, I mentioned the soon to be released book, When A Good Church Goes Bad. Now that it is published in three separate formats (book, Kindle, and Audio book), I invite you to read the first three chapters for free here. 

How much of what we do or practice as a church is sending the opposite message of what we are trying to convey? Is our church saying, "All Are Welcome" outwardly, but in reality, saying, all are welcome if you become like us as soon as possible?

About 80% of people come to your church through personal invitation. Included in that statistic is checking you out on the web before they come.

During the podcast we attempt to look at your church through the eyes of guests.

Other than telling people to come again, have you thought through why people should? Is your church actively thinking about how to attract your guests to return again and again and again?

“You never have to advertise a fire. Everyone comes running when there's a fire. Likewise, if your church is on fire, you will not have to advertise it. The community will already know it.”

During the podcast, I offered two chapters of my (now published) book, When A Good Church Goes Bad. You can read THREE chapters for free here.