Category Archives: Healthy Church

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How to Set Goals as a Church Staff

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It’s Tuesday, and the whirlwind of this past Sunday is still blowing through your church office. There are people to call, meetings to attend, to schedule, to prepare for, counseling to done, sermons and lessons to write.

Why?

Sunday is coming, and people have needs. They are struggling in their marriage, with finances, their kids, career direction.

For most leaders in churches, merely surviving the week is a goal.

How to get out of the whirlwind of church ministry.

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That isn’t what we signed up to do.

There has to be a way to get your head out of the clouds, above the whirlwind and see what is happening and work on the right things. 

But how?

How to see ahead for your church.

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For our church staff, we’ve tried a variety of ways to make this happen.

We’ve created annual plans but found that it was hard to forecast a year out. We still look at a year out, as you’ll see in a minute, but we do that year out by making 90-day goals.

How to make 90-day goals for your church staff.

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First, we sit down as a team and list out every area in our church. Someone around the table should have responsibility for a category you discuss. This list needs to include every area. Some examples: kids ministry, students, first impressions, worship service, social media, preaching, staff, etc.

Then, taking one at a time everyone shares what is right, wrong, missing and confusing in each area. (hat tip to a mentor of mine Brian Jones for coming up with these four categories). The right part is essential because this is a chance to brag on the person who leads it and the team involved with this, to celebrate what God is doing. If it is hard to think of what is right in an area, maybe ask, what doesn’t need to be fixed right now instead.

Once you have your list of what is missing, wrong or confused (and there will be some overlap between those lists), the person who leads that area puts dates next to them. Are these issues that need to be worked on or fixed in the next 90 days, six months or 12+ months from now?

Then, I meet with each person individually to go over them. This step is vital for a couple of reasons: the lead pastor can often see things that others can’t regarding importance. The person leading an area can see things that are important that the lead pastor can’t.

The ones that are 90-day goals, we create OKR’s for each one. So, let’s say (a common one), we need to increase our kid’s ministry volunteer team by 20 people over the next 90 days (that’s the objective). What will 3-5 key results (the KR’s) need to happen so that we increase the team by 20 people? Those KR’s need to be measurable.

Then, once those plans are in place, you share them on your church staff. You give weekly or monthly updates, which also creates accountability. Why share them in a staff meeting? Every lead pastor knows that people are more likely to fail privately to you, than publicly to a group.

How to create accountability for your church staff.

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Doing this every 90 days helps to clarify what needs to be accomplished in the next 90 days, what goals we are all shooting for, but also keeps in front of us, what is coming up (remember we still have the ones with 12 months next to them).

Some of you are thinking, how long does this take?

When you first start, this will be a half a day laying out what is right, wrong, missing and confused.

Those 4 hours are not only incredibly helpful but energizing. Our team laughs, cries and celebrates what God is doing. We pray together for each area and what God has in store.

Those 4 hours are worth the investment.

It especially helps your staff members who are not natural dreamers or vision casters or who don’t naturally set goals.

It also helps fight against one of the frustrations many pastors experience, and that is disunity or a loss of momentum. Many times, disunity and a loss of momentum are not intentional; it’s just that everyone works on what they think is most important.

One of the most important jobs of a lead pastor is to say what is most important right now.

One of the most important jobs of a lead pastor is to say what is most important right now.

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Healthy Church Systems

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Many leaders and couples get into church planting or leading in a church because we care about people and want to see their lives changed; marriages healed, past hurts redeemed, addictions broken. This is why we labor, pray, vision cast, have meetings, preach sermons and sacrifice like we do.

But how does that happen?

The work of the Holy Spirit is one, but the other part of that is through relationships and systems.

God is a God of systems and relationships.

We see in Genesis 1 both of these.

God creates man and woman in His image, and we see the relational aspect of God in the Trinity.

We also see that he organized the universe with systems. Time is measured through a system. Think of your body, it is a series of systems: respiratory, digestive, nervous, just to name a few. And Paul when he talked about the church, talked about it as a body, a system.

For many church plants though, they don’t build systems.

At least not intentionally.

Many times, when I talk to church leaders about assimilation. They’ll say things like, well I know who the guests are, I meet with them for coffee and help them get plugged in. This is a system (not a good one), but a system. It will break down the moment you go on vacation or when you start to average 5, 10 and 20+ guests a week.

In the 1950’s, the Japanese auto industry was transformed by one man, an American named Edward Deming. Deming went to Japan and after researching their industry for a decade told them, “Your system is designed to give you exactly what it is giving you.”

Your system is designed to give you exactly what it is giving you. -Edward Deming

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If you don’t like the results you are getting, it’s time to revisit your system.

Nelson Searcy, was a mentor of mine that introduced me to church systems (I use many of his titles below) when we planted our church, said, “A system is an ongoing process that Saves You Stress, Time, Energy, and Money.”

A system is an ongoing process that Saves You Stress, Time, Energy, and Money. -Nelson Searcy

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Besides helping your church steward time, money and energy better; systems also bring clarity to your church,

This is important because, most of the time in church, we decide if things are going well based off how we feel. Think about how you talk about a service; you ask people how they felt? Or that’s how people answer if you ask what they think. I felt ___ from your sermon or that song. But that isn’t always accurate. How many people showed up for VBS or that event? Many times people will say, “It felt full.” Feeling full and being full are two different things, just like feeling like people are growing in their relationship with Jesus in your groups and growing are two different things.

Lastly, systems are how you serve your people and help them grow into the people God created them to be.

Sam Chand in his book on systems Bigger Faster Leadership said, “The size and speed of an organization are controlled by its systems and structures.”

The size and speed of an organization are controlled by its systems and structures. -Sam Chand

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System 1: The Strategic System

The Strategic System sits above the other seven systems and serves as the foundation of all the other ones.

Let’s be honest; people rarely leave your church because of vision or theology. Sometimes they do, but what I’ve found is people the #1 reason people leave your church is that they disagree with your strategy. This is how you preach, the kind of worship you have, how you do discipleship and community, kids ministry, etc. This has to be clear.

Before you get depressed, this is also the #1 reason people love your church and come back (although they can’t articulate that).

For our church, we are a simple church that does Sunday morning and groups. Sunday is our front door; we target 20 – 40-year-old men, all to help people take their next step with God. Growth and community happen in the context of relationships in groups (“Circles are better than rows.”). That’s our strategy. Notice something in that: It defines what needs we are trying to meet, who our audience is and what our definition of success is.

Nine times out of 10, people leave our church because you don’t like this strategy and that’s okay.

System 2: The Worship Planning System

Think about the service or gathering. Sunday is a stressful day, especially if you are a portable church like we are. Who is your target on a Sunday morning? The answer to this question determines the elements you use, the language you use. It determines what you preach on, what songs you sing and prayers your pray.

To evaluate your worship planning system, after determining what lens you are looking at Sunday morning though, you can ask questions like What was missing? What was confusing? How can we do things better?

System 3: The Evangelism System

This system asks, “How do we attract people to our church? How do people find us?” Ultimately God sends people to churches, but why do some reach more than others?

How many first time guests have you seen in the last year? How many should you have? If you average 100 adults on a Sunday, your goal according to consultants is to average 100 first time guests a year.

How does this happen?

This can be through social media, Facebook ads, google adwords, direct mail, invite cards, servant evangelism, creating big days around Easter, mothers day (which is our second biggest day).

This comes through training your people in evangelism, you sharing your faith with people.

System 4: The Assimilation System

This system is your plan for taking people from their first visit to being fully-developing members of your church.

How does that happen?

By having a plan for how someone would do that. Often, our system for this is a hope and a prayer.

Here are some questions to ask your team about this:

  • What questions does a guest have when they show up?
  • What does a guest feel when they walk into our church?
  • When was the last time you filled out your connection card? There are so many useless things on a connection card.
  • What is your next step from a Sunday morning? Is it obvious? Clear? Is it too big of a step? If small groups are the only step from a Sunday morning for a guest, that is too big.
  • What words do people use to describe their first impression? You need to get info from guests to know how you’re doing because every church describes themselves as friendly.
  • How do guests who don’t know Jesus feel in your service? Can they connect? Know what’s going on?

System 5: The Volunteer System

This system determines how you mobilize people for a significant ministry at your church.

We used to see groups as the step before this, but we’ve found it easier and less intimidating for our target, remember system 1, to get onto a team before getting into a group.

Here are some questions:

  • Who in your church serves exactly how you wish everyone did? How do you duplicate that person? What experiences did they have that got them that way?
  • What are you doing to make people want to serve?
  • How do people find out about serving opportunities in your church? Is it stage announcements, fairs or one-on-one recruiting. You should utilize everyone, but the reality is, do you know the #1 way people start serving? Someone asks them.
  • What does the first serve look like for someone?

System 6: The Small Groups System

You should know how many adults are in your small group system and how many adults you hope to have. If you don’t have a goal, you don’t know how you’re doing.

As you think through this system, you need to ask if the goal is for this to be the primary vehicle for discipleship in your church. If it is, are there things that are barriers to this?

Your strategy will have an enormous impact on what your groups look like.

System 7: The Stewardship System

I remember an older mentor asking me one time, “Josh, how much ministry can you do with $100?” I didn’t understand the question, so I shrugged. He said, “$100 worth.”

We don’t like to talk about money in church, but the reality is, it’s needed for your church to survive. Giving is a spiritual gift, and this is crucial, in our culture, stewardship is a major battleground.

When it comes to stewardship, teaching and modeling is the most important combination.

Here are a couple of ideas to raise the value of stewardship in your church and onboard new givers:

  • At least a series each year on stewardship. This topic is so broad and not just financial.
  • Do 2 90 day giving challenges each year.
  • Do 3 – 4 special offerings each year.
  • Tell stories in your monthly financial update on how the generosity of your church is moving the gospel forward and changing lives.

System 8: The Leadership System

If you want to see a healthy, growing church, you will see a clear plan to develop leaders. Sam Chand said, “Many churches measure the number of people as a benchmark of success, but the true mark of success is the size and strength of the core of leaders who shoulder the burden and spread the joy of God throughout the ministry of the church.”

If you’re a leader at your church, your main responsibility is to attract, recruit, place, train and nurture as many volunteers and leaders as possible.

Here are some questions to consider:

  • How many leaders have you developed? When was the last time you invested in developing new leaders?
  • How are you developing the leaders and staff that you have?

Systems & Relationships

Do you see the connection between systems and relationships? If you have bad people/teams and bad systems, your church will close at some point; your business will run out of steam. If you have a good system but don’t have good people or teams, you will get results. If you have good people but a bad system, you will get a lot of frustration, which is where I think a lot of churches sit.

But, if you have good systems and good people & teams, a lot of flourishing happens in that space.

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How to Talk About Money in Your Church

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Many church leaders struggle with talking about money in their church or loathe the offering time. However, this fear can be alleviated by making a shift in their perspective about money. The topic of money is not about money per se. The Kingdom of God and helping people to live as disciples of Christ is the true aim of money. In the words of Peter Greer, “Money is a vehicle, not the ultimate objective.”

The reality for pastors is that money is important. It is needed when it comes to ministry and money is one of the biggest struggles and stresses of the people who sit in your church.

Here are 5 things to keep in mind for the next time you preach on money:

5 things to keep in mind when you preach on money.

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1. People genuinely are interested in what the Bible has to say on money. People come to your church to hear what the Bible has to say. They drove there, probably looked at your website, they drove past a sign that said church, so they are expecting for you to open the Bible and read it. I think people want to know what God thinks about a whole host of things, money included.

Why?

Because very few people have strong financial knowledge. There are so many takes on it, ideas on what you should do, how to get out of debt, where you should invest that it becomes overwhelming and then people stick their head in the sand. Telling them what the Bible has to say is incredibly helpful and refreshing to them because it says more than “you should give to the church.”

People genuinely are interested in what the Bible has to say on money.

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As well, most couples are fighting over money. Most people are laying in bed at night stressing over money. Talking about it hits them where they live and answers some of their most burning questions.

To read the other 4, click here.

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The #1 Reason People Leave Your Church (And Love Your Church)

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People leave churches for all kinds of reasons.

They might move, their kids get older, their schedules change, the church moves to locations.

They also leave for theological reasons. Maybe a new pastor has a different bent on an important theological point. They may have changed the version of the Bible they preach from (not kidding on that one).

The preaching may have changed and it no longer feels as deep as it used to or now it’s too deep and isn’t focused on application like it used to be.

Some of the reasons are good and normal, some make pastors scratch their heads and wonder what happened.

What I’ve learned (and I don’t have a study on this), but I think the number one reason people leave your church is…

Your strategy.

Another way to put it: how you do church. 

The #1 reason people leave your church.

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Think about it.

Almost every church holds up Acts 2 as the model they are going after.

Almost every church and Christian would agree that we are to live out the great commission (making disciples) and the great commandment (loving God and others).

But how?

That’s strategy. That’s how you do church (for lack of a better word).

Your strategy is how you as a church uniquely live these things out.

Do you have small groups, classes, missional communities, men’s ministry, women’s ministry, a combination of these? That’s strategy, but they all get at how you disciple and connect people to each other.

What about kids and students? When do they meet? Do they serve? Attend the service? Are they off on their own? What role do they play in community groups?

All strategy.

How about preaching and music? Do you go line by line through a book of the Bible, jump around, preach topically? What kind of music or liturgy do you use? How often do you do communion?

All strategy.

Make no mistake pastor or church leader, when someone walks up to you on a Sunday morning and says, “We’re leaving”, if you press long enough, it will be the strategy, almost every time.

Now, this isn’t bad at all.

In fact, when this happens this should tell you that your strategy and culture are real and clear.

As well, this is also why people come to your church.

The #1 reason people come to your church.

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They often don’t know it, but your strategy is not only why they stay, but also why they come.

Why?

Because your strategy comes through everywhere. Your strategy on being simple, programmatic, attractional, missional or all 4, attracts them and others.

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8 Ideas to Make Your Christmas Eve Service Memorable

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Christmas Eve is coming, and millions of people will walk into a church to experience something. But what will they get when they walk into your church or mine?

For many of those guests, this will be the only time they attend church this year. They are coming for all kinds of reasons. Some are searching, some were drug along by a family member, and some can’t tell you why they are there. But they are there.

What will they feel? Experience? Hear?

8 last minute tips for your Christmas Eve Service.

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With that in mind, here are a few last minute tips for your church and mine:

Be you. I think many churches over blow big days and try to go all out, and then when someone comes back they are disappointed. The old saying, “What you win them on is what you keep them on,” applies greatly to Christmas Eve.

Be you. Don’t try to be a different church. If you are a small church plant of 50 people, use that to your advantage and don’t try to be the megachurch of 3,000 that puts on a huge production. Be you.

Keep it simple. The church I lead strives to be a simple church in all we do, and that extends to special services and days. We want the people who walk through our doors to experience a great service, but we also want them to know this is what it is like every other week of the year.

Be friendly. Every church thinks they are friendly and most are not. So try to be friendly. As a pastor, walk around before and after the service. Be visible. Have greeters ready at the doors and walking around saying hi and engaging guests. If you find someone who doesn’t know where to go, show them, don’t point them. Walk them to where they need to go, don’t say, “Go through that door, take two lefts and then a right and walk backwards.”

Thank people for coming. I’m blown away that churches don’t say thanks to people who show up. They didn’t have to come to your church. They could’ve stayed home, but they didn’t. Say thanks. Give them a thank you gift or verbally thank them for spending the holiday with you.

Invite them back. Again, this is something many churches don’t do or don’t do well. Tell them, “We’d love to have you back.” And make it sound great. Tell them what you are inviting them back to.

Talk about Jesus. This might seem obvious because it is Christmas, but many pastors will not talk about Jesus and miss the whole point. Tell people about Jesus, regardless of what the topic of the service is. He is why you are there.

Give them a clear next step. At the end, give them a clear next step. It might be becoming a follower of Jesus, coming back next week for that brand new series you are starting, talking to someone, or something related to the sermon. It might be giving to your Christmas offering or some other response, but have one.

Keep it short. A Christmas service should be under an hour. Period. Keep it short and simple. Thank them, invite them back, talk about Jesus, give them a clear next step and say, “Merry Christmas, I’ll see you next week!”

How to make your Christmas Eve service great!

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The Halfway Point of the Year & the Top 10 Posts of July

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It’s the middle of summer.

In Tucson, where I live, the monsoon’s are in full swing and school is back in session.

The year is more than halfway over.

Hopefully you are closer to the goals you set at the start of the year.

If not, don’t fear.

The year isn’t over and it isn’t too late to hit restart and try again.

In case you missed them, here are the top 10 posts of the month of July. Hopefully, they are encouraging to you but also help you reach the goals you have as a leader and a person. Thanks for reading!

  1. 11 Ways to Know You’ve Settled for a Mediocre Marriage
  2. How to Share your Faith
  3. 7 Ideas to Help Your Kids Grow Spiritually
  4. 8 Questions to Ask Before You Preach a Sermon
  5. The One Thing Destroying Your Marriage That You Don’t Realize
  6. 18 Things Every Husband Should Know about His Wife
  7. How Many Times a Year Should a Pastor Preach
  8. 5 Books Every Pastor & Church Staff Should Read
  9. What Role a Pastor’s Wife Plays in the Church?
  10. When You Manipulate Your Husband, You Lose Him
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Church Growth and the Work of God

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We know that God is the one who makes a church grow, that it isn’t on us. This is both a comfort and a problem.

It is a comfort because we can rest. We don’t have to force things, we don’t have to make something happen. It is a problem because it can make us lazy. It can make us throw up our hands and say, “Well, I just need to preach the gospel and that’s it.” This is much like the Calvinist who doesn’t share his faith because “God will get who he’s going to get”, as one pastor told me.

Those are extremes, but they are important to point out.

Yes, Jesus grows his church. God grows the seeds that are planted. The Holy Spirit draws people, and often times a church grows and God moves with no explanation.

Other times a church grows, and while the Holy Spirit did the work, there were specific things that church did and did not do.

How much are you praying? How much is your elder and staff team praying? Not only for people in your church but for people not in your church? Are you asking God for specific people you are in relationships with? Are you praying that God will send 300, 500 people to your church this Easter? How burdened is the pastor for people who don’t know Jesus? Are there any sins in your church, leadership team or your life that you need to confess that are hindering the work of God?

How much are you, as a pastor, praying for your church?

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In your church and in your preaching and worship, are you exalting Jesus and making it simple for people to understand?

Many times I’ll have pastors ask me to listen to their sermons, and all I can think the whole time is that I have to have a seminary degree to understand what he is talking about. Being simple is not being shallow. Being simple is being helpful. The gospel is complex, deep and robust, but it is also so simple that my four year old can explain it to you. Our kids can draw a picture of the gospel, so our preaching should reflect that to a certain degree.

One of the ways we evaluate this in our church has to do with communion. When we move from the sermon to communion, is it an easy transition or does it feel like a hard right turn?

We’ll talk about systems in a minute, but do you have a clear vision, a clear strategy and a clear picture of what you are shooting for? For example, can you articulate in simple terms what a healthy, mature disciple looks like? Many times in our churches, we can’t. I’m sad to say, in our church we waited too long to articulate this, and it did a disservice to our people.

I think the work of God is deeply connected to our ability to clearly help our people grow. They are connected. If Jesus builds his church and the gates of hell will not prevail, what kind of people will withstand those gates?

Many times churches do not know what they are trying to build in people. They don’t know what a healthy, mature disciple looks like, so they aren’t sure what they are aiming at. For our church, we took too long to define this clearly, and I think that hurt us as a church.

Why?

Not only did it not serve our leaders and people well, we weren’t able to ask God for specific things to build into our people. It hinders the ability to focus a sermon calendar on those important discipleship aspects.

Let me leave you with an important question for churches, boards and staffs: What kind of disciples are you building? Is that what the New Testament calls us to? Do you have a clear path to accomplish that?

What kind of disciples is your church building?

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How to Build a Healthy Elder Team

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If there is one thing pastors know well, it is the pain that can stem from a poorly run elder team. Long meetings, arguments, back stabbing, meetings outside of the meeting, gossip, politicking. The list goes on and on.

On the other side, you hear about elder teams that care for each other, love and serve the church well, care for the pastors and their families and work together to fulfill what God has called the church to. This side of the equation is seen by many pastors as a unicorn. There are rumors, sightings and rumblings, but few actually realize it.

Those elder teams do exist, but they take specific steps to get there.

Here are seven things you must do as a pastor to build a healthy elder culture.

1. Make building a healthy elder team/culture a priority.

Too many lead pastors don’t make this a priority, and their elder team and the culture of that team shows how little effort this gets. In fact, in many churches the lead pastor has little to no say who is on the elder team, yet that team determines more about the health of the church than almost every other team.

Most pastors need to make building a healthy elder team a higher priority.

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If your by-laws have a nominating committee that doesn’t include the lead pastor, change your by-laws. If you have a nominating committee for your elder team, change your by-laws and take that out. (I’ll get to that in a minute.)

For too long at our church I saw leadership development as something that would just happen because I cared about leadership, but for leaders to be developed and a culture to be built, the lead pastor must carry the flag. Don’t mistake this, a culture will be built, whether you try or not, so make building a healthy culture a priority.

Pastor, this needs to be higher on your list of priorities.

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Why does this have to be a priority?

A healthy elder team brings security, health, care and development to the whole church. When the elder team knows what it is doing (and not doing), when they care for the staff and leaders well, when they are connecting to new people in the church, praying with and for the church, protecting the church, keeping them on track with the vision as well as financially and doctrinally, everyone wins.

The whole church feels the effects of a healthy or unhealthy elder team.

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When this doesn’t happen, you see carnage, hurt, pain and disillusionment all over the church.

2. Know what you are looking for in an elder.

If you ask most people in a church what an elder does, you will hear a few different answers. Those answers determine what you will get in an elder team.

They should be financially and business minded. In this case, the elders act more like a board of directors simply checking and balancing things.

You will hear someone pull out 1 Peter 5 and talk about shepherding and pastoring. This team is highly relational, caring and functions to make sure the church is warm, discipled and no one falls through the cracks.

Eventually someone will pull out 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 and talk about the qualifications of an elder.

Many pastors simply look for friends to put on their elder team because they know the carnage that can happen if they have enemies on that team.

You will find whatever you are looking for in an elder, so look wisely and know ahead of time what you are looking for.

The failure of most elder teams stems from no one knowing what an elder does.

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Does an elder preach? Counsel? Make budgets? Decisions? Do they shepherd everyone? Are they there to protect the pastor? Protect the church from the pastor? (I had an elder say that once.)

Again, your answer will determine what you get because you will go looking for that.

An elder is a man with character, someone who fits the qualifications of 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1 and 1 Peter 5.

An elder is a man who will protect the church, who will keep the church on mission and on track financially and doctrinally. A man who can see the whole field of the church.

An elder must be able to see the whole church.

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This last part, seeing the whole field of the church, is one of the most important things to ask when considering someone to be an elder. Someone can be a great community group leader but not a good elder. Someone can be a good businessman but not a good elder. Someone might be a great volunteer in an area, but that’s the lid of their leadership. None of those are bad things. In fact, they are good things. It just means someone is not an elder.

Too many times we put the wrong people on that bus. We think, “He’s a good shepherd, so he should be an elder.” But as a church grows, shepherding isn’t the only thing an elder does. They also oversee staff and budgets (that begin to have a lot of zeros after them). Other times we think, “He’s good with numbers, but he might be a jerk.” You need to know.

3. Always be on the lookout.

You as the lead pastor are always on the lookout for great leaders for every part of your church. The moment you stop, the moment you delegate this, is the moment your church begins to suffer.

You must also have your antennae up for the guns blazing awesome guy who comes into your church and can hurt your church.

4. Start training an elder three years before they become an elder.

If you take responsibility to always be on the lookout, you will begin training an elder well before they become an elder to see if they can handle it. Give them leadership and shepherding opportunities to see how they handle them. Give them decision making responsibilities to see how it goes.

I lead a leadership development group every week with up and coming leaders in our church. Every elder in our church goes through this group. I want to see them interact with a group, argue over a case study, discuss theology, see if they’ll be on time for a meeting, if they’ll come prepared, speak up in a discussion, watch how others interact with them and see if they have the respect of the group.

This is so important, has low risk for the church but brings so much fruit.

5. Have a long process to become an elder.

Why a long process? Honestly, protection.

Three years allow you to see a man’s character, his marriage (if married), his parenting (if he has kids), his generosity and desire to live on mission. You hear him pray. You watch him serve. Read #2 again. You can’t know if you someone meets the qualifications in a month.

Three years also bring perseverance. A wolf who will destroy your church and eat the sheep won’t wait around that long; they’ll move on.

This process also helps you know if someone has what it takes to be an elder.

Now, they aren’t in a process for three years (at least not officially), but you should make someone be at your church at least two years before they become an elder. What’s the rush?

Someone should be at your church for at least 2 years before becoming an elder.

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Depending on what you determine you are looking for in an elder, what they will do (and this changes some as a church grows), your process must help you see if someone can do that job. Don’t be swayed by charisma, a desire to not be alone, filling a spot or keeping a big giver. Those do not end well.

Have a longer process for an elder than you think you need.

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6. Know how unique an elder is and what they do.

Elders do what no one else in the church does.

Elders do what no one else in the church does.

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Yes, they serve, shepherd, pray, evangelize, give and disciple. That’s a role all Christians play.

But elders do something that is unique and builds into #7: they shepherd and care for the lead pastor and his family. This is unique.

Elders shepherd and care for the lead pastor and his family. This is unique.

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Many people in the church care about the lead pastor and his family. Many people are fans of his and put him on a pedestal. Elders, though, see the man for who he is. They know him and his struggles. They know his hurts, pressures, frustrations and joys.

This doesn’t mean the lead pastor is special, only that his role is unique. Not everyone can shepherd and care for him. Most people are used to getting something from a pastor, so it is hard to think differently about the lead pastor. But it is a crucial, yet often overlooked role of elders.

When an elder team is working well and fulfills this, it brings great joy to a pastor and his family. This joy is felt throughout the church. This does not happen over night and takes training.

7. Always (almost) keep paid pastors off the elder team.

I expect some disagreement on this, but hear me out. Some churches make any paid pastor an elder. The qualifications for an elder and pastor are the same. I get it.

Here’s the dilemma.

The lead pastor leads the staff, is the boss of the staff. On an elder team, he’s one of the team. Yes, first among equals, but elders do not have power apart from the team.

It is very difficult for a student pastor or worship pastor to sit in a meeting with the lead pastor on Tuesday morning and be reviewed, be given an assignment, and then on Tuesday night sit in a meeting where they are equals in that meeting.

Are there exceptions? Yes, but less than you think. It is difficult for everyone to change the hats they wear. It is also difficult to discuss the salary and benefits of people sitting in the room.

7 ways to build a strong and healthy elder team.

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The Weight & Joy of Being a Pastor: Communicating God’s Word

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One of the best parts of being a pastor (or a Christian for that matter) is seeing God use you. There is nothing like using the gifts God has given to you.

Recently I’ve been sharing some of the weights and joys of being a pastor to help people who attend church understand what it is like to be a pastor and how they can support their pastor and his family, but also to encourage pastors to keep going and not give up, as so many do.

Being a pastor is unique. It isn’t harder than another job, just different.

If you’ve missed any of the weights or joys I’ve covered, you can see them here: Preaching God’s word every week, You can’t change people, God’s call on your life, Seeing life change, People under you are counting on you, God using you and What God thinks of you.

Joy #4: Communicating God’s Word

While this is a weight that pastors carry, this is also a joy.

To have the ability to open God’s Word and share it with others is a huge joy. To have people come to hear what God is saying through his Word and you is unbelievable. It is humbling, holy and scary all at the same time. For me, because teaching is one of my top gifts, I love being able to preach every week.

I love to see the way God chooses to use the work that I have put in and the time I have labored on a talk. It is something that is difficult to describe. It goes back to God using us.

For me, a sermon starts about six to eight months before I preach it. I lay out where I feel God is taking our church over the coming year and begin meditating on those passages, researching, finding articles, books and commentaries to see what others have to say on those topics. By the time I get up to preach something, I have been sitting with that topic for quite some time. To see more of how I prep a sermon, you can read that process here.

I am always blown away at how, even though we plan in advance, our church seems to be in the place where what I’m preaching on is what they need. Countless times God has shown up where we are going through what I’m preaching on. I used to be surprised.

By far this is more work, but at the same time it is so worth it. To be a part of God’s work in the world in this way makes what I do worth it.

Too many pastors, while they enjoy preaching, get lazy at it. They don’t plan ahead, they are trying to figure out Saturday night what to say instead of getting a good night’s sleep. They simply download someone else’s ideas instead of doing the hard work of figuring out what God wants to say to the church they serve. Or, they get up and say too many things instead of doing the hard work of editing.

Preaching is a weight, and according to the New Testament something you will get judged twice for. So if you preach, it is a joy as well as a weight. If it is not a joy, do something else in your church, or ask God to make preaching a joy to you.

When you see this task as a joyful weight, you finally get it. In that moment, a lot changes as a communicator. You are humbled by the opportunity, how God works but also that God will move through your prayers, confession and study. Those are never wasted in this weighty joy.