Category Archives: Healthy Church

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How to Maximize Your Summer Vacation

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It’s the end of summer and you might be wondering why I’m writing a post about summer vacation.

How to maximize your summer vacation next year.

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The reason is simple.

If you want a great summer vacation, a great summer preaching break, you have to plan it. Too many leaders wait until May when they are running on fumes to start thinking about summer vacation and by then, it is really hard to plan a good one.

You have to think through:

  • What will recharge you personally? What will recharge your spouse? Your kids?
  • Who will do your job when you are gone?
  • What will be fun?
  • How will you pay for all that fun?

So, to help you, here are a few common questions I get about a summer break:

5 ways to maximize your summer vacation.

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Why take a summer break?

This has a ton of reasons, in no particular order. Preaching and leading are hard work. If you’re a pastor who preaches regularly, coming up with something to say every week is tiring. Preaching is tiring. As Charles Spurgeon put it, “It is spiritual warfare every week.” It is mentally, spiritually, relationally, physically and emotionally draining. It is healthy for a pastor to recharge physically, mentally and spiritually. It is good for a church to hear other voices than just their pastor. It is helpful for a pastor’s family for him to get out of the weekly grind of preaching. Doing the other work of a pastor is just different.

Why don’t pastors and leaders take a summer break?

I think many pastors and leaders are afraid to do it. They are afraid to not be at their church as if it all revolves around them or is dependent on them. I love hearing that on a night I am not there that not only does everything run smoothly, but also that our attendance is up, we have a ton of first-time guests, etc. Your church can run without you; God doesn’t need you.

As well, many leaders feel like they need to be running, selling all the time. Get your hustle on!

You can take a break and in fact, as the authors of The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal points out, regularly resting increases your performance, and work.

What do you do on a summer break?

Now we get to the goal of your summer break and vacation.

Do you want to learn? Grow in something? Rest and recharge? Do you want to work ahead?

My summer break encapsulates much of that. One of the other advantages for a pastor in taking a break from preaching is working ahead on sermons, using that time to work on your church instead of working in your church. Which is crucial for a leader.

One of the other things I seek to do is spend extended time in the Scripture. Because much of my job is thinking about and prepping the next sermon I am preaching it is easy to not spend time letting the word speak into my soul. During this time, I spend time just letting God speak to my life without thinking about how I can fit that into a sermon. I’ve always thought of a spiritual life like a bucket and if it gets too low, there isn’t anything to give out. And pastor’s give out every week from their spiritual lives as they preach and counsel. During this time, I get to fill my bucket up, which is a huge blessing for the rest of the year.

This is also an opportunity to serve your spouse. What would they find helpful and recharging on your break? How can they rest and rejuvenate?

My elders think this is nuts, how do I teach them this is a good thing?

If there is one thing many pastors need to grow in, it is the ability to lead up to their elders. It isn’t that your elders are against this or something else, they just lack an understanding of what it means to do your job.

Over the years, I’ve had elders who are supportive of this and ones that are not.

Most people have no idea how hard prepping a sermon and giving a sermon is. They have no idea what the warfare is like, what it does to your adrenal glands and your body overall. You might need to do some research and teach them this. Teach your church about the value of other communicators besides yourself.

Two books that have helped me in this area are Adrenaline and Stress and Adrenal Fatigue. 

If after all this, they still won’t budge. Just take all your vacation at the same time and be gone from your church for 2-4 weeks and don’t call it a preaching break just take your vacation.

I’ve been blessed that my elders see the value in this for me and our church. I shoot to preach 35 weekends a year at Revolution. Each staff member is given 7 Sundays a year where they can be gone from Revolution.

How do you prep for a break?

This is something often overlooked. It is a lot like prepping for a vacation. We’ve already talked about how to figure out what to do on your break, but you have to prepare mentally and physically for the crash that follows. A pastor’s body is so used to the adrenaline that comes from preaching that when you don’t do it, your body goes through withdraw because it craves the adrenaline it is used to having. You have to be aware of this and realize that in the first week of your break you will be tired, cranky, irritable as your body regulates. Being aware of this is huge and talking with your spouse about it.

You also have to figure out who will do what while you’re gone, who will answer email, texts messages and how you will handle social media. I do my best to shut off all of those while I’m on my vacation.

5 questions to maximize your summer vacation.

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3 Lessons in Church Planting

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I was asked by someone recently about 2-3 things I’ve learned about church planting since we launched our church. I think there’s a lot of lessons to be discovered. In fact, I feel like right now I’m being stretched as a leader and pastor in a way I haven’t been in a while and that’s a good thing.

3 church planting lessons.

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1. Decide what it will take to last. When you start a church, a marriage or a business, you start with the intention of finishing. Again and again, I’ve seen it not last for people.

For church planters, sometimes their churches didn’t last, so they found a different job. Some got caught in failing morally; pride took them down, their church fired them.

Lasting isn’t just a matter of morals or not sinning or getting caught with your pants down. It also means you need to build a church that will last, that has a strong foundation of leaders. It means making a solid team and knowing that who you put around you will determine how far you go.

It also means making a plan with your spouse about what it will take to serve joyfully side by side for decades. It involves determining how to keep your soul fresh and alive with the passion you had when you started as that will wane over the years.

From an energy perspective, this will go down and the way you ran the race as a 27-year-old will be different at 37 and 47 and 57. You must learn this early on and choose to be wise when it comes to food, exercise, and sleep.

Also realize, you will retire as a pastor. This point will help you prioritize relationships and know how best to spend your time.

2. Know that not everyone will finish with you. One of the most painful realities of life is the loss of relationships. It becomes even more pronounced in a church.

I have tried numerous times to explain to someone the pain a pastor feels when someone leaves their church, but there is not a comparison I’ve been able to make.

There is something deeply felt when you spend time with someone in a hospital, weeping at a funeral, walking with them through cancer, parenting or marriage difficulties and then have them meet with you (or not at all) and say, “we’re leaving because this church isn’t meeting our needs.”

This makes what I said in point 1 so important. This is when you will cling to the calling God placed on your life.

It also means that your spouse needs to understand the road ahead. One of the things that have been the hardest for Katie is facing the hurt when someone leaves our church, meets with me but says nothing to Katie.

You will feel discarded.

If you’ve read your New Testament, this shouldn’t surprise you, but it will still hurt.

You will also have elders and staff members you will have to fire or ask to step down. Sometimes that will be for obvious moral or theological sins, and sometimes it will be a judgment call. No matter how blatant or not apparent, you will lay awake at night replaying conversations. Your soul will ache when you tell someone they no longer have a job. You will know the pain of betrayal as people who loved that person leave, as that person goes down the road and starts a new church.

That is why friendships will be so crucial to your health, whether they are other pastors or people inside/outside of your church. They will bring normalcy to your life and a listening ear when you need it.

3. Hold your methods loosely. What you plant your church doing, how you do church, that will change. I know you don’t think it will, but it will. Candles and incense, cover songs, lights and haze, dialogical preaching, small groups, missional communities, long series, short series, all these things will work and excite you for a time.

Never say, “We’ll do this forever.” You probably won’t.

And that’s okay.

Notice, this doesn’t have anything to do with theology or the message you preach, how you do church. Hold that loosely. What works today and reaches people will not in 3 years and that’s okay. Cultures shift and so do people, so churches must adapt how they reach people.

There is a passion and maybe even a naivety when you start a church, and in many ways, that’s a good thing. You don’t know the road ahead, much like when you have your first child. There is so much hope, so many dreams, and passion at the beginning. It is natural the longer you are in church planting to lose this, to forget this, but stay fresh and close to Jesus so that you will finish the race He has given to you.

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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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