Pray with her for her out loud.

Read [and reflect on] the passage preached last Sunday.

Read [and reflect on] the passage being preached this Sunday.

Pray with her for others.

From Brian Croft at Practical Shepherding

I have always loved to read. In 6th grade there was a contest at school for reading and you got “book bucks” for every hundred pages you read. The bucks could then get traded in for prizes. I think I read something like 10,000 pages during the time of the contest. I can still vividly remember dropping all my book bucks on a new basketball in the cafeteria at Glenwood Elementary School in Enid, OK. I still love to read to this day and most mornings begin with reading both my Bible and, typically, a theology or church planting book.

I hope that Malachi and potentially PB and/or J also love to read and I’m excited to share with them some great books from my childhood. The sad truth of 2010, however, is that many boys don’t read and if they do it’s mostly “gross-out” books. Instead of reading, the Internet and video games consume their time. An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal today talks about this trend. There were some very interesting statements in the article, one of which I want to highlight. The author, Thomas Spence, writes

If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn’t go very far.

At face value, it’s a very true statement. I also think it’s deeper than just boys and reading. I think it’s also applicable to men and leading. Men are called to lead their homes and their families. The continual effort of the church to make herself “accessible” to men often lowers the playing field to motorcross jumps during worship and references to ultimate fighting. Instead, we should call men to more. We should call them to love their wives sacrificially, to teach and train their children patiently, and to worship God fully. We should have high expectations of our men because they are each modeled after the True Man, Jesus Christ, who lived a perfectly human, yet sinless, life. Call men to big things, like being “fishers of men”, and they will respond and in the process God is glorified and His kingdom is furthered.

From Kevin DeYoung – Part 1 and Part 2. I’ve highlighted some great thoughts

1. Take advantage of opportunities to be taught by others. Get the most out of books, lectures, and special speakers in seminary, because soon you’ll be be doing all the putting out with few people to put it in to you.
2. Beware of closing your heart to people.
3. Be a pastor for the whole church, not just part of it (don’t be just one group’s champion).
4. Establish your priorities at the church early and clearly. I suggest: preach, pray, and people.
5. Work hard to foster deep spiritual fellowship with your closest leaders (e.g., staff, elders, deacons).
6. Don’t try to do too much too soon. Expect change to happen very slowly. Whenever possible, work for desired change by positive reinforcement, rather than by criticism.
7. While you shouldn’t attempt too much change right away, if you are forced to make a hard change or take a tough stand, do it decisively.
8. Expect people to leave your church when you come.  Be kind when they do.  Follow up, ask why they’re leaving, pray for them, then move on. Don’t let a few folks on the way out determine the plans for the rest of the church.
9. Be personal instead of academic. A conversation is usually better than a paper.
10. Beware of technology: wasting time on power points, frittering hours away on Facebook, getting bogged down in emails, doing all your pastoral communication by email instead of phone calls or personal visits.
11. If you are good at administration, don’t do too much.  If you are bad, get someone to help you immediately.
12. Plan for prayer days.
13. Learn to think in 5 year, 1 year, 6 months, and 1 month increments.  When you start out at a church you’ll feel three months behind everyone else; you need to be six months ahead.
14. Guard your day off and don’t let your work creep into your evenings at home.  You’ll be miserable and ineffective if your life becomes a rhythm-less mush.
15. Spend more time getting to know your people and less time trying to figure out the culture of your city.
16. Remember: you are not the only special person in the church. Don’t get offended if you’re not invited to a wedding or they ask the other guy to do the baptism. It’s silly to feel threatened when congregants are closer to another staff member or lay leader than they are to you.
17. Don’t minister just to keep people happy. Don’t be the pastor who does all the counseling, all the teaching, and all the praying because “that’s what people expect” and you “don’t want to let them down.” You’ll burn yourself out, stifle the gifts of others, and keep your church smaller than it needs to be.
18. Don’t compare. There are dozens of factors that make a church successful. Many of them are out of your control–most notably, God’s sovereignty.
19. Christian maturity entails more than theological acumen. Don’t assume the dudes reading Bavinck will be the most fruitful, faithful, and effective leaders. Could be, but that’s far from certain.
20. God opposes the proud but gives grace to humble. Pray this into your soul before and after every sermon.
21. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.  Get in touch with seminary profs.  Try to get a top notch speaker in once in awhile.  Make contact with churches your respect. Build a network and learn from others.
22. Keep reading.  Please keep reading.  Boldly ask for a book allowance. The rule is not absolute, but I question a man’s call to ministry if he does not like to read.
23. Man is not justified by preaching.  Some sermons are a home run. Other times you’re lucky to bunt your way on.
24. Don’t preach your issues from seminary. I can almost guarantee no one in your church doubts the Pauline authorship of Ephesians. It says “Paul” in their Bibles so they’re good to go.
25. Sometime in your first two years, preach about prayer, evangelism, giving, and the authority of Scripture.
26. Figure out what you believe about divorce and remarriage, and figure it out soon.
27. Build consensus whenever possible, but when you have to make an unpopular decision that will be unpopular don’t insist that everyone like it. Take your lumps and move on.
28. Be comfortable in your own shoes. Preach through your own personality. Learn from, but don’t try to clone, your heroes.
29. Accept the blessings God gives (and does not give) you. Some pastors have two talents. Some of five or ten. That’s just the way it is. Don’t be jealous of those with more or look down on those with fewer.
30. Develop warm relationship with other evangelical churches in your area. Pray for these churches. Direct people to their ministries when the situation fits. Be happy for their blessings. I realized early on I didn’t really want revival unless I was fine with it starting at the church down the street.
31. Pray that the Lord won’t give you success until you don’t want it anymore.
32. Don’t assume the worst about people, even if you’re suspicions are right. Better to be a little naive than a lot cynical.
33. Make time to make friends. In the long run neither you nor your church will regret the hours invested in personal relationships with other pastors, old friends from seminary, and kindred spirits in the congregation.
34. Have low expectations for people this year and high expectations for people in five years.
35. Figure out the membership class and member care. Set the bar high for both.
36. Train and evaluate potential leaders. You can endure a lot of hardship if you feel energized and supported by your closest leaders. Ministry will be a nightmare if your leadership team lacks unity and maturity.
37. Focus on the basics.  Don’t get distracted with the church website or the newsletter layout.  The pastor who works hard at his sermons, genuinely likes people, and really loves the Lord will be used by God.
38. Don’t expect the search committee to have any clue what they’re doing.
39. Love your wife. Spend time with your kids. Be very afraid if you no longer look forward to going home at the end of the day.
40. Be generous in giving credit to others and stingy in passing around the blame.
41. Learn to ignore some comments, some controversies, and, yes, some people.
42. Never use the pulpit to settle old scores. Do use it to honor faithful saints and co-laborers.
43. Tell your congregation you love them and are glad to be their pastor.
44. What your people need most from you is your own personal holiness. People want a pastor who has been with God.
45. Keep your passions in proportion.  Not everything matters as much as everything else. Keep the gospel front and center.

My Re:Train buddy P.J. Tibayan posted ideas for a Los Angeles Pastor’s Fellowship along with questions to ask during their time together. These are very helpful and something I hope to use someday when gathering for fellowship with pastors in Ann Arbor.

What are barriers to the gospel that you’ve identified in our city?

How do you personally develop relationships with gospel intentionality?

How do you cultivate romance and a mutually edifying relationship with your spouse?  (for single pastors attending: what issues do you face as a single pastor when it comes to the area of romance and marriage?)

How have you developed leaders and shared leadership?

Do you practice membership?  If so, how do you do it?

How do you lead your church to be an encouragement to other churches and Christians outside of your church?

How do you equip your members to evangelize?

What is your personal Bible reading plan and how do you cultivate joy in Christ and holiness in your life?

What are some challenges you face in preaching/teaching?

What would an ideal pastors’ fellowship look like?  What would they do?  How often would they meet?

What does personal accountability look like for you?  To whom are you accountable?  Is it structured or organic?  To what degree?

1. Know God

• Cultivate a steady devotional and prayer life.
• Participate in gospel-centered accountability, like a Fight Club.
• Serve with the strength God supplies (2 Peter 4:11).

2. Know Your People

• Pastor your Missional Community. Don’t just lead discussions.
• Take notice when somebody disappears and make sure they are loved well.

3. Know Your Neighborhood

• Know the culture and relate to it well.
• Know your neighbors and invite them into your community.

4. Don’t Go Alone

• Share leadership by appointing leaders for hosting, meals, prayer, and mission.
• Participate in monthly leaders’ meetings.
• Participate in monthly coaching meetings.

5. Say Who You Are (And Who You Aren’t) Every Week

• Graciously deconstruct the small group/Bible study/social group approach and reconstruct your Missional Community.
• Reaffirm your Missional Community practices each week.

6. Get Out of the Living Room

• Be on mission every month as a community.
• Celebrate life and good culture.

7. Live the Missionally

• Read and apply the 8 ways to be missional.
• Live out loud. Let gospel talk be ordinary talk, not obnoxious but genuine.

8. Eat, Laugh, Pray, and Serve Together

• A healthy group does all four.

9. Share Your Stories

• In the living room.
• On the blog.
• In social media. Use Twitter or Facebook to facilitate community (not replace it).

10. Come to Serve (Not Just Be Served) on Sundays

• Missional community doesn’t stop on Sundays.
• Always be the church.

From Jonathan Dodson with Nate Navarro on TheResurgence.com

1. Mentoring – This generation has great respect for those older than they are. Most of them have good relationships with their parents. They have learned from older people all their lives, and they don’t want to stop now. They want to be led and taught in their places of work, in their churches, and in their families. They particularly want to learn from couples who have had long and successful marriages. Many Millennials see such examples as heroes to emulate.
2. Gentle spirit – This category is easier to describe by what Millennials do not want in leaders. Divisive, loud, and acrimonious persons turn them off. They loathe politicians and political pundits who scream at each other. They are leaving churches to some extent because they see many Christian leaders as negative and prone to divisiveness. They are repulsed by business leaders with harsh and autocratic spirits.
3. Transparency and authenticity – I wish Jess and I had counted the number of times that Millennials used the word “real” to describe leaders they want to follow. As one Millennial told us, her generation “can smell phony and pretentiousness a mile away.” They don’t want phony; they want authentic. They don’t want pretentious; they want transparent.
4. Integrity – The Millennials are weary of politicians who don’t keep promises. They are tired of Christian leaders who fail basic moral standards. They are fed up with business leaders who are more concerned about personal gain than serving others. They want leaders with integrity.

From Thom Rainer, president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources, and culled from research in his upcoming book The Millennials.

From Josh Dix

Person, Performance, and Context

Give full attention to the person (who they are), their performance (what they do), and the context (the where, when, and possible why).

Assess, Equip, Refine

For a couple years now, I’ve been using this framework for development plans.

The assessment is an objective look at the standards of the job.

• Where are we trying to go?
• What is expected of the individual?
• Do they meet those standards?
• Whether they do or do not meet the standards, what are our goals for this individual and what are the obstacles we will need to address to get him/her there?

Having a conversation with someone about these goals and obstacles can be a huge win.
Equipping the individual is taking the assessment past mere evaluation and into practice.  It’s using feedback and coaching to help someone.  It’s providing resources that increase knowledge and understanding. It’s giving opportunities to experience new kinds of assignments and tasks that will create disequilibrium and application for the coaching and resources.  Keeping it simple is the best option.

Refining is simply revisiting your assessments, your goals, and measuring the progress toward those goals.  At its essence, refining is giving the process a chance to change.  It’s evaluating your own assessment again.

Remember that evaluating someone begins with creating the standards you want to perpetuate in your organization.  If you don’t have clear standards for those you’re evaluating, they will likely flounder in underperformance or create their own standards that may or may not jive with where you want to go.

Great thoughts from Josh Dix on developing leaders. I’ve included some highlights

What I see from Jesus

• is that leadership is not about getting more followers. The essence of discipleship is to produce more leaders.
• Jesus has a vision for what someone can become when they know him and discipleship is his leadership development tool.

Who did Jesus disciple?

• People who needed to know the one and true God.
• those who need an up close look at the ministry of Jesus because they are the future leaders of the church

Leadership development at the Journey

The process of growing your character, knowledge, and skills in the fruit of the Spirit for the purpose of leading the church.

What your best leadership development tool?

It’s you

• With God’s word in your heart and mind
• Doing the work of a missional church through discipling others.

Developing a leadership development play with:

• a name written down of someone who you can see God using for his glory and his mission.
• identify areas they can grow in their character,
• identify things they need to know to grow into maturity as a man and a Christian,
• identify ideas for how you can share the work of ministry with them to grow their leadership skills. 

Remember how Jesus thinks about leadership:

• It’s not about gaining followers, it’s about discipling more leaders.
• It’s dreaming of what people can become when they know him.
• It’s being kingdom minded…on a mission.  “Go.”
• It’s sharing the hard work of ministry.
• Helping others grow in your knowledge and heart as they work under the control of the Holy Spirit.

Having never made pastoral visits before, and having never been visited by a pastor, it’s kind of a black box with lots of unknowns. David Murray’s overview of a “normal” pastoral visit is really helpful.

First, I prepare for visitation with prayer. I take a few minutes or so to pray for the family I am about to visit. During that time I make sure I know the names of both the adults and the children, I remind myself of what each is doing in their lives, and I make a mental note of any special needs or concerns that we had previously talked about.

Second, for the first 15 minutes or so of the visit, I try to chat to the family about what’s going on in their lives: how’s the job, the kids, school, etc. If there was some important local or national issue we might talk about that as well. Obviously, this sometimes stretches quite a bit beyond 15 minutes. And sometimes it is difficult to change the topic to something more “spiritual.” However, I like to “break the ice” in this way. I don’t think this is pragmatic or manipulative. As a pastor, I am interested in the spiritual welfare of my flock above everything else; but I am also interested in every area of their lives. I enjoy hearing about their vacations, their jobs, their schools, their friends, etc. I enjoy seeing and savoring the different personalities and characters. Often, issues arise in these conversations which we could never have predicted, taking us into the Scriptures in a very natural way (I’m always looking for opportunities to relate God’s Word to the person’s world). Usually it just helps everyone to relax a bit and makes it easier to move into more directly “spiritual” issues. I agree with the old saying, “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

Sometimes I find it helpful to share a bit from my own life and family. I try to show that I have a normal family life with all its joys, worries, and sorrows. Obviously you have to be careful here. You don’t want to “let it all hang out,” and you don’t want to spend too much time talking about yourself. However, some people find it easier to open up if the pastor himself is prepared to do so.

Third, the main aim of a pastoral visit is to have a conversation about spiritual matters. Sometimes that’s very easy, as mature Christians especially will be used to pastoral visits and will probably have some spiritual questions to ask, or some spiritual topics they want to talk about. But, for the sake of this post, let’s assume that you are visiting people who are not used to spiritual conversation. How do you guide the conversation to produce a profitable discussion? Until now, I’ve never sat down and thought about what questions I ask people. But I’ve tried below to list some questions that have been helpful. It’s important to ask these questions in a friendly and natural way, rather than in an accusatory or “clipboard” way. Sometimes I find it easier to direct some of these questions to the children initially, as they often talk much more freely about spiritual matters.

• Is there anything you would like me to pray for?
• What have you been reading in your Bible? Anything that’s helped you or puzzled you?
• What do you find difficult about reading the Bible?
• What do you feel burdened about in prayer?
• Is there anything you would like to hear a sermon on? Any verses you would like explained?
• Are there any sermons that you’ve found helpful… confusing… challenging?
• What did you think about the sermon on…?
• Would you say you are going forward spiritually, or backwards?
• Are you reading any good Christian books? Is there anything you want to share from it?
• Have you found any verses that are helping you to live life and prepare for eternity?
• What gifts do you think the Lord has given you? Do you feel the church is making most use of your gifts?
• How would you describe yourself: Unsaved, saved and sure of it, or not sure?
• Do you think much about death and life after death? Do you feel prepared for that? How are you preparing?
• What is your hope of heaven? What reason will you give for being admitted there?
• What do you think of Jesus Christ?
• What would you most like to change in your life?
• What is your greatest fear?
• Are you facing any difficult challenges?
• Is there any one thing that stops you from following Christ?
• Children, what have you been learning in Sunday School?
• Do you have any questions for me?

Maybe only one question will be required to start a profitable conversation. The ultimate aim is to find out where people are spiritually, and how you can help them either to be saved, to be sanctified, or to be of more service to the church.

Fourth, finishing the visit can sometimes be difficult, especially with older and lonely people who have lots of time on their hands. You need to keep good track of the time (with unnoticed glances at a watch or clock), especially if you have another visit arranged. I usually let people know when I arrive that I have to be somewhere else at a certain time. That helps to focus the visit a bit, and also avoids people thinking you are bored with them, when you eventually have to draw the visit to a close. You can always arrange to return, if necessary.

And even if you don’t have anywhere else to go, don’t overstay your welcome. If you start to detect cues that it’s time for you to go (people obviously looking at watches, some members of the family disappearing, longer silences, etc), then go!

But not without prayer and reading of the Bible.

During the course of the conversation you should be making mental notes of matters for prayer. And in the concluding prayer, try to gather up these various pieces of information and pray about each of them – even trivial matters raised by young children. Also, try to pick a relevant chapter of Scripture to read, a chapter that speaks to their needs. Try to show how prayer and Bible reading should impact ordinary life. Maybe ask the children questions about the passage?

Fifth, pray about the visit in the car on the way home or when you get home. Maybe take notes about anything you should follow up on with a note in your diary to phone again in a few weeks. Also, maybe think about how a sermon might be able to help that family.

Here is how Brian Croft pastors his congregation by praying for and contacting each of them intentionally at least one time a month

I created a prayer guide with each member of the church broken into a 28 day chart in alphabetical order.  This is to represent the first 28 days of each month.  On day 1, I pray for those 5-6 people or families.  Then, I try to make some kind of personal contact with them that day in the form of a home visit, email, hand written card, phone call, facebook note, or text message to let them know I prayed for them on that day.  Lastly, I ask in that moment of personal contact if there is anything I can do to serve them.  For those I haven’t seen recently, I will usually call or go see them to get an update on how they are doing in general.

I repeat the same process for day 2, then day 3…all the way to day 28.  If I am faithful and consistent in this process (which I never do perfectly) I would have prayed and made contact with all those who have been entrusted in my care in one month.  Any extra days of the month I do the same thing with our missionaries and others we have sent into ministry from our church.

This became such a fruitful system to keep up with all our folks that I took it to our other pastors/elders and they began to do it also.  It became such a fruitful system for each of us as pastors that we made a chart for our members and encouraged them to pray for each other in the same way as a prayer guide for our church.  Several of the members have even adopted the model of the pastors to contact folks that day they pray for them.   It has been amazing the fruit that has come from many of our members taken this task to pray for one another seriously.

On our women’s retreat last month, one of our dear ladies in the church led our ladies in a project to take that chart and transfer it to index cards that can sit on their table a home in the form of a flip calendar.  Each morning, you just flip to the next day and you see who you are to be praying for that day.  Since putting this on the table in our home, our children now make an assertive effort to pray for those appointed for that day.