While the subheading for the recent Christianity Today interview with Francis Chan is horrible (Francis Chan says we should stop trying to make people love Jesus, and learn to rely on prayer, elders, and the Holy Spirit instead. Really, he advocated that) the interview is amazing. Chan is consistently one of the most Holy Spirit-aware, Bible-integrating speakers that I listen to. He’s consistently comparing his life and the life of his church against what he reads in God’s Word and there’s little, if any, of his interpretation that I can argue with. Here are some questions and answers from the interview

Q: So the example of the elders and leadership is more important, even in a large church, than having the right programs or preaching?

Absolutely. That is 100 percent true. There are a lot of churches with leaders that aren’t living out their faith together, and they don’t have trust. Instead they’re trying to bring transformation by creating programs. That’s why you often hear of people who say, “I love church but once I got into the leadership, the inner workings, I was so disillusioned.” That’s a terrible indictment.

Q: How can we know if our ministry is being empowered by the Spirit?

Churches that are built through our effort rather than the Spirit’s will quickly collapse when we stop pushing and prodding people along.

Now we should push, prod, and persuade men, but I’ve learned to spend a lot more time praying and asking the Spirit to move and begging God to send forth laborers.

The more you look at Scripture, the more you realize that nothing happens unless God is behind it. Jesus is building his church. I just want to be a part of that. I’ll keep doing my work, but the fruit is up to him. We can only pray, “Please, please, please let us see your Spirit at work. May it be like a mighty wind that moves us.”

Q: Cornerstone is a megachurch by definition. Is the size of the church evidence that a “wave” of the Spirit is happening?

A large gathering where everyone is singing really loud is nice, but it’s not an indication that the Spirit is at work. We don’t see that biblically. If that’s success, then we’d be spending more money on better musicians and better worship leaders. But that’s not how our elder board measures success.

In God’s eyes success is people loving each other deeply, caring for one another, digging deep in each other’s lives, sharing their possessions, and sharing the gospel in their communities. Are they fully devoted followers of Jesus? Is there transformation happening? Do they see themselves as part of something bigger than themselves—a body with a mission larger than the individual?

Our job is not to keep as many people as possible. Our job is to make sure that we’re setting a biblical pattern.

Q: But you have had people get upset and leave.

Yeah, and it’s hard. But Jesus really didn’t have a problem with turning people off if they weren’t ready for the commitment. What I see in Scripture is that’s it’s all or nothing. We are called to die to ourselves; it’s complete death, surrender.

I tell people, “It’s great that you’re checking us out and learning, and I pray that you’ll come to understand that God is good and nothing compares to him. I hope at that point you’ll give your life to Jesus and follow him.”

The commitment to follow Jesus is like marriage. It’s a lifelong commitment for better or for worse. And if someone is not ready to make that commitment, then they shouldn’t get married.

Q: How do you respond when someone walks away because they’re not ready for the commitment?

We always have to check our own hearts and make sure we communicated with them in love. Early on when people first started to leave, there wasn’t a lot of love or compassion. We sort of considered it a victory that people walked away. There was some arrogance in us, and that breaks my heart. Even now it’s always hard when a person leaves. And so we rally around each other, encourage one another, and remind each other that this is going to happen but we’ve got to keep teaching it.

Q: Do you ever get accused of being pharisaical for calling people to such a high commitment?

Oh, absolutely. The comment I get is that we’re becoming a cult because we call people to make a commitment. We define cults as communities overly committed to a belief system. By that definition Jesus would have been leading a cult. So today Mormons are willing to ride their bikes around town, Jehovah’s Witnesses will knock on doors, but as Christians we don’t have to do anything. We’ve been taught a watered-down version of following Jesus for so long that people think it’s Christianity, but it’s not biblical.

I have to be honest and say there were so many times I wanted to quit, because it is really painful when friends leave and your loudest fans become your loudest critics. It does get lonely. And it’s hard when leaders who are with you start getting attacked. I get very defensive of my leaders because I love these guys. I don’t want people to think it’s easy to lead the church into greater depth and commitment. It stinks at times. But when you look back to the Word, you realize this is the way it’s got to be, and you have peace.

“We’ve been taught a watered-down version of following Jesus for so long that people think it’s Christianity, but it’s not biblical.” That line is hitting me hard right now. Am I really willing to follow Christ, knowing that it will require complete surrender to Him? Am I really willing to commit, come what may? I feel like some recent events (the twins, financial questions, etc) have put me in a position of needing to wholly depend on Christ and be completely committed. I’m not scared of what is to come. In face I’m really excited that God has called me to Himself through Chris tand that my whole life is an opportunity to give Him His due praise and glory.

“But when we begin to see that our life is in Jesus and not success, we can pursue our expectations, however high and lofty.  We may reach them or we may not, but we are now free to try, without our success or failure ultimately saying something about us.  We don’t need to lower the bar to prop up our ego.

So today are you tempted to lower your expectations about what you want to accomplish because it will preserve your ego?  If so, then remember, it wasn’t your definition of success that is the problem, it is that you think accomplishment is what defines you.”

Thanks, Tim Dunn, for this post today. I needed to hear this. I have big dreams for a movement of the gospel in Ann Arbor (planting 25 churches in 25 years, creating a training and equipping center, etc), yet I worry about “dreaming too big”. What if I fail, and I plant nothing and no one gets equipped? If my identity is found in Jesus, then I haven’t failed. I’m still on the path God ordained for me, it’s just a different one than I thought.

From Thom Rainer, president and CEO of Lifeway Christian Resources and senior pastor of four churches.

There are no “do overs” in life and ministry. But there are always opportunities to learn, correct, and improve. So I decided to share with you seven of the key mistakes I made as a senior pastor.

1. I would spend more time in the Word and in prayer
2. I would give my family more time
3. I would spend more time sharing my faith
4. I would love the community where I lived more
5. I would lead the church to focus more on the nations
6. I would focus on critics less
7. I would accept the reality that I can’t be omnipresent

These are good words of warning as I look to plant a church.

I have had a number of opportunities to share with people about my vision for a gospel-centered church plant and a movement of church-planting churches. Some people have seemed interested and responsive, others seem appreciative for the information and content to go their own way. I haven’t put much thought into trying to categorize the various responses that I might receive, which is why a recent blog post by Todd Bumgarner has been so helpful. In it, he presents “six categories into which someone falls.  Evaluating people through this grid is helping me to determine where to focus my time and energy as well as wake-up to the reality that I don’t want to face which is that some people, despite their excitement and interest, simply are not on-board.” I will definitely be using something like this in the future.

Family

The first category is what I call “family.”  These are the folks that are all-in.  They’ve caught the vision and want to help in any way possible.  They are servant-leaders and their commitment is apparent via a verbal conversation in which they express their commitment.  It is important to realize that simply showing up at things does not make someone part of the family (consistency does not necessarily equal commitment).  A better gauge is to combine their consistency with their language.  Folks who are in the family use phrases with first-personal plurals like “our church” or “we can do this…”.

Fence

The second category is what I call the “fence.”  These are people that are interested in what we’re doing, excited about what we’re doing, have come to one or more of the vision meetings, or expressed their interest/excitement over coffee or lunch.  People in this category require patience.  Often times people on the fence are plugged-in to other church communities and asking them to up-root from that to join what we’re doing is a complicated decision and process. I tell these people all the time that we are not in the business of stealing people from other churches, but that my role is to cast the vision and trust that the Holy Spirit will do his job.

In a church plant, people on the fence ultimately have to be called by the church planter to commitment.  A church plant consisting of interested and excited people (but with no commitment) will fail.  This is the category where the most time and prayer is to be spent.  In addition, a prayerful ear to the Spirit’s prompting of when to call them to commit must be discerned.  The goal is to move people from the fence to the family or discern if perhaps they are simply a “friend.”

Fans

On Facebook, having a lot of fans is great.  In a church plant – not so much.  Fans love what you’re doing, express their excitement, follow you on Twitter, meet you for coffee, let you buy them lunch, but never come to anything that you organize.  Fans are typically podcasting Driscoll, reading John Piper, and can give you the latest update on Chandler’s cancer faster than it takes for you to find it on the web.  Fans will suck the energy out of you.  Often times people in this category are another “F” word I like to use – “floaters.” Meaning they don’t have a church home, they float from one church to another, avoid commitment, and really see themselves as getting “fed” from guys they podcast.  Fans love to talk about the terms “gospel-centered” and “missionally-focused” but fail to ever translate their talk to their walk.

Fans need to be quickly moved to the fence or the farm or they will consume your time and distract you from the mission.

Friends

Friends are typically gospel-centered people that are playing in the same league but just on a different team.  They are interested in what you’re doing, realize the importance of it, want to support you in ways they can, but in the end are plugged-into and committed to another church.  Friends are brothers and sisters in Christ.  Friends are great, but they’re not family.  You can call on friends for practical help and outside advice, but when you’re trying to build a family, sometimes you have to limit your time with friends.

Farm

The farm is made up of people that were on the fence that turned out to not be in the family when you called them to commit or else folks that were fans that you simply had to move to farm as they were much more interested in hanging out in the grandstands than ever making it onto the field.  Instead of being “all-in,” they’ve verbally or non-verbally stated that they are “all-out.”  As much as it can sometimes hurt, the sad reality of a church planter is that once people are on the farm, it is typically a distraction from the mission to continue to pursue them.  Call them like you see them and move on.  If they want to rejoin the fence – trust that they will on their own.

Foes

Foes are the critics.  These are the opposite of “family.”

Elders lead the church. The main Biblical passages about their qualifications are 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-10. Specifically, 1 Timothy 3:6 reads

He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil

Since an elder must not be a recent convert, it stands to reason that elders must be tested and examined. This something many churches do not do when they appoint as elders good speakers or good business vs. holy Christians. Some churches have an examination process for elder candidates. Some of my bros in my Re:Train cohort are going through elder training at Mars Hill Church and I think it’s a year-long process. Coram Deo in Omaha, Nebraska has a  “6-month course of study and discussion” towards becoming an elder that “culminates with the examination phase.” Here’s the description of that phase written by Lead Pastor/Elder Bob Thune.

• Written essays outlining spiritual history, practice of spiritual disciplines, theological influences, leadership strengths and weaknesses, and understanding/articulation of the gospel
• A 3-hour written exam testing Bible comprehension and pastoral wisdom. For example: “What is the significance of Colossians 1 and 2 to our understanding of Christology?” And: “How would you comfort and encourage a couple at Coram Deo who just miscarried 9 weeks into pregnancy? What biblical passages would you take them to?” And: “A non-Christian in your MC asserts that he is a pretty moral person and, to his knowledge, has never broken one of the Ten Commandments. What Scripture passages would you take him to in order to show him that sin does not consist merely in outward acts?”
• A full review of stewardship, budget, debt and family finances by the CD Financial Team
• An oral assessment that tests “on-the-spot” Bible knowledge, theological acuity, and pastoral discernment
• A husband/wife interview assessing family health, marriage and parenting practices, conflict resolution, etc.
• A major theological position paper interacting with some current topic in church life (Coram Deo’s current position papers on Poverty and on Divorce and Remarriage are the fruit of past elder examinations)

It’s our desire to raise up men who 1) meet the biblical qualifications for eldership in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 and 2) have the full faith and trust of the entire Coram Deo community. This examination phase is a key step toward that end. Please pray for the men who are in the midst of it right now. And pray that God will raise up many more!

I’m very grateful that Bob posted this. It’s an excellent model to follow as I look to plant and raise up elders. It’s also very close to the same material that my Acts 29 application included, which makes sense, since every elder should be qualified to plant a church.

From Winfield Bevins

Lesson 1: The Family is a Church

The Puritans believed and taught that your family is your church. Every man has a responsibility to pastor his wife and his children.  Jonathan Edwards said, “Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influenced and governed by his rules. And family education and order are some of the chief means of grace.” George Whitefield said, “A man ought to look upon himself as obliged to act in three capacities:

As a prophet, to instruct:
As a priest, to pray for and with;
As a king, to govern, direct, and provide for them.”

Lesson 2: Love Your Wife as Christ Loved the Church

Pastoring your family begins with loving your wife as Christ loved the church. Through our marriage, we are examples of the gospel to our children and to our church.

Lesson 3: Family is the Seminary of the Church

Puritan Thomas Manton said, “A family is the seminary of the church.” The Puritans believed that the home was the primary place of learning the Bible and moral instruction. They also believed that it was a parent’s spiritual responsibility to disciple and teach their children about the faith.  The Bible instructs us, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).  It is important for children to begin learning about God and the Bible at home.

Thomas Doolittle said, “Masters of families ought to read the Scripture to their families and instruct their children and servants in the matters and doctrines of salvation. Therefore, they are to pray in and with their families. No man that will not deny the Scripture can deny the unquestionable duty of reading the Scripture in our houses, governors of families teaching and instructing them out of the Word of God.”

Lesson 4: Regularly Practice a Family Day Off (this has personally saved my marriage and my ministry)

For the Puritans that day off was synonymous with family. Many church planters fail to take a day off by justifying their great ministry need. We are not leading our family well unless we take time to be together without work lingering in the background. This is a common sin that ministers need to repent for not keeping.

Ministers are burning out at an unbelievable rate. Nearly 90% of pastors feel overworked and 50% of those who go into fulltime service drop out in 5 years. Spiritual burnout occurs when we don’t give ourselves time to rest from our daily routine. Puritans were a great example for spiritual rest because they had a rhythm of work and rest and service and worship.

Lesson 5: We are Responsible to God for the Proper Stewardship of our Families

Puritans taught the gravity of the responsibility of shepherding your family. We are stewards of our families. Let us not sin in this area, let us repent for not leading well. Thomas Doolittle said, “If God be the Founder, Owner, Governor, and Benefactor of families, then families are jointly to worship God and pray unto Him.”

From Dr. Bruce Ware, Re:Train instructor and professor at Southern Seminary, as blogged by Owen Strachan. You can listen online here.

1. Love.   1) Loving God increasingly w/ all my heart, soul, mind and strength; loving Christ and the cross; loving the gospel — these are the foundation for all else.  Drawing from God all I need to be the man and husband God has called me to be is my strength and hope.  2) Loving my wife as Christ loves the Church — this is the umbrella principle for marriage; everything else flows from this responsibility and privilege (Eph 5:25ff).
2. Leadership.   Biblical manhood involves cultivating, embracing, and exercising leadership initiative, especially spiritual leadership initiative.  This is a principle that applies to young men and adult single men just as well as to married men.  Cultivate, embrace, and exercise spiritual leadership initiative.   In marriage, my love for my wife involves and requires that I exert leadership in our relationship.  My headship of my wife means I’m responsible for her spiritual growth and well-being.  And as a father, I’m responsible in ways that my wife is not for the spiritual development of our children (Eph 6:1-4).  And again, to do this, I must be seeking God and growing personally.  Only out of the storehouse of my own soul’s growth in God can I assist my wife to grow spiritually.
3. Example.  Lead by example as much as by admonition and instruction.  Set the example in:  consistent times in the Word and prayer;  in sacrificial service for your wife, children, church family members, and community needs;  in giving faithfully, generously, and regularly of your finances;  in humble admission of wrong-doing along with confession, asking forgiveness, and repentance.  Fight pride, fight defensiveness, fight carnality before others.
4. Authority.  All three points above imply and invoke the concept of male-headship.  Yes, God has given special authority to husbands and fathers.  Learn, though, the correct expression of healthy, constructive, upbuilding, God-honoring, Christ-following authority.  Resist and reject the sinful extremes of 1) harshness, bossiness, mean-spirited authoritarianism, and of 2) laziness, apathy, lethargy, negligence, and abdication of authority to the women in our lives.  Learn to blend firmness with gentleness, truth with grace, a firm hand with a warm smile.
5. Acceptance.   Each of us is unique as God has made us.  We should accept others’ differences w/o thinking ourselves to be either superior or inferior to others.  In marriage, my wife is unique, and so in many ways, she is not like me.  I need to accept who she is, prayerfully and sensitively seeking to assist her in changing what is sinful and needs to be changed, and accepting what is “just different.”
6. Listening.   One of my wife’s biggest and most real needs is my attentive and respectful listening ear.  She loves to share her experiences, thoughts, ideas, feelings, concerns, hurts, joys, etc.   I can minister to my wife more than one might think by offering her caring, responsive, and respectful listening and interaction.  Learn to listen sympathetically w/o rushing to “fix it” solutions.  Connect first heart to heart, then later heart to head.  Establish regular times of mutual sharing (yes, mutual), keep short accounts, and act on what you hear and learn.
7. Understanding.   I need to live with my wife in an understanding way (1 Pet 3:7), to learn her needs, her sensitivities.  I should seek to know the desires and felt needs of my wife and, when appropriate and possible, fulfill these.  I need to discover her “language of love” and make every effort to love her in ways she feels loved.
8. Work.   A man’s main sense of identity, responsibility, and purpose is found in his work.  Wives want to take pride in their husbands, and taking pride in their work is an important part of this.  Women are not meant to bear the financial weight of a marriage or family, so husbands must work hard and responsibly.  As important as work is to a man’s identity and fulfillment, we must not allow work to overshadow our commitment to and time with our wives first, and also to our children.  Work hard, work well, work to the honor of Christ, and then put work to rest.
9. Sexuality.   My wife is my only legitimate sexual experience, and I am hers.  So, learning to love sexually with increasing skill and pleasure is vitally important to the satisfaction and intimacy of our marriage.  See human sexuality for what it is — the good gift of God to be experienced in marriage, as God has designed.
10. Home.   She cares much about our home.   The “honey-do” list is far more important to her than she is likely to let on.  In love for her, I must pay attention to her requests and treat them as important.  But more important even than this is cultivating the “culture” and “ethos” of our home.  Develop an atmosphere of appreciation, respect, kindness, service, holiness, happiness, gratefulness, contentment, forgiveness — all as expressions of our love for God and one another.

I’ve been told by my Re:Train coach, Cliff Low, that the best use of my time is developing leaders. Much easier said than done, however. When developing leaders, you need a plan and you need to make it a priority. When planning, you should ask “What are the

1. Requirements from Scripture (For example, what do 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 say?)
2. Requirements from your Denomination or Network (For example, what does it mean to be an elder in a Presbyterian, Baptist, or an Acts 29 church?)
3. Requirements from your context and church (For example, what does it mean to be an elder at my church, at this time, this stage, this size, in this part of this specific city?)

Scott Thomas of the Acts 29 Network recently published a study guide that is very useful in training and raising up new leaders. Here’s an overview of the guide.

This study guide is an interactive curriculum of the book, Christian Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005) written by Wayne A. Grudem and edited by Elliot Grudem.

Christian Beliefs (160 pages) is a condensed version of Grudem’s book, Bible Doctrine (528 pages), and that itself is a condensed version of Grudem’s award-winning Systematic Theology (1,290 pages).* This guide is designed to introduce Christians to the core beliefs of Bible doctrine in preparation for church leadership or to help new Christians to distinguish truth from error. This guide can be used to prepare elders, deacons, small group leaders, Sunday School teachers and all those who want to learn more about maturing in their Christian faith and becoming equipped to give a gentle and respectful answer to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3:15). An instructor in a class or small group or in a one to one environment can facilitate the questions or it can be utilized as a self-study or as a tool to equip a family in Biblical doctrine.

Theological Clarity and Application seeks to preserve the contents of Grudem’s Christian Beliefs by using questions to stimulate further understanding and application. The participants in this curriculum would benefit by first reading each chapter in Christian Beliefs before answering questions. It is also highly recommended to have a respected study Bible and a copy of Grudem’s Systematic Theology available for reference.

Each chapter of this guide corresponds to the chapters in Christian Beliefs. At the end of each section, a prayer text and Scripture memory is included. Additionally, a reference to the corresponding chapters and supplementary readings in Grudem’s Systematic Theology are included as well as further readings by noted conservative scholars and authors who contribute to the specific topic covered in the chapter.

This material is not something that should be rushed through to complete. It is a refrigerated locker full of meat that must be eaten regularly and systematically one meal at a time, allowing ample time to chew and digest the information and ideally to savor with others. One can complete the study in 20 weeks by covering one chapter a week or complete it in 40 weeks (approximately one school year) by covering one chapter every two weeks. The latter allows for a deeper reading of the accompanying Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem.

You can download it here

• B&W Questions Only (63 pages),
• B&W Workbook (color cover) 91 pages,
• Color Questions Only
• Color Workbook

My Re:Train class that starts tomorrow is Leader as King and for class we’ve read a number of leadership books. As I read the books I reflected on the various jobs I’ve had. Working for a creative company, leadership looks very different from what it looked like working for a school district. Here’s an interesting interview with Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar, the company who produced one of my favorite films of all time, Monster’s Inc. His thoughts on leading creatives is helpful as I look towards leading a church and hopefully building a culture of creative doxology.

Things to note

• People don’t like post mortems, but they are helpful. Be aware that people try to game the system and use them as another opportunity to praise the team
• “Hard rules don’t work”
• Pixar intentionally includes elements that young kids don’t understand because it’s a reflection of their world, that they’re daily figuring out new things
• “Fundamentally, successful companies are unstable and we need to operate in that unstable place.” This quote refers to dealing with the tension of competing interests in an organization.
• People with vision also need to draw the best out of other people
• It has to be OK for managers to learn of things out of order.
• It’s better for managers to fix error vs. trying to prevent it.

Practical Shepherding is a blog you should read. It’s full of , well, practical posts for pastors and church leaders. Here are a few recent posts on service reviews, which I got to see first hand at a 9Marks Weekender at Capital Hill Baptist in DC.

What is a service review?

Service review takes place as a round table discussion with one primary facilitator to evaluate the public gatherings for that Lord’s Day.  For our church, it works best to have this time 15 minutes after our evening service with duration of forty five minutes – one hour.  There are two main benefits:  First, everyone is already at church to meet before going home for the day.  Second, the gatherings for that Lord’s Day are fresh on everyone’s minds and hearts, which produce a more engaged evaluation.  This time also provides wives and children the option to stay and fellowship with one another while the men meet.  Sensitivity to families waiting is why this meeting should last one hour maximum.  Anyone is invited to attend, but is primarily attended by those men who participate in leading and preaching in the public gathering, or aspire to do so.  Those leading and preaching that day, as well as current pastoral interns are required to attend.

What is the purpose of a service review?

The primary role of service review is two fold:  First, service review is a safeguard to maintain biblical fidelity within the public gatherings of the church.  Secondly, service review is a tool to cultivate the skill of giving and receiving sincere, helpful, and godly criticism, which does not come naturally.  It must be learned, taught, and molded into believers.  Within these two chief purposes, there are several other purposes to be accomplished in setting this time aside to evaluate:

• To provide an opportunity to speak words of encouragement as well as correction if needed into the lives of those who led and preached in the public gathering.
• To create a culture of evaluating the public gatherings, not by preference or style, but biblically, theologically, pastorally, and practically.
• To create an environment to evaluate critically what is important and what is not important in regard to sermons and services.
• To create an environment for those participating and observing to learn, grow, and mature in the various roles discussed.
• To learn discernment in what are helpful, instructive comments—and what are not.
• To create an environment of humility, trust, fellowship, and openness with our lives to those present.

What is the process of a service review?

The facilitator’s role is much like a moderator or chairman.  He is to keep the discussion progressing in a helpful direction and protect the group from digressing in a negative manner.  The facilitator asks a question about the service or sermon and goes around the table soliciting thoughts and comments about that particular question.  Here are a few examples:

• Did the service run on one continuous theme that led into the preaching?
• What encouraging comments do you have for those who led the service?
• What could have been done better?
• Any theological concerns with the songs chosen?
• Did the congregation seem to sing well? Why or why not?
• What was one truth prayed in the service that was particularly meaningful to you?
• Was the Lord’s Table administered in a biblically appropriate way?
• Were there any distractions that need to be mentioned?
• What connections did you see to the scripture readings and the sermon?
• What is something new you learned in the exposition of the text?
• What application from the sermon was particularly meaningful to you?
• Was there any portion of the sermon that you would suggest amending?
• Were there any errors spoken, or clarifications that need to be made by those who led or preached?

The facilitator can also use this time to have a short discussion about a topic if he feels it would benefit the group.  Topics could include approaches to preaching a certain text, factors in determining songs, methods of applying texts edifyingly and faithfully, good templates to think through when praying publicly, and techniques for communicating effectively (e.g., voice inflection) are useful conversations to have with those leading, preaching, and aspiring to do so in your congregation.

This approach should leave those involved challenged to think through different issues in regard to the public gatherings of your church, but ultimately this time should encourage those who labored in leading and preaching, unless a particularly poor job was done.  If you find these meetings have a more critical feel than mutual edification, you need to consider whether this time has taken too critical a direction and adjustments need to be made.