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Tie your shoes.
Name the first president of the United States.
Buckle your seat belt.
Recite John 3:16.
Look both ways before crossing the street.
Know the speed limit even if it isn’t posted.
Skills mastered to perfection become habits. They permit us to perform daily tasks without taking up a lot of mental bandwidth. Information fully grasped becomes knowledge. It presents the salient facts in an instant so we can make quick decisions.
Habits and knowledge grease the skids through our day. We perform important tasks, recall crucial facts and make quick decisions with ease. It all becomes second nature. We don’t have to stop and think, we just do.
What pastors should know
Every pastor should master important ministry skills so they become automatic. Listening attentively, responding graciously, studying prayerfully, preaching passionately—these are among the crucial skills that should be second nature for pastors.
They should also master basic information about the ministry to recall important knowledge at a moment’s notice. When a pastor can snap off answers to the following 10 questions, we know that a church is in good hands.
As you read the following questions, consider jotting down your answers.
1. Why does this church exist; what is its purpose?
This concerns the church’s mission. The answer should be a complete declarative sentence that is clear, concise and biblically accurate. You should be thoroughly drilled on the mission so your answer is immediate.
2. How does this church fulfill its purpose?
This probes for evidence that the mission is actual rather than merely aspirational. Your response must state how the church allocates resources and plans to fulfill its mission. A clear answer sets direction for the ministry, establishes priorities and determines focus.
3. What is your primary role?
This question focuses on your responsibilities, deliverables and accountability as a pastor. Your reply reveals your ministry paradigm. It also limits or expands your ability to lead.
Is your primary role a chaplain (one who provides spiritual care to those in need), a shepherd (one who guides the church along its journey and protects it from predators) or a leader (one who insures that the church reaches its goals)?
Granted, you’ll fill all of these roles at one time or another. The question is, which is your primary role?
4. How do churches grow by conversions?
You only need the fingers on one hand plus a couple on the other to articulate the best ministry practices that produce conversion growth. You should be able to rattle them off with ease.
This information has been widely available for centuries. I’m baffled by the fact that the vast majority of pastors have never been taught.
5. What are the distinct traits of Jesus’ disciples?
Congratulations if your answer to question No. 1 included “making disciples.” Now the question is, “What, exactly, are we making?”
Your answer should give a clear, concise and biblically accurate recall Jesus’ “blueprint” for making disciples. In fewer than 10 texts in the gospels Jesus, told us what he’s looking for in the finished product.
If you can list them, chances that your church is getting it done improve dramatically.
6. How do pastors lead churches off plateau?
There are a handful of leadership practices that move churches off plateau. It takes several years of hard work, but when pastors implement these practices with love, grace and patience, their churches generally begin to grow.
Can you recite those best leadership practices? If so, do you have a development plan to increase your mastery of these crucial skills?
7. How does your personality help or hinder your leadership?
The vast majority of what a pastor does probably consists of managing relationships. Your ability to manage relationships rests on understanding yourself. Understanding your personality—why you are the way you are, why you think the way you think and why you feel the way you feel—is absolutely essential. You can’t manage your relationship with others (and thereby help them to be more productive in life and ministry) if you can’t manage yourself.
This is more than knowing your strengths and weaknesses. This is understanding how your “firmware” (the personality God encoded into you) governs your reactions, thereby either helping or hindering your leadership capacity.
8. How do you train and motivate people for personal evangelism?
This loops back to question No. 1 from a different angle. Any and every church should have evangelism training in place. This is true of growing, plateaued, stagnant and declining churches.
Evangelism is a mission-critical component of any church’s ministry. As the pastor, you should be able to outline how the church trains people for evangelism and have ready recall of the metrics which indicate whether the training is effective or not.
9. Where is God already at work in your community?
No church can be all things to all people. Smaller churches have limited resources; there’s only so much money, so many people and precious little time to do everything. The smart move is to allocate those precious resources where God is already at work. The church growth folks call this “finding the gospel receptive people in your community.”
Where is your church focusing its outreach efforts? Who are the gospel receptive groups you can reach with the resources available to you?
10. How do you align programs, leadership development and staff around the vision?
A sure clue that a church’s mission is actual rather than merely aspirational is the degree of alignment. You should be able to state how every program, event, activity, staff position (paid and volunteer) and training moves the needle.
You should also have a plan to deal with those that don’t make direct, bottom-line contributions to the vision. Will you re-purpose, revise, retire or go around those items that don’t contribute to the fulfillment of mission and the achievement of vision?
A quick diagnostic test
This isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of what pastors should know and do. There’s no secret sauce here.
However, this is a handy diagnostic test. Denominational officers, church consultants and coaches use these questions to identify where pastors need help. How they answer these questions often reveals why their churches remain plateaued.
Photo source: istock
 | Bud Brown is an experienced ministry leader, writer and educator. He is co-founder of Turnaround Pastors and co-author of the ground-breaking Pastor Unique: Becoming A Turnaround Leader. He brings special expertise to change leadership in the local church, mentoring pastors to become revitalization leaders, training churches how to find and recruit the best talent, and training leadership teams how to achieve their shared goals. Learn More » |
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