Lead Well

Photo by Dominic Hanson on Unsplash At my first church, I felt like I was alone. My senior pastor was sick, and the church was struggling. I had been in ministry for about a year and half and at first, I thought I was doing ok. But then when problems came, and I expressed them to my fellow staff members, it fell on deaf ears. I had a few friends in kidmin, but they lived in other states. Also, Facebook was in its infancy so finding others like me was difficult. Then at a sectional meeting with other church leaders in my area, I met a guy who told me about his kids’ pastor and how he had a podcast. Intrigued, I downloaded a few episodes and instantly felt at home. You know that feeling when you meet someone, and they just get it?  Since we were in the same town, I looked him up, and we went to lunch. It was the first of many connections and set me on a journey of seeking outside sources to make my ministry better. The thing is you were never meant to do ministry alone. We need o

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash Budgets, love them or hate them, you need to have one to effectively manage the resources God has given you and your ministry. The churches I’ve served in have been on both ends of the spectrum when it comes to budget planning. One of them didn’t give me a budget at all. If I needed something, I had to ask my lead pastor. Most of the time this worked because he would say yes.  However, while I served there, the global recession hit, and we entered a spending freeze for 2 years. I didn’t have a budget and the answer for buying literally anything was almost certainly going to be no. It became impossible to plan and very difficult to minister. On the other side of the spectrum, one church required me to put almost every purchase into its own category. I had income and expense line items for over 20 categories. Many of which were legacy categories my predecessors used that I had no plans for. In addition, I had to painstakingly plan out each categ

This past Wednesday, one of our Mpact Girls Sponsors, Jenni, did something really cool to make the creation story come alive.  She made a creation tube! Here's a picture. The tube is made of medicine cups with a fun thing inside to remind kids what God did during the creation week.  When I called Jenni to ask her how she came up with this really cool, fun, and unique activity, she said she got it from Pinterest.  As a guy, I'm not a user, but I know there are a lot of great ideas out there.  You can see the full directions here.    A lot of us think we have to be super creative.  That's just not the truth.  There are a ton of resources out there that can help you find something fun, engaging, and memorable. Jenni said that the girls loved opening each container and seeing what was inside.  She said she even had trouble putting the thing back together because they wanted to see what was inside. You don't have to be gifted in creativity to produce g