Graciousness with doubt and questions. A crisis will cause people to question their beliefs. Pray for graciousness for those seeking God, even during a season of doubt. Mental, spiritual, and emotional health for church leaders. Pastors and other church leaders have faced many obstacles in the last few years. Ask God to provide ways for people to seek help and maintain health. 

Before you launch your New Year ministry plan, begin with prayer. How might you pray to start the year?

Passion for people, not numbers. You should track your numbers and know your metrics. Yes, each number represents a person. I get it. But you don’t shepherd numbers. If you struggle with caring more about numbers than people, now is an excellent time to take a new posture. Pray God gives you this passion.
A filling of the Holy Spirit over comfort with nostalgia. I have a deep love for the sanctuary room. Even when I’m alone, I still enjoy the comforting presence of the room. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion, but our prayers should be first for a filling of the Holy Spirit.
Outward movement rather than an inward bent. Pray your church has a desire to reach outward rather than inward. Ask God to give your church a wake-up call for evangelism.
Compassion for the lonely. Some people need more time alone, but isolation is never beneficial. Pray for those who are experiencing loneliness. Pray that your church shows compassion.

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Prioritize healing, but don’t use recovery as an excuse to become apathetic. Seek the help you need and do not walk alone. No one should navigate a difficult season solo. Make phone calls to your mentor, counselor, and close friends. Be grateful for those who respond positively. 

When the church causes hurt, it pollutes God’s calling and creates a toxicity that works against the gospel.
The goal is to minimize church hurt and maximize church unity. Here is reality. Something will happen in almost every church because ministry includes people. In some cases, the pastor is the cause of the hurt. In other cases, the people of the church hurt the pastor. Pastors can be responsible for church hurt, but this article focuses on how pastors should respond when experiencing a toxic church culture.
Pastors can experience various forms of church hurt, some more painful than others.

“I’m not being fed, so I’m leaving.”
“People are saying. . .”
“I love you, but. . .”
“I noticed you bought a vehicle. How can you afford that?”
“You should listen and learn from my favorite YouTube preacher.”
“I support you, but I don’t want to talk to my friends about their negative attitudes.”
“Why do your kids act that way?”
“Why is your spouse not more involved?”

Now, there is a difference between hurt and toxicity. The former is personal. The latter is cultural. You may experience toxicity but not be personally hurt. You may be personally hurt but not in a toxic culture. Or you may feel the compounding effects of both.

Not toxic or hurtful: A healthy church acts as God designed.
Toxic, but not hurtful: The culture is poisonous, but the people are not after you personally.
Not toxic, but hurtful: In these cases, an individual or small group is attacking you unbeknownst to the rest of the congregation. This situation is usually short-term, as even a small group will eventually affect the church’s culture.
Toxic and hurtful: The culture is hurtful, and at least some people are after you personally.

Though there is much overlap between toxic church culture and personal hurt, making this distinction is critical for pastors. The pathway to reconciliation is clearer when a toxic culture is not present because the process involves a small group of people (perhaps just two) rather than the entire congregation. What are some warning signs of a toxic church culture?
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No other books are required to know God and follow the Holy Spirit. What we have in the Bible is perfect, trustworthy, right, clear, pure, and true. No other written words can claim this sufficiency. The Bible alone is sufficient. You can trust the whole of Scripture, so now I hope you read the whole of Scripture. 

All of Scripture is for every part of our lives.
Every single word in the Bible is powerful, purposeful, and prescient. Understanding the Bible as a whole is worth your whole effort. Every word in the Bible matters because every minute of your day matters. In Luke’s gospel, we learn that God counts the hairs on our heads (Luke 12:7). God is always involved in every area of your life. Since He always knows every hair on your head, God must actively count each one.
The lesson is simple: God is always active, caring, and present in your life. The way He wants you to interact with Him is through the Bible.
The Bible is God’s story. And the first step in understanding the Bible as a whole is realizing the biblical story is not about you but rather for you. The first words in Genesis are, “In the beginning God,” not, “In the beginning you.” God is the protagonist of the Bible, not you.
God creates. God speaks. God saves. He is not just part of creation or a power in creation but the Sovereign over all creation. The story of the Bible is about God, but this story exists because God wants to redeem us. Paul wrote that God gave us the Bible for our “hope and encouragement” (Romans 15:4). The Bible is God’s roadmap to hope.
The Bible reveals God’s plan for redeeming his people. The story has ups and downs, unexpected plot twists, failures and successes. It’s not G-rated, and all the characters are flawed, with one exception—Jesus.
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It’s time for the neighborhood church to make a comeback. The stigma of small churches is fading. Fostering is becoming more common. Pastors should feel free to leave the islands of their campuses and make friends. The opportunity to revitalize neighborhoods is as big as ever. The neighborhood church movement is primed for a relaunch.

Neighborhood churches tend to be small or midsize and well-established. For years, we have dismissed the potential for a significant move of God in these churches. I believe they are primed for a comeback. They are numerous, and they are located in the heart of places with lots of people.
I believe in this comeback so much that I wrote a book about it. The Surprising Return of the Neighborhood Church just released! If you lead or attend a neighborhood church or want to know more about this potential movement, you can pick up a copy now. I wish I could write that these churches will make a comeback, but it’s still an unrealized possibility. But what might it look like if such a comeback were to occur?
The Stigma Must Become the Advantage
Some have bemoaned the “on every street corner” nature of the established church. I understand. It seems there are churches everywhere that are doing nothing. But a shift is already underway. The megachurch movement is waning. The younger generations don’t prefer the giant sanctuaries on sprawling campuses that their Boomer parents enjoyed. The neighborhood church has a long way to go before we can talk about a movement, but the stigma of small and local is fading. Smaller churches embedded in neighborhoods have a certain appeal. If these churches step up and begin to reach into their surrounding communities, that stigma might shift to an advantage.
Church Fostering Must Become More Common
We understand the term fostering in connection with children being placed with a family. It differs from adoption in that it’s not intended to be permanent. Similarly, a new movement called fostering is emerging in the world of church revitalization, as healthy churches provide people and other resources for unhealthy churches over a specified time frame—usually six months to a year. In many cases, the fostering relationship involves sending in a preacher, improving the worship ministry, and restarting programming for children. The most successful fostering relationships also include outreach into the surrounding neighborhood.
Local Pastors Must Work Together for the Kingdom
In too many communities, pastors treat their church campuses like islands instead of as interconnected outposts in a kingdom network. Pastors need to get off their islands and befriend other pastors. When pastors in a community become friends, tenures become longer, and churches stop competing and start cooperating.
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My old mentor brings hope. He got through the tough stuff and knows the way! He’s already taken the machete and blazed a trail. I need to follow his path. My old mentor connects me to a significant generation. He helps me understand the oldest in my congregation. I can ask him questions without fear of offending him.

“Sometimes the being is more important than the doing.”
My mentor shared this wisdom at our last meeting. He’s in his late-80s, almost 50 years ahead of me. He retired from a church in Indiana and moved to Bradenton several years ago. I inherited him with my church when I was called as pastor a few years ago. Unfortunately, he recently moved back to Indiana to be closer to family.
God gave me a spiritual heavyweight of encouragement with him. He sat a few rows from the back—prayerfully listening every week. He held no formal leadership position in our church. He did not need it because his prayers moved mountains.
Every young pastor needs an older mentor. I know that’s not a new thought. I press the point because it’s hard to overstate the value of wisdom from someone 50 years older than you. Unfortunately, young pastors tend to dismiss the oldest generation of leaders. Not overtly, of course. Few would explicitly state they don’t want to hear from someone older. The dismissal comes more in the form of time.
Our ears can only listen to so much before words start melting together.
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