Let’s be honest. Much too often “making things happen” is a fruit of nascent pride. The proud in spirit feel they must force a quick fix when faced with prolonged circumstantial ambiguity. They are compulsive and cannot trust God with what they do not understand about His timing. Too self-interested to wait, they attempt to supplant His unhurried work. However, God honors those who wait patiently upon Him. Humility accompanies the learning of this lesson. Ultimately, a pastor does not control his ministry circumstances. And our best efforts to eliminate their ambiguity may well make things worse.

Talking with a fellow pastor I know and trust, I recently asked a question. “What’s one quality you believe is indispensable for an effective pastor?” After a moment’s thought, the answer came: patience.
If you aspire to pastoral ministry, you likely envision yourself preaching the Word and rightly administering the sacraments. Perhaps you also envision counseling sessions, praying with those who hurt, and leading the ministries of the church. All good things, no doubt. But have you taken time to consider the kind of patience these things actually require? Have you envisioned yourself learning the hard lesson of being patient and moving slowly? If you would rather not, then one of two things will eventually happen after you enter ministry: you will be crushed or you will change.
When I was in my twenties and aspiring to the pastorate, I gave little to no serious consideration to my need for patience. And on certain days, I find that I can still be this way. Pastors, like most people, struggle with impatience concerning life’s circumstantial ambiguities, those unresolved things we are chagrined to live with. Ministry is so filled with such ambiguities that a pastor must learn what do to with them. As much as I may not like it, pastoring is slow, steady work. It is “tortoise work,” not “hare work.”
Of course, a temptation every pastor faces is that of “making things happen.” According to Zack Eswine, our tendency is to do “large things in famous ways as fast and as efficiently as [we] can.” I’ve found that this very thing is widely incentivized, often marketed to me as the model of ministry success. After all, pastors who are thought to “make stuff happen” are the ones who get book deals and amass high follower counts on social media. Is this the kind of pastor I must be? Experience enough ministry setbacks, though, and that question answers itself. It doesn’t take long for the hoped-for glitz and glamor of pastoring to fade. And you’re left with the reality that much of your pastoral success is measured by something you didn’t expect: capacity for patience amidst the crises, criticisms, controversies, and conflicts that beset congregational life.
As a young man, aspiring to the noble task of pastoring, do you recognize your need to learn patience? Do you see in yourself a tendency to idolize immediacy?
Read More
Related Posts:

While we are in this world sin remains in our mortal flesh, as John has reminded us twice (1 John 1:8, 10). Yet if we confess our sin, God will forgive us, not merely because we confess that sin but because we confess Christ as the end of sin. Jesus is our “Advocate with the Father” (1 John 2:2). He represents us before the throne of judgment, having atoned for our guilt and suffered the wrath of God for it on the cross. 

If anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous (1 John 2:1)
“Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” (Rom. 6:1) That was a rhetorical question posed by Paul following his explanation that a person is justified not by works but by faith in Christ. It is a natural question to a proper understanding of the gospel. If salvation rests upon what Christ did and not what I do, then I can sin with abandon. Can’t I?
In Romans 6-8, Paul explains that our obedience and growth in holiness are not contributors to our acceptance by God but consequences of it. The Spirit who unites us to Christ for salvation forms Christ in us for sanctification. Sin is inconsistent with our new life in Christ. We who were dead in sin are now dead to sin and alive in Christ. That shows up in a changed life.
In like fashion, John reminds us that our freedom from sin’s penalty does not promote license to sin but prompts disdain for sin because of our new identity in Christ and our new relationship with God.
Read More
Related Posts:

The church is meant to draw in everyone and anyone, because the church is made up of people across all generations, cultures, races, levels of education, careers, and backgrounds. The message of Scripture is for anyone who would trust in Christ for their salvation (Rom. 1:16). If as a church we are striving to only reach a niche, ideal churchgoer (and thus exclude others), we’ve missed the purpose to which God has called us.

Everywhere our eyes rove, we see branding: the spine of the book you’re reading, the ads dispersed in your Facebook feed, the cartoon on the milk in your fridge, the labels on our clothing, and the sticker on your child’s school binders. I can dig through thrift store bins of blue jeans and recognize what brand they are simply by the back pockets.
Branding is what helps us recognize our favorite brands—it helps us buy the smooth and creamy almond milk instead of the stuff that tastes like water and chalk. Branding also helps us recognize our favorite content creators on social media—we immediately discern their fonts, colors, and logos and slow our scroll to read what they’ve posted.
It sounds harmless, right? Perhaps even helpful. As a believer, you may even strive to choose your church based on its branding—or lack of branding for that matter. But what if branding shouldn’t be a part of the church at all?
The purpose of branding is inclusion and exclusion.
In an article on Forbes about the ten golden rules of branding, they explain that branding requires a niche focus:

Keeping your message focused for your target demographic will make it that much easier to both create content around your personal brand and have others define you … The narrower and more focused your brand is, the easier it is for people to remember who you are.[1]

During my freshman year of college, I started my first blog, and I dove into every resource I could find on Google about how to blog successfully. Over and over, this same message repeated itself in nearly every article I read. Branding begins by identifying a specific reader you want to reach—so specific that you should think of one single person and create each piece of content for that particular reader.
Once you’ve created this ideal client/reader, you form your brand to best reach them. In another article in Forbes, they explain that where most brands and businesses fail is by trying to reach everyone, but businesses that begin with a narrowed niche tend to thrive. [2] In other words, the more specific your ideal customer is, the more likely it is for your business to succeed.
By creating a brand like this, you are seeking to draw in people like your ideal client and in turn drive away anyone who isn’t like them. Consider some well-known brands like Hollister: If middle-aged people walked into one of those stores, would they get the sense that they belonged there? Of course not, because the brand is built to draw in teenagers who like beachy styles.
Branding is incompatible with the message and mission of the church.
This model is useful for businesses. If you’re a Christian freelance writer, you don’t want to draw in clients looking for medical writers. My husband runs a business repairing and building guitars, and he doesn’t want to draw in people who want factory-built wind instruments. As a business, you must put your energy into reaching the right people, not all people.
But this business model can’t work for the church.
Read More
Related Posts: