The Problem of the Ego-Driven Pastor

One of the things that I have become more and more aware of the longer I have been a pastor, and subsequently, more and more aware of in my own life, is my EGO. Last Summer and Fall, I dove into a book by one of my favorite authors, Ryan Holiday, called “Ego is the…

“How do I build my Ministry if I can’t Hire anyone?” – part one

This is a question that I get from a lot of my youth ministry friends… and just ministry friends, in general. We are constantly reading books, looking at articles, perusing websites & social media, and going to conferences that are led by people who seem to have multiple staff members at their disposal and talk…

So… What is a NEXT GEN Pastor?

For the past 14 years I have been doing something in the student ministry world.  I have been a student ministry intern, a volunteer youth pastor, a middle school ministry director, and a student ministry pastor.  Last July, I took a new step and took one foot out of the student ministry world.  I became…

WE NEED ALL OF US!

It was my turn to lead our all staff chapel time at Hopevale Church this past Wednesday, so I had to figure out what I thought God wanted me to share with our team.  I was reading Bill Hybels’ book AXIOM in preparation for leading my Next Gen team Tuesday and came across a chapter called…

Reflection = Humility (or humiliation… whichever you prefer :-) )

So for the past two days I’ve decided to read through some of my blog posts from when I first started writing this thing. I caught myself thinking two things 1) I was completely ridiculous & 2) I thought I was the STUFF in youth ministry.  Do you know what I’ve learned in the 7…

FORWARD

  Starting April 12 in Ignite (high school ministry at Hopevale Church) we are looking into the future of where God is leading us in the area of serving.  FORWARD is a strategic serving endeavor where we will INTENTIONALLY identify some SMALL STEPS FORWARD and some BIG STEPS FORWARD that our students can take to…

Ministry Season Evaluation

So today is the last day of school for students in our area.  It marks another year of youth ministry that has come and gone.  One of the questions I had early on in my student ministry career was “How do I know if I’m doing well or being successful with this ministry as it’s…

Developing Systems in Student Ministry: A MUST HAVE

One of the big things that I have learned in my leadership development over the years is that it isn’t good enough to say something and hope it happens… or say something over and over again and hope it happens either.  What I have learned is that the most successful youth ministries, organizations, etc… Say…

THE Key to Communication: OVER COMMUNICATE

I’ve been focusing on a few BIG DEAL leadership things in student ministry that will help you take your ministry and teams to the next level over the last few weeks: 1) building and maintaining cohesive teams, 2) creating organizational clarity… and today I want to focus on how you can get that clarity to…

When Change is Necessary Part Two: When

So it has been a little bit of time between part one of this series of posts and part two.  That is  because there has literally been something going on almost every week of this summer that has demanded my time away from blogging. Anyway, let’s get back to it! So we have walked through…