Rebuilding Your Organization Looks Like Destruction (But It Isn’t)

I sat in a church service recently where my former youth pastor was honored for 30 years in ministry. That’s a long time to serve in ministry.

Statistics show 50% of pastors will quit ministry within the first 5 years. Only 1 in 10 will retire from ministry. So, let me give Pastor Rick South a huge shout out and congratulations for his years of faithfulness.

Construction vehicle in a field cleared of trees

Photo By Sebastian Grochow

During this service, Pastor Dusty mentioned the state of Abundant Life Church in Wyoming, Michigan, the church Rick is currently pastoring. The church is going through an expansion. This means things are messy.

When you look at any rebuilding project, the process looks like destruction.

Everything is everywhere. Things are scattered about. Pieces are broken or in the wrong place.

An outsider looking in would see pure chaos. Pure destruction.

How To Engage The Youth Within Your Church

The youth in your church is the future of your church. They are going to replace the current church deacons, elders, and leadership. This means you need to pay attention to the youth in your church.

While many churches know this, they struggle with engaging and keeping youth in their church. The church has seen far too many young people step away from the church and faith.

The youth are the future of your church

Photo by Jed Villejo

But there are things you can do to engage the youth in your church…

How To Engage The Youth Within Your Church

You know you have to. Without youth, your church will continue to dwindle in size. Eventually dissolving because your older congregants have passed away, your youth have left, and no one else has taken their place.

So, what do you do? To engage the youth and get them excited about church, try the following:

The Areas A Leader Must Balance

The Work-Life Balance Series

When you think of balancing your life, what do you think of? You probably think of balancing work and family.

These two areas are the first things people think of when they think of balancing life. And for good reason. Family and work are the two most important areas in most leaders lives.

What are the areas you must balance in life?

Image by Nathan Dumlao

But balancing your life goes beyond balancing your work and your family. There are many areas leaders forget to balance.

The Areas A Leader Must Balance

1. Work:

This one is a given. Work often takes up 40 hours or more of our lives. This means a quarter of our life is spent working in the office or building our brands.

What’s Your Strategy?

Whether you’re leading a church organization, a for-profit business, or even writing a blog, we can easily overlook a key part of our work. Creating and crafting an executable strategy.

Having a strategy for my blog is something I’ve struggled with.

We need strategy for growth

I know the direction I want to go with my blog. My mission is to help equip young leaders with the best leadership content out there.

To do this, I’ve consistently created content around leadership and personal growth. There’s been huge success in that aspect.

However, I’ve failed to grow the business side of the blog.

There’s a reason. I lacked a strategy for bringing in an income.

We Need A Strategy

Without a strategy, we will flounder in trying to grow what we’re building. We may know where we want to go.

While we may know where we want to go. That is vision.

How To Build Missional Relationships

One of the things I’ve struggled with as a youth leader has been how we call others to a saving knowledge of Christ. It always seemed so hooky.

The typical way we present Christ is through a message on a Sunday morning or Wednesday night. We share about Christ’s work and then invite people to accept Him into their hearts.

That or we do run-and-gun missionary work. This is where you hit the streets, tell the world they’re sinners, and try to get them to repent.

Build relationships, build followers

Image via Sam Beebe

Now, these methods have worked, or seemed to work, for quite some time. But I’ve always wondered if there was a better way to promote the Gospel and tell of what Christ has done.

My friend, Dave Arnold, recently released his new book titled Building Friendships: The Foundation For Missional Engagement. And his book hit on something that’s been stirring within me.