Mental health and ministry

Recently my wife Amy combined the things she learned from a youth mental first aid course, our last five years of ministry and some threads from her sociology PhD to present a course called 'Mental Health and Ministry.' Amy's PhD is funded by the Victorian state government as a way of figuring out how to measure the usefulness of their leadership-training funding in regional areas. Her thesis is focused on finding out what helps or hinders regional leaders. A key idea she's identified is that leaders operate within systems (even entrepreneurs, who break the mould to create new businesses).

Amy's course came in three parts. The first part based on the youth mental first aid course, emphasised reactions and referrals. Mental health manifests differently, so the best path is react calmly and evaluating the severity (but not the cause and treatment of mental illness, that's the job of a medical professional) and then offering a referral based on the situation. At its simplest, referral could mean connecting the person to a safe friend or at its most extreme calling emergency services. In the second part of the course Amy emphasised that our pastoral purpose should be to create a healthy system of care. Amy used a simple care matrix to help people in ministry think through how to help those they are pastorally responsible for. The four columns of the matrix are are about identifying the 'mental health need', the 'spiritual need', the 'social need' and our 'own needs'. So often mental health situations are confronting and complex so it helps to pause and plan out what's going on and what needs to happen.

The third and final part Amy gave a brief primer about Narcissism. A big part of pastoral ministry is helping people and so manipulative behaviour can be both a shock and a surprise. Not everyone wants to be helped or help. Narcissism is a behaviour that is characterised by a strong emphasis on the needs, feelings and desires of the narcissist. They will seek to control people or situations in order to fulfil their own needs, feelings or desires. The opposite of a narcissist is often labeled an echo, someone who always prioritises the needs, feelings and desires of other people. Healthy people have a bit of both, because having a certain degree of self-confidence is good and to live in a healthy community you need to know when and how to serve others.

Rethinking Narcissism: The Secret to Recognizing and Coping with Narcissists by Craig Malkin is an excellent introduction to Narcissism. Side by Side: walking with others in wisdom and love by Ed Welch is a helpful primer for how to provide pastoral help to those in your pastoral care who want to be helped.  Calvin's Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536-1609 by Scott M. Manetsch is a meaty theological and historical case-study of a church based pastoral care system. 

Your ministry is valuable

Here, Sam Alberry an evangelical minister in England observes that the phrase "strategic ministry" makes him uncomfortable because it privileges one group of people in God's schemes over another. This is the danger of using the pragmatism of business and politics in ministry; successful ministry to the urban elite becomes more valuable than struggling regional ministry. It shouldn't be like this, the beautiful egalitarianism of gospel truth, is like good philosophy, accessible to everyone. Everyone who trusts Jesus is a character in the divine narrative. You also run the risk down-playing God's providence, over-emphasising the importantance of your own schemes within the bigger picture. The other danger of top down ministry is that it can reinforce class systems that benefit the wealthy.

There is however a flip-side that Sam misses. Everyone is strategic, even those studiously attempting not to be strategic, are making a strategic decision not to be strategic! In reality the Lord's prayer values both the top down and the bottom up approach. We prayerfully connect the grand schemes of God, "thy kingdom come" with our life "here on earth." We also prayerfully connect our parking spaces and drinking water back up into God's larger plans, "give us today our daily bread." It's good that some people are theoretical physicists and it's good others are happy with a cup of tea. I preach to my congregation and I write this blog because I believe my ideas (if they correspond with God's bigger narrative) have value and might go a small way towards influencing people towards Heaven.

So the solution for evangelical ministry is a mixed economy. Small self-sustaining congregations alongside large booming congregations. Niche ministries with obscure goals alongside ministries with plans for wholesale cultural change. Amidst this all needs to be the acceptance and delight in a mixed economy of ministry with a robust sharing of ideas but not the imposition of particular models as normative or necessary. So for example Presbyterian theology with it's careful emphasis on the doctrines of grace contributes to the larger Australian Evangelical world. Therefore ever major town needs a self-sustaining Presbyterian church but they don't each have to be large or influential.

Evangelical Clearing Houses?

• Gospel Coalition Australia
• Ethos - Evangelical Alliance
• Centre for Public Christianity
• Thinking of God
• Eternity - Bible Society 

There are other Evangelical para-church organisations that provide online resources but they're either focused on specific things such as church planting (E.g. Geneva Push) or unfortunately mostly behind a pay wall (E.g. Go there for). You may not agree with every article from them but these sites in the list above are both a good guide to what Christians are currently discussing and useful resources for sharing online. 

Good Governance for Presbytery

Presbytery meetings are unusual because they include procedural or administrative items and theological and pastoral discussion. They're the building blocks of the Presbyterian Church, take substantial time and sometimes make decisions with significant ramifications. So here are my tips to making Presbytery better.

• The moderator needs to keep an eye on the clock, moving procedural items along quickly to give time to theological and pastoral items
• A good clerk is worth their weight in gold
• Presbytery should keep a list of standing orders, little ways of doing things that are peculiar to that particular group and that can be given to new members. 
• If possible meet during the day, this allows for extended discussion and breaks for networking (being kept up late is generally a bad pastoral move)
• Circulate material, agenda, reports, correspondence requiring action etc several days before meeting
• Develop a standing order where, non-controversial items are automatically approved and delegated
• Use the devotion time as a time to preach a short sermon, rarely do the ministers get to hear each other
• Don't pad reports, there's no need to persuade, just present the information
• Don't be afraid to attempt to persuade and negotiate during discussion though
• A good moderator should flag when the discussion is loose and informal and then flag when Roberts Rules should be adhered to closely
• Meet in a geographically central location
• The seating arrangement will affect the dynamic of the discussions

Tips for participating in Minister's Associations

Minister's Associations make more sense in a rural setting where there's little utility or return in duplicating things such providing emergency welfare or putting on big community events such as Carols by Candlelight by yourself. They are peculiar because apart from geography there is little in common, people pray differently, express themselves differently and minister to congregations from different traditions and no one person is in charge. So what are some tips for an evangelical in this setting?

• They're good for making connections with other ministers
• Some things can't be duplicated very effectively, especially if you're a small congregation
• Be polite and positive
• Use simple clear language, yes you're speaking to other Christians but they often have vastly different ways of expressing things to you
• Be assertive without being annoying, no one is charge which means you have to speak up but the group doesn't like any one person to take charge
• Meet with ministers individually outside the meetings
• Find a way to describe your involvement that doesn't descend into ecumencialism but doesn't disparage the co-operation: "the minister's association is a positive and useful gathering of resources and encouragement" 
• Like with any pastoral or theological conflict, be like Hannibal and choose the time and place of battle when the conditions are favorable, especially since unlike your congregation the stakes are lower
• Send out attachments in PDF (not everyone has Microsoft publisher)
• Send out an agenda several days before the meeting
• Choose a devotion that reflects your own priorities or background
• Try to attend most meetings but don't feel bad about missing a few, but send your apologies 
• Don't gossip about the other ministers, especially in a small town
• Don't be shy about identifying factions

Free Advice: great conferences on a budget

I'm currently attending the annual Presbyterian Ministry Conference at PTC Melbourne. I'm benefiting from the conference, learning things I wouldn't have learnt at home, connecting with old friends and making new connections. However I thought I'd better use my University Fellowship of Christians experience and offer some free advice to the powers that be, about how to run a great Christian conference on a small budget. This is because we don't want to put barriers before people hearing good preaching and we must resist entropy and embrace beauty.




Registration

• Online payment and registration, don't forget to provide a tax invoice, have an automatically generated email with PDF attachment
• Provide details about accommodation, meals, wifi, location etc online.
• Have a conference picture/design: this gives the conference an identity it also helps bless Christian designers 

Advertising

• Have Printed postcards made, go for 300 gsm designed as an actual postcard
• Send out emails more than six months in advance through a reputable email source, eg the denomination's email list, this alerts people to put it on their calendar
• Then post out the postcards, this prompts people to make a decision to go
• Recruit well-known or influential pastors to promote the conference, this builds word of mouth

Location

• Does the main venue have enough seating space, so people aren't squished together? 
• If it's a College, remove the tables, people can use tablets or pen and paper
• Make sure you have a working sound system (clear, no annoying noises) and a person to operate it. This is where you should spend some money of your meagre budget.
• Is there enough space for lunch and break-out spaces?
• It's OK not to have a data-projector, but if you do make sure you have an operator and everyone can see the screen. (Use handouts instead of a data-projector, encourages kinaesthetic learners.)
• Consider the beauty of the location, is there pleasant space to wander around in, a landscape to look at during morning tea? 

Logistics

• If you have spare cash, time and energy, set up a guest Wifi, make the password known. 
• Provide lunch and snacks
• Recruit volunteers a local church to be servers
• If you have the cash outsource the catering, volunteer food preparation costs a lot of social capital
• Spend a bit extra a provide lanyards, then people can wear them session to session without having to worry about those fiddly 'Mormon badgers'.
• Layout, simple things like space for people to mingle, linger or hide?  

Program

• Explain the purpose of the conference
• Make housekeeping short and interesting
• Have different geographic groups put up their hands or stand up at the beginning(this is an interesting and fun ice-breaker and better than groups by work or rank) 
• Have one or two short, interesting book reviews or short well-researched reviews of popular books so that you don't have to read them yourself
• Have several electives run by interesting/passionate B-listers/amateurs. This achieves two things, gives people a platform for their ideas and provides you with a chance to learn something (ensure quality by giving the presenters lots of notice) 
• Have a Bible reader who reads the passage and then prays for the speaker
• Interviews of the speaker are not strictly necessary, but can warm up a crowd for an unknown key-note speaker but keep them short!

Networking

• Conferences are about learning new things and networking (in the positive mutual beneficial/interest sense not the slimy building an empire sense) so provide opportunities to network, this means well arranged tea and coffee areas and one session where people are grouped in a way they don't usually work in, but isn't weird. 

Keynote Speakers

• Pick key note speakers who will preach interestingly on familiar passages or plod wisely through difficult passages. Two things that a difficult to find listening via podcast on your own. (This isn't just a Christian dilemma, notice how hard it is for TED talks to do this as well.) 

Post-Conference

• Make some or all of the material available online, as a gift to the community and to whet people's appetite for next year. 

Naughty suggestions

• Have a sponsor, offset the "your selling out to commercialism" by having the MC say we've got this sponsor because of these expenses so that the conference will be worth your while. Being upfront about it and having a fun sponsor will make this easy to do. 
• Give away books. This gives attending the conference in the flesh an added incentive. 

Planing Outline

Team: Logistics person, MC (they should be separate roles), sound, volunteers to serve and take registrations etc

2 years out

1. Book key note speakers
2. Draft a budget and ask the powers to be for that money

1 year out

1. Book elective leaders
2. Create advertising plan
3. Create logistics plan
4. Draft the program

6 months out

1. Set the advertising and logistics plans in motion
2. Publish the program

3 months out

1. Visit the site
2. Tweak the plans

If you don't have much money, as you can see time is your secret weapon. Encourage attendees to prepare for the conference by seeing it as an opportunity to learn new things and make or strengthen connections. :-) 

Better to teach than satisfy

Seth Godin on why it's better to teach than satisfy

Godin is a marketing guy with a heart, his little insights are often worth reading and are sometimes very suitable for ministry. In this case why; it's better to teach people something than to satisfy a need, even if the latter is easier at first.

"There's always a shortcut available, a way to be a little more ironic, cheaper, more instantly understandable. There's the chance to play into our desire to be entertained and distracted, regardless of the cost. Most of all, there's the temptation to encourage people to be selfish, afraid and angry. Or you can dig in, take your time and invest in a process that helps people see what they truly need. When we change our culture in this direction, we're doing work worth sharing. But it's slow going. If it were easy, it would have happened already. It's easy to start a riot. Difficult to create a story that keeps people from rioting."

How big is your planning horizon?

I've noticed in Christian ministry that we don't often reverse engineer from the super horizon, the end of time. We might plan a sermon series or next year's church camp but we don't think about where history is heading and the state of Christianity in our part of the world and where it'll be in a decade or two. Now admittedly, the plans will be hazier than next year's conference but we need to be connecting the dots all the way down. Otherwise there is a gap between our espoused theology (the importance of history and Jesus' return) and our practiced/actual theology (concern only for our local patch).  

Some reflections

It has been refreshing to read Introverts in the Church. People are a bundle of things, including temperament, which like the rest of the world has been damaged by Original Sin. It's been almost a year since the SOUL Church debacle and in the meantime I've done a fair bit of thinking about who I am, my weaknesses, my strengths and how my temperament shapes my philosophy of ministry.
The three big weaknesses I've focused on are confidence, clarity and self-awareness. (Thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit I believe I'm growing in each of these.) My three big areas of strength I've decided to prioritise are; imagination, integrity and determination. (Amy has encouraged me to embrace and enjoy them.) Then there are some inter-personal tools I've sharpened up on, such as not taking criticism personally. (Some counselling helped here.) What's been important about reading Introverts in the Church is untangling my temperament from the expectations of others in ministry. As an introvert I thrive on reflecting about ideas, need solitude to recharge my energy and can sometimes draw a blank or get stressed in situations requiring fast-paced verbal interactions. Some of the things that got me in trouble at SOUL, such as asking questions or making sure people didn't fall through the gaps of pastoral care I'll keep doing enthusiastically.
However looking back at the last nine years since beginning the path to become a church leader I've realised that I need to be both a little more positive about those around me, while also a little suspicious (in a healthy Suspicion and Faith sort of way!) and less naive. Introverts in the Church encourages introverts to create a "rule of life" where you pace yourself to be both productive while avoiding  burnout. Most recently it's been very useful to be around Mikey (my AFES campus director) who, although he has a slightly different philosophy of ministry, has encouraged me in several significant areas of productivity. For example, using multiple discrete projects with accompanying deadlines instead of filling the week with busy-work to appear godly or please people. Or in the area of communication: building prosaic bridges from my ideas to the audience or congregation. I'm looking forward to applying these insights and seeing what the future holds.

[Evangeline and I on Pilgrim Hill during a work-day earlier this year. Photo by Jordan de Hoog.] 

Measuring Ministry

At my old church I was working on a model of measurement built around the Great Commission (Matt 28:16-20) and the Parable of the Sower (Matt 13:1-23). (I never got to use it but maybe a version will surface at Uni Fellowship.) A question from Steve from at the Communicate Jesus blog prompted me to post this.

The Great Commission is the big (vaguer) picture, against which we measure several things:

• General attendance over a year and a straw poll of what that attendance over a year looks like. (eg 100 people on average per sunday 75 under twenty five and 25 over twenty five)
• Number baptisms, professions of faith or memberships over the year.

And so we stay real:

• Numbers of attenders who are no longer part of the part of the community
• Number of members who are no longer part of the part of the community

Plus an important miscellaneous measurement:

• Number of flyers distributed and Bibles given away

The Great Commission is about reach of the gospel these measurements should give us idea of the ministry has reached over the year. (The data could then be compared with other data such as the local census data or a similar church/ministry.)


The Parable of the sower is about longitudinal (personal) growth:

Asking a representative sample (hadn't figured how to do that yet) the same questions every year, even those who have left the church under either positive or negative circumstances.

1. How have you seen God's grace in your life this past year?
2. What theological/christian book have you read this past year?
3. Are you a part of a local congregation?
4. What are you looking forward to in the coming year?
5. What do you remember about church or ministry x?

We need to keep in mind that we don't ultimately know who will Persevere but we can see fruit of God's grace in people's lives.

Some general contextual observations. There's nothing dirty with measuring ministry, God told Abraham he'd bless him with as many descendants as there are stars. However as we parse the data we should keep God's gigantic plans (eg David's census or Ananias' field). God may be weakening or strenghtneing the visible church in a particular region and no amount of data changes that dynamic. 

Who needs the gospel?

In Christian ministry, raw conversions are highly valued and "transfer" growth is often disparaged. Raw conversions, are undoubtedly exciting, for example my wife was one. When Amy made her public profession of faith; Christianity, churches, theology and the bible were new, strange and exciting. On the other hand I grew up in a family were the gospel was a constant explanation and motivation.

But here's the kicker, both Amy and I need to hear the gospel again. We need to hear it explained, contextualised, preached and argued. Those regular Christian punters in the pews need the gospel just as desperately as the pagans at T.A.B. and the preacher needs it most of all. What I'm really saying is that we've lost sight of the discipleship forest in the search for the conversion trees.

This is what I meant in a previous post about discipleship, we should measure church growth longitudinally instead of simply numerically. In addition, in the search for conversions we've dumbed down the gospel in order to get as many across the line as quickly as possible. Applying the gospel to lots of different people will require lots of planning, careful explanation and good questions.

The Gospel changes people

I'm working my way through How People Change by Timothy Lane and Paul Tripp. I think they're the American versions of Tim Chester. While it's a little over-written with examples, it's a great source of practical pastoral application. Basically it's about building a personal eschatology, the nuts and bolts of Sanctification in other words. The Gospel changes people in the midst of their current circumstances based on their past forgiveness in Christ and looking towards their future hope of life forever with God. For example at the beginning of the book they outline five ways this gap between forgiveness and hope gets filled by partial gospel truths.




Danger

• Each solution by itself is based only on a single strand of gospel truth

The full solution to living in the gap between past forgiveness and future hope:

1. Humbled before God's activity
2. Realisation of present benefits of belonging to Christ
3. Responding to God's call to growth and change
4. A Lifestyle of repentance and faith

Partial Solutions


Formal participation

• Claim = participation is all that matters
• Truth = participation in the body of Christ is important
• Current = Grace above participation

Performance of rules

• Claim = performance based on obedience
• Truth = obedience should be part of our response to Grace
• Current = our response is to God's grace not the other way around

Activism

• Claim = working for wider cultural change
• Truth = The gospel does challenege culture
• Current = God may empower or not empower your activities

Biblicism

• Claim = being a biblical expert
• Truth = God does want us to know him
• Current = knowledge alone doesn't save

Psychology

• Claim = healing is avalible
• Truth = Jesus is our healer
• Current = full healing won't happen till later

Preaching

Preaching is a humbling experience, particularly it's aftermath. My dad's an artist, in his poetry and artwork he's able to express simple ideas beautifully. I wanted to do that with preaching, instead the result is a babbling mishmash of concepts and illustrations. My supervisor Campbell has encouraged me to be more structured and I've seen first hand the benefits of being pastoral: talking about people's actual experiences to actual situations in the congregation. Today I've decided that, while I need to keep being pastoral, I should aim to be a philosopher, like my favorite philosopher Peter Kreeft. In other-words have the goal of expressing complex truths simply. I then had the most encouraging conversation with James Veltmeyer, who is a SMBC grad and youth minister in Bellerive, Hobart.

He reminded me of Chapo's famous model, explained here, and then outlined to me his own variation with a few extra encouraging tips. James, before going into ministry was a carpenter, this coupled with his personality and SMBC training makes him a clear, funny and strong communicator.

James's tweaked Chapo model:

1. State the main idea
2. Show the main idea in the Bible
3. Illustrate the main idea
4. Critique the main idea 
5. Explain from the passage
6. Apply with examples

He also recommended thinking about my delivery and suggested another alternative where the critique goes at number 2 to make people "hungry for the passage." With delivery he said I should try to make every phrase and gesture count, think about what I want to achieve. He encouraged me to be direct with the "possible applications" because we are often afraid as preachers of the people's reactions. Then he suggested a really nifty idea of using the "impossible application" as way of thinking of good illustrations. 

On top of all this I read this useful article about the gap between exegesis and application at the Briefing, if you are a preacher or you listen to sermons you should read it. (I'm going back to Preacher's workshop next year!)

[Photo of James with his son. and a fish.]

Mild push-back: Mikey on 'children in Church'

Mikey, as part of a great "no easy answers" series, asks about keeping children in the church service. It's an emotive topic, and these are all thoughts in progress. I tend towards keeping children in the service but recognise that in a well-resourced church (read money to spend and people passionate about kids learning separately) should run "age-appropriate" programs for kids.  However churches that are under-resourced shouldn't feel the burden to run  "age-appropriate" programs. Now I'm aware I'm part of a small Christian subcultural trend towards age-integration but I'm glad Mikey's raised the question, popular Australian culture assumes that the institutionalisation of kids is a good thing. I don't think this wider trend is healthy although this isn't to say individual schools or even individual day-care centres can be really well run and beneficial places. Furthermore within the church, occasional age or gender segregated events can be powerful experiences. However in the end there seems to be a biblical model of the whole community learning and worshipping together. While I believe this is the right theological direction for me to lead my congregation in, there are practical advantages and disadvantages.

Practical Advantages:

• You learn from how other parents discipline, positively and negatively
• You get help if you're struggling with raising your kids
• Kids learn the patterns and rhythms of church together

Practical Disadvantages:

• The Stigma (similar to the "we never eat McDonalds" or "let our children watch TV") if you actually want to send your kids out to day-care* for the service
• Is this all a setup for teenage Amish naughty stage [nomenclature?] - in other words its all rosy till your back's turned
• The Teething problems of setting this all up might not be worth it

(*Day-care: if it's 'day-care' let's be honest about that and do it well and not pretend it has a high educational value but on the other hand if it really is 'age-appropriate learning' let's recognise that!)

Should our congregations have an identity?

I'm the pastor of a small church plant, SOUL Presbyterian Church and we worship together in the city of Hobart. I arrived a year and a half after our mother church Cornerstone Presbyterian and it's minister, Campbell had started the church. The goal is for SOUL to eventually become independent financially, with its own session of elders. SOUL is part of the Vision 100 network, which ultimately wants 10% of Tasmania to be attending "gospel-based churches" and sees planting lots of small churches as a way of achieving that goal.

I recently read this blog post and it got me thinking about our church's identity again. In it Trevin Wax interview a couple of pastors about the idea that our churches should be multi-ethic. Most of Tasmania is Anglo, (white Australian) but there notable class divisions, the flannelette curtain being an obvious one. One of the exciting things about SOUL which reminds me of Melbourne, are how many nationalities are represented in the congregation. However the congregation is overwhelmingly University educated and about two thirds are unmarried. We meet at 5pm in the city but most people drive although a few walk or ride. Our services are simple and we share a meal afterwards which together I think creates a relaxed atmosphere.

One of my goals, Vision 100's and the Presbyterian Church, and rightly so, is to grow God's Kingdom. What that looks like on the ground is lot tricker. Should congregations be homogenous units? (Is that a worthy means and a noble end?) Should we target a specific group or pick a particular time-slot or geographic area? Certain things are always going to be the glue for particular groups. At SOUL I suspect it is similar life experiences. But our time-slot, our preaching, our music and our developing sub-culture will end up excluding someone, so how much do I work against our natural tendency to homogenise? I have a feeling that this year will be one where the churches in our 'network' think more about our churches identities and our wider goals for our Tasmanian church planting. 

Sticky Church - Book Review

Larry Osborne argues that it's better to have a smaller "sticky" church were people stay around than a larger church with lots of people coming for a while and then leaving. His central idea for a "sticky" church is "sermon-based small groups."  It's very much common sense, generally people feel more comfortable learning about God and sharing their lives in smaller groups. He advocates keeping groups together instead of redividing them, because dynamics matter and following the sermon series because it helps people learn more about the Bible by discussing the same passage they've heard on Sunday. He's also an advocate of simple church, were small groups are prioritized over various alternative programs. Although with all this it's good to keep in mind that this is just an argument for one idea for helping churches work, not the endpoint of Christian discipleship or even the secret to church growth!

Constructing a Booklist

I'm building a book list of short but informative and interesting books to give away to my congregation. There are plenty of longer tomes, but I'd like something short and sharp without being superficial. In a way this list represents my worldview because I only want to recommend books I'm confident in and I feel represent my worldview.

These are the topics I have books for so far ...

• Abortion: Abortion and the Early Church by Michael J. Gorman
• Apologetics: The Journey by Peter Kreeft
• Contentment: The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs
• Discipleship (How-to): One to One Bible Reading by David Helm
• Discipleship (tough spurring-on): Am I Really a Christian? by Mike McKinley
• Ecology: Pollution and the Death of Man by Francis Schaeffer
• Gospel: Making the most of the Cross by John Chapman
• Genesis: Did Adam and Eve really exist? by John Collins
• Heretical groups: Defending the Faith by Richard Abanes
• Heaven and Hell: The Great Divorce by CS Lewis
• Idolatry: Counterfeit Gods by Tim Keller
• Jesus (history): Jesus: A very Short Introduction by Richard Bauckham
• Jesus (theology): From Glory to Golgotha by Donald Macleod
• Parenting: Loving the Little Years by Rachel Jankovic
• Pornography: Sexual Detox by Tim Challies

These are the topics I don't have books for ...

• Discipleship (gentle spurring-on)
• Doctrines of Grace
• Cosmology
• Homosexuality
• Gender
• Judgement
• Justification
• Sanctification
• Sin (A summary)

Books I've heard might be useful and may find their way onto the list ...

• Satan and Demons: Living with the underworld by Peter Bolt

Are there any topics I've missed, books I should find a topic for, books that I should replace or books that need to be added?

A useful set of goals for ministry

Being a minister is difficult because it's a vocation that deals with qualities that difficult to measure such as relationships and spirituality.  So it can be fairly discouraging without a direction and difficult to set goals but I like this checklist I found on the interwebs:

• Pastoral ministry requires far more courage than I ever dreamed.  
• Expositional preaching is a far more effective medium than I ever imagined.
• The temptation to quit the church or quit pastoral ministry all together is rather frequent, but perseverance is worth it.  
• Neglecting important ministries is terribly easy but also deadly in the long-term.  
• If there is a strong love-bond between the pastor and his flock – the congregation believes that I love them and I believe that they love me – that will cover a multitude of sins.  

[h/t 'What should I expect to learn my first 5 years as a pastor?']

Ditch all kids ministry after creche?

In a trends-to-watch post, Trevin Wax makes this very interesting observation about the future of congregational ministry.

Evangelicals are already divided on the issue of ministry philosophy. I suspect these lines will become more defined in the next decade. The attractional model will lead many churches to adopt incredibly entertaining children’s church programs, youth group experiences, etc. The attempt is to hold on to an evangelical culture that is increasingly bored with church. Mega-churches will continue to compete with one another for a decreasing number of “regular church-goers.” Other churches will react to the attractional model by upholding family-centered churches and dismissing event-based evangelism.  

I remember Mum and Dad keeping us in church during the service while most of the other kids trooped out for Sunday School.  (As a concession, we were allowed to draw or read during the sermon.)  It's a model I generally prefer but what so often tends to be the case is that a 'family service' is designed along attractional lines with a "fun" kids church to keep all the kids out of mischief during the service.  However what then tends to happen is that the teenagers have been conditioned to be out of church during the sermon and so they have to have something special just for them and on it goes until people rejoin the main service when they're ninety.

I'm all for creche, if my infant daughter is screaming one of us scoops her up and takes her out.  But the moment you think we should be teaching these little tackers is the moment they should be back with the rest of the congregation.  However in our modern world of broken families, family-discipline can be very lax so maybe the cost of having everyone in the same room is a changed service dynamic.

Pastor-Theologians?

Over at First Things, someone argues that pastors should be at the forefront of doing theology, guarding orthodoxy and applying Scripture across the broad range of human experience.  This makes sense if the focus of Christian activity, this side of eternity, is the church.  I trained as a high school teacher before entering the ministry and generally this idea of leaving theology to the ministers has a parallel with teaching theory and teachers.  Those in the academy sometimes produced powerful and useful resources, but at other times their trendy theories had little bearing on the reality of the classroom and the ordinary student experience.  The article says rightly:

"Historically, the church’s most influential theologians were churchmen—pastors, priests, and bishops. Clerics such as Athanasius, Augustine (indeed, nearly all the church Fathers), Anselm, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Edwards, and Wesley functioned as the wider theologians of their day—shaping not only the theological vision of their own parishes, but that of the wider church. In their day, the pastoral community represented the most influential, most insightful, and most articulate body of theologians."