When the Lord first brought me into the pastorate, I was twenty-four years old and had a great desire to reach people in our community with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s hard to believe that a few weeks ago, I celebrated my sixtieth birthday, and in a few more weeks, I’ll begin my thirty-seventh year at Lancaster Baptist Church. Sometimes I wonder where the time went! I still believe that I have far to go, and with every part of my being, I want to finish well to the glory of God. But I’ve been reflecting over the journey God has given me and noting some of the key aspects of what a biblical journey of local church spiritual leadership should include. I often tell our staff that if a spiritual vision will survive, it must be accompanied by a strategy of faith. In other words, just hoping for the best, isn’t a great plan. We need biblical markers of where we’re going and what we are striving to accomplish for Christ. In this month’s Spiritual Leadership Podcast, I share very personally about five biblical and essential principles that I have been learning along the way of local church ministry. Some of these are principles that perhaps as leaders we have a tendency to give lip service to but neglect to implement. Some are ones I didn’t start out with in ministry but have worked to develop. All are principles that I am still growing in and still asking God to increase in my life. I pray that these truths are a help to you as you seek to provide spiritual leadership.
Mentoring may be a corporate buzzword, but when you think about it, the whole idea of mentoring is a biblical process. From Jesus mentoring His disciples to Paul mentoring Timothy and Titus, we see these kinds of relationships throughout the Bible, including the New Testament. One of the most direct instructions about mentoring is a verse we commonly think of in relation to discipleship: And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. (2 Timothy 2:2) Paul challenged Timothy to take the things he had learned from Paul and to commit them to faithful men to the point that they could train others also. This is a great pattern for mentoring relationships because it moves past just the word to a functioning definition. Mentoring takes place when we have so trained someone that they are able to train others. Paul gave another description of the mentoring process in Philippians 4:9: Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you. (Philippians 4:9) A wholistic approach to mentoring is a process that involves more than just hearing or instruction. It includes observation, reception, and application. In this month’s episode of the Spiritual Leadership Podcast, I share some principles God has blessed in my life as I have endeavored to mentor our ministry staff, men in our church, and various leaders in our community. I hope these are a blessing to you.
That word perilous in 2 Timothy 3:1 speaks of an unraveling. It’s not hard to see the application of this verse to the world we live in today. It seems that culture from top to bottom is unraveling around us. The question is, how should we as spiritual leaders respond in this perilous time? In this newest episode of the Spiritual Leadership Podcast, my son Larry and I discuss three vital responses: We need to settle our convictions. We need to know what we believe from Scripture and be unwaveringly faithful to biblical truth. As culture moves further and further from the truth there is a stronger and stronger pull on Christian leaders to accommodate their beliefs to the whims of culture. We must resist this trend. We need to study our culture. We need to be discerning of current trends. While we must never bend our convictions to culture, we do need to understand the world in which we live in order to reach people for Christ. We need to understand how to teach and apply biblical truth to the people which we are ministering. We need to seize our calling. We need a renewed commitment to proclaiming the gospel and to serving the local church. We need to lead like Jesus, walking in the Spirit even as we face opposition.
Prayerfully, and with God’s help, as vaccines get distributed, it looks like we could soon be closing the chapter on COVID-19. I think most of us are looking forward to breathing a collective sigh of relief. This season of ministry has brought numerous challenges, and most church ministry today does not look like it did just 12 months ago. Most of our churches have seen some combination of spiritual, physical and financial challenges over the past year. So what do we do now? How do we restart with fresh passion and vision? In today’s episode of Spiritual Leadership Conference, my son, Larry and I discuss moving ministry forward. We talk about learning from the challenges and reengaging our staff and our church family in our cause of declaring the gospel to our lost world.
Time is one of God’s greatest gifts. He gives it to all of us equally, and how we use it is our gift back to Him. We often speak of managing our time, but I have learned you really can’t manage time—you can only manage yourself. In this episode of the Spiritual Leadership Podcast, we discuss how to develop and remain accountable to a weekly schedule that holds all of the core responsibilities which God has given to us. My son, Larry, joined me for this discussion and posed helpful questions throughout, including these: What is a good starting point for developing a weekly schedule? How often do you step back and re-evaluate your priorities? What are the differences in your purposes for a weekly, monthly, and annual view? How often does your week go as it was planned? What are some of the ways you replenish and restore after expending energy? How do you deal with interruptions? What would your advice be to ministry leaders who want to implement this for themselves as well as for their team? I enjoyed this discussion with Larry. We have different temperaments but share the same desire to steward our lives fully for Christ. I believe what we covered in this conversation is helpful for every leader regardless of their temperament, responsibilities, or specifics of their weekly schedule. Near the end of our conversation, we talked about a new resource that is a tool for your weekly schedule—the revised edition of the Stewarding Life Planner. The changes in this edition are substantive and useful. They include a new weekly review process as you go through your roles as well as a daily page spread with room to include devotional thoughts, identify the big priorities for the day, and map out the day’s appointments and tasks. The planner is available for pre-order now and will be in before Christmas. For listeners of this podcast, we are offering a special 20% discount if you order by December 18. Simply use the coupon code PODCAST20.
If you have a heart for missions and for the spread of the gospel around the world, you are going to love this episode of the Spiritual Leadership Podcast. Our three guests on this episode each brought a unique vantage point to our discussion on New Testament missions. There are entire denominations that have designated social works as missions. But when we look to the New Testament model in Acts, we see missions as winning the lost, discipling them, and planting indigenous churches. Visiting with these men on this focus of missions was refreshing to me, and I believe it will be to you as well.