Eight Essential Practices for Eliminating Fear of the Vile Practices
This article is featured in the The Vile Practices of Ministry (Feb/Mar/Apr 2018) issue of Circuit Rider
- Prayer: Whether you believe in divine intervention or not, clergy and churches who pray for it usually exhibit greater generosity and good administration.
- Personal Accountability and Generosity: Pastors must maintain good practices in their personal life. They will lack all credibility to ask it of others if they do not.
- Clarify the Mission. Every good leaders knows this, but without clarity of mission, finance and administration cannot be built to support it.
- Converse Across Ministries: Find the connections and clarify the mission through conversation. Financial leaders ought to be exploring what good local church ministries are doing and sharing how the finances are really working.
- Build Trust: Conversation builds it but also requires it. Look for ways to build trust between pastors, leaders and the whole congregation.
- Discern Great Leaders: Identify people who will (a) be honest even when it’s painful, even as they also (b) provide unwavering support and compassion to the ministry and mission.
- Delegate to those Leaders: No pastor can put good administrative practices in place without lots of help. Simple segregation of duties requires several leaders.
- Endeavor to Be Lifelong Learners: Pastors and church leaders must develop a thirst for learning in an array of fields including finance, administration and the law. Learning promotes courage, and courage promotes good health.