For 20 years I served as a family ministry leader in the local church. For the past five, I have been a lead pastor. What I am learning these very days is that I have to be willing to fight for a healthy family ministry if we are going to have a healthy family ministry. The family ministry staff needs me to come alongside them and walk with them as they serve kids, teens, and parents because this is hard work and also important work. This is also work that our enemy does not want to happen. I must choose to be the chief champion of family ministry in my church.

Pastor, I know how busy you are and I know you have so many things fighting for your attention. Let me share a few ways you can step in and fight for your family ministry even if you never spent time serving in that area of the church. Here are 13 steps every lead pastor can take.

• Fight for their budget.
• Cover your team with prayer.
• Help solve problems.
• Learn from your team.
• Speak well of your family ministry.
• Recruit leaders to serve in family ministry.
• Provide training for your family ministry team. (this is where a conference like D6 comes in!)
• Push your team to have faith-filled goals.
• Celebrate what your team accomplishes.
• Be patient and encouraging when mistakes are made.
• Pray specifically for kids, teens, and college students!
• Be responsive to your family ministry team.
• Empower your team to take risks with innovation.

Your family ministry team needs you to be the chief champion for the work they are doing. This is not easy work but it can be done where there is vision and support. Lead pastor, I am praying for you and thankful for your work to lead the church!

Let’s ask this question together, what are you going to make time for as we get back to a more normal pace? I believe we have a beautiful opportunity to make time for things that we know are very important for our souls. We also have the chance to course-correct and not return to patterns of time waste that robbed us of a more meaningful life. Here are a few things I believe we need to be making time for…

• Make time to listen to the voice of God.
• Make time to rest.
• Make time to travel.
• Make time to celebrate.
• Make time for community.
• Make time to share a meal with family you prepare at home.
• Make time to worship with others.
• Make time to read.
• Make time to volunteer.
• Make time to reflect.
• Make time to mentor someone.
• Make time to hang out with friends.
• Make time to dream.
• Make time to laugh.
• Make time to pray.
• Make time to evaluate on focus on what’s most important.
• Make time for a hobby.

This is my list I am trying to work on as we speed up in my corner of the universe. Don’t allow a call for a return to normal to push you to settle for the old normal. Let’s be better coming out of this pandemic. Let’s be intentional about what we make time for. Make time for what matters most.

Let me first be clear about what is really needed for social media and the church. What every church needs the most is a simple and consistent presence on a few platforms. The church never needs to worry about being everywhere, but you must be where your people and the people you want to reach are. Our church has chosen to focus on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and we are only on Twitter to have a professional presence. Instagram and Facebook are where we focus. We work hard to keep it simple, honest, positive, and consistent. We want anyone checking out our church to get an idea of our culture and our vibe as a church…that is all. It’s just one tool, and we trust our website to be where people really exploring our church to gain a full picture.

Let’s talk about common traps I see…

1. Incorrect information on profiles. / You can’t help folks connect with your church when you have bad info on your profiles!
2. Bad logos. / You need designed logos for your social media platforms. PLEASE pay attention to this!
3. Links back to websites that are not professional. / Your website and your search rank on google matter more than anything. Great social with a bad website is a nightmare.
4. Stock photography overload. / Stock is helpful for many things, but it’s also important to get real shots of your real environment so you can reveal who you really are.
5. Argumentative tone. / These are the churches that are constantly posting something they are mad about. Not helpful!
6. Low-quality video. / It’s really not that hard. Please get tools to help your capture quality video and sound and film with good light.
7. Infrequent posts. / Posting once a week? Why? Get a plan and work it consistently. You never know what day someone new will check out your church.
8. Constant infomercial. / These are the profiles that basically make announcements. Some promo is great, but you can use social media to encourage spiritual growth instead of just more church attendance.
9. Celebrity driven vs. community revealing. / These profiles try to lift up a few staff members as the church celebrity and author of every amazing quote to try and draw people in vs. shining the spotlight on the church as a whole and many people in the church.
10. Everything is HYPE tone. / This is when every post tries to convince people everything your church does is amazing when you know that’s not true. When everything is amazing, your real quality efforts are diluted.

Let me share 4 practical reasons I think it’s wise to teach through books of the Bible in your ministry setting…

1. The spotlight is shifted off of the speaker and onto Scripture. // It’s not really about you anyway. Your people need more of Jesus and less of you. Pushing yourself to be text-centric in your preaching will help ensure you make less of yourself.
2. We get to address issues we would normally avoid. // You know you avoid certain topics in the Bible. Teaching through entire books of the Bible pushes you to teach the whole counsel of Scripture rather than your favorite topics. When you have to teach on a difficult issue you grow and you handle it with open hands and grace. Your congregations are asking the questions the Bible wants to speak to.
3. We help people learn how to explore the Biblical text rather than just listening to our favorite speakers. // There is no reason the Bible should ever be boring. If it’s boring, it’s totally on the speaker and not the text. Listening to a message and engaging is more about listening and learning than entertainment. Something entertaining or emotional is not always true. We have to help frame our congregation’s expectations when engaging the Scriptures.
4. The Holy Spirit has the chance to work in the speaker as much as the congregation. // When you have to lean into a text, discern its central meaning, understand its context, and search for real-life application, the Holy Spirit is going to work in the speaker as much as the crowd. There is a dependence that comes only from having to depend on the Holy Spirit to reveal why the Scriptures say what they say.

I feel the tension. We are ready to get back in motion as we serve our communities. The problem arrives when we don’t ramp up at a pace that allows our teams to heal as we accelerate. When we try to move right back to an old pace of ministry after all the trauma we have endured, we will injure our own souls, trying to chase imaginary outside expectations. Recovery time has to be built and expected for our staff and volunteers as we enter the 2nd half of 2021. Here are a few reasons why…

1. We have to adjust to being back together regularly. It’s hard to go from being isolated at home to gathering in spaces with people. Be patient because even if it’s not an issue for you, it’s a big one for others.
2. Everyone has an opinion about how we should regather. I say this because some folks are not going to like your plan, and they will push back.
3. Volunteer teams have to be rebuilt and retrained. Volunteer teams are fragile right now. You are going to have to add new leaders and also train your old leaders again. Don’t be hard on yourself; we are all dealing with this.
4. Mass migrations are in motion. You are going to see lots of folks move away from your city and to your city. Moves were put on hold in 2020, and this year we will see lots of change with people switching jobs and starting over. This applies to ministry staff also.
5. We have to find new rhythms for this new season. Not everything we were doing pre-covid needs to come back. We have the chance to embrace new rhythms that could help us do more ministry at a more healthy pace. New rhythms take time to evaluate.
6. The results of the pandemic will be different than the pandemic. We are just now seeing the impact of the past year. What we face next is also unknown, and that uncertainty is hard for us to deal with internally. The more we fight to recover, the more we will be ready for the next challenge.

You need to check out Arlene’s new book Screen Kids: 5 Relational Skills Every Child Needs in a Tech-Driven World. The reason your family needs a technology strategy for your personal family is that technology is never neutral. Technology is meant to demand more and more of your time and attention. There is no natural end to time with technology; in fact, it’s designed to keep you engaged. If your family does not have a plan, then the family will get ran over by tech.

We know we need technology, and we know that we need to help our kids engage and leverage technology. Arlene helped us think about digital vegetables and digital candy. We would never allow our kids to have unregulated access to the candy bowl. Why would we give our kids unregulated access to digital candy? YouTube, Netflix, games, social media are all forms of digital candy. These are tools that are designed to keep your kids engaged with minimal boundaries. If you don’t develop a plan to help your kids navigate these forms of technology, the technology will shape your child in ways you never want as a parent.

One of the things that Dr. Elmore helped us process is that Gen Z is different from millennials, just as millennials are different than Boomers! Each generation reacts and adjusts to the one that precedes it. Here are the nine shifts that Dr. Elmore sees in his research…

1. Confidence is morphing into caution.
2. Spending money is moving into saving money.
3. Attacking education is morphing into hacking one.
4. idealism is morphing into pragmatism.
5. Consuming media is morphing into creating media.
6. Viral posts are morphing into vanishing posts.
7. Feeling special is changing to feeling savvy.
8. Text messages are morphing into iconic messages.
9. Anticipation is changing to anxiety.

Going to process this list as I work to invest in Gen Z in the coming years! Look for more notes coming this week here on the blog!

If you don’t listen to the Carey Nieuwhof Podcast, you need to be! Carey has a host of ministry and business leaders on his podcast and dives deep into their leadership habits. I have yet to hear one say they don’t have routines that keep their leadership lives in a healthy place. A ministry leader without healthy routines is doomed for constant chaos and frustration. When we don’t have routines, we will be constantly distracted from the most important work we need to accomplish. Without routines, we will also not have the needed flexibility when emergencies arise. Here are a few areas of your ministry life you need to embrace firm routines. (These are not in order…)

• Spiritual Habits / Your personal prayer life and time in the Scriptures are key to maintaining a soft heart that depends on God. You have to make this a priority, and you have to find a routine that empowers you with time to focus. There is no one set path for spiritual habits. This is very personal so get creative.
• Administrative Work / This kind of work fuels some and exhausts others. Either way, admin work can dominate our calendars if we allow it. Block off focused time to attack admin work without distraction and try to do it the same days and times each week so you can communicate with other leaders when you can get back with them.
• Teaching Preparation / If you teach in any area of the church, this is critically important. When you block out firm times to study and prepare, you will guarantee yourself that you will not be scrambling on Saturday night. I personally block our Tuesday and take the entire day to craft the message at hand for the weekend and future preparation. I don’t do Tuesday meetings. I don’t do admin work. I write and study. This allows me to have the rest of the week to allow the message to sit in my mental crockpot and slow cook in my soul.
• Rest and Family / If you don’t have a rest and family routine, the church will steal you away from your family. Many ministry leaders blame the church for poor rest and family habits when they have no established routine. Flexibility is demanded here, but there is no reason your family can’t have a set routine, so connection and fun are planned. There is no reason you can’t schedule a real day off and rest.
• Meetings / You can meet with others so much that you neglect getting actual work accomplished. I encourage ministry leaders to have preferred meeting times in the week that you try to leverage. I even encourage people to find the best locations that help the meetings be most effective in several parts of town.
• Communication and Marketing / Email, ministry communication, and social media can overrun your productivity. We are not at our best when constantly on our phones and responding to what’s immediate. It would be best to set times when you invest in digital communication ministry-wide and interpersonal through email and social media. Control the distraction and improve your focus!

Routines built around these areas will make such a difference in your ministry experience. If you want to be a healthy leader, then embrace the power of routine.

One of the things we know is that pastors have struggled during the pandemic. Many are considering walking away from leading their church due to the past year’s political and social unrest. Fighting for joy is one of the key elements for enduring this season. Yes, this is a season. Will you allow this season to push you away from your calling? One of the first things you can do to move toward health is start by daily choosing joy.

Before I give you a few helpful steps, let’s look to the Psalms. David wrote this idea as he navigated a tough season. He wrote, “This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24). Yes, this is a song, but it comes from this Psalm. David is giving us an idea of what it means to choose joy in the midst of difficult times. In the struggle, we have to choose to rejoice in the goodness of God. This choice is not a choice to ignore reality or face sorrow and pain. We rejoice in a way that is appropriate to the moment, but rejoicing leads us to depend on God. This is the starting place, and here are a few other helpful steps you can take to rediscover your joy as a pastor…

• Have a steady rhythm for prayer, reflection, and Bible reading. / Nothing will steal your joy as a leader like the trap of trying to lead in your own strength. This is the path to hear from God, cry out to God, and learn from God. Ignore your feelings and get in a rhythm.
• Invite a mentor or coach into your life. / In difficult seasons, make sure you leverage technology and get some time on your calendar to process your emotions and health. Once you find those trusted people be real and ask them to speak into you.
• Evaluate what brings you joy and what drains you and adjust. / Spend more time in your workday on what you love and give away some of what drains you. Some things are draining that you can never give away, but there is much we have taken on because of our tendency to overwork and earn approval from others.
• Be intentional with your calendar and take control of your week. / Your calendar and your planned schedule allow you to say no to many distractions. You probably need to be doing less right now so you can say yes to things that bring you life.
• Invest in your home life with the same passion you invest in the church. / Date, your wife, Hang out with your kids. Plan a vacation. Commit to your day off. Get a hobby. Your home time matters deeply for your ability to choose joy.
• Laugh and choose gratitude more. / Find things that make you laugh and enjoy! Look for moments of gratitude more. Invite the Holy Spirit to reveal His work so you can express gratitude.

If you are reading this and you are in a bad spot, there is hope. I have been where you are. I am thankful for your service to the local church and am praying you can rediscover joy and lead your church to be a joyful church.

We will have COVID-19 precautions in place for the next several months, but we are well into the process of regathering. Here are some of the lessons we have learned…

• Make a Plan and Be Flexible / Making a plan matters but being flexible with that plan is even more important. Many things we thought would work did not. Many of our plans have to be adjusted as we talked with community leaders and medical experts. Flexibility is the key to staying sane in this process.
• Communication Matters / How your share your plan with your congregation will be an important factor in the process. Be clear, be confident, and be humble as you reveal the process. You are communicating with many people that have lost family members and friends in the pandemic.
• Listen to Your People More than Social Media / Don’t develop your plan around social media experts in other states or cities. Listen to the people you lead. Work to answer the questions of your people. Develop a plan that helps your people regather safely.
• Make Sure you can Defend Your Plan / If you can’t defend your plan, you don’t have a good plan.
• Online Matters So Much More Now / Your online experience will be the front door of your church from now on. Don’t take your eye off the online experience. Create an experience that helps people grow if they are watching from home or away from your gatherings.
• In-Person Gatherings are Needed / Many of our people desperately needed the in-person experience. They needed to be around people. Isolation was tough for them. In our context, people were thankful for a regathering plan and precautions as we moved forward.
• Give People Options for Community Building / We chose to leverage in-person and online community groups. It helped us invest in a much wider number of people navigating the pandemic. Don’t forget people that are still lying low as we work our way through the vaccine process.
• Don’t Rush Back to the Past Version of Normal / What you did pre-pandemic should not determine what is next. The time to dream of what can be is now!
• Be Patient with Your People / It will take time for people to be ready to regather. The ones that choose to do so early are not the same as the people who need time. Get ready for this to take longer than you think.
• Don’t Tear Down Other Church’s Plans / This may be the most important aspect of the process. Your plan will not be the same for everyone, and that’s just fine. Don’t tear down the plans of others when you don’t lead those churches and organizations. Give others the same patience as you want from your congregation.

These are some of the things we learned. We are seeing people slowly transition back to in-person gatherings, and we are also connecting with new families online and in-person. I am praying for you as you start the regathering process in your context.