Your Ministry Was Never Meant to Run You

It usually happens a few weeks into the new ministry year. The leader who said yes to the nominating committee is now three events behind. The bulletin needs an announcement by Thursday. The volunteers are asking what’s next, and the plan — if there ever was one — lives in a to-do list on a phone.

I have been that leader. In more than eighteen years of pastoral ministry, I’ve watched faithful people give everything they had to a ministry until there was nothing left to give. Most of them didn’t burn out because they lacked love for God or for people. They burned out because the ministry was running them instead of the other way around. And many of them were busy with events that never moved a single person closer to Jesus.

All things are created twice

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey observes that everything is created twice. Every great building stood complete in the architect’s mind before a shovel ever touched the ground. The first creation is the vision. The second is the construction.

Scripture was teaching this long before Covey. Before Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, he spent months in prayer and then walked the broken walls alone by night. He saw the finished work before he told a single person his plan (Nehemiah 1–2). And when God called Moses to build the sanctuary, the tabernacle existed on the mountain before one board was cut:

“See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.”

Hebrews 8:5, KJV

That is the first creation for a ministry leader. It doesn’t begin in the newsletter or the bulletin. It begins on your knees, receiving God’s pattern before you build.

What happens when we skip it

When we skip the first creation, we jump straight to the second: events, schedules, sign-up sheets. Moses lived this. He sat judging the people “from the morning unto the evening” (Exodus 18:13), until his father-in-law finally spoke up:

“The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee.”

Exodus 18:17–18, KJV

Jethro’s counsel wasn’t “try harder.” It was a plan, clear limits, and raising up faithful people to share the load. Those same things sit underneath the five questions below.

The five questions

1 What is your ministry doing in the next three months?

Start with honesty. List what’s already on the calendar, and what you sense God calling you to add. Most leaders inherit a calendar before they ever set a goal, so begin with what’s really there.

2 What is each plan really designed to achieve?

This is the question most ministries never ask. Every plan should move someone one step closer to Jesus on the Pathway for Making Disciples: the one-page map of how our whole church makes disciples, from a person’s first connection to the day they are training others to make disciples.

So for every event on your calendar, ask: which step is this designed to move people toward?

• If your event is for people who will be having their first experience with the church, then the whole event should be designed around one goal: a second experience.
• If it’s designed to help people make a decision for baptism, then everything, from the music to the final invitation, should serve that decision.
• If it’s designed to turn casual attendees into regular attenders, then build belonging into it, and invite them into something that meets every week.

Name the step. Build the invitation to the next step into the event itself. Decide who will follow up within 48 hours. And if a plan doesn’t move anyone a step, redesign it or drop it.

3 What boundaries will you set right now to protect yourself from burnout?

Compare the hours per week your plan needs with the hours you actually have. If the plan is bigger than your week, shrink the plan or share the load. Don’t pay the difference with your Sabbath or your family. Name your early warning signs, and give someone permission to tell you when you’re overloaded.

4 What resources, training, or mentorship do you need?

Most leaders quietly go without rather than ask. Think through money and supplies, people, training, and mentorship, then write down one specific ask: who you will ask, for what, and by when.

5 Who is your Timothy?

Every healthy ministry is training its next leader. Paul put it this way: “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, KJV). Name the person you are discipling. If there isn’t one yet, name three people you could invite, one thing you’ll teach them this quarter, and one thing they’ll lead by day 90.

How to use them: the Blueprint Hour

No leader answers these questions on the spot. That’s the point. So here is the most important step: sometime in the next two weeks, set aside one to three quiet hours and work through them prayerfully. Put it on your calendar now.

• Make it a prayer hour, not a screen hour. Print the worksheet and put your phone in another room.
• Begin by listening. Read Exodus 25:40 and Nehemiah 1–2, and ask, “Lord, who do You want this ministry to reach and grow in the next 90 days?”
• Keep the Pathway open beside you. It’s printed inside the worksheet.
• Finish with one page. Copy your answers onto the one-page summary and share it with your pastor or elder.
• Come back in 90 days. Line your plan up with the Sabbath School quarter, and repeat the Blueprint Hour as each new quarter begins.

Pastors and board chairs: do this together

The Blueprint Hour works well alone, but it’s powerful as a team. Give your ministry leaders two weeks to complete their worksheets, then spend part of your next board meeting or a Sabbath afternoon leadership gathering letting each leader share their one-page summary. Lay them side by side on the Pathway. You’ll see in one evening which steps have five ministries aimed at them and which have none, who is overloaded, and who has no Timothy yet — before any of it becomes a crisis.

In a small church, where one faithful member often leads three or four ministries at once, use one worksheet per ministry. Question three will matter more for those leaders than for anyone.

Your ministry was never meant to run you

God has not called you to carry your ministry alone or to build it without a pattern. He invites you up the mountain first. Block the time, ask the questions, and let Him show you the pattern. Then build with His power and His vision.

— Pastor Myckal Morehouse