We’ve reached The Final Four.  If you haven’t followed along with us, we are discussing ten tips that you may use to ensure a fruitful ministry no matter where you live.  Whether you are a preacher, elder, deacon, teacher, trustee, small group leader or youth leader, these tips, when practiced, will ensure fruitfulness in your ministry.

If you want to refresh your memory of the first six tips, click here. Now, let’s complete the task before us.  Welcome to the The Final Four.

Tip #7: Learn to celebrate victories with people in your church no matter how small or insignificant they may seem to you or anyone else.  People want to know there is something great about the church they attend.  People want to have something that excites them about coming back week after week, especially if they are new Christians.  People want to have something to say to their neighbor, their relative or the people in their work place.  In short, people want to know that their church is making a difference in their community and the world.

If you are a leader you need to know that your congregation is doing something right.  The trap of negativity raises its ugly head in all quarters of the church.  Stepping into its snare is easy if you are not paying attention.  Attendance is down.  Offerings are down.  When it is summer, people are fishing, working in their yards or on vacation somewhere other than where they live.  When it is winter, people are skiing, snowmobiling, celebrating the holidays or snuggled into their easy chairs with a warm fire crackling in their fireplace.  If you are a leader, you must be especially careful not to let negative issues cloud the sunshine of positive events and ideas going on in your church.

If you are a leader, then purposely look for the little things you see changing in the lives of your church people.  “Mrs. Jones is here for the fourth straight week!”  “Bob’s Sunday school class has six students rather than the regular three.”  “We started on time!”  “We have 50% of our congregation in small groups during the week.”  Look for the little things because enough little things will snowball into a big “something.”

Keeping the tone positive is especially important during the time of offering.  It’s easy to remind people that they need to give more because the church is behind in its budget.  However, even at those times we need to say to our people, “Thank you for your giving.  We were able to donate 50 pair of shoes to needy children at the school.”  “Thanks for giving.  Did you know that people gave more than we budgeted.  Consequently, we were able to send ten more kids to camp this year.”  If people feel appreciated and know that the money they give is making a difference, they will continue to give.

Celebrate the victories no matter where you find them, no matter how small they appear to you.  Those victories will bring smiles to faces and happiness to hearts of people.

Tip #8: Keep your goal in front of you and in front of the congregation.  Have you ever been driving and talking at the same time?  Oops, you just missed the corner that takes you to Taco John’s.  Oh my, you’ve passed the turn off to your kids’ school.  Driving while you are talking is especially difficult especially when you are talking excitedly.  You forget where you are going.

Sometimes our churches become so oriented to activities that we forget about our main purpose.  Sunday school class, worship service (a.m. and p.m.), small group, youth activities, choir practice, small group activities, board and committee meetings, visiting the elderly or those in need of encouragement, coffee with the men or the women.  All these activities are good, but they often keep us so busy that we forget our purpose as a church.

Oh, I became so involved in writing this blog that I forgot to remind you that the purpose of the church is to make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20).  We are so busily involved in keeping people in the church that we neglect the task of getting people to come to Christ.  Neglect leads to forgetfulness.

Take a few moments to slow down.  Look at your church budget.  What percentage of your budget supports the church membership?  What percentage goes to missions, missions that are evangelistic in nature?  What percentage funds organizations that feed church members, but do not encourage evangelism?

Now look at your church activities?  How many activities are designed to feed people already in the church?  How many activities are designed to evangelize the lost people in your community, in your neighborhood?  How many church activities are designed to minister to the community outside your congregation?

As leaders, it is our responsibility to keep the first things first.  We must be ever diligent to keep evangelism of the lost at the forefront of our budgeting and activity planning.  We must always ask the question of ourselves and all church ministries, “How can we reach the lost?”

Tip #9: Take time to visit other congregations.  Go to be invigorated.  Go to see what’s happening outside of your world.  My friend, Gloria, lives in Newcastle, WY.  When people talk to her about where they’ve been, she says, “I’ve been to Osage.”  Osage is about seventeen miles to the NW of Newcastle with a population of 208 in 2010.  We all laugh when she says this because she has traveled many places, but prefers to go nowhere.

Unfortunately, that is exactly how many of our church people and leaders feel.  They prefer to go nowhere else.  Yet, outside their walls is a vast world teeming with new ideas and approaches that we might use to share the gospel.

In one of my ministries, we focused our attention on understanding what a contemporary worship service looked like.  We sent some of our elders to different churches to see what was happening.  My wife and I traveled with one of our elders to a town a few miles down the road.  Loud contemporary music with uplifted hands greeted us during the service.  People wore whatever they wanted to wear: t-shirts, button-down shirts, blouses, skirts, jeans, shorts, sandals, shoes, boots.  The preacher wore blue jeans with holes in them.  Our poor elder was quite taken by all this.  Eventually, our congregation added a contemporary service.  We took ideas from the churches we observed.  We left a lot of ideas right where we found them, but the experience served us well.

When I’m out and about, I like to pretend that I’m a hick from Wyoming.  No pretending.  It’s true.  I look at everything.  I listen to everything.  I take mental notes and written notes.  I ask questions, all in an effort to learn from other congregations.  What works for them and why?  What doesn’t work?  What would work for us and what wouldn’t work for us?  Learning from others is more than just book learnin’.

Tip #10: Leave church things at the church when you come home.  If I could name the biggest fault in my ministry, this would be it.  I did not successfully leave church things at the church.  In the long run, this affected my attitude and the attitude of my family members.  Shame on me.

This past month I attended an orientation class for new employees at our hospital.  I’ll be teaching the class on occasion next year and thought it would be a good idea to watch and listen to the lead chaplain.  It is amazing what you can learn when you have a mind to learn.  

When the chaplain came to the section on self-compassion, he shared with the new employees that when he punched out at the time clock, he reached up and took off his chaplain’s badge.  He was now a husband, a man in the community outside of the hospital.  This became his mental exercise to close the door to one compartment of his life and open the door into another compartment.  He left behind the needs of the patients and staff.  He left behind the politics found in all hospitals.  He left behind his paperwork.

When I was a student in college, our practical ministries professor said that he knew of men who consistently came home each night and hung their imaginary coat on an imaginary tree outside their front door.  Ministry to the church was over.  Their family waited for them on the other side of the door.  Often, they refused to answer the phone for an hour or two after arriving home.  Other leaders said they simply allowed the answering machine to take the call.  How many church leaders find themselves taking home the burdens of their congregants only to spill those burdens all over their family’s living room floor?

For your spiritual, mental, physical and family health, leave the events, discussions and actions of the church at the church.  Take a break; breathe and bask in the joy of your family.

Here again, are the Final Four tips.  God bless you in your service to the King.

Tip #7: Learn to celebrate the victories with people in your church no matter how small or insignificant they may seem to you or anyone else.

Tip #8: Keep your goal in front of you and in front of the congregation.

Tip #9: Take time to visit other congregations.  Go to be invigorated.  Go to see what’s happening outside of your world.

Tip #10: Leave church things at the church when you come home.

What other tips would you suggest for ensuring fruitfulness in your ministry? Do you have ideas or concerns that you would like this blog to address? Drop us a line.

As iron sharpens iron, so a person sharpens his friends — Solomon