Lauren Hunter on annoying your congregation.

With more and more churches becoming savvy in all areas of digital, mobile, and print communication, if not carefully orchestrated, it can be easy to over-communicate with the members you care most about. The last thing you want to do is to allow technology to get in the way of ministry. If you’re sending too many text, email, and voice messages along with occasional snail mail, all that communication can sometimes have the opposite effect—it turns people off to your church.

Below are three dangers of over-communication the Church should avoid if at all possible:

You say too much

As Proverbs 14:23 says, “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.” Communicating just for the sake of always being in front of your members is by itself not a great reason to communicate. Choose to communicate carefully all the while respecting the valuable time and attention of the people you are here to serve.

• Within a voice message sent to people’s homes or mobiles, don’t talk too long, keep it short and sweet.
• In your email, keep it to the point, use short paragraphs and bullet points when you can. If you have a long story to tell, include a paragraph with a link to the rest of the article online.
• In your text messages, keep it very terse and use simple language that can’t be taken out of context.

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Chris Ruddell reveals a clever way to promote your church.

Odd as it may sound, one of the scariest places to go is church. When a visitor – especially one that hasn’t been in a church for years – takes that first step inside a church building, they often are filled with numerous anxieties and questions.

What door should I go in? Am I dressed appropriately? Will people be nice to me? Will they be “too nice” and try to push me into something I’m not ready for? What are the escape routes in case my experience goes horribly wrong?

These are just some of the questions many visitors have when they come to your church.

But Google has offered a way to calm many of those fears and provide a safe and easy way for people to get the answers. Last month, Google unveiled a new feature to Google Maps – interior photos for local businesses. It’s the perfect way to give a virtual tour to people wanting to check out your church or organization.

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David Santistevan on your best role for the glory of God and the good of the church.

There comes a time in everyone’s life that no one looks forward to.

That time where the train takes off. Life moves at deafening speeds. Where at one point you were on the front lines of ministry, it seems you’re now being replaced with younger people.

You’re struggling to keep up. You’re getting older.

“Getting older” is sneaky, isn’t it? When you were a kid, life was slow – full of possibility, dreams, and big visions.

Now, you find yourself saying, “It’s my birthday…again?”

It can be a scary time. You don’t learn as fast. Your hearing is getting worse. Your style is no longer cool. You don’t know how to strum the guitar like those kids.

Are You Too Old?
Are you too old to lead worship? This is a very common question but I believe it’s the wrong question.

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Rhett Smith cautions against being so outwardly focused on the needs of others that you don’t look at your own needs.

The irony of the work that I do as a therapist is that ministry leaders are one of the biggest referrers to my practice. They often instinctively see someone who is hurting and in need of help, and they are quick to locate help for that person. They may do some counseling themselves, refer to a lay ministry, or make a recommendation for that person to come see me in my private practice.

Ministry leaders are really good at connecting hurting people to avenues of help.

If that is the case, then why do so many ministry leaders have a hard time connecting to help for themselves? I ask this question of myself as well since I have been serving in ministry for about 18 years.

Why do I have such a hard time reaching out and getting the help I need?

It was not always easy for me to ask…to reach out for help. And it still isn’t easy. But when I did…wow, it changed my life. And I was forever thankful to the people who often encouraged me to get the help I needed. In fact, I’m just now coming out of a long season where I had people alongside of me helping me through some difficult transitions.

So why then do ministry leaders often ignore their need for help but are so good at getting others help?

Here are a few thoughts I have. Let me know what resonates with you.

One, many ministry leaders are often so outwardly focused on the needs of others that they don’t look at their own needs. Some of this is due to the large amount of us in ministry who are “people pleasers” and have hard time setting boundaries in our lives. We overextend ourselves in order to help others, but often at the peril of our own families, marriages and personal lives. The thought of getting one’s own help often goes unnoticed. And unfortunately, I was sharing with one pastor in counseling the other day that church history is full of stories of great ministry leaders whose personal lives were a trail of destruction. Broken marriages. Angry and detached kids. And a ministry legacy that was tarnished in the process.

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“How do you stay motivated?” That’s what one of my mentees asked me last week while we were sitting around a fire in my backyard. He told me he struggled staying motivated to do anything for more than two weeks at a time before burning out and giving up.

It’s a great question. I know a lot of leaders, including myself, who have faced the same problem. One day, for one reason or another, We find ourselves fired up about a new training tool, or leadership method, or something. Then after a few weeks, they’re no longer even talking about the revolutionary idea we had been ranting about only weeks earlier. We’ve lost our motivation.

The shame in it all is that most leaders feel ashamed of themselves when this happens. They feel like they’ve failed in a way that directly reflects on their characters. But in reality it’s usually an issue of bad cultural habits that blow out the flame of our passion.

Today we have a worldwide culture that relentlessly pursues progress without consideration of the individual. We set impossible deadlines, burn the candle at both ends, over commit, under rest, and wonder what happened when we feel too tired for our passions at the end of the day.

In order to pursue our passions, we don’t have to change our whole way of life, which is good because many of us over commit out of necessity. But by simply being intentional about our habits, we can keep the fire of our passions burning, even through the winds of a busy life. Here are 6 things that’ve helped me keep the fire going.

1. Regularly draw from people who inspire you. Who inspires you? Is it a mentor, a friend, co-worker, a celebrity? Whoever it is, invest some regular time in that person who helps you see the potential for your passion. These people can help recharge your batteries when you feel like you’re out of juice.

2. Maintain your physical health. It probably doesn’t surprise you hear that your eating habits might be effecting your energy level. Most people know that regularly eating fast food isn’t a good way to boost your energy, but that still isn’t enough to make them do anything about it. That’s because our culture gravitates toward all or nothing thinking. We want healthy eating habits today. but it isn’t realistic to change all your eating habits in a week. So let me ask you this, what’s one small change you can make to your diet or exercise routine to build your physical stamina?

3. Draw from a long long long term goal. I bet you have weekly work goals, but do you have any 1 year goals? How about 30 year goals? I work toward saving for my senior years. Someday I will volunteer my hours to a church while living off the money I’m saving today. That very long term goal keeps me going daily. When I have days where I feel too tired to do anything, I just think about how great it will be to freely invest my time and money in God’s kingdom without having to worry about a paycheck.

4. Stop bad habits. Believe it or not, there are some other bad habits, other than food, that can keep us from being effective. I can’t tell you what it is for you, but for me it used to be pornography. I never knew how much I was giving up to carry on an addiction to porn. Aside from the spiritual implications of a sinful addiction to porn, regularly looking at it killed my stamina. When I stopped, I found energy that I never knew I had. Can you think of any unhealthy habits in your life that are costing you energy?

5. You have it, set it down. This is the one I have the hardest time with. When I’m passionate about something, I tend to work at it until I have nothing left to give. But in order to persevere, I have to learn to set down my passions and still have a life. If you’re like me, build yourself some structure, and stick to it. That way you don’t become the guy who’s always telling people about the same thing every time they see you. I can be that guy sometimes, it’s no fun for my friends and family.

6. Don’t ever, for any reason, give up while your heart is still in it. Matthew 25:14 begins Jesus’ telling of the parable of the talents. He talks about a master who gives his servants some money. Several of his servants use their money to make more and bring the master a return on his initial investment. The master rewards those servants by trusting them with more. But one servant becomes afraid and hides his money. The master deals out a consequence to that guy. It can be easy to talk ourselves out of our passions. It begins with little nagging questions, “Is my passion just silly?” “Am I really cut out for this?” Those questions are the beginning of fear, and when we nurture fear, it brings death to our dreams. And it’s important to remember, God works through our dreams. We have to submit our passions to Him, then work diligently to give God a return on the investment He’s made in us.

Question: What one passion have you been regretting keeping on the back burner?

Tim H. Swanson is the Music & Programming Director at Moon Valley Bible Church in Phoenix, AZ.

Glenn Packiam explains that the liturgical year was developed as a way to help the spiritual formation of Christians.

I’m not in love with all things old.

I don’t think then is better than now.

I’m not trying to get back to how things were.

My journey in learning about the liturgy and the liturgical year is not about nostalgia; it’s about spiritual formation.

The people who wrote some of the best liturgical prayers– from John Chrysostom (The Eastern Orthodox’s “Divine Liturgy”) in the 4th century to Thomas Cranmer in the 17th century (Anglican Book of Common Prayer)– were passionate followers of Christ and diligent scholars of the Scriptures and of theology. When the seasons of the church calendar– or the “Christian Year” or the “liturgical year”– developed, it developed as way to aid in the spiritual formation of those who sought to follow Christ.

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