Pastors: Users, Abusers, or Stewards?
A Journey Survey of Staff Pastors - Part I Pastor, a pastoral coaching question for you: “When it comes to your pastoral staff: are you a user, abuser, or steward?” Do you use them – you make good use of them as God’s called ones in leading your church ministries, seeing them as people and ministers? Do you abuse them – using them like objects to accomplish your goals, unconcerned for them as people or...
The Unwritten Rules of Living in France… And What They Can Teach a Young Minister
Before our many years in the French-speaking region of Belgium, my wife, two daughters, and I were privileged to serve as missionaries in France for two years. By design, our first year was invested in learning French language and culture and making relationships. At the time, a new theory had sprung up among some that language and culture learning were unnecessary training for missionaries. “Machine translators remove the need for language learning,” some said. “And,...
Syncing Up With God: Kingdom-Focused Time Management
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published under the title “In Sync With God: Kingdom-Focused Time Management” in Evangel Magazine in the 2020 October edition (www.evangelmagazine.com). The author, Josiah Smith, serves as Campus Pastor of Northpoint Bible College & Seminary in Haverhill, Massachusetts. His book, Along the Way: A Beginner’s Guide to Journeying with Jesus in the Kingdom, and other resources are available at his website josiahsmithonline.com. Josiah has been a member of Journey since...
The Centrality of the Word of God: Guest Blog
In June of this year, my husband and I decided to make the HUGE shift from serving as lead pastors to that of being youth pastors. While it is true to say people are people, ministering to these teenagers as compared to adults is dramatically (in every sense of the word) different. But there is one timeless encouragement in ministry that should transcend every type, form, and aspect of ministry: Read your Bible. For those...
Coaching and Community: The Journey Pastoral Coaching Approach
THE COMMUNITY BLUEPRINT Journey is a coaching community focused on helping young ministers build strong for a lifetime of healthy and effective ministry. Our focus is not ministry growth but minister growth - as we build the minister, we build the ministry. Our means are not techniques but relationships - God walks with us and develops us through relationships: our relationships with Him and others. The basis and model of our ministry is the life...
Sound Ministry: Why Pastors Must Return to Teaching Strong Doctrine
“I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,...
Ministry Struggles
SOME BACKGROUND Every January, Journey kicks off the year with retreats for our members, held in the warm climate of Orlando. Members arrive from all over the country for one of our two retreat weeks. Those who cannot afford the cost of transportation are scholarshipped by generous donors – how thankful we are for their partnership in making it possible for young ministers to attend. Our partners make it possible for us to make these...
Resolved
A new year. With the dawning of a new year, we are prone to make New Year’s resolutions designed to improve us or our lives in the year ahead, or maybe even for the rest of our lives. Among the more common are: reading our Bible and praying daily, exercising, and losing weight. But, unfortunately, all too often, with 365 days and yet another new year on us, our list of New Year’s resolutions is...
Journey’s Best Reads of 2022
As we turn the final pages of 2022, I once again offer my list of favorite reads for the year. As always, this is not a list of my favorite books published in 2022, but books read in 2022, whatever the publishing year. If a book is on the best of list, I recommend you give it a read in 2023. As is true every year, in 2022 I read a few good books, a number of great books, some...© [2015] — Journey Pastoral Coaching