I steward Productive Pastor, a podcast and community of ministry leaders focused on how productivity and strategic ministry in the average church. I write about practical approaches to ministry productivity. I also write emails about church stability/development and my own theological musics in our current social moment.
How I'm preparing for 2025 | Productive Pastor
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I love the end of the year. Each year, I try to reserve the week between Christmas Day and New Year's for planning and review. This isn’t so much about ministry, but family and personal goals I want to have. We are going to talk about this idea over the next few weeks. I’ve done several emails about using personal values and beliefs to help understand growth and goals. You can listen to them here. Setting Personal Goals Through Values | EP 107 Core Values and Decision Making | EP 77 I like this approach because it helps me get beyond some random list of 5-10 goals. Sure, I’ve got those. Over time, I have found more valuable in drilling deeper into who I am personally. If I focus on who I am and aspire to be, hitting an objective goal will be easier. Starting off with some reflection around “what do I want to embody over the next year?” is a much better assessment. Sure, you could say you want to lose weight. Or you could say, I want to strive for physical fitness long-term and begin the pattern of getting 15,000 steps in every day. This sounds like a goal, but I attach a personal wellness goal to my core value of being healthy enough to not be physically unfit. That way making a goal to go on a strenuous trip or event isn’t just a one-time thing, but pointing my life towards what and where I want to be. Currently, I am having to level up my administrative skills. I could attach a goal or two to that. Where I am more likely to be heading is instead embodying better communication practices, reviews, and using systems to get long-term results. I’ll share more on this in the next couple of emails, but I want to give you a specific call-to-action. What would the one-step better version of you be next year? Think about this with 3-5 bullet points. These are what we want other people to say about us when we aren’t around. Next week we will hit the specifics and some systems, but think about those bullets. Yes, these might need to be ministry related. Or personal. Think holistically. I’ll see you back next week. Chad |
Hey. I'm Chad Brooks.
I steward Productive Pastor, a podcast and community of ministry leaders focused on how productivity and strategic ministry in the average church. I write about practical approaches to ministry productivity. I also write emails about church stability/development and my own theological musics in our current social moment.
I find myself talking about evangelism around 50% of the time in my work as a Congregational Developer. I work with over 250 churches, and many of my conversations involve churches seeking vitality. Evangelism always comes up. I want to let you in on a key theory I like to start with. Evangelism isn’t uniform. Let’s talk about this from a single, specific research point. Ryan Burge, the current G.O.A.T. in religious engagement research, published findings from a study he is currently doing...
Hey Friends - I hope your new ministry year is kicking off with a bang! It is always an exciting time, and the cycle of a New Year always invigorates me. One of the things I love about a New Year is starting the planning done in November/December. Today, I want to talk a bit about these plans and how we can better approach them. Goals Drive Plans You can work hard on some amazing plans, but unless there are goals attached to them, those plans will just linger on a whiteboard, note, or in a...
This is part 2 of a larger series on the Biblical Theme of “Calling on the Name of the Lord.” - You can read Part 1 here. In my short introduction, I wrote about this fascination I have with a repeating theme across Scripture. "Calling", in some variety, is this action of humanity directed towards God. It is all over Scripture, and fleshes itself out in the Old Testament. I have a working theory that this act, first found in Genesis 4, is the fundamental posture humans are to take with God....