• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • Sermons
  • About
  • Contact

So What Faith

Greg Smith

  • Books
  • Discipleship
  • Social Media
  • Leadership
  • Trends
  • Prayer

Don’t Wreck Your Ministry (#1058)

2013/04/09 By Greg

Ben ReedBen Reed, pastor of small groups at Long Hollow Baptist Church (Hendersonville, TN) and communications director for the Small Group Network, recently blogged about how people wreck their ministries.  Reed shared a few obvious ways people ruin their ministries before sharing a list of 17 additional ways he labeled “not so obvious,” including:

  • quit dreaming,
  • never build relationships with people outside of the faith,
  • spend 98% of your time in your office,
  • never go to conferences (or, on the other end of the spectrum, go to 25+ conferences a year), and
  • always think you’re right.

So What?

Being successful in ministry requires a commitment to ongoing growth as a person and as a person of faith.  Often ministry leaders engage in unhealthy behaviors that compromise the effectiveness of their ministries.

  • In addition to the items listed on Reed’s list, what are examples of unhealthy behaviors that you have noted in other ministry leaders? healthy behaviors these same leaders have failed to model?
  • Identify one unhealthy behavior in which you find yourself participating and one healthy behavior you often avoid, then commit to focusing on those areas for the next two weeks.

Primary Sidebar

Greg Smith

Greg is a follower of the Way of Jesus who strives to make the world a better place for all people. Currently, he serves as Chief Executive Officer of White Rock Center of Hope and as Interim Senior Pastor of Advent Lutheran Church. He has served ten congregations, taught religion to undergraduates for eight years, and helped three organizations provide quality healthcare to underserved populations. (Read More)

Categories

Recent Posts

  • Going Electric! (#2229)
  • Living by Faith (#2228)
  • Fewer Master of Divinity Students (#2227)
  • Welcoming Everyone (#2226)
  • The Increasingly Purple Mainline (#2225)

Tags

Advent Lutheran Church Bible blogging Catholic change Christian Christianity church COVID-19 Dallas decline Diana Butler Bass discipleship education ELCA Episcopal Evangelical facebook faith Jesus Leadership love mainline Mainline Protestant marcus borg membership Ministry Naples United Church of Christ ordination pastor PCUSA Pew Research Center Prayer preaching Presbyterian Protestant religion Scot McKnight social media technology theology twitter United Church of Christ United Methodist worship

Copyright © 2025 · So What Faith, a member of The Faith Growth Digital Ministry Network