“Somebody has to set the direction for the church.”
“It’s all about leadership. And unfortunately, Bible colleges, seminaries historically did not teach much about leadership.”
“You get into a church and you find out you only preach on Sundays. So what do you do Monday through Friday? You do a lot of administrative directing. You do a lot of coaching of other people, recruiting. You know, you do a lot of executive stuff in the church.”
“We have got to realize the pastorate is a lifetime learning event.”
“We have to lead ourselves. And one of the things we want to lead ourselves on is being a lifetime student.”
“Ministry changes fast every five years. If a person’s been out of seminary five years, they’re probably out of date.”
“I would always encourage pastors to keep learning.”
“You’ve got to renew your own prayer life and your spiritual walk. That’s number one. Number two, you’ve got to carve out some space in your life to have some alone time and to think.”
“I had to find somebody else to talk to. A lot of pastors are extremely lonely. They don’t have other people to talk shop with. They don’t have other friends that are in the ministry.”
“A lot of times we just get wrapped up in our own church and our own issues, and we can’t get a perspective of what God is really doing. And it really helps to have somebody else to talk to. Now, if a pastor can’t find anybody to talk to, I think what you have to do is you have to hire a coach.”
“A solo pastor is a person who is serving a church without other paid staff. So a solo pastor may have deacons, may have elders, may have other people to help them and assist them, may even have a part-time secretary sometimes. But essentially the solo pastor is a person who is leading the church as the only trained pastor-type person in the church, most likely the only paid person in the church.”
“The number one challenge of solo pastoring is feeling alone.”
“In some denominations, associations and networks…it’s more of a feeling of competition rather than of support, unfortunately. And so a lot of solo pastors find themselves really alone with really nobody to talk to and to get advice from.”
