Episode 67 - How To Start Smart As A Young Pastor

This week on the podcast we talk with Dan Reiland about starting smart as a young leader. This episode is intentionally tilted toward YOUNG PASTORS with leadership lessons on beginning well in ministry. Jonny and I share lessons on either end of our conversation with Dan, and Dan himself shares six things that he believes young pastors need to remember to start smart in ministry.

This is a great episode to share with the young pastors or leaders in your life or ministry. This is information to help them start well in their 200church.

Here are the six suggestions from Dan about starting smart:

• Transition from leading only yourself, to leading others. Not all young pastors make this transition well, and the smoother the transition, the shorter the gap, the better off your leadership and ministry will be.
• Learn as much as you can as fast as you can. Especially about the history of the church and what is culturally important to the people in your community. Incarnate yourself into the culture and community.
• Gather some change before you make change. You must build trust before you ask your people to either listen to you, or follow you.
• Be yourself. Don't try to be the next Francis Chan or Andy Stanley. Be the best you, you can be!
• Develop leaders. You will always want new leaders to help you in your ministry. It's never to early to begin developing them.
• Chase God. Finally, this is the most important element, without which everything else dries up and blows away.
  

Here are four other lessons that Jonny and I talk about:

• Know your strengths and weaknesses, and communicate them to others. Don't be insecure about your weaknesses or overly modest about your strengths. Operate in reality regarding both of them.
• Don't cut corners in the integrity department. At the beginning of your ministry, you are laying a foundation for your character and reputation. This is not optional if you want to start well as a pastor/leader.
• Prioritize your family right out of the gate! Your spouse and/or children should never have to tell you that you're spending too much time in the ministry. Your family is your first ministry.
• Tomorrow never comes. Don't waste those valuable early years of life and ministry. Don't put off until tomorrow... John Maxwell has a great book - Today Matters - that speaks to the importance of today. It's all we have. It's never tomorrow, it's always "today", right? Tomorrow never comes.

One correction from the podcast: Jeff talks about content from one of Jim Collins' books, and Jonny correctly identifies the book as Good To Great. Jeff tells him he's wrong, but actually, it's just another instance of the old guy's memory slowly failing. If you've never bought the book, it's a good one... or, uh, a great one! If you don't want to buy the book, here's an Executive Summary of Good To Great.