How To Take Five Sundays Off, Get Ahead, Bless Your People, All For Free!

Are you completely exhausted as a small church pastor? Are you doing it all? Are you running on empty? Do you just need a month off from preparing weekly sermons so that you can get 1) caught up, and 2) ahead on your ministry prep? Well, there is a way that you can do it, without paying one penny for a special speaker to come in and cover for you. Jonny mentioned it in this week's podcast. It's called www.lifechurch.tv.

Being Rich, a five week series by Craig Groechel, would be a great set of messages to share with your church family! You can find this series at www.lifechurch.tv, in the resources area.

This series comes complete with Talk-It-Over notes, and companion videos available online and on YouTube to show to your small groups. These printable Talk-It-Over pdf's and videos will guide your Sunday School classes or small groups through the five week series.

Of course, Being Rich is not the only series to select, there are many. You'll need to create a free account, and then you'll sign in and have access to tons of free content. There are too many mega-church sites to mention, but a few would be:

Saddleback Church
Northpoint Church
Willow Creek Community Church
Woodland Hills Church
Experience Life Now
Northridge Church

These sites, along with LifeChurch.Tv have full length video message series available to view online. Maybe you'd feel better emailing or calling the church and asking permission to show these to your church family. If you would, I know that these churches want their messages to be seen and that they would gladly allow you to use them. I do not guarantee or approve of every message or series you might find, but hey, you're smart, right?! You don't need me to clear stuff for you.

Would it not be so cool to kind of have a month long sabbatical from preparing weekly messages? And, would it not be equally cool for you to sit with your church family and guide them through these messages from other great pastors? Most of these sites also have online message notes or small group material to use as companion material to the messages.

Speaking of mega-churches, here is how you could partner with some of them to accomplish wonderful ministry in your church, and give yourself time to refresh and get ahead before the busy fall season comes. You could show a message series sometime in the summer and get a much needed break. Again, you would incur ZERO cost while you took this break!

Next week we are going to be talking about the issue of burnout in ministry. We'll be talking to a 200church pastor from Lincoln, Nebraska about how he managed to survive burnout, only to now thrive in his urban ministry, while equipping his church family to lead and serve. We also talk to him about the issue of race, and multiethnic churches. Next week, on episode 66!