{"id":31614,"date":"2022-09-10T15:37:21","date_gmt":"2022-09-10T20:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/4-wins-worth-celebrating-in-church-ministry\/"},"modified":"2022-09-10T15:37:21","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T20:37:21","slug":"4-wins-worth-celebrating-in-church-ministry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/4-wins-worth-celebrating-in-church-ministry\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Wins Worth Celebrating in Church Ministry"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><em>By Kyle Bueermann<\/em><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re just over 20 days away from when baseball pitchers and catchers report for spring training. It&#8217;s a welcome development since it&#8217;s been just over 80 days since the Washington Nationals won the World Series in dramatic fashion.<\/p>\n<p>When I think back to the latter, I remember the plastic covering the lockers and the championship hats and shirts donned by a team who felt on the top of the world. The excitement was palpable.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>It&#8217;s Important to Celebrate Wins.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>In ministry\u2014particularly in the work of church revitalization or replanting\u2014it can be easy to get bogged down by the tyranny of the urgent (and sometimes, the trivial).<\/p>\n<p>There are phone calls to make, marriage counseling sessions to host, sermons to write, and church members to visit in the hospital.<\/p>\n<div class='code-block code-block-1' style='margin: 8px 0;clear: both'> <\/div>\n<p>It&#8217;s also easy to focus on the negative with comments like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>&#8220;Pastor, it feels like your preaching has been struggling as of late.&#8221;<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>&#8220;Why didn&#8217;t you make it to the hospital to see me?&#8221; (No one told you he was there.)<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>&#8220;It was too hot in the sanctuary today.&#8221; or &#8220;It was too cold.&#8221; (You often get these complaints on the same Sunday.)<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>&#8220;The music was too loud\/not loud enough.&#8221;<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>&#8220;Your sermon was too long.&#8221;<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>&#8220;You used too much\/not enough Scripture.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The list goes on and on, week by week.<\/p>\n<p>If we only focus on the urgent needs and complaints of the congregation, ministry can become life-sucking. Pastor, that&#8217;s why you must focus on wins in your ministry.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>God&#8217;s always at work in His church. Ultimately, the success of your ministry isn&#8217;t about how great you are at turning a phrase in your sermon. Your success is based upon your faithfulness to the Word of God and your commitment to follow Him.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Here are some wins you can focus on to remind yourself\u2014and the people you serve\u2014that God is still at work in and through your church.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>1. Celebrate baptisms.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>In my experience in church replanting, I&#8217;ve noticed churches that are on the brink of closing their doors typically aren&#8217;t baptizing many people. In some cases, it may have been years since a congregation has seen the baptismal waters stirred.<\/p>\n<p>So, when you finally do get to baptize someone, make a big deal out of it!<\/p>\n<p>We give small cards to our baptism candidates and encourage them to fill in the date of when they&#8217;ll be baptized and then use the cards to invite family and friends to be a part of the occasion.<\/p>\n<p>I have some pastor friends who host a &#8216;Baptism Sunday&#8217; several times throughout the year, complete with a potluck lunch afterward. I know others who give new Bibles to the people they baptize.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The point is this: when someone follows Christ in believer&#8217;s baptism, it&#8217;s a big deal. We should celebrate.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>2. Celebrate births.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Most dying or declining churches aren&#8217;t flooded with babies and young children. So when you begin seeing young couples attend your church and children running around in the halls, be sure to celebrate.<\/p>\n<p>Few things will boost the spirit of a church like a baby dedication when there hasn&#8217;t been one in a while.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>3. Celebrate service.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>You most likely have several people who have been serving in positions for a long time. This is especially true in churches that&#8217;ve seen a decline over several years.<\/p>\n<p>Often, as church attendance declines, people will feel pressured to stay in their volunteer roles for fear that no one else will take the reins. Others will often step into a role that needs to be filled whether they have the gifting for that role or not.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;ll come a day when those individuals are no longer able to serve in those roles for whatever reasons. When they do, celebrate them. They&#8217;ve sacrificed much to serve the church.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You may also consider doing what another pastor friend of mine does. Each fifth Sunday, his church recognizes a &#8220;volunteer of the quarter.&#8221; During this recognition, the pastor presents the volunteer with a gift and shares how God has used them in seen or unseen ways in their church.<\/p>\n<p>Whether a volunteer is your biggest supporter or your harshest critic doesn&#8217;t matter. As you celebrate their service, you just might see others step up to begin serving as well.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>4. Celebrate the Lord&#8217;s faithfulness.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>I&#8217;ve listed this one last, but it&#8217;s, of course, the most important. Even through the darkest days of a church&#8217;s decline, the Lord is faithful. He hasn&#8217;t abandoned His people. And, if a remnant remains in the church, it&#8217;s because the Lord isn&#8217;t finished with that church.<\/p>\n<p>So much of church revitalization is about awakening the people in the pews to recognize the is Lord faithful and the gospel is good news. If you&#8217;re serving in a difficult place, you might need to be reminded of the Lord&#8217;s faithfulness as well.<\/p>\n<p>Psalm 145:3-5:<\/p>\n<p>The Lord is great&nbsp;and is highly praised;<br \/> His greatness is unsearchable.<br \/> One generation will declare&nbsp;your works to the next<br \/> And will proclaim&nbsp;your mighty acts.<br \/> I will speak of your splendor and&nbsp;glorious majesty<br \/> And your wondrous works.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Pastor, keep in mind that celebration communicates value. In other words, we celebrate things that are valuable to us. And what&#8217;s celebrated often gets replicated.<\/p>\n<p>So, pastor, celebrate the wins in your ministry.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KYLE BUEERMANN (@kylebueermann)<\/strong><em>&nbsp;co-authored Replanting Rural Churches and is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Alamogordo, New Mexico,&nbsp;director of replanter development for the North American Mission Board, and co-host of Not Another Baptist Podcast.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"su-box su-box-style-default\" id=\"\" style=\"border-color:#000000;border-radius:0px\">\n<div class=\"su-box-title\" style=\"background-color:#333333;color:#FFFFFF;border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px\">Dig Deeper at Lifeway.com<\/div>\n<div class=\"su-box-content su-u-clearfix su-u-trim\" style=\"border-bottom-left-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px\">\n<div class=\"one-third first\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"two-thirds\">\n<h2>God&#8217;s Grace for Pastors<\/h2>\n<p>  FIND OUT MORE <\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class='yarpp yarpp-related yarpp-related-website yarpp-template-thumbnails'>\n<h3>Related posts:<\/h3>\n<div class=\"yarpp-thumbnails-horizontal\">  4 Steps for Quickly Recruiting and Training Church Volunteers  Serving God in the Midst of Decline  8 Vital Steps to Prepare for Your Church&#8217;s Immediate Future <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Kyle Bueermann We&#8217;re just over 20 days away from when baseball pitchers and catchers report for spring training. It&#8217;s a welcome development since it&#8217;s been just over 80 days since the Washington Nationals won the World Series in dramatic fashion. When I think back to the latter, I remember the plastic covering the lockers &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/4-wins-worth-celebrating-in-church-ministry\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;4 Wins Worth Celebrating in Church Ministry&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}