I know that every person who is in ministry feels like they work all the time.  Serving in a ministry entails a lot of energy and personal investment.  Along with all the personal, hands on ministry and teaching that everyone sees, there are countless hours of hard thankless administrative and preparatory work. If you aren’t careful, you can easily burn out and become emotionally and physically drained.  

A couple of years ago I had a friend who introduced me to the idea of implementing finish lines.  A finish line is a moment that you designate as quitting time.  When you cross the finish line it is a moment of personal Sabbath.  You cease from working, thinking about work and talking about work.   It can be a time of day every week, or a once a week finish line, but it is important to define when your finish line exists.  It is even more important to keep your finish lines every time. 

In my life, I have an off day (Friday) that I don’t keep and technically Saturday is not a work day, but I usually find something work related to do on both those days.  Usually I am working on a message or some important task, and even though I should honor Friday as a day off, its really hard not to get sucked into work.  

But, my finish line is Sunday after Lunch.  We often go to lunch with people from Church so that technically still is work because I am still in Pastor mode, but after lunch on Sundays I am done.  I can completely rest.  I stop thinking about church, I stop thinking about work and I just rest.  I can hang out with Tabitha and Bailey and enjoy life.

I encourage you to pick a finish line.  Its not an easy thing to do but it is very worth it.  Even God took a Sabbath after creating the world.  Its a great example of how valuable rest can be.  I hope that you too can choose a time and a day where you say, my work is done.  Now I can focus on family, fun and God.

I had the honor to bring my small group and some other from our church to partner with Belmont University and Feed My Starving Children to make meals for kids in Thailand.  We along with about 800 other volunteers were able to make 413,000 meals.  Thats right 413,000 meals.  That was an awesome experience.  Our shift was able to make 113,000 meals.  We were cooking in our food assembly line.  I don’t think I have ever seen my friends move so fast.  If you ever are interested in being a part of a organization that gives back, I thoroughly endorse “Feed my Starving Children.”  If you want to check out their website check it out here.  http://www.fmsc.org/  

Here are some Pics!

Everyone who prepares messages on a weekly basis knows how difficult it is to continue to bring fresh insight and background information to a message.  So to all you faithful students of God’s word and practitioners of the sweet science of preaching I thought I would pass along my 4 favorite resources for NT study.  

“Jewish New Testament Commentary” By David H. Stern

David Stern is a scholar who attempts to keep the Bible in its traditional Jewish roots instead of westernizing it.  He does a great job of giving the true meaning to idioms and sayings that get lost in translation, both in the translation from Greek to English and from Jewish to American culture.

Here is his Wiki Bio:  David H. Stern (1935 – ) born in Los Angeles is an Israel-based Messianic Jewish theologian.

Stern’s major work is the Complete Jewish Bible, his English translation of the Old Testament and New Testament (which Messianics refer to by the Hebrewphrase from the book of the prophet Jeremiah/Yirmeyahu chapter 31, “B’rit Chadashah,” New Covenant). One of the ways in which he treats the issue is to leave most of the proper nouns in their transliterated form, and for the New Testament to replace Greek proper nouns with transliterated Hebrew or words. He calls this the ‘cosmetic’ treatment. Other decisions include translating Greek phrases about ‘the law’ as having to do with ‘Torah-legalism’ instead. More explanation is found in his Messianic Jewish Manifesto (now out of print) and his Messianic Judaism: A Modern Movement With an Ancient Past (a revision of ‘Messianic Jewish Manifesto’).

Dr. Stern’s background includes a Master of Divinity degree from Fuller Theological Seminary, graduate work at the University of Judaism, and a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University. He taught the first course in ‘Judaism and Christianity’ at Fuller Theological Seminary and at UCLA he was a professor.

I hope you enjoy him!

“Jesus the Messiah” By Alfred Edersheim

This is a great book to get a very Jewish perspective on Jesus’ ministry.  It was written by a Jewish scholar in 1183.  I have found that it doesn’t talk about everything in the gospels but it has a lot of very important information that can help fill out a message nicely.

“The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament”  By Cleon L Rogers Jr. and Cleon L. Rogers III. 

This resource is very helpful when it comes to understanding the Greek and parsing your verbs.  I have found it to be great in checking my Greek work.  Ok I usually look at this first instead of trying to figure out if  the scribble I am looking at is an imperfect participle or an aortive verb.  Surprisingly Rogers and Rogers also has some commentary insights that are very helpful.

“The New Daily Study Bible” By William Barclay

Ok so this is really not a study Bible but it is a 17 volume commentary set.  Barclay has some interesting tendencies and some people may not like him  because he was an admitted universalis.  But his work on the New Testament is amazing and he tries to address every view that you may come across in a passage.  Barclay is really insightful and practical.  

Here is his Wikipedia bio:  William Barclay (5 December 1907, Wick – 24 January 1978, Glasgow) was an author, radio and television presenter, Church of Scotland minister andProfessor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow.

While professor, he decided to dedicate his life to “making the best biblical scholarship available to the average reader”. The eventual result was the Daily Study Bible, a set of 17 commentaries on the New Testament, published by Saint Andrew Press, the Church of Scotland’s publishing house. Despite the series name, these commentaries do not set a program of regular study. Rather, they go verse by verse through Barclay’s own translation of the New Testament, listing and examining every possible interpretation known to Barclay and providing all the background information he considered possibly relevant, all in layman’s terms. The commentaries were fully updated with the help of William Barclay’s son, Ronnie Barclay, in recent years and they are now known as the New Daily Study Bible series.

While this detailed approach is not to everyone’s liking, the 17 volumes of the set were all instant best-sellers and continue to be so to this day. A companion set giving a similar treatment to the Old Testament was endorsed but not written by Barclay.

Barclay wrote many other popular books, always drawing on scholarship but written in a highly accessible style. In The Mind of Jesus (1960) he states that his aim was “to make the figure of Jesus more vividly alive, so that we may know him better and love him more”.

Sometimes is it so easy to be consumed with great endeavors.  If you are anything like me you dream of greatness.  I find myself thinking about ways I can change a city, a generation and a nation.  Its easy to dream big sometimes but I think true satisfaction often comes in the smaller and common place things in life.  God seems to value who we are becoming more than what he will do.  Thats probably because if it something truly great he can do that himself and not even tax his ability so why would be so impressed by our feeble efforts.  So often, I find myself trying to impress God with what I will do for him and what I intend to do.  I think God would rather me be on mission with him and to rejoice in this life that he has given me.  To rejoice in the little things that make life great.

One of the reasons I am doing this ramble is because today on my day off I found the time to go for a prayer walk with my wife at lunch, clean my back deck off of leaves and wash my dog (he was getting really smelly).  In these things I found real value and contentedness.  I found that by doing the little things of walking closely with my God and my wife, doing common household chores and serving even my pet, God is pleased.  God cares about how I treat his creation and the people and things he has entrusted to me.  At the end of all this I am happy and find myself truly blessed.  God grows us by each moment of dependance and availability we trust him in.

Ok so this is really a Tuesday morning Ministry Tip, but I got bogged down in meetings yesterday.   

Today I want to give some tips on encouragement.  Doing ministry is really hard and as leaders we need to be aware of the fact that both we and the people who work alongside us get tired and worn out.  A key role in the life of any leader is to encourage himself/herself and to encourage those around them.  So I am going to drop a few ideas out there on how to encourage yourself and how to encourage others.  Hopefully this will be helpful.

Encouraging others:

Encouragement is vital to any ministry.  This is because every ministry thrives on happy volunteers that are able to unlock and use their spiritual gifts and natural talents.  Serving God is exciting stuff and we need to continue to foster a passion for that service through our encouragement.  Here are 3 ways to encourage others.

1.  Write notes.  Yes I know it is tedious but it is the most effective way by far to encourage others.  Writing a personal, hand written note on paper is volunteer gold.  I prefer to keep it short, personal, up beat and encouraging.  Its great to share an inside joke, remark about something specific that they did that was above and beyond ordinary, and then tell them how you have seen God use them and how they are growing.  I cant tell you how encouraging a not can be to someone who is struggling. 

2. Throw a party.  I think that having an annual party is a wonderful way to say to your volunteers that you value them.  I like to do this at Christmas.  Having a dinner and a time of sharing is a great way to cast vision and make your volunteers feel like they are serving with a family of friends not alone on an island.

3.  Individual verbal pep talk.  I think one of the most valuable ways to encourage people is to praise them in front of their peers or to point out something they are doing well.  For many people words of affirmation are a huge need and I have found that people dont get enough positive encouragement and crave it.  Just telling people that they are awesome and you are thankful for them goes a long way.  I try to tell everyone that is serving on Sundays how much I value their service to God.

Encouraging yourself:

Sometimes it is tough to keep serving God without having a perspective of what He has done through you.  I often see many of my fellow co-laborers struggle with being positive.  Here are a couple of ways I manage to keep motivated and encouraged.

Look back on how far you have come.  One of the things that breeds frustration more than anything else is to feel like you are wasting your time.  When I look back at how far God has led me and how I have grown over the last year, or several years, that is a source of encouragement.  Knowing that God is developing me to be more like himself and that I am in the process of becoming keeps me from feeling like my life is stagnant.  Often the best growth is the slowest and by looking backward we can see how much God has been developing us.  Keeping a journal is a fantastic tool to be encouraged by what God has done in and through you.

Celebrate Lifechange.  Nothing motivates me more than to see people that I have been praying for and serving grow in their faith.  I try to keep my eyes on the people I am loving and notice that God is using me to make a difference.  

Look at some stories of Bible characters who encountered adversity.  Many times it is hard to remain upbeat when you don’t know how things will turn out.  I have found that God has encouraged me to continue to have faith by looking at the lives of Joseph, Abraham, David, and Job.  

Talk to an encouraging friend.   Sometimes the best medicine is to pick up the phone and talk to someone who believes in you and loves you.  God puts people in our lives who can lift our spirits and speak words of wisdom and advice to us when we really need it.  

I hope these ideas are helpful to you.  I know that encouragement is a discipline we all need to grow in.  Let me know if you have any other tips that would be helpful to pass along to others!

Tune in next monday for next week’s tip.  I am going to be talking about Volunteer recruiting.  If you have any ideas of some things you want me to address let me know.  By the way, I am going to attempt to post more often so stay tuned.