Keeping Your Ministry Fresh and Creative
by Jim Somerville

I’ve been an ordained minister for 20 years, which means that when Easter Sunday comes around this year, I will climb the steps to the pulpit, look out over that beautiful, bonneted congregation, and breathe a heavy sigh. How will I make fresh for them this year the ancient story that begins every year with the same words: “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb”? (John 20:1). While experience is an asset in almost every area of ministry, the experience of trying to preach an original sermon on Easter Sunday can be daunting. And it’s not only preaching. How do you stay fresh in all those other exhausting aspects of your ministry year after circling year?

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BOOK NOTES - Three Concise Reviews of New Resources

Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times: Being Calm and Courageous No Matter What
by Peter L. Steinke, Alban Institute, 2007, $18.00

Peter L. Steinke, well-known congregational consultant and family systems author, reports in his latest book that after reviewing over a hundred reports he had prepared for troubled congregations, he found five recurring themes: 1) high anxiety; 2) systemic impasse (two parties polarized); 3) lack of a clear sense of mission (even if a mission statement was in place); 4) poor boundaries; and 5) avoidance of problems.

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Leaders do not need answers.
Leaders must have the right questions.

Knowing how important it is to affirm congregations and how easy it is to neglect this task, one pastor uses this question in preparing for worship services each week.

What is so good about this congregation’s ministry
that I want to honor and affirm it this week?

Editors:  Lovett H. Weems, Jr. and Ann A. Michel
Production and distribution:  Joe Arnold

Copyright © 2007 by the G. Douglass Lewis Center for Church Leadership. Leading Ideas material may be freely distributed with attribution (exclusive of material protected by separate copyright).