Seven Practices of Effective Ministry

Churches and ministries must serve a greater cause than themselves. One church alone can’t fully reach its own community, let alone its city or nation or the nations.

We would like to see the kingdom in full effect here and now, but our King works patiently, slowly, and graciously.

As church leaders, we need objective means by which to measure the effectiveness of our ministry environments.

When a church fails to distinguish between its current model and the mission to which it has been called and mistakenly fossilizes around its model, that church sets itself up for decline.

Should we switch things up? Try another tack? Measurable nonresults is one of the reasons so many churches tuck the gospel behind fog and lasers or adjust their teaching to the “7 Steps” busywork of moralistic therapeutic deism.

purpose with passion. Comparing these seven practices, I realized that they all embodied the idea of selectivity. Whenever they could, top performers carefully selected which priorities, tasks, collaborations, team meetings, committees, analyses, customers, new ideas, steps in a process, and interactions to undertake, and which to neglect or reject