Top Five Lessons from Great Pastors

by Jeff Patton

Top Five Lessons from Great Pastors

                    Summer time and the living is easy

                    Fish are jumping, and the cotton is high

                                                Gershwin  1922

 Well it is summertime and from where I sit, it is hot and the cotton ought to be high.

 I hope you have had time for refreshment, relaxation, time with family and time to connect to God.   If you haven’t done so yet, can you make time to do it now?  Why? Because in a few short days the summer will be over, schools will be back in session and life will be getting back to the hectic pace it tends to have all year long.

 I have the great opportunity to coach terrific pastors all around the States.  It is such a blessing to work with these men and women who are serving God with all their “hearts, minds, bodies and strength.”   I have learned a few lessons.  Here are my top five:

 What you knew worked yesterday won’t work today.  So try something new.

4. If you work harder, longer hours, and with more effort, you will die faster.

3. What you thought was important last year wasn’t and won’t be this year either.

2. Equip don’t do.  Coach don’t play.  Experience it, live it, others will catch it.

1. It is either all about Jesus and the mission or it is a waste of time.

 Try this.

      Take these five points and make them yours.  Own them.  Eat Sleep and breath them.  Look at everything you are, everything you do, everything you believe and put it to the test—do they pass these five things?

       Is it fresh from God, today?  Not yesterday’s rehashed blessing.

       Are you entering God’s rest? Or are you in your exhaustion?

       Are you discerning what is first in God’s heart and mind?

       Have you identified the ten people God is calling you to equip so that ten people will do the work of ten people, instead of one person doing the work of ten?

        Is everything, EVERYTHING about Jesus and his mission?

 If not, why not?