Posted on Monday, June 11, 2018

7 Good Reasons Pastors Should Say NO

5 Minute Mentoring

Peter Drucker once said something about like this, “A prerequisite for a career in ministry should be a 6 week intensive course in saying ‘NO.’ Yet no such course exists.”

Can you relate as a pastor? It’s tough to find the wisdom to know when to say YES and when to say NO. Often we feel pressure to say yes when:

The person asking is a valued leader in the church.
The person asking is a new attender.
You said YES to something similar in the past.
You feel guilty about not “doing enough.”
You feel that spirituality is mainly related to activity.

Pastors struggle with all these things, pretty much weekly.

Here’s a quick 5 minute video that will help. It’s entitled 7 Good Reasons Pastors Should Say NO.

If you’d like a TON more of this kind of content, you need to check this out:

I’ve decided to open up my Small Church Coaching Membership site to any pastor.

Here’s what’s included:

1. Video Coaching Class

One Unit per month is added, and members have access to the ENTIRE ARCHIVE of past topics. Current and upcoming topics include:

Creating An Outreach Culture
Recruiting and Leading Volunteers
Small Church Financial Leadership
How to Follow Up on Guests
Personal Spiritual Growth
Lower Your Sunday Stress – Preaching Habits
Personal Systems
Marriage & Ministry
Morning Routines
Intentional Leadership

Each Unit includes a 30-60 minute video training, handouts, resources, and links to sermons you can preach on these topics in your own church.

2. Private video messaging group for Q&A!

I use the app Marco Polo for Q&A, and respond as quickly as possible to your further questions on any topic in the archive.

3. Done-For-You Resources

RESOURCES INCLUDE:
* Complete Sermon Resource file – the best from 15 years of messages

* Graphic Design Templates:

Outreach Invitation Card
Guest Connection Card
Church Brochure
Plus tips on where to get them printed dirt cheap!

2 ebooks (including early release)

7 Steps to a Killer Guest Follow-Up System
Top 9 Tech Tools I’m Using to Get More Done

40 Day Church Prayer and Fasting Campaign

Video Messages
daily texts
Sign up sheets
Social Media graphics

* Administrative File (Worship Program Swipe File, Sign-up Sheets)

* ALL 5 Minute Mentoring Videos before they are publicly posted.

(20 topics and counting! Personal time management, leading change, Lowering Sunday Stress, Sharing the Gospel, and many more!)

The Cost

I’m one of those guys who quickly scans what’s included, and goes to the bottom for the cost. 🙂

This $30/mo membership is packed with valuable information that is specifically tailored to the needs of small church pastors. Small Church pastors are incredibly important, but often do not receive the respect they deserve… and too often, they don’t respect themselves enough to invest in their leadership growth!

Invest in your ministry today, and get complete access to the library of small church coaching videos as well as an archive of sermons, documents, administrative helps, hours of recorded videos, and a helpful video messaging private group where you can ask further questions. Find your supportive community for small church pastors today!

My Coaching membership for small church pastors are available here: darrellstetler2.com/pastorcoaching

My Guarantee:

If you don’t think it’s worth it, cancel in the first 14 days, and you’ll get your money back. Zero risk, No Hassle.

If you’re interested, click here to be re-directed to a simple purchase form.

Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2018

Free Video Pastor Coaching Group

Just an idea I'm testing...

I’ve been silent for quite some time on this blog. It’s been quite a journey over the last 9 months, a journey mostly covered in sheetrock dust.

My family, with all 7 kids, lived in a 3 bed, 1 full bath parsonage of about 1100 sq. ft. for the last 15 years. (OK, we didn’t have 7 kids 15 years ago, but…) Last fall, we bought a 4,300 sq ft home (6 bed, 3 full/2 half bath), and started a remodel process that took us about 6 months to complete. I’ll tell the whole story sometime… it’s a story full of answered prayers, and God’s amazing faithfulness. If you want pictures of our very own “fixer-upper,” I would point you toward this video tour I put on Facebook early in April of 2018.

But for now, I’m coming back to the blog.

I’m focusing in for a time on a new idea that I’m testing. I love

pastors
local churches
coaching
providing resources that save time and energy

I want to do a better job sharing things that I’ve learned over the years. So I’m here today to announce:

Limited Space Free Pastor Coaching Group

This temporary coaching program will:

be 1-3 months long (depending on how it goes)
be entirely on your own time
enable you to ask quick questions & receive 5 minute answers and feedback on issues you care about
Use the video messaging app Marco Polo
ONLY INVOLVE 15 PASTORS at once. I’m afraid I can’t handle more than that.

So what kind of issues will I be talking about? Well, it depends on what questions you ask, but I’m happy to share ideas on:

leadership issues
administrative tools and techniques
outreach
work/life balance
pastoral emotional health
pastoral care
preaching
habits and systems

So, if you want to try it out, here’s how you join up:

Click this link.
Install the MarcoPolo app on your mobile phone.
You might have to come back here and click that link on #1 again… not sure.
Watch the welcome video, then think of a question you’d like some coaching on.

I’ll be watching to see how this comes together, and I’ll cut it off after 15 guys join. I’ll check out your video questions, think it over, and then record a response.

I have no idea how this will work. 🙂 But hey, that’s the joy of trying stuff… just to find out what happens.

Looking forward to chatting with you!

Posted on Monday, February 8, 2016

The Porn Pandemic: Is Purity Possible?

I admit it — I love the Internet. I liked it from the first time I heard the beep beep boooop of our first dial-up modem, and saw how information came streaming into our home. Anything I needed to know, type it in… and there it was.

Today, it’s better, smarter, and way, way faster. My smartphone is always connected. Google Now learns what I like and search for, and automatically shows me news stories connected to my interests. Google Drive syncs all my files, so I can retrieve any picture or document from anywhere and send it instantly to anyone. Amazon lets me order & ship things directly to my door. My sermons on Youtube have been viewed 5,000 times as of this writing. I can find the lyrics to almost any song in seconds.

A friend told me once (and I’ve repeated it many times) “Without the internet, I am like any other mortal.”

So you know I’m pro-internet.

But… I have to say this: Be cautious, friends. The internet is like nuclear power. Harnessed, it’s great. Without proper controls, it’s deadly.

No phenomenon shows this more, or is more pervasive in our culture than internet pornography.

Consider the following statistics:

Porn is a $60 billion industry per year worldwide – $12 billion in the USA. ($32.8 million per day!)
Pornography brings in more than pro baseball, basketball, football & hockey combined… more than the combined revenues of ABC, CBS & NBC. Statistically, sports is not “America’s favorite pastime.”
Porn sites comprise 12% of ALL sites on the internet.
25% of all search engine requests are porn-related.
28000 people view porn per second.
372 users every second type words to search for porn.
In the year 2014, one of the largest pornography video sites reported 78.9 billion video views — 11 for every person on the earth.
90% of kids by age 18 have seen porn on the internet.
Average age of first exposure for a child is 11 yrs, usually inadvertently.
#1 consumer of porn: boys 12-17.

Now, after you pick your jaw up off the floor, let me hit you with one more: A university attempting to study the effects of pornography, attempted to locate a control group of men who had not been exposed to it, so they could compare them with men who had. They cancelled the study; they were unable to find men who had not.

In that kind of world, is it even possible to be pure?

I imagine there were those who felt the same way when Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints…” (1 Cor. 1:2, NKJV) I imagine they stopped, shook their head, and looked out the window at the towering mountain fortress of Acro-Corinth above their city. The ancient writers say 1,000 temple prostitutes engaged in “worship” at the temple of Aphrodite.

How does anyone follow Christ and be holy in the shadow of the 1,000 prostitute temple?

But while it may seem challenging, He calls us to holiness nonetheless.

How do we protect our homes? Our children? Our own hearts?

Filters? Rules? Make sure our kids never have computers? Or visit anyone with computers? Get rid of the internet? (What?! How would you read my blog?!)

In my next post, I’ll be sharing 4 starter steps to protecting the atmosphere of your home against the rampant spread of pornography.

For now, I’d like to hear from you in the comments below, or on my Facebook: What are you doing to protect your home from the pornography epidemic?

Posted on Wednesday, February 3, 2016

What to Do When Life Punches Your Goals in the Nose

My morning routine, which I wrote about recently, was going so well. Life was starting to hum along again, after the birth of our sixth child. He was sleeping through the night, I was able to get some sleep & get up and rock my to-do list before dawn.

Then, the baby got a cold. And started waking up every night. Twice. And my 4th child spent the night throwing up. And… you get the picture.

My morning routine for the last week (plus!) has been completely nuked. I’m sleeping later than I want to. I shut my alarm off and almost missed an appointment this week. I’ve accomplished less than half of what I want to on an average morning.

Not cool.

Holding high ideals while still allowing yourself permission to fail is not an easy thing. Some people have a hard time doing both, so they get rid of ideals. Or they get a case of perfectionism and make everyone around them miserable. I’ve done some of both.

I spent years beating myself up for not being better about this or that.

But I’ve adjusted my attitude. Here are the three things I tell myself. Hope it’s an encouragement to you, if you’re in a tough season:

Posted on Monday, January 18, 2016

How to Build a Morning Routine – Part 2

How I Capture the Most Important Part of the Day

There isn’t one “right” morning routine. It’s built on your values and realities. My reality is self-employed (pastor) and 6 kids. Yours might look totally different. But for some ideas and encouragement, here’s a walkthru of my morning routine, from start to finish, with tips of what makes it work better for me.

If you want to read the first post I wrote on this, you’ll need to go here: How to Build a Morning Routine In 7 Steps.

First 90: Getting Started Right

Posted on Wednesday, December 16, 2015

How to Thrive In A Tough Season

I know that title is pretty broad — I can’t do anything about some of the frustrations in your life. I can’t do anything about that guy whose trash blows in your yard. Or the guy on the interstate who cuts you off with no blinker. And you really can’t do much about it, either. Just get over yourself and get over them. 🙂

But there are some larger, enduring frustrations that I’ve experienced that I bet you have too. And THOSE, I can teach you something about. It’s the frustration that comes with seasons in your life.

I know you’re familiar with the concept of seasons of the year, but you might not have thought of life in terms of seasons.

3 things you need to remember to keep from being frustrated about seasons:

1. Seasons come in a micro- and a macro- version.

Here are some examples of micro-seasons:

Recovery from a medical procedure.
Bouncing back from a very busy project
Adjusting to a new neighborhood after moving

Examples of macro-seasons:

Raising young children
Old age
Teenage years

For micro-seasons, you just need to wait them out, and take some short term actions — medication, rest, etc.

For macro-seasons, you’ll need to adjust your attitude, check your values, and engage in personal growth.

2. Seasons are not something you can control.

You can’t just decide you’re not going to participate in this season any more. You can’t stop most seasons of life any more than you can stop spring or winter from coming.

So the solution to the frustration can’t be found in how to change the season… it’s got to be found in how I respond to it.

3. You can’t control seasons, but you can choose your attitude.

The old saying “It’s not what happens to you, it’s what happens IN you,” applies here. Author and holocaust survivor Victor Frankl said,
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom….When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.”

So here are some ways that I have dealt with seasons, while trying to keep my attitude positive:

1. Watch your words.

Early in my ministry, when we were frustrated about a season we were facing, Liz and I would often say to each other, dramatially, “Well, in the grand scale of 30 years of ministry…” It was usually good for a chuckle, but it did more. It became a tagline that allowed us to “zoom out” and see the season from the larger perspective.

Be careful of your words. They don’t just reveal your perspective — they help create it! And your perspective helps create your reality… Create wisely.

2. Find the funny.

Kids have been probably the defining season of this part our life. I have a saying my wife and I have laughed over for the last few years: “Someday, I’m going to change the world, but right now I have to change this kid’s diaper.” It helps me laugh, and remember the delicious irony of a young kid that thought he was going to change the world through his career in ministry — then had 6 kids, and discovered that he needed to change himself first.

3. Grow.

Sam Chand says, “A leader can only grow up to the level of his tolerance for pain.” Seasons can be full of pain.

But they are also prime places for “the growth that happens before the growth.” You know what I mean by that, right? It’s what Steven Covey calls the “private victory” that always precedes “public victory.”

I know what it’s like to be dealing with a season while wishing to be out “kicking behind and taking names.” But while you’re waiting, don’t waste the time. This is captured beautifully in John Waller’s song “While I’m Waiting” from the movie Fireproof. Check it out if you need some encouragement:

These are some behind the scenes areas where you can grow during tough seasons:

Attitudes
Personal Discipline
Family habits
Reading
Personal devotional time
Working on a new skill
Improving an old skill
Investing in a relationship
Seeking out coaching
Developing teamwork in your church/family
Creating better systems
Creating morning and evening routines

Choose your attitude. Watch your words. Create your plan. You’re going to get through this.

Who do you know that’s in a tough season right now? Share this with them!

Posted on Monday, November 23, 2015

A Pastor’s Thanksgiving List

10 Things I'm Thankful for this week

It’s that time of year, where our hearts turn toward things we are thankful for. Thanksgving is far too important a habit to only do once per year. Zig Ziglar was right: “Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.”

Sounds like something we ought to cultivate year-round! So here’s my list of 10 things I’m thankful for as a pastor:

1. Thank you, Lord, for saving me, and for your sanctifying work in my heart.

The day I feel like I’ve arrived is the day I stop leading people deeper into Christ. Don’t ever let me get over the shock of the Gospel, or the hunger for more holiness.

2. Thank you, Lord, for calling me into the work of a pastor.

It’s a privilege to help the Great Shepherd care for His sheep. Thanks for inviting me to participate in leading your people. Don’t let me use them, resent them, or mislead them. Let me be patient with them like you are with me.

3. Thank you, Lord, for my wife.

My wife Elizabeth and I

She could have done anything. She could have had a safe house and life in a small town. She could have lived where the helicopter doesn’t circle. But she was willing to live in an exemplary way, in the “fishbowl” of a pastor’s home, and serve God’s people in that way. Thank you for her unselfish commitment to the Kingdom… and me.

4. Thank you, Lord, for my family.

Grace, Darrell III, Heath, Caleb, Gideon and Will

They take the benefits and sacrifices with grace and sweetness. Please help me be faithful to them, and to pastor the little church in my home first.

5. Thank you, Lord, for my spiritual heritage.

Granddaddy Agan – a great man and preacher

Four Stetler Generations

I remember today that I stand on the shoulders of those before me. Thank you for their prayers, their example, their faithfulness. Thank you for the stores of wisdom and prayer that are there for me to draw on.

6. Thank you, Lord, for my successes… & failures.

My successes keep me trusting that I’m making a difference. Thank you for giving me enough hits to have the courage to keep swinging the bat.

My failures keep me humble, and learning. Thanks for helping me not be destroyed by them. Thank you that I’m not always right. When I fall, help me learn to pick up something while I’m down there.

7. Thank you, Lord, for the volunteers who serve with me.

They lift the load in so many ways. Bless them today, and make their reward great. Let them feel my gratitude and Your smile.

8. Thank you, Lord for the people who willingly follow.

It’s such a blessing to have some who gladly do right. Sorry I sometimes forget them in the rush to go after those who stray. Thank you that everyone is not wandering or resisting… that some let me do my worth with joy & not heaviness of heart.

9. Thank you, Lord, that my self-worth is not wrapped up in what people think of me.

I rest in what you see. I rest in your definition of success. They don’t have to like me… or my preaching… or vote for me… or give in the offering… or support my latest idea… for my ministry to be acceptable in your sight.

10. Thank you, Lord for strengthening my resolve.

When I think that I can’t go on, you step in and strengthen me. I’m grateful.

What things are you most thankful for? Share in the comments or on my Facebook page.