Ministry Top Ten

Over the past few months, I have been rambling on about things like compassion, understanding, relationships, etc.  I thought it might be fun to list my personal top ten list of important ministry concepts and then ask my readers to chime in.

The idea here is to share your thoughts on how to make ministries more relevant, or how as a church family we can improve our relationships, fellowship and outreach.

1. Transparency. This needs to start with leaders who share their own hurts, struggles and challenges. When the leaders are open, the church is open.
2. Acceptance. Somewhere along the way our response to people has become unbalanced. We say, "love the sinner, not the sin," but I am afraid we don't really practice it. Everyone is seeking love, acceptance and needs to belong.
3. Liberty. I wrote on this not long ago. We all want liberty extended to us because we can handle it, but we don't trust others with the same freedoms.
4. Forbearance. Sometimes we call it patience. The old KJV says, "love suffers long..." The ability to accept, be patient and allow people time to grow.
5. Non-legalistic. That is the only way I could make that one word. We need to quit laying heavy burdens on other people. Too often we just make up laws because we think we know better than God how to run things.
6. Humility. Isn't this life about bringing glory to God. Not the local church, not the preacher, not my awesome teaching style. It is only by the grace and mercy of God I am here and can do any of this.
7. Teamwork. I will never understand why we are all so territorial when it comes to church work. MY education program, MY mission point, MY, MY, MY. Let's figure out how to bring it all together for the greater good of the kingdom.
8. Kudos. Pat someone on the back every once in a while. While it is about glorifying God and working together, we all need our batteries charged now and again.
9. Forgive. What greater gift can we give one another than a spirit of forgiveness. In this way we are more like Christ than almost any other thing we do.
10. Relevant. If we are going to teach and instruct let's make it relevant. Give me some tools for my toolbox. Help me to understand how a book thousands of years old relates to me today (and it does). The Bible is relevant, its up to us to communicate that to the world.

Alright! It's your turn. Please chime in on this topic - all thoughts and suggestions are welcome.