{"quotes":[{"text":"Deception is nowhere more common than in religion. And the persons most easily and damningly deceived are the leaders. Those who deceive others are first themselves deceived, for not many, I think, begin with evil intent. The devil, after all, is a spiritual being. His usual mode of temptation is not an obvious evil but to an apparent good. The commonest forms of devil-inspired worship do not take place furtively at black masses with decapitated cats but flourish under the bright lights of acclaim and glory, in a swirl of organ music.","author":"Eugene H. Peterson","tags":["church","leadership","pastoral-ministry"],"id":7964,"author_id":"Eugene+H.+Peterson"},{"text":"Don't just cry over your 10 or 20 member church. Sometimes, God gives you your future first. The ones you call little carry in them every possibility you desire of the future. God would send you leaders but they may come as weak men and women first. Don't be so 'gift' conscious that you fail to realize that certain things are results of growth.","author":"Kingsley Opuwari Manuel","tags":["christianity","church","church-leadership","church-ministry","growing-churches","pastor","pastoral-ministry"],"id":18841,"author_id":"Kingsley+Opuwari+Manuel"},{"text":"Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul. Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first.","author":"Wayne Cordeiro","tags":["isolation","jesus-christ","pastor","pastoral","pastoral-ministry","refuge","solitude"],"id":19380,"author_id":"Wayne+Cordeiro"},{"text":"As someone who has spent the last decade training young men and women for Christian service, I have been keen to help them see that the best kinds of ministry are, more often than not, long term and low key. I have tried to prepare them for a marathon, not a short, energetic sprint. In other words, to help them have a lifetime of sustainable sacrifice, rather than an energetic but brief ministry that quickly fades in exhaustion.","author":"Christopher Ash","tags":["christian-living","pastoral-ministry"],"id":30465,"author_id":"Christopher+Ash"},{"text":"If a church is good at making disciples it will be good at making leaders because in the end, a good spiritual formation plan will lead to an accelerated spiritual multiplication.","author":"Gary Rohrmayer","tags":["church-leaders","church-planters","discipleship","leadership","leadership-development","mission","missional","missional-church","pastoral-ministry","spiritual-formation"],"id":31126,"author_id":"Gary+Rohrmayer"},{"text":"Our real problem is not the pervasiveness of the darkness but a failure of the light. Light always dispels darkness. The glorious light of the resurrection life of Jesus Christ is still sufficient and available to those who reject self-reliance and return to His plan for biblical leadership. This return can reignite the radiance of the Gospel in transforming power.","author":"Daniel Henderson","tags":["bible","faith","leadership","ministry","pastoral-ministry","pastors","pray","prayers","praying","praying-life","quotesistianity","revival"],"id":68269,"author_id":"Daniel+Henderson"},{"text":"Great leaders are teachable leaders.","author":"Gary Rohrmayer","tags":["church-leaders","church-planters","church-planting","greatness","greatness","leadership-characteristics","pastoral-ministry","treachable"],"id":88784,"author_id":"Gary+Rohrmayer"},{"text":"Pastors enter congregations vocationally in order to embrace the totality of human life in Jesus' name. We are convinced there is no detail, however unpromising, in people's lives in which Christ may not work his will. Pastors agree to stay with the people in their communities week in and week out, year in and year out, to proclaim and guide, encourage and instruct as God work his purposes (gloriously, it will eventually turn out) in the meandering and disturbingly inconstant lives of our congregations.This necessarily means taking seriously, and in faith, the dull routines, the empty boredom, and the unattractive responsibilities that make up much of most people's lives. It means witnessing to the transcendent in the fog and rain. It means living hopefully among people who from time to time get flickering glimpses of the Glory but then live through stretches, sometimes long ones, of unaccountable grayness. Most pastor work takes place in obscurity: deciphering grace in the shadows, searching out meaning in a difficult text, blowing on the embers of a hard-used life. This is hard work and not conspicuously glamorous.","author":"Eugene H. Peterson","tags":["church","leadership","pastoral-ministry"],"id":115980,"author_id":"Eugene+H.+Peterson"},{"text":"Somehow we American pastors, without really noticing what was happening, got our vocations redefined in the terms of American careerism. We quit thinking of the parish as a location for pastoral spirituality and started thinking of it as an opportunity for advancement. Tarshish, not Nineveh, was the destination. The moment we did that, we started thinking wrongly, for the vocation of pastor has to do with living out the implications of the word of God in community, not sailing off into the exotic seas of religion in search of fame and fortune.","author":"Eugene H. Peterson","tags":["church","leadership","pastoral-ministry"],"id":132157,"author_id":"Eugene+H.+Peterson"},{"text":"An angry leader is a scared leader or a hurt leader or a frustrated leader but most of all they are a vulnerable leader.","author":"Gary Rohrmayer","tags":["anger","angry","angry-people","church-planters","leadership","leadership-characteristics","leadership-traits","pastoral-ministry"],"id":157399,"author_id":"Gary+Rohrmayer"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":30,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}