The Only Two Questions Any Pastor Should Be Asking Right Now

The Only Two Questions Any Pastor Should Be Asking Right Now August 7, 2014

Pastors spend a lot of time solving problems, and that means asking questions. Unfortunately, most of those questions are unimportant, even trivial. I know this because I’ve wasted plenty of my own time wondering about these same things.

In fairness, many of these questions are forced upon pastors by their job description as the leader of an organization and have little to do with their real work as shepherds of God’s flock.

But a pastor has to earn a living somehow, so most spend the majority of their time pondering things like these—

How can I get more people to come to church?
Where will I raise enough money to pay the mortgage?
How can I direct church ministries and still find time to write sermons?
How do I keep the women’s ministry director from strangling the youth pastor?


The Operations Question

All these are versions of the Operations Question, which has to do with managing the church as an organization having property, employees, activities, and constituents. The Operations Question solves the problems of management: staffing, funding, scheduling, time management, logistics.


The Vision Question

A few pastors are asking a different question, which goes something like this:
How can I lead this church to change?
What strategies will most effectively reach people in my community?
How do I lead this congregation in accomplishing the mission?

That sounds better for sure, but the Vision Question is just the operations question with more panache. It’s about doing the same thing better or bigger or with a different audience.

Neither of these questions addresses the fundamental problems the church faces now, which have nothing to do with funding, scheduling, or growth strategies.

Two more urgent questions address the primary problems we face today.

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