What role does the pastor play in the church’s work of evangelism? What does Scripture say about the pastor in relation to the work of evangelism?
How does pastoral evangelism relate to the church’s tendency toward apostasy? What does pastoral evangelism look like in the context of the local church and its surrounding community?
How might evangelism affect the preaching ministry of a pastor? Listen as Brian and Jim address this oft-neglected aspect of pastoral ministry.
Listen HERE
Two weeks ago our church, Auburndale Baptist Church in Louisville, KY ordained a man for pastoral ministry and in doing so sent out our 35th member into some kind of pastoral or missionary work in the last 15 years. What has amazed many who hear of our sending culture in our local church is that our church currently has only 75 members and functions on a $103,000 annual budget.
As a result, I have been asked a variety of questions around this commitment to train, affirm and send people into the ministry. In preaching through the book of Romans, I found myself in the middle of Romans 15 yesterday. This portion of Romans allowed me to speak to our church and remind them why we have gone through the painful reality for the last 15 years of sending so many out into the ministry that we love and desire to stay.
In the providence of God, my sermon preached yesterday became quite a significant moment for our church and reminded us of what it means to be a local church committed to spreading the gospel throughout the world. The link for the sermon is below if you wish to listen. It will answer a lot of the questions many of you have been asking about our church’s effort to raise up and send pastors and missionaries around the world.
Listen HERE
A book resource that explains how we do this and with no money in our budget: Prepare Them To Shepherd
Every pastor either has or will soon be criticized. What is God doing when people criticize him? How do we determine whether criticism is a mountain or a mole hill?
What are some common criticism one occasions in pastoral ministry? Are all pastoral criticisms necessarily baseless?
In what unhealthy ways do pastors sometimes handle criticism? How do we resist the impulse to defensiveness when criticized?
Should we be comfortable as pastors if we receive no criticism? How should a pastor process criticisms?
Listen as Brian Croft and Jim Savastio address these vital questions and more in this episode.
Listen HERE
Here is a excellent conversation with Brian Croft and Bob Russell about Pastoral Ministry in Mega-Churches (Over 1,000 in attendance). Bob Russell went to pastor Southeast Christian Church over 50 years ago when it had 120 people. When he retired after 40 years as Senior Pastor it had over 18,000 members and was one of the largest churches in the world. Bob remains a sweet, humble, down to earth minister of the gospel and every pastor would be helped to listen to the wisdom of this seasoned pastor Brian interviews here:
You can check out Bob’s writing and speaking ministry HERE
