Ministry Consulting Services
You may have noticed that I love to help churches. If you’re familiar with church or ministry consulting in general, you might have also noticed that I do things differently. Feel free to visit my FAQ page to learn more about that.
There are many consultants who are gifted and godly, who do consulting work full-time. If your needs line up more with the services they provide, I would be glad to recommend a firm for you to contact. I want to help you, however I can.
Scroll down to see a fuller picture of how I can help your church or ministry.
Strategy Assessment
I create metrics to help you assess how you're using the resources God has given you for effective ministry.
Stewardship
I love to help churches think through God-honoring stewardship principles to maximize kingdom growth.
Objective Insights
Sometimes all you need is someone who can see things from a neutral perspective. I can offer an impartial analysis to help you reach a positive outcome.
Content & Media
I help pastors, staff, church boards, and committees write and update proposals and church documents— from mission & vision statements, church covenants, by-laws, and roll-adjustment plans, to job descriptions and compensation packages. Do you need headshots for your staff or other photographic services? I can do that too. What about website issues? Let's talk!
Research
Whether you're a pastor, staff member, or you serve on a committee or team, having the best information at hand is critical. I can compile and analyze the information that will allow you to focus on your ministry, without letting important details fall through the cracks.
Crisis Management
Sometimes you might need to bring down the temperature in the room. I can help mediate those conversations, using biblical peacemaking principles, focusing on repentance, and, where possible, helping to bring about restoration.
Strategy Assessment
Jesus’ Great Commission is strategic. It’s specific in its structure: Go out with the gospel. As people respond in repentance and faith, baptize them. Then, help make them disciples of Jesus by teaching them the Bible.
The Great Commission gives us the framework for what to do, but as a unique church, you have to develop a mission and vision that is both faithful to Jesus’ commands and effective in reaching the lost and making disciples of the specific people whom God has entrusted to your church.
Most churches know plainly what to do. It’s the how that tends to pose more of a challenge. I can help you assess how you’ve done historically in these areas, how you’re doing now, and help you create a biblical, God-honoring, strategic plan to continue to faithfully fulfill the Great Commission.
Stewardship
As a child of the ’80s, I’m old enough to remember when conversations about stewardship felt natural. Now, they tend to be fraught with anxiety and tension. Many churches are embarrassed to teach or preach on giving sacrificially to kingdom work because of the abuses and excesses that certain “celebrity preachers” have engaged in so publicly.
But stewardship is about more than people giving of their resources to the church. It’s also about how churches leverage those resources to do ministry inside their four walls, in their communities, and in broader missions and cooperative ministry endeavors.
I’m here to help you get back to the beautiful biblical truth that God owns everything, and that we simply act as temporary stewards of the blessings that he entrusts to our use.
Objective Insights
We all need people who can look at us objectively and give us, in appropriate measure, praise, constructive criticism, and reproof. Churches are no different. Because I’m a pastor of a local church, I can’t always be this voice for them. In fact, we recently brought in an outsider to help us have a basic conversation, which helped us to see clearly where we had been misunderstanding each other for months.
Please don’t think I’m saying that there is an inherent weakness in the structure and staffing of local churches. Ideally, all of our churches would be so biblically structured, led, fed, attended, served, etc., that we would never need outside help or intervention. But even if your church is wonderfully healthy, and I pray that it is, neutral, third-party insights can often still be beneficial.
Content & Media
Over the past two years, particularly, many churches have felt the pressure to embrace some sort of digital content presentation, or to update their current processes. Whether you embrace technology, don’t care for it, or are somewhere in the middle, my approach is to look at your specific situation theologically, individually, and strategically—in that order—for your church or ministry.
I’m here to help you address needs in video streaming, website development and utilization, content creation, photo and video production, and graphic design. I’m not an expert in all of these areas, but I can help you connect with people who can help you meet these specific needs.
Research
Conducting research for several secular thought leaders was one of the ways that God opened up doors for me to begin helping pastors and churches work through practical and theological issues. I never intended to be a ministry consultant. One day I simply realized that God kept placing me in positions to help pastors and local churches work through theological and practical issues.
I regularly help pastors and churches compile the relevant data that they need to assess mission and vision, staff members, ministries of the church, and budgetary concerns. Then, I analyze that information and synthesize an action plan from it. I also help churches craft documents. I won’t write your constitution and by-laws for you, but I can help you refine, update, and polish what you have. I can also assist you in updating your church covenant, statement of faith, new member’s material, personnel policies and procedures, and roll-adjustment plan.
Crisis Management
Along with the research component, God also initially opened doors for me to help churches through crisis intervention. Churches are magnets for crises. There are many reasons for this. First of all, every church is full of people who are at different levels on their journey of sanctification, but we all have to admit that, in this life, we will still struggle with sin.
Secondly, many Christians (thankfully) take their faith very seriously. After all, we’re talking about issues of ultimate importance and eternal consequence. At times, this invariably causes friction among people who would otherwise get along swimmingly. Because the stakes are so high in general, it’s easy to sometimes mistake strongly held preferences for first-order biblical issues, when they’re really not. Sometimes the issues are deadly serious and the gospel or glory of God is on the line, and the crisis moment is necessary for the survival of the church. Other times, peace-making mediation, focusing on mutual love and forgiveness is more in order.
I pray that your church doesn’t enter into crisis, but if it does, let me walk beside you, to help discern fact from fiction, preference from biblical imperative, and to seek peacemaking, reconciliation, and restoration—where possible—all to the glory of God.