Ministry Breakthrough Stories are New Podcast’s Focus
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (BP) — In Philippians 4:8, Paul tells the church to dwell on what’s commendable and praiseworthy. With a new podcast, Christians can now apply Paul’s advice during their daily commute.
Hosted by Bryan Rose, “My Ministry Breakthrough” is dedicated to telling the stories of churches experiencing key moments of vision clarity and alignment.
“Many of our guests may not make conference stages with their stories or be featured in big magazines, but that’s the beauty of the podcasting medium,” said Rose, lead navigator for Auxano, the on-site consulting arm of LifeWay Christian Resources. “You can tell stories with ordinary leaders in a way that’s encouraging and challenging.”
The inspiration for Rose’s podcast comes from National Public Radio’s “How I Built This,” a broadcast featuring entrepreneurs behind some of the world’s best-known companies. But instead of speaking to website designers and real estate moguls, Rose calls upon pastors and high-capacity volunteers to tell their stories of how “God build this.”
“It’s easy for churches to copy-and-paste vision from other churches,” Rose said. “But every church is called to be unique and to tap into its own DNA. God has a plan for every church that’s rooted in its context.”
Rose believes ministry breakthrough happens when churches embrace their cultural and geographic context and align people and resources to a vision that helps them make disciples.
“Pastors are visionaries,” he said. “The problem is many tend to rely on a general sense of where they’re going. This always leads to misalignment and competing pictures of what the future looks like.”
In the inaugural episode of “My Ministry Breakthrough,” Rose interviewed Will Mancini, founder of Auxano, about what breakthrough looks like for churches. Mancini said such a definition is hard to put into words but described the following traits of churches that go through such an experience:
— Church members and leaders begin to see ministry routines in a new, exciting way.
— An idea brings a quantum jump of energy to a church.
— A deep sense of satisfaction forms in knowing, “This is exactly what we’re called to do.”
— New confidence is created as the future of the ministry becomes clearer.
— Persistent tension in a church suddenly becomes resolved.
“For me, the most important part of breakthrough is there’s a trajectory change for the rest of your life,” Mancini said. “You know it when you see it.”
By telling breakthrough stories, Rose is committed to helping others learns what a breakthrough might look like for their own ministries.
“There are lot of pastors out there who feel isolated, who feel like they’re going through things no one else is,” Rose said. “The goal of this podcast is to provide an instructive listen for anyone who’s involved in leadership in the church, whether it be in a lay role or a staff role.”
Future episodes of “My Ministry Breakthrough” will include:
— Barrett Bowden, senior pastor at Island Community Church in Memphis, Tenn., which began in a living room but has blossomed into a large ministry heavily populated by Millennials and medical students living in urban areas of Memphis.
— Chris Freeland and Justin Atkins, senior pastor and executive pastor of McKinney Church in Fort Worth, Texas. Freeland and Adkins will discuss what it looks like to lead an established church through a name change.
— Chris Driver, pastor of Fifth Street Baptist Church in Levelland, Texas, a church with a membership of less than 100 that plans to launch house churches in small farming towns nearby.
“You don’t have to be a big church with big resources to have a big vision of what God is calling you to,” Rose said.
New episodes of “My Ministry Breakthrough” are made available every other week and can be downloaded at MyMinistryBreakthrough.com or wherever podcasts are available.
Auxano is the on-site ministry consulting arm of LifeWay that fuses vision clarity with five critical needs in churches: resourcing, leadership, execution, communication and discipleship.
The original story can be found at: http://www.baptistpress.com/51801/ministry-breakthrough-stories-are-new-podcasts-focus
Reprinted from Baptist Press (www.baptistpress.com), news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.
by Aaron Wilson
Tags: Breakthrough Clarity, Bryan Rose, My Ministry Breakthrough, auxano
