Now What? The After Party

Okay, so we had our official Grand Opening on Sunday March 20th, 2011 @ 6:00pm. After months and months of praying, planning and promoting, we finally saw fruit from this. We had over 200 people show up for our Grand Opening. What a great day! It was encouraging, inspiring and exciting.

.....but then Monday came. I was really tired. I had to go back to my full time job. I am not "Pastor Kevin" at my job. As a matter of fact, I had two co-workers actively try to get me fired. I had to meet with management and our HR department about this. I had to work on next week's sermon. I began to work on our next events. Very anti-climatic. What now?

I am reminded of the birth of Christ. There were angels, traveling shepherds and God's glory that came that day. What a circumstance of miracles that led up to this event. I heard a message from one of my mentors, Dwight Dunning, who preached, "What Happens After the Glory?" He spoke on Christmas about the shepherds and all those involved in this event. It was probably pretty anti-climatic. They went back to "normal." They had this great experience, but what now?

After a Great Ministry Experience:

1. Take Time to Celebrate with Your Team: Have a party! Have fun. Thank them for their faithfulness and reflect upon the faithfulness of God.

2. Share with Them your Next Big Event: Shift their minds to thinking that was the end all. Remind them there is much more to come. Start working on improving your ministries. Use S-Curves for your advantage.

3. Make a Memory, but not a Monument: There are some preachers and even leaders in our denominations who talk about that "one experience," pastorate, church plant or book they wrote. They are experts of the previous 20 years, but have no clue how to shift for the next 20 years. Some guys say, "Yeh, son, I had 80 people at my church one time too." (gruff country old voice.)

4. Don't Try to Out Do the Previous Week: Ministry is tough. We have great nights where we progress and change and then we have MONTHS where nothing visually happens. It seems like we are plowing through concrete..... then BAM, we have a powerful week and so we work hard to out do the previous week. Don't focus on that. Growth is a process, not an event.