Every Christ-centered pastor desires to make a difference for eternity and to build a Christ-honoring, Spirit-led, and gospel-centered church family.

Yet, there are several trends in our culture today that bring some unique challenges to church life and church leadership.

In this year’s Spiritual Leadership Conference, I taught a two-part session on contemporary ministry trends and compared how they line up with Scripture.

Part 1 covered contextualization and interpretive ministry trends—including such terms as missional and gospel-centered. If you have not already had the opportunity to watch it, I hope you will, perhaps even before watching Part 2 below.

Part 2 focused on congregational trends, including attendance, media impact, fewer young people going into ministry, and the slowing of evangelism and outreach.

Below is a video of the session with downloadable notes available if you’d like to follow along with the outline, Scripture verses, and quotes I included.


(If you cannot see this video in your RSS reader or email, you can watch it here.)
download audio | download outline

In addition to looking at these topics, I gave several concluding thoughts to wrap up both parts of the lesson (beginning at 33:47 in the video above). Afterward, we held a question and answer panel with four leaders related to the content of both lessons (beginning at 45:02 in the video above). I’m praying the Lord will use this material to help, strengthen, and encourage local church leaders.

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