While scrolling social media, I happened upon an open question from Travis Stephens that resonated with a conversation held just a week earlier with a few of my colleagues in ministry on the topic of churches struggling to fill positions of leadership, especially the role of pastor.

I reflected for a moment on my own calling and how, during that time, God used a single General Baptist church in White House, Tennessee to bring forward numerous men as pastors and leaders. Each of these men received or acknowledged their calling under the same man – Pastor Larry Treadway. My recollection from the late 90s and early 2000’s is that there were few, if any, empty pulpits in our local association; yet men were stepping forward in response.

Reacting to Travis’ question, “Why do you think fewer young people are going into ministry and what can we as the church do about it?”, I spewed out a “Top 12” list. Some were deep. Some not so much.

With a bit more substance…and in no particular order (beyond #1), I offer the following:

• We need more diligent, directed prayer specifically to see pastors called. It starts here. With all of us. Everyone. Not only pastors. Perhaps we have not because we ask not.

• Young people respond to example. We need more examples. Some churches have not seen a single person baptized in years, let alone step into ministry, leading some of our younger generations to perhaps question the stirrings in their own heart.

• Shrinking and/or Aging Congregations. There are no young men to respond to a call if there are no young men in the congregation. As well, a young person may be hesitant in preaching to a crowd of his elders. “What can I teach them?”  Timothy moment.

• Men respect strength and courage. A man that will fearlessly lead a church in the face of all efforts of the enemy will see men stand beside him and young men follow.

• The value of what can be accomplished in a small church by a pastor that loves Jesus is sometimes overshadowed by the flash and the prominence of “megachurches.”  The expectation of having to “deliver at that level” to be considered successful is daunting and unrealistic…and unnecessary.  Honor and encourage pastors and leaders in their service where they are and for who they are.

• Pastors should…with great discernment…seek out, recognize, and help to ignite the spark in a young person. Champion and encourage them. “I see God working in you. How can I help? Do you have any questions?  Again…Timothy.

• Many churches have removed Sunday and Wednesday evening services, which leads to a lack of opportunity for younger people to preach.  A church that previously had 150 services per year now have only 52, and it was likely these evening services most often utilized for training up young men and women in ministry. I fondly remember a time when young preachers were called up to deliver messages at local GB churches on Sunday and Wednesday nights.  The crowd was typically smaller, but made up of the “doors open” folk. Unintentionally, pastors can be protective of pulpit time. The reduced number of services also means fewer moments in the pulpit for those already serving. The first time that a young man stands in the pulpit is more often successful when approached with those who love them and want them to succeed.  Adding back something as simple as a quarterly Sunday evening reserved for someone other than the lead pastor can provide a great proving ground. Open the pulpit.

• Too many openly complain about how hard it is to be a pastor. Personal note:  This literally makes me throw up my hands and yell “Stop it!” “It’s not rewarding enough. It doesn’t pay enough. The world is against us. I’ll be canceled.” Speaking in private to an accountability team, spouse, friends who are discreet…completely understood.  But on social media or from the pulpit? Why would anyone want to be a pastor when the majority of what they hear or read about being pastor or ministry leader is negative? Pastors sharing “Why I chose to step down from the pulpit” articles on social media is not conducive to developing new pastors. Another caution here is how we speak about pastoring in front of our own kids.  Pastors’ kids have an upbringing that is different than most others, and what we allow them to hear has an unquestionable impact on their opinion of ministry. My own personal experience speaks here.

• Some small struggling churches have become comfortable being small struggling churches because growth would mean change…particularly in tradition. A young pastor might have new ideas and desire to do things that would change their demographics…like bringing in young people.  Or drums.
  
• The call to culture is in constant conflict with the call to ministry…and modern culture is LOUD in the ears of our younger generations.
  
• Not every young person is called to start out in youth ministry. Seriously.
  
• Lack of support and resourcing can take the feet out from under even experienced pastors. When a young person announces a call to ministry, the church should be ready and eager to help, support, and encourage them in every way possible.

Pulling these various threads together, my heart is drawn back to #1. Prayer. Diligent, intentional prayer for God to work a mighty work in the hearts of our younger generations and call them forward to proclaim the Gospel.

We should not only pray that God would move in the hearts of young men and women to respond to leadership, but that we…all of us…would be moved to support these men and women with affirmation, resources, finances, and celebration.

About the Author: Bill Petty is the Worship Pastor at Revolution Church in White House, TN. Alongside his wife, Cinda, and his children, Eve and William, he has served in multiple roles, including lead pastor, with more than 20 years in ministry…most of that time with a guitar somewhere close by.

General Baptist Ministries is trying to address this issue right now. Please join the Answering the Call Prayer Team to get updates on how God is moving in General Baptist churches all over the world. And for more info and resources visit our website.

My daughter, Bailey, is an old soul. She’s infatuated with all things vintage, from jewelry to furniture, and mostly old vinyl records. For her 16th birthday, we bought her a restored vintage stereo system with an old school Pioneer record player. And let me tell ya, it shakes the house! She enjoys some CCR, jams out to Dire Straits, and absolutely loves the Beatles.

Her favorite thing to do when she’s home alone is put on a record, turn the volume up to the max, and let the music start to move her. The majority of the albums in her collection are used, and every so often, there’s a blemish on the vinyl. We all know what that means, and it always seems to happen during the best part of the song! 

The saying “like a broken record” is a cringy reality when you’re trying to listen to your favorite jam. 

I absolutely loved the direction and heart of this year’s Summit – Answering The Call. This issue, along with many others in the local church seems to be broken. In all reality, the church isn’t broken. Just like Bailey’s favorite Beatles record isn’t broken. We just have to be wise enough to move the needle. 

I get it. As a pastor, many times it looks and feels like no one cares anymore. I hear phrases like “this place would be packed if…”, and I hear small group leaders disheartened from the lack of participation. I see kids and youth leaders giving up on the idea of “Church of tomorrow.” Where is everyone at?

Here are my thoughts. The Gospel isn’t broken. I truly believe that Christ is compelling the church not to throw up our hands and toss the record. There may be skips from time to time (things that aggravate us). Don’t change the record. Just reposition the needle. We also must not ignore the skip by acting like there’s not an issue. (Ya know, doing the same thing but expecting different results?)

In Mark 6, we read that the apostles are gathered around Jesus, reporting to Him all they’ve done and taught. Jesus must have been thinking, “Man, you haven’t seen anything yet!” Fast forward a few verses and the apostles were faced with a challenge: Hungry people with not enough to eat. No, I’m not talking about fellowship dinners here. I’m talking about real hungry people, and a ton of them! They were tired, it was late, and there was no food.They just couldn’t fathom where any food could come from.

Wait, didn’t they just finish bragging about all they had done and taught? The very men that were walking with Jesus wanted to send the hungry away. To them, the problem was bigger than the problem solver. In this moment, Jesus could have gotten angry at His men for “not getting it.” He could have said, “Ya know what? On second thought, I don’t want you to follow me.” In true Jesus fashion, He didn’t throw the record away, He just moved the needle. He completely changed the conversation with this command: “You give them something to eat.” In that moment, the Gospel wasn’t broken, but Jesus brought the Gospel to life! We can learn a couple things from this. 

Number One

Many leaders look at bigger churches and say things like “If I only had that worship team, or that small group… If we were older… If we were younger…”. You get it. Jesus didn’t wish there was enough to eat, and He didn’t wish His men were more faithful. In that moment, He used what He had. Some tired men, five loaves and two fish. God can use the young, the old, the tired, the strong. He can use one piano player, or no piano player! He can use an entire worship team, or someone that can barely carry a tune. It’s time for us to stop getting down about what we don’t have, start looking at what we do, and let the Holy Spirit work in that capacity! 

Number Two

Pray for what you don’t have. Jesus, after taking the five loaves and two fish, looked up to Heaven, gave thanks, and broke the loaves. The multitude ate until they were satisfied. We can get so hard hearted on what’s not going on in our church that we forget the simplest, yet most crucial thing: prayer. When we pray for God to stir hearts and to send teachers, singers, builders, preachers… God will supply! Why? Because the people are hungry and the only food that will sustain is the Bread of Life! On the outside, this was an overwhelming “bigger than life” moment. This was a skip; a blemish on the record. This skip allowed Jesus to have a conversation in real time, showing the apostles what the value of the album was. 

I believe that the beat of the Gospel message still has the power to feed the hungry soul and give living water to the thirsty. The Gospel record still has the power to move a soul from dead to alive. So I have one question: why would you change the record when you think it’s not working? Keep the record on, just move the needle.

About the Author: Mark McDowell is the pastor at Pleasant View GBC in Risco, Missouri. He describes himself as an average, ordinary guy who serves an extraordinary God. His mission in life is simple – Love Jesus, love people.

I have attended Providence General Baptist for almost 18 years now. My sisters and I joined the praise team not long after we started going there. We came from a small country church which I still love to this day. I grew up singing about “The Old Rugged Cross”, and how “The King is Coming”. Those songs still speak to my heart. In fact, we still incorporate those songs into each service.

But now, 18 years later and co-leading the praise band with one of my sisters, we have evolved and added contemporary praise music to our Sunday morning worship sets. I am a strong believer that we can change the method of delivery in terms of music (following respectable and biblically sound reasoning), but we cannot change the message. The message we believe is still about that merciful, loving Father who died on the cross to save us from our sins and rose again and continues to extend to us far more grace than we could every deserve. So how could it ever be difficult to praise a Heavenly Father who is so deserving?

My answer to that would be busyness. 

Google defines busyness as the state or condition of having a great deal to do.

In my case, it should say: “The state or condition you accidentally get yourself in by committing to too many things, even if out of the goodness of your heart; see also self-inflicted.”

I would love to tell you that I have learned to set my eyes on Jesus every second of every day, distraction free, and have weeded out the unnecessary of life. Yet here I am, at 10:54 pm on a Friday night, finishing putting my thoughts on paper. But I justify it in that my day was filled with good and wholesome things. I worked at my job where I do outreach in school, then I coached our high-school volleyball team where my oldest daughter plays as a senior, then I co-led praise band practice at church with my sister, pastor, and friends. Those are all good things, right?

So why do I feel guilty that I allowed busyness to rob my day of blessings? Because I wasn’t intentional about finding joy in every moment of the busy. If we are not careful, we can let even the “good-busy” distract us from our true purpose. 

Leading worship at a church is no small task. Our number one focus is to please God by allowing Him to work through us as we praise His name together and help usher in his presence. I admit, I must be careful not to let pleasing people become a priority as well. It is easy to be worried about messing up or who likes the songs. I’ve found myself picking songs based off how happy the congregation looked the last time we sang it.

While we do need to take their worship into consideration, I just remember that the goal is not just to help them have an experience. A worship experience feels good, but it is temporary. They leave and the emotional high fades away. It is simply an event. The goal is to help lead others into praising that will cause them to long for a relationship where worship is ongoing.

To do this, I must remember that this is not about me. It never has been, and it never will be. Leading worship is about glorifying Him above all.  I must trust that if I am doing His will and striving to follow His lead, that He will take care of the rest. When you allow yourself to come to a place where you play or sing as if it is only you and Jesus in the room you find a much deeper level of intimacy with Jesus Christ.

This has truly changed my life and my relationship with God. I still must find time for studying God’s word. Worship is wonderful, but we still need that biblical knowledge. We must stay fed and fill our cup in order to pour into others. 

Remember, the enemy is not going to leave you alone when you are trying to serve God. He attacks us so often on Sunday mornings that sometimes I must laugh to keep from crying. From the computer glitching to the piano player coming down with a cold and having to fill-in, you name it, it happens. Those are all very small things, yes, but when you’re trying to lead a congregation into serious worship of a Holy God, those small things are big interruptions.

Please hear me- do not let distractions steal purpose. 

As a wife and mom, I strive to be very careful not to become so distracted by life that I lose sight of Him. I know I talk a lot about being intentional, but that is what I am having to focus on. Serving with a joyful heart and not becoming overwhelmed by the weight of “have to”. If you allow serving the Lord to feel like a job you have to do, you allow the enemy to suck the joy out of it.

I want my children to grow up seeing mom and dad serve joyfully, even in the hard times. I am sure I fail daily, but I strive for them to see that setting your eyes on Jesus above all else truly does bring a peace that passes any earthly understanding. My husband and I intend to show our children that parents should have a mutual love and respect where the woman loves and serves her husband to biblical standards while the husband loves the wife as God loves the church. This takes a lot of forgiveness, grace, and being intentional in all we say and do. Doing these things honors God which is what we should all be reaching for. God Bless. 

About the Author: Rachel Gooch is a wife and mother of three girls who attend Providence General Baptist Church in Providence, Kentucky. She serves as a worship leader and co-leader of the junior high youth group, along with her wonderful husband. She has a degree in Elementary Education, grades K-5 and a degree in Special Education, grades K-12. She is also a Family Resource Coordinator in two elementary schools in her local school district while she pursues her masters as a Literacy Specialist.