Episode Transcript
Bart Blair here I am the director of church revitalization for Assist Church Expansion, and I'm joined by the executive director of assist, Mr. Nathan Bryant. Hello, Nathan. Hi, Bart. How are things going? Are you in Ontario today?
I am. I'm actually sitting at my desk at my house. Okay. You've been on the road a lot lately, so. And your background is blurred, so I'm never really quite sure where you are.
Actually, I knew you were at home because you had to let your kids in the house earlier. That's right. During our call, before we started recording. Great to see you. This is going to be episode 33 of our podcast, and it's also going to be the final episode that Nathan and I record together in 2025, released on December 1st.
Now, it's not the last episode of the year. We got one more episode coming on December 15, which is an interview that I recently did with lady named Amanda Purchase. Amanda and I talk about how churches can build out space for families with special needs in their church building. Something that I think is a really, really great and interesting conversation. So I mentioned that for all of you listeners who are listening to this episode or watching on our YouTube channel, if you haven't subscribed, make sure that you do subscribe so that you don't miss future episodes.
Don't like that one. And I have a couple of really amazing guests lined up for early 2026. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag yet, but really, some. Some. A couple of guys that I'm really excited about getting a chance to interview here.
I'll be interviewing them in the next couple of weeks, so please make sure that you subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite episodes or favorite podcasts so you don't miss any of our future episodes. We Release on the 1st and the 15th of every month. This is going to be a relatively brief conversation as you and I wrap up 2025. I've spent a lot of time on site with churches in recent weeks and months, as you have as well. And one of the things that is kind of a recurring theme, especially in churches that are going through a season of revitalization, is discouragement.
Discouragement amongst pastors. I see stuff posted on social media. I'm in some Facebook groups where guys are constantly asking for other pastors in ministry, people to be, you know, encouraging them and praying for them, because discouragement can be a real deal in ministry. Nathan, have you ever been discouraged in ministry? Yeah, I think it's part of.
The. Part of the price of doing ministry is being discouraged because, you know, we're so. We're so connected to. With what other people see, what we're supposed to do and how we're perceived by others, by how our ministry is going, all the stat lines. And it can be pretty numbing as well in ministry.
To me, the most discouraging thing I find in ministry beyond the Numbers and not achieving goals I'm hoping to achieve is when you lose people and they leave the church or they leave the ministry. And that's really hard for me because you build a relationship, you build trust, and you're thinking it's going to be forever, and sometimes it's not. It's really hard. Yeah, it's true. There are a lot of things that can lead to discouragement in ministry.
Obviously, comparison is one of those things that you just mentioned. Fatigue. I know fatigue for me has always been one that I struggle with because my brain just never shuts off when it comes to ministry and the things that I want God to do in and through our church. And so, you know, when everybody else is at home having dinner and maybe, you know, thinking about watching the latest episode of Survivor or hanging out with their neighbors and having barbecues, I'm thinking about what's the next thing that I can do to really make this ministry that I've been given the opportunity to lead better and more effective. So the brain never.
The brain never shuts off. So I find myself tired. You get to the end of the year like we are now, and maybe you just had unmet goals. Maybe your expectations were that you would have had more people commit their lives to Jesus, or that your weekend attendance would have grown or. Or that you might have made budget this year.
And now you're looking at the end of the year and you didn't make, you know, didn't make budget. Our last episode was on holidays. And you know how churches can leverage holidays, particularly Christmas, to reach more people. Maybe you set expectations for yourself in those regards, and maybe just the chaos of the holidays wears you down. And one thing that is a reality in church revitalization is the fatigue and the discouragement that comes from persistent resistance from people in your congregation.
Yes. If you're leading a church and you're trying to lead that church through change, it doesn't matter what you do, where you go, who you're trying to lead. There's always going to be somebody that resists or a group or a group of people. I'll, you know, I'm gonna be. I was in Anderson, South Carolina, working with one of our church partners this last week, and Jerry, the pastor there, accused me of shouting him out too often in the podcast.
So here you go, Jerry. You get another shout out. Jerry has just led his church through a major repainting of the inside of the building and even just changing the paint color inside the hallways and the sanctuary. There's resistance in that. You know, he was wanting to brighten things up and clean it up a little bit.
And Jerry has a great team that he's working with, and he's doing a super, super job there at the church. But even a simple thing like changing a paint color and freshening up the building comes with some level of resistance. And you kind of scratch your head and you go, why in the world would people resist this? But everybody has their own set of expectations and their own desires and their own opinions, and sometimes they differ from yours as a leader. Agreed.
Oh, and they have history. Right. Aunt Susie paid for that paint, maybe. So. Yeah, Uncle Bill painted it.
You can't touch that because that's the memory of Aunt Susie and Uncle Bill. Right. So this particular church building, I think, was built in 1976. Yes. Because they're coming up on their 50th anniversary of being in that building this next year.
And I'm not sure if it was the original paint from 1966 that they're covering, but it could have been. You know, it looked like it should have done a lead test on it. Yes, maybe. So, Jerry, if you're listening to this and you didn't do a lead test, maybe. Maybe you should get.
Get checked. All right. What we're going to do in a rapid fire podcast episode here is we're going to go through five Biblical and practical steps to find or keep your momentum going into a new year. If you're tired, if you're discouraged, we want to help you just reinvigorate and hopefully go into 2026, the next year with some level of just fire in your belly for what God has called you to do and what he hopes to accomplish in and through you. I do think it's always important that we remind pastors, just like pastors remind their congregations often.
What God wants from you and for you more than anything else is that you just enjoy him, that you're able to appreciate the relationship that he's provided for you through his son, Jesus Christ. We don't perform for God as pastors and in church leaders. And sometimes we can kind of take on that mentality that God loves me more when I do more for him, but that's not a reality. He or God loves me when I see result, when he blesses me in the way I think I should be blessed. Yeah, right, exactly.
Otherwise, he's not loving me. Exactly. And sometimes the results and the things that we hope for and that we long for, not the results that God gives us. You know, sometimes our best expectations are often unmet because our expectations are not necessarily aligned with what God thinks is going to be best for us in that season. So sometimes it's a matter of just regrouping.
And the first point, the first step I think that every pastor, church leader should do every year or as regularly as possible is just look back to Jesus for restoration. Go back to your own personal relationship with Jesus and remember that you're called to be a child of God and a disciple of Jesus before a pastor and church leader. Any comments on that, Nathan? Yeah. I think we have to ground ourselves in the gospel that we are saved by grace and we, we deserve nothing from God, but God allows us to participate and be part of his team, and we are privileged to do it.
And so this idea that, you know, we're often wanting all these results and we see other people get results and we're not getting the results, and, you know, we can get very discouraged. But just the fact that we're alive and can breathe and we are living in the mercy and grace of God and then above that, God has privileged us with the opportunity to serve as leaders and his team, the church that he died for. And we're privileged to serve in that. And so just kind of get back to that. That one, I'm saved by God's grace.
This is only temporary. The pain and affliction we, we. We are challenged with here is temporary. We will be forever with Christ in eternity. But while we're here, you know, we, we are given a new day every day.
And the, the God who loves us gives us an opportunity to serve him and be part of his team. And that's a wonderful blessing. Yeah, we preach the message to people in our congregations often that, you know, Jesus is a restorer, that that's who he is and what he does by nature. And, you know, one of the greatest examples of restoration was Jesus restoring Peter to his place as a disciple. You know, Peter denying Jesus had pretty much disqualified Himself as being a disciple.
That was the ultimate, really the ultimate crime that he could commit against Jesus was denying that he even knew Jesus. And we see in John, John's Gospel, chapter 21, Jesus cooking him breakfast and restoring him to his role as a member of that small little tribe, that small little family. And then we see from there what Peter was able to accomplish. You know, Peter had left. Peter had gone home.
Peter had gone back to work. He knew he was done. And yet the Lord restored him to his role. Yeah, I think we need to remember that God loves us. That's it.
It's not about what we do or didn't do. We have never did enough to earn his love, and we certainly can't do anything to disown it. And so we are loved by go God. And we need to rest in, in that as a starting point for anything for our ministry. The other piece I would say to this one is, is we also have to, I think, push into our calling.
You know, has God called you here? Is this what God wants for you? If that's true, then I can lean into the calling that God has given me. I was taught something a long time ago by my, my. One of my mentors, Pastor Jeff Thornley.
And I, I always, I always felt like, especially because I was so young when I was in the ministry and that ministry was growing large and I was responsible for a lot of things. I said, pastor, I don't know how to do any of this stuff, and I'm so inadequate to do it. And he would just say, listen, has God called you? I said, yeah. I said, well, he's the one who's going to do it through you and have confidence in what God's going to do, not in yourself.
And I'm like, oh, man, I wish I could say that. But as you start to lean into that and my confidence isn't in me. My confidence isn't the one who's called me. And, and, and he's given me this job. He wants me to do it so I rest in him and not me.
And that's a big one. Yeah. So the first point in just fighting that discouragement and getting yourself back on track is to look to Jesus for restoration. The second is to look back at what God has already done. I think sometimes we get so fixated on what we expect or want God to do that we sometimes miss.
I'm. I mean, this is my personality. I'm a high D, let's charge the hill kind of guy. I've been accused many Times of not stopping to celebrate enough because I'm already moving on to the next thing. I think it's really important that we take time, pause, look back on what God has accomplished in the previous year, even if it didn't meet all of our expectations or help us accomplish all of our goals.
God is work. God is at work. He was at work. And you've got to, you've got to look back and acknowledge that. Yeah, I, I, I'm with you, Bar, because I'm like you in some regard.
I'm not, I'm probably not as I'm, I'm maybe a little more optimistic than you are most of the time, but so to me, the cup is always half full. And I can even, no matter what happened this year, I'm always thinking the next year is going to be amazing. You have to, you have to hit me pretty hard to not to knock my optimism out. But, but at the same time, I don't stop enough just to celebrate the little things. This person, this marriage was restored, this person's life was changed.
This person made a decision to actually commit more to Jesus. And so even the littler things are the bigger ones. That these people made a decision to follow Christ and got baptized. And if only one made a decision this year, that's eternal, that's amazing. So sometimes we don't stop and celebrate the wins because we're so fixated on the big goals that we think we're supposed to be accomplishing.
But God had other plans about what he wanted to do this year in our ministry and in our life. I'm with you 100%. We just don't, we don't stop and be thankful and just celebrate the good things. Throughout all of history and God's relationship with his people, he's told them, encouraged them to set up monuments and celebrate the day. Right?
You cross the Jordan river, let's stack up the rocks. Well, we're always looking for those Jordan river moments. We're always looking for those big things to celebrate. And I think it's really important to, to remember the small things. David in the Psalms, repeatedly said, repeatedly says, I will remember the deeds of the Lord.
Well, sometimes the deeds of the Lord are just those simple, daily, rhythmic things that he does in the lives of people that help them continue to grow in their relationship with Jesus. Even some cases, it's the fact that you're, maybe it's the fact that your church is still open, that it's still alive. Like sometimes that's the miracle in and of itself. If your church was on life support, maybe, you know, it was at the end. The fact that you're still meeting and that there's still a congregation and it's still a community together, maybe that's the miracle that you need to celebrate.
Oh, amen. Yeah. So second. Second step in fighting discouragement is looking back on what God has already done. The third one is to look at the unseen and check the score on the eternal scoreboard.
A lot of times we're looking for numeric growth and things that we can measure ourselves. But Paul the apostle, you know, says in. In Philippians that we fix our eyes on what is not on, not on what is seen, but what's unseen. We know that God's doing all kinds of things that we can't see. And I think it's important that we just do a gut check every once in a while and realize that the things that we're investing in have eternal consequences that we may never even see in this life.
Yep. Oh, totally. Yeah. And that's what I was saying before. Like, if one person comes to know Jesus, okay, whatever else happened here, it's as hard as it was, as difficult as it was, as little as we thought we accomplished, that's the eternal thing that will never be changed.
Like, that's that that person's with. With in God's kingdom forever and ever. And that's like, sometimes we don't. We don't actually weigh that in the right amount. I mean, there was.
The angels were rejoicing in heaven when I first received Christ as their savior. Right. There was a celebration in heaven. And we don't, you know, we just don't maybe give it the kind of weight that we probably should. Sure.
The next point that I think is, I know a lot of guys that they struggle with this, but the point is to look around and share the load. This is something we see oftentimes, especially in solo pastorate churches, where the pastor is just carrying too much, the pastor is doing too much. Sometimes you have a guy who's just a doer who by nature is going to be the one that's going to roll up his sleeves and own things. A lot of times it comes from unrealistic expectations from the congregation that the pastor is going to do everything. Sometimes you just have to look for some reliable people that you can invite into your circle and give some other leaders or people who have prospective leadership the opportunity to try.
Try some things, to do some things, and to take a little bit off of your load, you know, I think lots of times guys, that's what they saw their pastor do. So they think that's what they have to do. And they've never been taught to actually. To lead others. Yeah, because I'm leading doesn't mean that I'm having to do everything.
It means I'm responsible for it all. God actually wants me to do it through others. And, and, you know, I come from a large family, so my mom used to make us all do the chores in teams and we'd cycle every week. So such a large family that they had teams. Multiple teams.
Yes. When. With 10 children. Yeah. So us two are on laundry this week and next two are on dishes next to her on, you know, so, you know, but sharing the load and working, that is, is a big deal.
You know, you don't have to be the one doing everything, you know, even though you're responsible for it. So, yeah, I would say that's a big one. And just, even, like the little things, like, sometimes I watch these, a pastor that I'm engaging and they're setting up the tables and chairs, making sure the building's open. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, you do what you have to do.
But I'm sure that there's somebody in the church that would love to do that. That, that, that would be their greatest joy. They don't want to speak Sunday. They would not want to do that or teach a Sunday school class, but they would love to serve in that way. And so, you know, that would be one more thing that, that he wouldn't have to be managing on all the different things that go on.
So that's, that's the kind of thing we just even think about the little things that are taking time from you that would be a joy for somebody. Like, sometimes we think we're burdening somebody with this responsibility, and sometimes we are. But a lot of times this person, that's what they would love to do if they were just being asked to do it. And it's a, it's a joy for them. It's a way for them to use their gift and to serve, and it's going to unload you with another responsibility that you don't have to take care of.
So, yeah, so, yeah, I, I, let's get, I'm gonna get super practical here. Okay. As we're wrapping up the year, if you're a pastor that seems to own a lot of the duty around your church, building, the ministry, otherwise, this is what I'd encourage you to do. Get out a spreadsheet and make a list of all of the things that you do on a weekly and monthly basis and then create a second column that puts a note in there if you are the only person who can do that. And then another column that says who might be able to help the things that only that they, that aren't the only things you can do.
So there are certain things such as, well, preaching. If you're the pastor, you're going to do most of the preaching and maybe that's, maybe you're the only person who do the preaching. But I know guys that are doing the preaching and they're printing the bulletin and folding it every week. There's probably like that. You're not the only person who can do that.
If you're printing and folding the bulletin every week. If you're the, if you, if you are vacuuming the carpet every week, that's not something that you have to do. The buck stops with you in terms of maybe ensuring that it gets done. But there's got to be somebody else in the church that can help out. And as you said, Nathan, might, might actually be more gifted at vacuuming than you are and will be blessed to do it.
They will be blessed and the church will be blessed. And, and yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So creating an opportunity to share the load is. Yeah.
Another way to give yourself a little bit more optimism and encouragement for the new year. The last point that we're going to cover here is the one maybe it should have been number one. But going into 20, 26, look after your own soul, Find time to rest. We see that Jesus did this all the time, pulled away from the rest of his disciples to spend one on one time with his Heavenly Father. And you know, there's just something that I think as pastors, even though we like the idea of a Sabbath, most of us don't do it.
We don't build it into the rhythm of our life. The Sabbath isn't. The Sabbath is good for us. That time away, that time to spend with God. And I would just say, hey, block off one full day at least once a month, if not every week.
If it's weekly, we'd call it a Sabbath. But if you can do it once a month, just take, just take a personal retreat day, no exceptions. Just lock it in, put it on your calendar and hold it as religiously as you can. Okay. If there's a funeral that needs to happen, maybe you, you know, you have to flex on that.
But you basically just say, hey, I'm you know, it's the third Wednesday of every month. I'm just going to block this away and I'm going to go do something that restores my soul. I'm going to go sit by the lake and pray and read my Bible. Or I'm going to, you know, maybe there's a local retreat center that you can go to and you can have a day where you just not working on sermons, not doing sermon outlines, not doing the work of the ministry, but just enjoying Jesus in your relationship with him and really just try to hold that sacred. Yeah.
One of the things I used to do quite frequently, at least once every two months, and I haven't done it in a little bit because I, I'm not in the same ministry role I was before. So it's, you know, it's. Although my, my job is demanding, it's not the same as when I was mentoring and pastoring people. It's not the same. But what I would do is I would get away for four hours.
I would take a four hour break. I'd bring my hymnal, which we, of course, we don't have those anymore, but hymnals. Actually, many of the churches that are listening to this podcast still have him. Okay. Hymnal.
I'd bring a notebook with me in my Bible and I would drive someplace and I would put my phone in the car and lock the door and I'd get away. And what I would do is. Because what I was finding when I would do spiritual retreat, I was thinking about all the stuff that I was dealing with and I just couldn't stop. I couldn't praise the Lord or pray because I was so focused on all the things I was trying to manage. So what I would do is I would just take my notebook and whatever came to my mind, I would write it.
So as I'm singing a song or I'm reading scripture, just keep writing down. And I would fill up five, six, seven sheets of paper in my time away with the Lord. And I would just spend time praying, spend time reading scripture, spend time singing songs. And I would be writing this list of all this, downloading all the garbage. Not always garbage, but mostly garbage that's in my mind that's crowding my space.
And when I was done that, I would just pray over this list. And I just felt like, man, so refreshed and so like, okay, God has all of this stuff I can't manage anyway. And I just came away with a much greater sense of peace and calmness and like all the stuff that's been on me. I'm now giving to the Lord.
That's huge difference. And I've seen your handwriting, so I would imagine that you and the Lord were the only ones.
Nathan doesn't speak in tongues, but. But he might write in tongues. Pretty tough to read. So, Nathan, we're gonna put a button on this episode. Just a quick little recap of these five points that can help you find or keep momentum and fight discouragement in the new year.
Look to Jesus for your restoration. Look back on what God has already done. Look at the unseen and do an inventory of the eternals scoreboard. Look around so that you can share the load and look after your own soul. Find some time to rest.
As you as a pastor, church leader, listening to this podcast, we hope that the content that we produced for you here in this calendar year has been a blessing and fruitful and helpful for you. That's really our ultimate goal. Nathan and I love the local church and all that it means to our world and the way that the gospel of Jesus gets spread and, and if we've been able to help you at all in any simple way this year, we're really grateful for the fact that we get to invade your, your AirPods or your car stereo or whatever that is. Nathan, any parting shots for our guests for 2025? The only other thing I would say is as you get into 2026, if you don't have a peer friend, accountability, peer mentor, you should go find one.
Every pastor needs another pastor who understands their burden, who isn't connected to their church that they can meet with, pray with, talk to things about, share their burdens with. This is really, really, really vital for you having a healthy, viable ministry. You need an outlet that will let you have that conversation who can understand your situation and concerns and pray with you as a peer. As you head into 2026 and all the other things you're going to do if you don't have that, put that on your number one list. Because I think that will really make a big difference in your future.
Absolutely. That is, that is such good wisdom. When I was up in Alberta and I was pastoring the church there, I had another pastor in town. I'll just name him. His name was Bob Church.
What a great name for a pastor, right? Bob just can't beat it. And Bob and I would get together for coffee and we would download on each other on some of the challenges and the struggles we were having. And he was an encouragement to me and I know that I was an encouragement to him. And it was a.
It was a golden relationship. So I think that's, you know what. And our churches were very different. We didn't do ministry the same way. Our gifting was very different.
But the reality was both being in the trenches of ministry, so many of the challenges and the things that we were facing were. Were common. He was in an older, established church that really needed to be revitalized. I was in a church plant. And we were just trying to learn how to be a church together.
And even though we were in completely different ministry spaces, we had the same thing in common, that God had called us to a place of leadership in the local church. And man, go and find one of those. Absolutely. And by the way, and if you can't find one of those, reach out to Nathan or me and we'll point you in the direction of somebody that at least maybe from a virtual standpoint can be. Can be a zoom or, you know, FaceTime partner with you, a church or a pastor somewhere else that might be able to encourage you.
Amen. Well, we're going to wrap this up. Thanks again, Nathan, for hanging out with me. It's been a fun year doing this podcast with you. I'm looking forward to another year.
And, and again, for those of you who've hung around to the end of this episode, we appreciate you. If you haven't yet left a rating or a review wherever you listen to the podcast or on our YouTube channel, would love for you to do that. And please make sure that you share the podcast with another pastor or church leader that you believe might be able to benefit from our podcast. Thanks again and have a great holiday season.
