The Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren Review

"Ministry is a marathon. It's not how you start that matters but how you end." Rick Warren stated this in the beginning of  his journey to planting a church. How you end in your ministry is the most important part of your ministry. Ending is the outcome of how well you taught and discipled your church. In this book, Rick Warren talks about how he came into the ministry of planting a church and the purpose of a driven church. One things that Rick talks about though is that you can't wait for things to be perfect in your ministry because if you do things won't ever get done. You can't always just expect everything to be perfect and that's not how it works in the ministry. If things were perfect than we probably wouldn't need to minister to each other but that's not the truth. We weren't made perfect and when it comes to us being in the ministry there will always be ups and downs and challenges but never perfect.

Within your church you need to be able to offer people something that they can't get anywhere else. When Rick stated that i was like wow! If there are good things happening in your church and a lot of awesome things are going on, than people will be drawn to that kind of church where much is happening in the church. I think one thing that we don't really think about is that as church planters, all church planters go through a discouraging point at some point in time and Rick makes this statement, "Absolutely nothing will revitalize a discouraged church faster than rediscovering its purpose." How true this statement really becomes.  God has so much purpose in each of our lives and in our passions and in our churches. When we are going on a downhill spiral, if we choose to remember the purpose that God gave us and our church than it all works out and things begin to get better!

All churches need a system and a strategy and i know that we all do! When we know our purpose as a church we need to find steps to take and strategies that we can have to get the things that we need to get done. Part of having a plan and a strategy with your church is that you need to be able to turn your attenders into members. Come up with a membership plan for people to really be able to become a member of your church and then make small groups too where people can grow even more in what they are learning and that's where the relationship happens where we can connect more with people. I could talk so much more about this book that Rick Warren wrote but i can't so i want to end with this, "Successful ministry is building the church on the purposes of God in the power of the Holy Spirit and expecting the results from God." If we build our ministries and our churches on God's purpose that he has for us and the church that is being planted, we will see the results that we want when we expect things from God.

I read 50% of The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.