Starting a ministry may seem like a daunting task. Stories of both successes and failures abound. But in this practical seminar you’ll learn key mistakes to avoid and in turn, real-world keys to success in ministry ventures, big or small. 

Wildwood 75th Anniversary Celebration

<p>Starting a ministry may seem like a daunting task. Stories of both successes and failures abound. But in this practical seminar you’ll learn key mistakes to avoid and in turn, real-world keys to success in ministry ventures, big or small. </p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Wildwood Lifestyle Center

10 Mistakes in Starting a Ministry

Jesse Zwiker

10 Mistakes in Starting a Ministry- Part 1

Before we pray and get into it, I just want to give a little bit of background on how I got to these, I call them the top 10 ministry mistakes, or the top 10 mistakes that many ministries make that are uncommonly understood or uncommonly known.

We have many mistakes or issues or something you know that that people make that we all know that are wrong, right?

A lack of faith is 1 of the top, would be 1 of the top 10 mistakes.

But everybody understands that a lack of faith is a problem, right?

So those are the ones that we're not going to be talking about so much because they're clear.

We don't want to rehash everything we already know.

So get ready for some heated discussion about some difficult challenges, okay?

Difficult issues that I believe are some of the major challenges that are not allowing us to progress as fast as God would have us to progress.

And our humanity often lies in the way for God to really take this message to the whole world and we're just lagging behind because of certain paradigms, certain things that we believe that don't allow us to actually move forward.

So we're going to look at some of these things, especially in the startup phase, but also in general, in ministry in general.

So let's just start with a word of prayer and we can allow the Holy Spirit to instruct us this morning.

Dear Father in Heaven, thank you so much that you give us this time to really think about how to do ministry in our modern context in which we live and applying all the principles that you've taught us throughout the ages, and especially throughout the Adventist history, and that we can learn from those things and really implement these things into our 21st century context.

Lord, help us to really focus on learning from the Holy Spirit, not falling in love with our own ideas, but really falling in love with your ideas and with your plans for our lives and for ministry in general and Help us to not make these mistakes that That other people and we ourselves have made in the past for us not to be an obstacle in the work, but actually be a blessing in the work, and that's all of our desire and so therefore we thank you that you will participate and as you have promised in Jesus' name we pray.

Okay, so just a little bit of background for whoever doesn't know me as well.

Some know me very well here, but I used to be, actually when I was 18, I got, The Lord gave me a call, finally.

I mean, the call has been there from, you know, since birth, but I didn't get it.

And then I realized, man, I do not want to do anything else except for work for God for the rest of my life.

And so that change really set the sail for me in what I was going to be doing.

And so from there, long story short, I was called to go help start a ministry in Honduras, Vida Internacional, where Joseph is working right now.

And so I was there for about 3, 4 years, and That was a tremendous experience for me.

I was 19 20 years old and I had no idea what I was doing and And here we had to do legal papers, and we had to figure out you know project plans and Fundraising and figure out how to do business and how to do how to start a program school You know a mission school and how to start a church I'd never started a church and then and then starting an elementary school and all these other things right and and and All of this just based on no experience, no idea how to do anything.

And so you can imagine how many mistakes we made, I made.

And so thankfully the Lord allowed, you know, the Lord's so merciful and He's so gracious and He helps us even through all these things, you know, even with our ignorance, He just tries to figure out how to bless anyway, right?

And so he allowed OCI, you know OCI, Output Centers International, the network of ministries all around the world, and so these leaders, they would come and visit us and give us some really good counsel.

It's like, hey, you shouldn't do this or you should do.

And so it helped us eliminate some of the challenges and some of the mistakes that we were about to make or were making.

The Lord has really helped them now thank God.

It's still a thriving ministry and I think it's thriving much more now than when I was there.

I don't know if that has anything to do with me not being there.

We are called to be missionaries for God to teach us, Right?

And so that's my, that's really my experience down in Honduras.

So from there, I was called to come up to Wildwood and spent about almost 4 years here leading the college here.

And we had some really cool experiences developing the online school, where now I think about 500 people are being trained right now in the online school.

As missionaries, you took the course, right?

That was really a big blessing for us to have that experience, you know?

And then also to develop the business course, the ministry management course, where many of the things that I wish I had had in starting the project in Honduras, we put into the course in this Ministry Management course, so that other people wouldn't do those same mistakes that we made.

So just the bare essentials, It's a one-year intensive course here at Wildwood.

So that was really, that's kind of the background.

And then, you know, I got married, thankfully.

Thanks to, really, to Wildwood for bringing us together.

We were working together in Honduras actually.

And then 7 years later, it hit me, right?

And she actually studied marketing and international business.

And so that really helps in a lot of the things that we're doing now.

Now we went, when we left Wildwood, we went back to Europe and we started an incubator, actually an incubator for businesses, for Adventists that want to start their own businesses or their own ministry but from a profit, as a profitable ministry, okay, a profitable that is like a restaurant or a health food store or anything, right, we helped 1 guy start his own app development company.

So it's an IT company and they do apps for ministries.

Actually for anybody, but The guy is an IT freak, you know, these guys, but he's really a missionary.

He's worked as a missionary before and so he wants to help many ministries get into the 21st century and get them up to apps and having these kind of things.

And so we get some experience doing this and a smoothie bar.

You know how when a child is just born, it's early, so you put them in an incubator and make sure that it gets everything that it needs and so forth until it's mature enough so that it can live on its own, right?

And so that's really, it's kind of, it's a business incubator.

So people come, we give them their legal structure, we have some, it's not just me, we're working with a number of people that are, that have lawyers connected to it and accountants and different things.

So we actually just do even the accounting for them if they need that.

We have the legal structure already set up for them and so within about 3 weeks we just help them launch, develop the business model and then launch it, bring it into the market with them.

So that's been very exciting and we've learned a lot of things on what to do and what not to do in terms of starting a Ministry or starting a company.

The idea is that these ministries are all Ministry their centers of influence, but at the same time, they're also profitable so that people can live off of it and continue doing ministry for the rest of their lives.

So you start with someone like a business master, business administration.

Can you get them into their own business in 3 weeks?

Even without any business degree or anything like that previously, we will help them.

These, the guys that we've helped, they don't have any business degrees.

But we have some experts that work with us that have done a lot of this in the past, and so they, they, to get, you know, myself and, and, and a few others, we help them with the design of the company, of the logo, of the branding, the whole business model, how it's supposed to be set up, and bring them into the market.

So with the market analysis, all of it, all of what is required to make a business successful.

And so, and 1 of the first ones that we also did was actually for ourselves.

We started with Gabby, we started a translation company.

So we translate books and we translate, we just translated the ASI, all the ASI abundant living health talks.

You know, what are used in all of the evangelistic campaigns.

Before the share him talk, you know, the spiritual talk, there's always a little health nugget, right?

So all of those we translated into Spanish and into Portuguese and so forth.

Now we're translating with the Avenis Publishing House in Switzerland, books, commentaries for the Great Controversy series, different things like that.

Now we have, I'm not really a good translator, but I'm good at getting projects and getting translators, good translators.

And so now we have about 15 translators, translating all of these kind of things.

And now we're wanting to get into translating Ellen White books.

Ellen White books into many languages that have had hardly any Ellen White writings in their languages.

Even in German, you know, major books like the book Evangelism, like the book medical ministry, Councils on Health, These kind of things are not translated into German so no wonder you know we might be struggling with some of these things so so Anyway, so this is this is really This is This is a little bit my background for being interested in figuring out why certain things work and why certain things don't work.

So that's why we call the seminar, The Top 10 mistakes in starting a ministry.

Now I'm aware that there might be others that might be also part of the top 10 but that's at least according to my my limited experience.

10 Mistakes in Starting a Ministry- Part 2

So everybody, just give me a short feedback for the first hour, the first issue.

I was talking to my friend and having even a specific location, we want something out in the woods where nobody can find it, but actually trying to go out there and put it in another location where people can actually get to it.

It's like, oh, I don't want to be out there with the world.

And he was trying to convince me that you need to be where the people are.

And not even that, just things like that.

I was trying to think, because it's hard for me to understand that to take this business and have it where it's really just me, in order to be able to reach the people, it's kind of hard to grasp, because you know, you want to be separate from the world, right?

But, you know, the problem is very clear, that he knocked them into the cities and he was a very respectful man, and He dealt with the people and he didn't stay out in his retreat, but he went out there and met with the people and just, is there a way to like, Like if you were to put something in the city, like not that you have to, but would it be better to put it downtown or in the outskirts?

It's the location seems to be so important that it's kind of hard to determine what to do, or how do you determine the location?

Yeah, that's actually a very simple business decision that needs to be made by any ministry, or any business that starts, is location.

It's 1 of the marketing piece, place, right?

And I'll say this, to tie it into the next common mistake of fanaticism or going to extremes.

The question on location, I think traditionally, has had a little bit a taint of this, where we have been so focused traditionally to go to to be outside of the cities and to be Separate from the world and separate from sin and we try to to be as far away as possible from the cities that we can kind of build our own little castle and be holy on our little campus.

And most of the time, we get so absorbed in building our castle here that we forget about the cities.

And most of the time, many times, that's not even a focus to be working the cities, because we're focused on raising our children and doing agriculture.

If you're doing agriculture, everybody in this room knows it takes time, right?

Training your children takes time, agriculture, and these are all great things, you know?

This is the most difficult thing about fanaticism is to figure out what is priority.

If we're majoring on minors and minoring on majors, that is considered a form of extremism or fanaticism, right?

So for instance, if we read all the texts, and this is what happens, and this is what also this is talking about, is how do we read Ellen White?

If we read, just read the quotes that we like, even, I mean, and I've seen it so many times, we even read the same quote and it contains everything in it, But we only see the things that agree with us.

We are to work the cities from outpost centers.

We are to reach the cities, but we are not to live in them, right, but to work from outpost centers and from there go into the cities and preach the warning message.

You've read these quotes, Testimony Volume 9, right, all over.

And so, But when I read these quotes, and I've heard these from many seminars in many places, and they read these things.

But all they focus on in this quote is what?

Yeah, it's all about the outpost centers.

But we forget, and we actually don't read it, we don't really understand it, what the main point is of that text.

So the point is to work the cities, you know?

But we completely forget that part, you know?

And then there's 1 quote where she says there was a project she saw and envisioned.

It's about 35 miles outside of the city, something like that.

And 1 of them she says, oh no that was in Spanish, it was 56 kilometers or something.

I have a friend in Honduras, he read that quote 56 kilometers outside of the city.

He didn't read all the other quotes okay, So he just saw this 1, he's like, oh, that's the divine measurement from a city to the project, the outpost center.

So he actually put a circle, what is it called?

A compass around the biggest city where he was from.

And he made a circle in the map, 56 kilometer circle.

And he looked at all the properties around that circle to find out what the divinely ordained property that was supposed to be his.

And he did this and where he actually bought the property, welcome, where he actually bought the property is exactly 56 kilometers from the city.

And so he thinks this is the most you know divinely ordained place in the world For him to do ministry and everybody outside of the 56 haha Wildwood is Way too close to Chattanooga, right?

We like to read certain parts of the quotes or certain quotes and we don't like all the other quotes.

But if we study, if we do a comprehensive study of all of what is read, of all of what has been written, then we can find out, actually we can find the principles behind why she's saying what she's saying.

And when we find those principles, then we can apply them also in 2016, 2017.

You know, this is our problem that we try to say, oh, it's exactly what it says.

Now, do we need to follow exactly what these things say?

We need to follow exactly to the word and to the title, right?

Well if we just follow the 56 kilometers, you know, then we we're also not able to to ride any bicycles today.

Well, why did she say these things, right?

This is what we need to accept the fact that we need to we need to actually understand the principle behind what she's saying and then apply that principle for our time.

We're really stuck in whenever that was written.

For instance, 1 Corinthians 11 is another really good example.

If we did 1 Corinthians 11, then all of our ladies here will be completely out of place.

All ladies should have a head covering, right?

Some very conservatives that do not accept that there's actually a method on how we should interpret the Bible so that we can understand it for our time, right?

This whole idea of timing, time and place in which it's done, the context, the historical context, the literary context, we must understand it.

If we do not understand it, then we're all stuck.

What was the problem if a woman did not wear a head covering during that time?

They were harlots, they were prostitutes.

Okay so all of our lovely women right here would be looked very bad upon during that time.

I don't, you know, I'm not going to, I don't judge anybody, you know.

Yeah, no, that's not a problem today, right?

So then that application does not apply the same way.

10 Mistakes in Starting a Ministry- Part 3

Dear Father in Heaven, we thank you for this time, this afternoon that we have to study a little bit more into your Word and into what you want to share with us this afternoon, especially in terms of the mistakes that have happened in the past in ministry lines.

And Lord, we know that this gospel should have been preached unto every nation in just a few years, a long time ago.

And unfortunately, humanity was not willing to cooperate fully with divinity and therefore it didn't get preached on to every nation so quickly and so now we're in this endeavor to to want to find out the Major mistakes that have happened in the past so that we do not do them again but that we can learn from them and really focus on advancing the work in the most successful way possible.

And Lord, we know that the foundation of that is to depend upon You and depend upon the Holy Spirit.

So we invite the Holy Spirit this afternoon to guide us in Jesus' name.

So this morning we started with the biggest points of the top 10 mistakes in starting a ministry.

In starting a ministry or also running a ministry.

Often they're very similar, They're almost the same in many cases, so I'm just a little bit more specific So the first 1 the first 1 we studied this morning the the entire first hour which 1 was it?

Yeah, balance between ministry and business.

Actually, we focus so much on ministry, we think ministry is the spiritual thing, and we think that business is actually not spiritual.

And so because we think that business, you know, that there's actually a discrepancy between ministry and business, then we demonize business and we just put ministry as this is spiritual and business is kind of worldly and secular, right?

And so because of this, we've had huge, huge implications and we talked about this this morning, which we're not going to go into, but that's what the thing.

Ellen White says, religion and business are not 2 separate things.

Is actually to put ministry and business into 1 unit and see that actually business should also be spiritual and is spiritual and is positive and And the accumulation of wealth is actually a desire implanted into us by God himself For noble ends right for advancing the work of God not to make ourselves rich, which is what the rest of the world does, but it's to advance the cause of God.

So we will live, and by the way, I didn't mention this this morning, but the work of God started in a very sacrificial way, right?

And the work in the time of the end will end with even more sacrifice than with which it started, right?

So just because we make money or make profit has nothing to do with how we live.

We won't live with fancy houses and cars and all this other nonsense.

No, we will invest the money into the work and advance the work of God.

So that's the first and probably most important point of all of the mistakes that we've done, that we've made in the past in starting a ministry, thinking that we are not allowed to make profit and all these kind of things.

Fanaticism is the way we interpret Ellen White, especially Ellen White, also the Bible.

And we saw the principles on how we should, or some principles that help us balance out true theology and common sense are to be used.

And also time and place must be considered when you're reading about different things.

And all the testimonies, which means all the texts and verses that talk about a certain topic should be taken into consideration.

And you get into fanaticism and you start focusing on things that actually the Bible is not focusing on that strongly.

We love, we fall in love with 1 verse and the verse that doesn't agree with us, we just kind of neglect, you know, we just leave it outside of the handbook, you know.

And so then we get into this unbalanced way of looking at things.

Now, number 3 is starting without a plan.

Oh, this is a common, it's such a common mistake that we make, Especially in Christian circles.

Why have do we have this issue of planning?

Yes God will make up for our deficiencies, right?

We don't need a lot of training for it or we don't need to do all this planning and business plans and all this stuff.

We think like this very often, some people.

Yeah, so planning, and here's the thing, the production plant for people that don't like planning.

Maybe I shouldn't say this this way, but it's mission schools, okay?

I am thoroughly in favor of mission schools.

This is what I've been doing with my whole life, but we have a tendency and the tendency is this that when people come They're so focused on doing it the worldly way that we try to tell them we try to teach them to do it God's way and God's way is not your plan.

She says these quotes, they're very strong.

We're not able to plan our lives for ourselves, right?

And all of our plans are worth nothing, right?

If God is not in it and so forth and so but we use these quotes we like these quotes but then we forget the other side of the coin the other side of the coin which is what is it what is it oh this is not an LNY quote, but this is the common...

When Jesus Christ, this is actually the perfect balance.

Jesus says in Steps to Christ, page 70, she says, we should pray this prayer every day.

She says, take me, O Lord, as holy thine.

Now if you don't plan, what are you going to lay at Jesus' feet every morning?

So it is very important that we actually plan, but because we cannot plan our lives for ourselves, we need to surrender that plan to God every day and the rest of the quote actually explains what why we should do that it's so that God can direct our plans to to be put into practice according to his providence or to be laid aside if the according to how the Lord would indicate right so we actually need to have a plan but we learn in mission schools it's that it's the the best place to teach him you know it's like you cannot plan for yourself and actually and everybody gives testimonies afterwards saying I Planned my whole life.

I each time I try to make a plan for my life.

And so people learn, instead of learning to surrender their plans and and lead, actually lead a life dependent on God, depending on for God to allow him to change the plan every day, right, to adjust it every day, we, instead of doing that, we learn to just not plan.

We go back, we're done with mission school, and then I ask them, so what are you going to do after you're done?

And it means that What's going to kick in if you don't decide if you don't if you don't plan yourself?

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10 Mistakes in Starting a Ministry

10 Mistakes in Starting a Ministry- Part 1

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