My personal and ministry goals for 2020

Some people are goal people and some people are not. I have not found a verse in the Bible yet that says, “Make goals for every calendar year.” There are general principles about goals that I outline in my latest book but I am not saying if you are not a yearly goal person you are not a good Christian. I actually find goals fun, but that is what the Strength Finders book would call Achiever. That is why I normally make my yearly goals to start December 1- so I can kick the tires on them and get renewed motivation when everyone else starts theirs in January.

Having said all of that I thought I would share with you some of my personal and ministry goals for your encouragement and motivation.

Health-

I have ten pillars to my health plan (or health Ten Commandments) that I have been working on for a while. Rather than lay them all here I have one main area that I am going to continue growing in for 2020. I have a different exercise for each of the muscle groups and my goal is to add to reps a week till I cross 100 a week. For example if I was doing 34 jumping jacks this week I will do 36 next week.

Mental-

I am continue on working on the goal to be able to speak Spanish well enough to preach it. You can read my reason for this challenge in another post. My 3 sub-goals for this is one-1. I have a certain number of Duolingo lessons I will have done. 2. I plan to take at least 5 lessons in the Italki community. 3. I am going to translate a manuscript of a message that I have already preached.

Spiritual –

At some point I would like to write a book on Spiritual Warfare for the Everyday Christian. So this year the research continues. This will include reading a 3 volume work on the subject by a Puritan (about 1000 pages).

Family-

We have a goal to visit a few more states that either my wife or daughter have not been to before.

Ministry goals–

Here I will put the big 3:

Podcast- I would like to see the podcast grow this year. 3 of the benchmarks for that are-1. Cross 10,000 total downloads. 2. Have at least one download from every state in the USA (3 to go). 3. Have had at least one download from at least 75 counties (about 10 to go).

100,000 Challenge– I would like to cross 100,000 unique visitors to the website. We have had all but 3 countries of the world visit our website (and those 3 countries aren’t known for allowing their people to use the internet. :-)) We want to continue to be a resource to people’s walk with Jesus around the world.

$700 in new monthly support from partners– I have been talking about going from adding to multiplying as a ministry for a while and this amount will get us above the tree line to take off and fly in this direction. This will allow us to add a 3 podcast episode a month and accomplish some of the other goals listed about. (To be on of those supporters)

So there are my main goals for the year. I didn’t include everything because some would just be strange (do you want me to write about looking for a plummer?) Are you a goal person? What is your goals for this next year? What assignments does God have for you to accomplish?

Praying for God to guide you and give you victory everywhere you go!

Leveling the Praying Field -Donna Barrett- Episode 40

My guest the general secretary of the Assemblies of God Donna Barrett. As general secretary of the Assemblies of God, U.S.A., part of the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world, she is a member of the denomination’s Executive Leadership Team and Executive Presbytery. Barrett stewards the credentialing process of ministers, oversees the chartering of churches, the collection of official statistics, and the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Prior to her election as general secretary, Barrett was a church planter, serving as founder and lead pastor of Rockside Church (Assemblies of God) in Independence, Ohio. Following seven years as a paralegal, Barrett became a credentialed minister in
1986. She served ten years as youth pastor at Highway Tabernacle Assembly of God in Youngstown, Ohio, followed by seven years as associate pastor at Bethel Temple in Parma, Ohio.  While pastoring, she was elected by her peers to serve the Ohio Ministry Network as an elected general presbyter and an executive presbyter for four years each.

We talk about her book- Leveling the Praying Field. She shares her story of a journey of prayer as a young Christian and as a pastor. We discuss a wide range of topics to help people get into prayer from how to start a prayer life to how to build a culture of prayer in your church as a pastor.

Listen Now

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Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Leveling the Praying Field-Book

Audio Book

Assemblies of God Week of Prayer Resources

Assemblies of God General Secretary 

 

A prayer for strength

Sometimes the weight of life feels like a lot. And not just days like today when I need to go to the dentist. Maybe you are feeling the effects of an attack from the enemy. Maybe this season of life was not what you expected. The surprising weight seemed to come out of nowhere.

At the same time, just because God has given us an assignment does not mean that it will be easy. We may be amazed at how challenging it actually is to accomplish. But as we think about what to do in the midst of those challenges we find a short prayer from Nehemiah that any of us can pray. Will you pray this prayer today?