Framework Articles Podcast
Feb 7, 2020
Glenn and Brad discuss the new framework articles he’s written for the association and why they are important to support the mission of pastoral ministry. Take a few minutes to listen to “The 5 C’s” of Framework.
Read the transcript below:
Glenn: Welcome to Heart of Kansas Southern Baptist Association podcast. This is February the fifth and we’re talking today about my framework articles. I intend for those articles to help you and your ministry. I’m Glenn Davis. I’m the associational mission strategist for heart of Kansas. And with me today is Brad Simmons.
Brad is a church planting catalyst with the North American mission board. Brad, we’re glad you’re here.
Brad: I’m happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me. I also hope you’ve had the chance to visit the new website for the heart of Kansas, HOKsba.org We’re still making some improvements to it, but it looks a lot better than before.
Got some new content, including these framework articles that we’ll be posting soon. Hopefully it’ll be a good resource for you. You’ll find this podcast on there too.
Glenn: So, I am excited about this. I started writing these framework articles, I look back, it was August of 2018 so it’s been almost a year and a half.
And today with the redesign of our website, I want to kind of go back and rethink about why we’re doing framework articles, why I write these. I kno, and you guys know as well that the first thing every organization does is it forgets what it’s supposed to be doing. We tend to all experience missional drift.
And I want to try to guard against that.
Brad: So what’s the mission of framework?
Glenn: Well, when I started writing framework, I intended to try to help pastors with their pastoral ministry thinking about five areas that I think are important for all of us as pastors to live our life. And to do our ministry well.
And so I’ve tried to stay true to that. I’m sure I’ve drifted some, but I’ve tried to stay true to that and to address these five areas, the first of these areas is character. We talk about that a lot, and character is really foundational for every person’s ministry. That’s why the New Testament has so much to say, and his description of elders and deacons.
Regarding character traits. We know that character is just, it’s what keeps us from going in the gutter. If we have giftedness or competencies without character, we tend to just gather a bigger group of people before it all implodes. So character is one of those five areas.
The second area I’ve tried to write about is commitment. I know ministry is hard and, uh, staying at the task over time is. It’s difficult. Brad, you work with church planters. How do you encourage them in this area of commitment?
Brad: Yeah. With church planters, they tend to be very entrepreneur, entrepreneurial guys, and they like to start new things. And so it can often be a challenge once the church has started to stay committed to the mission there.
And so just always encouraging them to remember that the ministry of a pasture is a marathon, not a sprint, and to remember that God has called you to this. And you’ve gathered these people, his people, for the purpose of pastoring them and leading them and to a greater relationship with God. And that God’s with them in this. So even when it’s hard to remember back to the time when they felt strongest the calling of God to do what they’ve been called to do.
Glenn: You know, I was just reading today, I think it was a Tom Reiner article about not just the peaks and the valleys of ministry, but the plateaus. Sometimes there’s a long season of ministry when we’re just kind of on the plateau. I think in those times, just staying committed to the ministry is something we have to just keep going back to our calling. So, for whether you’re a planter or a pastor or in some other place in ministry, this calling to put our hands to the plow and not look back is, a high calling.
A third area that I’ve talked about is competency. And by that I’m talking about our ability, the giftedness that God gives those he calls to ministry. These are not things that we conjure up ourselves any more than we conjure up our own calling. But God gifts us. And certainly one of the gifts that he gives to those who are going to serve in the elder or the pastor role has to be word gifts. So by that I mean the ability to look at the word of God, to understand what the word of God is saying, and then to be able to communicate that in a way that’s helpful for people. In the framework articles, I want to encourage us all to continue to grow in our skill development. Whether that’s, preaching or teaching or better understanding the word or other skills. It’s a competency that is important.
And community. Number four is community. As pastors or planters, not being involved in community is easy because we get so busy. Brad, how do you keep planters? How successful do you think you are at keeping planters involved in community, and what would you say to them about that?
Brad: Well, they are busy guys, just like most pastors. And so, it’s hard sometimes to get them to gather together. Many of them have small groups that they’re a part of in their church, and some small relationships, or groups with other planters or pastors. But I think the pastor clusters or pasture cohorts that we have here at Heart of Kansas are good opportunities for planters and pastors to spend time with each other and to get some community with other guys who have similar lives and situations that they’re going through.
Glenn: You know, we’ve got four pastor cohorts growing going right now. I’m very thankful for guys who were involved in that. We have one that meets in the evening for men who are working full time jobs and they’re bi-vocational in their ministry or co-vocational in their ministry. And so we have that one and we have three that meet during the day time.
And if anyone, any of the pastors or planters or staff members have an interest in being a part of one of the cohorts I’d be glad to talk with you about that so you can reach out to me to do that.
The fifth ‘C’ that I want to write about is content. And when I’m thinking about content, I’m thinking about, obviously I have to have a C, so I can have the five CS, we want them all to be alliterated I suppose.
When I’m thinking about content, I’m thinking about the importance for all of us to be lifelong learners. I have been in full time Christian ministry since 1979 so it’s been a long time, but I know that I still have to keep learning. We have to all be lifelong learners. It seems like after you’ve been in ministry for 20 years or so it’s easy for us to think we know enough and we’ve learned enough and we can rest on our past achievements or our past knowledge. And I think that’s not true. If we’re going to be effective as ministers, as pastors, we have to keep learning. But I also think in regard to framework articles, when I write framework articles about content, those may be the most challenging to write and probably the most challenging to read because you take a look at that article and you realize, I’m not going to be able to read this, scan this quickly and understand what it’s talking about.
And so it’s easy for you to click delete and move onto the next email. I guess I want to today just try to encourage the pastors and others who are reading these to give attention to those emails even when they deal with content. Because my hope is there that we’re going to talk about and learn together content and principals.
Things that will help us to better understand not only what we’re supposed to do, but maybe the ‘why’ behind the what. That’s really important. It’s easy for us to skip that, but I think it’s important. We must keep learning if we’re going to lead well and challenge our congregations and those who are following us to lead well.
So those are the five ‘Cs’ that I’ve tried to stay true to the five areas of pastoral ministry. I’ve tried to stay true to and framework and I wanna just kind of refocus on that as we think about going forward. Brad, what else would you say today?
Brad: These are all important ‘Cs’ that you’ve put together here. And I think these emails will be very helpful and hopefully along with the podcasts and other content that heart of Kansas will be putting out, and be helpful to our pastors and churches as they complete the great commission.
Glenn: All right, well, thank you guys for listening today. Just in closing framework really is intended as an email that I send out every week.
It’s intended to be short enough for you to read quickly and yet have enough substance to make it worth your time. So I hope you all find them helpful. If you have thoughts or ideas for future articles or ways we could make this better and more helpful for you, please be sure and let me know.
Thanks again for listening. May the Lord bless your ministry.