MH 001: Growing Ministry Through Prayer with Mark Batterson

Welcome to Episode 001 of the Ministry Hangout podcast. Listen and access the show notes below or search for Ministry Hangout on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Mark Batterson is Lead Pastor of National Community Church in Washington, DC and bestselling author of 14 books, including The Circle Maker. In this episode, Mark...

Welcome to Episode 001 of the Ministry Hangout podcast. Listen and access the show notes below or search for Ministry Hangout on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Mark Batterson is Lead Pastor of National Community Church in Washington, DC and bestselling author of 14 books, including The Circle Maker. In this episode, Mark discusses the role of prayer in the life of a pastor and how the power of prayer has shaped his ministry.

Follow Mark Batterson: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Website

 

Resources Mentioned 

The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson
The Road Back to You by Ion Morgan Cron
Essentialism by James Latham
The Pastor by Eugene Peterson

 

Takeaways From This Episode

Pray and play.

Mark mentioned that his church has a retreat with the staff and their families that they call “pray and play” because it’s important to “play together and pray together.” He said, “The emotional capital we get from those couple of days serves us the rest of the year.”

Begin to think and play for ways to “play and pray” with staff, volunteers, and more.

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

You learn from mistakes and they’re the best teacher. Or as Mark put it, “Success is really well-managed failure and failure is really poorly-managed success.”

What are the lessons God is trying to teach you?

Pray for each other.

The Lord convicted Mark when it was easier to pray for a church that was four states away than four blocks away, but now some of his best friends now pastor just blocks away. Their mantra is #SameTeam.

Develop relationships with other pastors and churches in the area. Those friendships can keep your heart in the right place. Sometimes, other pastors can pray for you in a unique way that others don’t understand. We need each other.

 

Quotes From This Episode

Time spent in prayer is time that could not have been spent any better. [Click to tweet]
I believe in long obedience in the same direction. [Click to tweet]
You can’t pray too much and prayer is something you can’t delegate. You have to set the pace as the leader. [Click to tweet]
Prayer has to infuse absolutely everything that we do. [Click to tweet]
Success is really well-managed failure and failure is really poorly-managed success. [Click to tweet]

 

About Ministry Hangout

Greg Surratt, founder and pastor of Seacoast Church in South Carolina was regularly having conversations with ministry leaders when he realized that these discussions could provide value to more than just him. Thus, Ministry Hangout was born. Our simple mission to share conversations that matter. We’ll discuss a little bit of everything from lessons learned from churches doing something really well to the nitty gritty of how to develop leaders on your staff to how to use social media for your church to how to foster worship leader development. We want to cover it all and have more conversations that matter.

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