With the holiday season looming, how can you end the year faithfully? In other words, pastor, what should your focus be for these last few days of the year? You can lead aimlessly to nowhere or aim purposefully.

I would like to challenge you personally and professionally. Here are some challenges that I believe will help you end the year faithfully.

Personally

I want to challenge you to end the year personally in the highest way possible. How can you do this?

1. Evaluate where you are with God. Pastor, draw aside to ensure all is right with God. Deal with yourself. Talk to God about your sinfulness and challenges honestly. Practice repentance. Seek fresh empowerment from the Holy Spirit.

2. Examine your relationship with others. In this hop-and-shop church culture, relationships can often get messy and misunderstood. As pastors, we frequently run fast, and usually that is not to our advantage. Therefore, we need to use this season to examine all relationships again. Pastors, do not underestimate the influence of a personal call, email, text message, visit or even hand-written personal note. The holiday season is the time of year many of our people are hurting and need a special touch. So pull your troops in closer to you, and let them know you need them with you to launch the new year.

3. Elevate your walk with Christ. Use this season of the year to elevate your walk with Christ. Read more of God’s Word and spend additional time with Him in prayer. Use your personal time with God to begin to pray about what He has before you in the new year, personally and professionally. Spend extra time with God to concentrate on your personal walk with Christ. Be ready personally to launch into the new year in a powerful way.

Professionally

Now that I have suggested three steps to take personally to end the year in the highest realm of faithfulness to God, let me do the same for you professionally. How can you do this?

1. Consider the status of your church spiritually. Just as you would have your vital signs checked at your annual physical, stop long enough to check the vital signs of your church. Pastor, honestly before God, how is your church doing? Is your church healthy? If it is healthy, how do you know? If your church is not healthy, what will you do about it? Determine to end the year faithfully.

2. Sharpen your leadership for the future. As a pastor, once you have considered the status of your church, you should know more about how to lead it. Where will you lead it? What will you lead the church to do? Consider having a demographic study done on your community to understand how to better reach people. If you have already done this, is it time for another study? Are you leading strategically to minister to your community compassionately, all for the purpose of making disciples of all the nations? Sharpen your leadership for the future. If you will do this, you will lead faithfully.

3. Commit yourself to teach the Word of God faithfully. As the pastor/teacher, your highest call is to bring glory to God by teaching and preaching the Word of God accurately and faithfully. This means you have to draw aside to consider what you are going to preach in the year ahead and how you are going to preach it. Will you teach through a book of the Bible or several books of the Bible? Are you going to deal with subjects like marriage, family, finances and the future and do it driven by the text of Scripture, leading people to walk in the depths of God’s riches? Or will you do a combination of the above? Whatever you do, commit yourself to teach the Word of God more faithfully than ever before in your ministry.

4. Challenge your church to finish the year with financial faithfulness. I am convinced that pastors need to challenge the people of God to finish the year with the highest level of financial faithfulness to God. It is incumbent upon us to do so for the people themselves, but also for the work of the church. A person cannot say they are walking in faithfulness to Jesus without practicing biblical stewardship. As pastors, we need to step up and challenge God’s people to:

• Honor the Lord with the first 10 percent of all God has entrusted to them throughout this year
• Honor the Lord with gifts of generosity above the first 10 percent, giving to international missions, church vision specifics or benevolence.

If we want God’s people to walk with Jesus faithfully, we need to challenge them to be faithful financially.

As the pastor of your fellowship, plan now to finish the year both personally and professionally with the highest level of faithfulness.

Dr. Ronnie Floyd has been a pastor for over 36 years. Since 1986, Pastor Floyd has served as the senior pastor of Cross Church, Northwest Arkansas, which has baptized more than 17,000 people during his tenure. Cross Church was one of the first churches in America to go multisite. Pastor Floyd has authored 20 books, including Our Last Great Hope: Awakening the Great Commission.

For the original article, visit pastors.com.

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