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Ministry Tips:

- - Church-planting:   A primary reason why church-plants do not succeed is because God's people and/or God's servants fail or downright refuse to make the sacrifices that are necessary for the church-plant to sufficiently develop, progress, and come to viability and self-sustaining.  Apparently, they fail to realize and/or accept the importance that church-planting plays in God's program to build His kingdom.
- - To substantiate these assertions from the Scriptures, and in brief:
- - - - since the time of Jesus Christ on this earth, the church is the main element in God's program (Matthew 16:18);
- - - - through the church, the gospel is preached to the world (Ephesians 3:4-10);
- - - - during the early time of the Apostle Paul's ministry to share the gospel with the Gentiles and plant churches among them, the Philippian church was the only church who had enough concern for him and his ministry work to therein send support to him, and repeatedly (Philippians 4:10 with verses 4:15-16 and verse 1:5).

- - Stay faithful to fulfilling your calling:  If developments or circumstances beyond your control have caused you to leave or be removed from ministry functioning that God has called you to do, be aware that your calling to ministry from God is not cancelled by God even though you have gone through a rough time and your ministry functioning has ended.  Your calling to ministry from God remains valid and active for the remainder of your life, unless you have disqualified yourself in some manner (see verse 27 in 1 Corinthians 9:22-27).  "...Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us" (from Hebrews 12:1).  In the account described in John 21:1-17 after the crucifixion of Jesus, Peter and some of his fellow disciples had returned to their previous occupation of fishing (verses 1-3).  Jesus appeared to them and essentially said to Peter, "Peter, what are you doing out here - returning to your former occupation of fishing?  I called you out of that secular occupation and into ministry, so why are you abandoning that calling just because you encountered some setbacks in your ministry functioning?  If you truly love me, you will stay faithful to fulfilling the calling that I have on you - even when the going gets tough" (from verses 15-17).  If your are no longer able to secure or afford the same kind of ministry work that you were previously doing, then God may want you to shift to a slightly different kind of ministry work, but nevertheless your calling is still in effect.  Find some way to resume and continue doing ministry work, in obedience to God's calling on you.

- - Qualified pastor:  Every pastor that is employed in a church should minimally have a seminary master's degree, so that he is fully trained in the Scriptures and fully trained in how to properly lead a church.  Employing a pastor with insufficient formal academic training substantially puts your church into risk of stagnating in spiritual growth, learning erroneous doctrines, and potentially self-destructing.  Youth pastors should minimally have a Bible college bachelor's degree.  Pastors who lack this formal academic training should be requested and facilitated by your church to work on completing it.   (see 2 Timothy 3:16-17)

- - Always teaching the "milk", never teaching the "solid food":  Almost all of the Bible teaching and preaching that occur in churches never progress beyond being "elementary".  A chapter or a large section of the Word of God is read and then a few main points within it are briefly highlighted and summarized.  Like skipping from the top of one wave to the top of the next wave, this overview approach fails to dive deep into the contents of the Scriptures.  Thereby, no "solid food" of the Word is ever dispensed to the listeners, rendering them stunted and hindered from maturing in the faith.  If you want to be making fruit-bearing disciples, then somewhere within your church's programs there needs to be occurring verse-by-verse and phrase-by-phrase in-depth expository teaching and preaching of God's Word.  (see Hebrews 5:11-6:1a, Ephesians 4:11-14)

- - Is your church significantly deficient?  If your church does not have an element that is actively and frequently engaging in presenting the gospel with an invitation to receive Christ, then your church is significantly deficient of fulfilling a main activity that God has designed and instructed all of His churches to do (Colossians 1:6).  God intends that evangelism is to be conducted on all levels: personally by true believers in the church; corporately within the preaching, teaching, programs, and events of the church; locally in the community; nationally in the country; and internationally within other countries (Colossians 1:6-7).  Therefore, minimally, small churches should have at least one person who is encouraged, supported, and requested to do evangelism throughout the church's programs and events.  Medium-size churches should minimally have a group of persons who fulfill these evangelism functions.  And large churches should minimally have an entire ministry devoted to fulfilling these evangelism functions.  Even if the pastor(s), elders, and leaders in your church are not inclined to do evangelism, your church nevertheless should have an endorsed element which or who is actively doing evangelism as suggested herein (for example: Romans15:15-16).  Those persons who do evangelism need to be trained to do it properly, otherwise the results will be people erroneously thinking they got saved when in fact technically God has not saved them because their evangelism was not conducted in accordance with what God designates in the Scriptures (Galatians 1:6-8,11).  A good document for this training to do evangelism is available on the "Counseling" page of this website, entitled "Session 02 - Presenting The Gospel" .

- - Evangelism:  The most resistant and difficult place to do evangelism is in the church, but the most fruitful place to do evangelism is in the church.

- - Highly-qualified volunteers:  Pastors, consider that historically, your church or ministry is perpetually deficient of having enough trained and qualified volunteer workers.  You and your staff even regularly pray fervently that God would send you more workers.  Also, consider the reality that Bible colleges and evangelical seminaries have been and are continuing to produce far more ministry graduates than there are openings for in churches and ministries.  So, there is a likelihood that occasionally, one of these highly educated, trained, and experienced workers may show up and volunteer to help as a leader or Bible teacher in your church, like a self-supporting missionary.  When you receive a volunteer response from one of them, be extremely careful how you react.  Because if God has indeed specifically sent that highly educated and trained ministry worker directly to your church or ministry perhaps as a response to your fervent prayers, then you would be wise to seriously consider and investigate forthright plugging that person into your ministry somehow.  Stay fully aware that on Judgment Day, God may ask you why you failed and refused to plug in and activate in your church or ministry the highly educated and trained ministry worker that He sent you - and furthermore why you essentially told that willing worker with an excellent ministry track record and references to "Sit down and shut up!!!!!".  (see Matthew 23:29-39)

- - Train your elders:  A church is a ministry.  Churches should not be run as a business.  Even though there are similarities between being run as a ministry or run as a business, churches are to be guided spiritually by appropriately and faithfully following the principles contained in the Scriptures, whereas businesses are guided financially by aggressively following the principles that produce a profit.  Therefore, elders who direct the affairs of the church need to be trained in how to run a church as a ministry.  Failing to adequately train every elder is to allow the running of the church to default to being run as a business.  In the same way that people need to be trained in how to do ministry, so too elders need to be trained in how to run the church as a ministry.  Head pastors, you should have as a very high priority and thereby be consistently implementing the ongoing training and refining of every one of your elders on how to run the church as a ministry (see 2 Timothy 3:17).  An "Elder Training Series" (located near the top of this web-page) is available to assist in accomplishing this objective.  Or you can start your own training with your elders by doing extensive studies of the numerous applicable verses that are contained in the Books of 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus.

- - Build a team:  There are some kinds of ministry work that God has for us to do which require collaborating with one or more other persons to fulfill.  Through collaborating together, 2 (or more) people are accomplishing a ministry work for the Kingdom that neither one can accomplish on their own.  Both persons have the complementing ministry skills that the other needs in order to take on that particular ministry work and to successfully produce the necessary ministry functioning.  Therefore, it seems obvious that God wants to and does match up people to work together to accomplish some tasks He has for us to do - together.  God requires COLLABORATION sometimes.
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Current events:

- - How did Noah get all of the species of birds into the Ark?
      An international consortium of scientists conducted research, known as the "Avian Phylogenomics Project", in order to correct the bird family tree, in which they compared DNA genomes of 48 select different species of birds to determine their last shared common ancestors.  From their findings in 2014, the scientists concluded that only 4-5 species of birds survived the past global mass extinction event, in which a giant asteroid struck near the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. They base this conclusion on their DNA findings that the 10,500 species of birds of our modern times have all evolved from those 4-5 surviving species of birds since that past global mass extinction event.
      In contemplating the various details of the Biblical account of Noah and the Ark in Genesis chapters 6-8, one related previously-insurmountable question arises as to how 10,500 species of bird pairs could fit into the Ark, along with all the other animals, and how Noah and his family could have fed all of those 21,000 (or more) birds along with all the animals every day for the year that they were in the Ark (see Genesis 6:7,17,19-7:3).  DNA evidence is usually highly reliable, and these particular findings of this DNA research on birds excellently fits into the Biblical account, essentially clarifying that Noah could have had as few as 5 different species of bird pairs on the Ark, for a total of perhaps 35 birds (see Genesis 7:2-3), from which all 10,500 species of birds have since evolved up to today.  Noah did have onboard a "raven" and a "dove", which also fit within these DNA research findings (Genesis 8:7,8).  The Biblical account does make a perhaps important qualifying distinction in Genesis 7:14 that "every bird according to its kind" was on board the Ark, apparently meaning 'every bird according to its category kind, which will be subsequently filled out, broadened, and expanded in additional variations from that original bird pair species'.  (A thought-provoking relating side note is that the account of the original creation of living creatures and birds in Genesis 1:21 uses the exact same Hebrew word (#4327) in the description of how God created the various living creatures on the earth "according to its kind".)  Obviously, Noah and his family in the Ark for a year could accommodate and care for only a very small fraction of pairs of birds from all the different 10,500 species that exist now.  And also obviously, God was and still is in control over and orchestrating all of this evolving of birds, apparently from a small number of original pairs (for example: "...will come to you" - Genesis 6:20; 7:8).  Believers would be wise to carefully discern and perhaps re-evaluate how we regard the various aspects of the theory of evolution, distinctly specifying which aspects of evolution apparently correctly correspond to God's activities and which aspects unquestionably directly contradict God's activities.

Source: "When Whales Walked: Journeys In Deep Time", video.  Aired on PBS, 08/25/21.

- - Expect Things To Get Worse:  The amount of wickedness and evil in societies is growing exponentially in the world today, at a substantially escalating rate, particularly during the last decade.  Wickedness and evil have become emboldened, being practiced and promoted openly through the accommodating that avenues of various media platforms provide (Romans 1:32).  The Kingdom of Darkness and its human cohorts are accomplishing new great victories for their agendas that promote depravity, and they are winning the war of evil versus good.  Because the battle for us true believers in Christ is ultimately with the Kingdom of Darkness, consequently, the extreme hostile and confrontational polarization within societies between the agents of wickedness and the ambassadors of righteousness is expected, natural, and even inevitable as we true believers "take our stand against the devil's schemes" and labor to advance the righteousness of Christ, which simultaneously serves to confront and hinder the advancement of the degradation of societies (Ephesians 6:11-13).  As we progressively draw closer to the 7-year Tribulation period during which God will bring widespread catastrophic judgment upon the wickedness of those humans living in that 7-year period, until then we can expect that conditions in societies will continue to degrade, proliferate, and accelerate toward ever-increasing open pervasive wickedness.  Thereby, expect proponents of wickedness to continue increasing the amount and intensity of their combativeness, hostility, deceptive claims, accusations, confrontations, and etc. against righteousness and, by extension, against us true believers in Christ, who stand up for righteousness (Philippians 1:9-14).

- - End-times drug usage:   In America now (and perhaps in other nations soon), there is a deliberate push and a momentum to legalize the recreational use of marijuana - a plant whose leaves are dried and smoked to produce a physical and mental 'high' or pleasant intoxication.  In the midst of the public discussions about this issue, perhaps people should stop to consider what God has to say about this.  One direct reference in Scriptures to this activity of widespread recreationally taking drugs to produce intoxication is in Revelation 9, which contains a prophetic account of the events that will take place in the Tribulation period wherein God pours out one cataclysm after another on the humans on the Earth because they are not repenting from their evil ways (verse 9:20).  In Revelation 9:21 among the list of evil deeds that humans will be continuing to do, in the original Greek is cited the word "pharmakeia" (romanized Strong's #5331; from which we get the English word "pharmacy") , which means 'medication or pharmaceutical drug used in an illicit manner or as part of sorcery or witchcraft'.  So from this direct and clear evidence in Scriptures, the assertion can be rightly made that the time will come when God will bring 7 years of numerous sequential cataclysmic judgments of destruction, suffering, and death upon the humans of the Earth because of the evil they are doing, one of which is the improper use of pharmaceutical drugs.

- - Mass-broadcasting slander:   On Judgment Day, God will hold every single person accountable for every instance of slander and malice they have spoken or written in their life to every person that they had any involvement in communicating it to.  This accountability will include every instance for every person that heard or read the slanderous or malicious statement.  So consider this: For slanderous or malicious statements by politicians, lawyers, news editors, news reporters, news commentators, and etc., the guilt of their speaking or publishing of slanderous and malicious statements is being multiplied by millions (or more) when their statements are broadcast through mass media or social media.  (see Matthew 12:36-37; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

Works Cited: Bible. “The Holy Bible: New International Version.” The Bible Library CD-ROM. Oklahoma City, OK: Ellis Enterprises, 1988.
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Concepts to ponder:

- - Life is one big test.

- - The Bible teaches that some psychological and medical conditions can have a spiritual component and a spiritual source (see "Psychological Conditions" on the Counseling page). 
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Recommendations When Looking For Ministry Employment:

If you have been unsuccessful in your extended quest to secure a ministry employment job, I recommend that while you are waiting for God to open a ministry employment job opportunity, consider the possibility that maybe God wants you to start your own ministry, and that is why He has not opened any ministry employment job for you.  Therefore, look for a way to start or invent your own ministry:
- - Your new ministry likely will need to be a free ministry because realistically it probably will flop if you try to charge money or rely on donations.
- - Your new ministry may not be the exact type of ministry you were planning on, or feel called to, or were preparing for.  So be flexible, and look at types of ministry you normally would not look at or think about.
- - Come up with a way to be self-supporting.  One really good way is for your spouse to hold a full-time job that sufficiently provides your household income while you do free ministry.  Statistically speaking, raising full support through donations is likely to fail.
- - Allow plenty of time to see if God is going to make your attempt at starting a ministry take off, in other words sprout and blossom into a significant ministry.  If after perhaps one year it is still fizzling and dying, then most likely God is not supportive of that idea - in its present form.  So either modify or adjust that ministry, or else dump that idea and look for a different idea.
- - The success of your start-up ministry attempt to become viable will be heavily dependent upon your giftedness that corresponds to the nature of the ministry attempt.  Some skills can be developed.  However, if you are unable to satisfactorily function for some aspect of your start-up ministry attempt, then search for someone to partner with you who has that giftedness, and consider your spouse first.  I am convinced God really delights in using and thoroughly blessing husband-and-wife ministry teams.
- - A wise approach would be to not invest too much work, resources, and money into your start-up ministry attempt until you determine that God is approving and supporting it.  You want to test the waters, so to speak, to see what God is going to do with it.  Begin by supplying the minimal essential basics for that start-up ministry attempt, making necessary adjustments or tweaks as you go along, and watching to see if God is either making it take off or letting it crash and burn.  It is going to be His ministry, so you need to determine what He thinks about it.  If you see evidence that God is active and moving in some aspect of your start-up ministry attempt, then be flexible and run with that, now more fully investing your time, resources, and efforts into that specific aspect He is moving in.
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Philosophy:

A main goal of this website is to cultivate, develop, train, and equip leaders to do the work of ministry, and to possess and exhibit the qualities of gentle persuasion, patient endurance, servant leadership, Kingdom perspective, shepherding the flock, feeding the Word, spiritual maturity, and ministry oriented.

Another main goal and focus for BelieverAssist.com is to nurture God's people so that they excel at becoming fruit-bearing disciples, who then proceed to excel at making other fruit-bearing disciples, growing the local church, and serving in its ministries.
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Practical Ministry:

Sometimes, doing ministry involves encountering situations that require challenging improvising in using the resources God has given you:



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