1. Use your congregation as a continuing education seminar. Everything that happens in your church, positive or negative, is an opportunity for you to learn about yourself, about the church, about the people in it, and about their families.
2. Read books that interest you on topics outside of ministry. Make friends with your local librarian who can recommend new and old books.
3. Find colleagues who still enjoy ministry after many years, have a sense of humor, and are flexible, and take them to lunch from time to time. You will learn something about what it takes to hang in there for the long haul.
4. Research your own family history so you can find out more about what makes you tick. Once again, the places we get stuck in ministry usually, if not always, come out of our families. Don’t try to fix your family, just try to learn about them so you can work on yourself.
5. Be a learner. Some suggested areas, beyond the usual theology and ministry nuts and bolts: family systems theory (highly recommended), entrepreneurship, and whatever else interests you. And find something completely unrelated to ministry and fun for you to explore: beekeeping, auto repair, painting.
6. Develop your own curiosity about the world and people in it. More than a specific field of study or method of learning, this is a way of being in life that will help sustain you in ministry. Some people do well with a daily discipline of study; others like to go away for a chunk of time. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you do something that feeds you.
7. Don’t worry too much about learning the latest techniques of ministry, whether administrative, worship or any other area. Keep tabs on what others are doing, but remember your ministry has to fit you. This is not an argument for a know-nothing ministry but for ministry as authentic self.
8. Remember that it is not the amount of information you take in but what you do with it. You can never learn everything there is to learn. Develop discernment about what information is truly important to you in your context and filter out the rest. (One colleague has a separate e-mail address for denominational e-mails and only checks them weekly.)
9. Glean from members of your congregation knowledge that can benefit your ministry. It will help you to learn from them and will help them to know you view them as a resource. Don’t be a know-it-all. You are not required to be an expert in everything, and in fact it is not only exhausting but also impossible.
10. Study the history of your congregation and the families in it. Nothing (except your own family history) will teach you more about how to minister in the place where you are.
For more about being a learner and other ways to sustain your ministry, see our resource How to Last as a Leader.
