From a missions pastor

This is Pastor Levi, a missions pastor for Highridge Church in Fort Worth, Texas. Called into the ministry at the young age of 18, and having worked with various facets of the church, one role being youth pastor to me and my younger siblings. What an honor it was having someone with such a heart for the lost and dying world to be our youth pastor. There are few I know with such a great desire to share Christ with everyone.
     I asked him to share a little bit about his role as a missions pastor and what that entails as well as how he personally stays engaged with Christ daily while balancing family and ministry.       

 Pastor Levi is a firm believer in raising up others into the ministry and getting people involved beyond just going through the motions. At Highridge missions are run a little bit differently than you see at most churches. When a ministry is brought up to Pastor Levi that aligns with the overall vision of the church, he empowers them to start that ministry themselves.
There are 3 things he looks for when starting a new ministry, we'll walk through this list together:

1. Does it align with the vision of the church?
2. Are there others interested in this type of ministry? Are there enough people to start/run the ministry?
3. Can we design a structure (skeleton) for the system to reach the end goal the reaching the lost?

Pastor Levi uses this as a rough outline to help new ministries blossom within the whole body. Having this structure/outline aids in the sustainability of the mission long term.
     Once a ministry is birthed, he implements the 4 P's of ministry as he calls it. Let's go through what these 4 P's are together:

1. Pray. Pray and fast, spend time seeking God about this ministry and how He would use it.
2. Plan. (Structure we saw in the last list) Share the plan with your team to keep clarity of the goal and when you recap how the ministry is going, always redirect back to the goal.
3. Prepare. (System we saw from the last list. The how.) Prepare your team with any information, training, tools, support they need to do the ministering in this capacity.
4. Praise. Praise God for the little wins you and the team encounter whether it is a team member experienced a break through personally or with someone they are ministering to. PRAISE GOD! :)

Pastor Levi is very involved in the beginnings of the different outreaches helping lead the first couple and being there for support after a leader is appointed. His goal is to work himself out of the job. After the ministry gets going he will circle back around and visit it after a little while but only as a volunteer not in a leader capacity.

     Now for a little bit we will change directions to look deeper into Pastor Levi and his life. Being a father of three and a husband, I was curious how his role in ministry affected his day to day life.
For his personal walk with Christ he implements the 5,5,5 rule into his life. This is 5 minutes in prayer, 5 minutes in the Word, and 5 minutes in worship. Very often these run over the five minute mark, but it helps make sure that he is at least spending 5 minutes in each area. Another thing he said is that he likes to make sure he is always growing whether it is reading books, listening to podcasts, and studying missionaries or varies church leaders.
In the area of family, the Lord has showed him through experience that his family is his first ministry. Pastor Levi explained, in his early days being newly married, with a little child, working full time and being new in the ministry, he was constantly drained. After a season I left the church I was working with in California to head to Christ for the Nations in Dallas, Texas. After learning a bit at school and getting involved with Highridge, the Lord began working on his relationship with his family and how to balance it and ministry. It took a lot of healing from being so drained from his prior work in ministry, for him personally as well as for his family. "The reason it is a struggle is because lives are on the line!" he continues, "I wasn't taking care of my first disciples, which were my family... God had really hit me." People are always needing help. Always coming with questions. "One thing I do is try to teach people to seek God themselves... I'll help them but then I point them to God." He adds, "My wife has helped me to learn how to compartmentalize."

"When I'm at work, I'm at work. But when I get home I have to switch my brain to all family... I can't just give them my leftovers."

Finally, Pastor Levi left us with a couple of his favorites. Some of  which being, Good to Great, Simple Church, and Traction.
Please pray for Pastor Levi as he serves God in the DFW area through Highridge Church.