Kevin Presseault

It has been WAY too long since I've simply sat down and written a blog post.  Kind of wondering if there's any writing still left in me by the time I get my sermon done :)  I'm sure there is... but I've been doing most of my writing in my private journals, which are just for me and for God and are not for everyone out here in the blogoverse. I have been doing some great reading lately that has really encouraged me.  One that I'm reading now is going to be taking a high place in my book shelf... actually I'm reading it on my iPad... so I'll be picking up a paper copy of it to go through again.  This book is The Measure of Our Success: An Impassioned Plea to Pastors by Shawn Lovejoy. It seems to me that a lot of the books that are directly for pastors seem to be few and far between... and the ones that I do find, don't seem to offer much.  And to be honest, at first glance, this book doesn't seem to be telling us stuff that we didn't already...

All my writing time has been going into papers for school... With the semester winding down (and the fact that I need a BIG break from school) I'm back on this topic of the books that have most influenced my life. In this list of books, I'm not including the Bible. That is the book that has changed me the most... so it's implied in this list :) When I was a brand new believer in Jesus Christ at the age of 28, to be honest, I really didn't have any clue at all what that meant... what did it mean to be a Christian husband, employee, and guy in general??? In 2001 I was at a men's breakfast... it was a real miracle that I was even at the breakfast since it was in a completely different city than where I lived at the time. I met one of the leaders there, shared my story with him, and he gave me a copy of the book Man in the Mirror by Patrick Morley. I got home that afternoon and read the entire book in one sitting! This was EXACTLY what I'd been looking for! Mo...

I've completely stolen this blog topic idea from my good friend Joel Bennett . Joel is a great ministry coach and mentor and I strongly encourage you to check out his site. I'm a big reader... and I've been incredibly blessed/challenged/stretched/broken/encouraged over the years through some fantastic books. So, like Joel is doing on his Facebook page, I decided I would blog about the 50 books that have had a big impact on me. Now, before we start... let me just flat out say, the Bible is really NUMBER ONE! That's a given... these are the fifty books that come AFTER the Bible :) BOOK ONE: Confessions of a Pastor by Craig Groeschel I actually stumbled on this book during a pretty low point in my ministry. I hadn't been in ministry all that long... maybe a year and a half... and I was already feeling myself heading towards a burnout. I was losing my joy and passion for Jesus and for the church... and I couldn't explain why. Then God gave me the answer. Lik...

I love reading. I read a lot. Actually, let me rephrase that. I USED to read a lot. Seems I've lost my reading groove since moving to the Ottawa area. Between getting settled at the new church, doing basement renovations, and living out of boxes my reading has really dropped. This month I'm making reading a priority again. I usually have a few books on the go at the same time, so here's what I'm reading now. The Grace of God by Andy Stanley . I have a number of friends who work for grace based ministries... so over the years I've been given multiple copies of books on the topic of grace. This one blows them all away!! I've actually restarted this book and will be going through it more slowly (I may even blog about what I'm learning). I love Stanley's understanding of God's grace in the Old Testament. I've seen very little (if any) references to the Old Testament in the other grace books I've read. Grace isn't just a New Testa...

I'm so looking forward to reading Craig Groeschel's latest book ! I'm hoping that I can pick up a copy of it next week at the Catalyst One Day event. Check out this video promo of the book!

Here are a couple of books I'm recommending this month! Check out the video below (if you're on Facebook you can see the video HERE ). You can order the books here: The Prodigal God Switch

Thought I'd try something new on the blog! Video book reviews. I'm a big reader... and I want to read even more this year! I'm a big BIG believer in the concept that as the pastor learns and grows than the church will learn and grow! Reading has been a huge part of my ministry this past three years and I'm know that God will continue to teach me more and more. So check out the video below. If you're reading this on Facebook, click this link HERE . Here are the books mentioned in the video. The Imperfect Board Member by Jim Brown Ten Stupid Things that Keep Churches from Growing by Geoff Surratt

Starting on February 28th, I'll be preaching for five weeks on the parable of the Prodigal Son from Luke 15. Now... five weeks may seem long for just one little parable... but this simple little story that Jesus told to religious leaders has HUGE impact on us as followers of Jesus. I've been reading the book The Prodigal God from Timothy Keller and just LOVE IT! I took my leadership team through a message by Keller at the Willowcreek Leadership Summit last month... and now we're going to go through it in much greater detail as a church. I'm praying hard and excited to see all that God will do in us and through us as we explore this parable in our Sunday Celebration and discuss it during our mid-week LifeGroups. It's going to be GREAT! This would also be a excellent time to invite people who are quite skeptical about the Christian message!

I'm currently reading the book Ignite by Nelson Searcy . Nelson is the Lead Pastor of The Journey Church in New York City. He also heads up the Senior Pastor Tele -Coaching Network that I'm a part of this year (by the way, if you're a Senior Pastor you REALLY need to sign up for this Network! I've been learning SO much over the past few months. You can do that here .) I'm really loving this book on the importance of evangelism and how to be more effective at equipping and preparing our churches to reach more and more people. Nelson really hits the nail on the head when he reminds us that, as senior pastors, the temperature of our church's evangelism falls on us. If we are not evangelistic and reaching out to people in our communities, then neither will our church. I love this quote: Make sure you haven't become so consumed with doing church that you have left the work of bringing in the unsaved to the people in your congregation. Love this! Isn'...

I love reading. I read a lot. But lately I've been feeling a tad disappointed that I'm not reading all that I would like to be reading. I read a lot for different areas of ministry. I have five books that I'm going through right now in that category. But... I have 13 others that I would love to get through before Christmas... I have 2 books in fiction/fantasy that I would love to read... they were Christmas gifts from last year! That's pretty sad! I gotta free up more time to read novels for fun! I have a bunch of reading for my seminary class as well. Love that! I'm a few chapters behind though... At least I'm up to date on my comic book reading :) I'm a big believer that one of the best ways to grow as a person is to always be learning. The trick for me has been to keep a balance on the type of stuff that I'm reading. I'm thinking of working on a reading plan as part of my New Year's resolution this coming January... we'll see ho...

I'm really pumped for the next six weeks at LifeSpring. Starting this Sunday we'll be studying the book Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson. This book was HUGE in my personal walk with Christ when I read it last November. I had the opportunity to meet Mark at The Sticks conference last year. His talk and this book really put a passion in me to see the Spirit of God really work in my life. I'm excited to preach for the next six weeks on this topic and to have each of our LifeGroups get deeper into the topics in their home meetings. We'll also be providing new Bible study resources in order to help people get into God's Word more in their own private time. It's going to be great!! For me personally, following the Wild Goose hasn't always been easy. In fact, sometimes it's just flat out hard! As a pastor, sometimes hard decisions have to be made. Sometimes people are not going to like you or agree with you. Sometimes you have to have difficult c...

In June, our church partnered with nearly 2000 other churches around the world in One Prayer. This was such a huge blessing to our church to be a part of something so much bigger than ourselves and I'm looking forward to being even more involved with it next year! Just received an awesome email from the One Prayer team with an update on how One Prayer went and an exciting opportunity for pastors who participated in One Prayer. You can check out this announcement by watching this video from Craig Groeschel , Senior Pastor of LifeChurch . tv . I love the idea of the God is... book! In fact, I'll be submitting a chapter for consideration. I'll be using my God is... Jesus message. And who knows, maybe with a LOT of prayer that will be my first work published :) It's so amazing to see what God can do with his church stands together! LOVE IT!!! My most heart felt prayers go out to the guys and gals who came up with this One Prayer idea!

I'm up north at my mom's place with the kids this week... they are enjoying a fun filled week with their grandparents while I enjoy the quietness of this place to get a lot of writing done! I'm hoping to get a research paper for school finished and get a few sermons done for the spring. Both projects are a blast but are really frying my brain! :) That's why I'm thankful for the quiet, forest surroundings here... and the hot tub (which I'm going to jump in as soon as I'm done writing this!) A part of me loves getting into the books and studying some tough stuff that Scripture brings out... but there's another part of me that wants to write my own book and call it "Who Cares??" I'm writing my paper on 1 Timothy 2:12 (Google it if you don't know it and you can imagine the arguments that this stirs up!) With all the opinions on egalitarians and complementarians I just can't help but wonder if it really matters... I mean... really....

Gee... this one post a week is getting sad... gotta get the writing juices flowing again :) Just started reading the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan. This is the kind of book that really gets my heart pumping. How am I really letting my love for God and his love for me to radically transform my life? Am I quick to just give God my todo list... or do I spend enough time listening for his voice and his plan for my life and ministry? My wife and I are doing this book as part of our personal devotion time. We're praying a lot for God's love to make even more of a difference in our lives! This is going to be part of our focus at LifeSpring during the summer as well. We're going to be studying the book of Mark. Why? Because I really want us to understand the heart of God by looking at how Jesus lived out his live and his ministry. Jesus said "if you've seen me, you've seen the Father". I praying that this examination on the crazy love of Jesus, a love so c...

I'm currently reading the book " Ten Stupid Things that Keep Churches from Growing " by Geoff Surratt. I'm just loving it so far. His writing style and personal examples are incredibly easy to relate it. His chapter on the Sunday morning worship service is especially interesting. There he presents a top 10 list to improve your weekend experience. This is great stuff and worth the price of the book alone! Sure, a bunch of them I could have guessed and probably knew already... but having them all in one place definitely makes it a lot easier for pastors to evaluate and improve on their services. Over the next few weeks, I'll be rereading each of those top 10 items and will probably blog about what God is showing me in this. His number 1 is " Ask the Hard Questions ". I LOVE hard questions! I love when I'm asked the hard questions and I love trying to find the answers to hard questions. I think the role of the pastor and the leadership of the church is ...

Today I had lunch with a friend of mine who also provides a lot of spiritual wisdom and guidance as I follow God's direction and do this pastor thing. He mentioned something of interest that I thought I'd throw out there... he thought it was time that I change the name of my blog.  He had a number of reasons.  The main fact is, I'm not really a newbie at this pastor thing anymore... I've been doing it for nearly two and a half years.  Also, by calling myself a "newbie" I'm kind of shooting myself down and some wouldn't take the blog seriously... Hmmmm... never thought of that. I countered that the reason for the name was, that no matter how long God calls me to be a pastor, I'll probably ALWAYS feel like a newbie!  The reality is, the more I get to know God and the more I think I understand him in reality I know and understand him even less!  In fact, I'm of the mindset that if I ever start talking like I have my theology perfect, or that my wa...

The staff here at Woodside have started reading Seven Practices of Effective Ministry by Andy Stanley, Reggie Joiner and Lane Jones.  I've gone through it a few times already and it's certainly hitting home with what I've been trying to see happen in the area of integration and discipleship here. As we begin our discussions on this book I find I have a LOT more questions then answers to bring ot the table...  stuff like: What is a "win" for an adult at Woodside? Do we need/have multiple wins for different types of people? What is the primary purpose of the Small Group ministry?  Do we truly want to be a church OF small groups or have we accepted a church WITH small groups? What is the purpose of men's and women's ministries?  Do they complement small groups or do they compete for leaders/time/resources? What is the purpose of Adult Bible Fellowships (Adult Sunday school)?  Again, do they distract from our win? Which adult ministries are best part of our i...

Just finished reading Sticky Churc h by Larry Osborne.  In fact I read it in just over 24 hours, I new record :-)  I started it yesterday morning and finished it a few minutes ago. I loved his presentation of the idea of closing the back door of the church through meaningful relationships with the people in the church.  I'm DEFINTELY a relationship kind of guy and this hit a strong cord with me.  I would, however, be very interested to hear from a more conservative introverted type person to see if it spoke the same way to them... A lot of what he had to say has really aligned itself with the other reading I've been doing lately... so I wonder what God is trying to tell me :-) This book was the homework for the discussion time at the next Small Group Network that I'm a part of.  I meet regularly with a group of other small group pastors to discuss ministry in our churches.  This is a great group and has been HUGE for me in getting connected around these parts and for helpin...

If chapter 9 is one of favorites in the book IT by Craig Groeschel, then chapter 10 is DEFINITELY my favorite! This chapter speaks to me at such a profound level that it feels almost like breathing! This is just as natural to me as that... let me explain. This chapter focuses on the idea that churches that have it think much bigger then their local ministry within the walls of their building. In fact, they have such a focus on the bigger picture of God's Kingdom that they are willing to give away what they have in order to partner and help other churches. He puts it this way: A kingdom-minded ministry is one whose leaders care more about what God is doing everywhere then what God is doing in their own ministry. A kingdom-minded ministry is generous and eager to partner with others to get more done for the glory of God. It's very easy to be excited that a church in the next town or city is doing well... but do we really celebrate when the church up the road is reaching more peo...

Chapter nine of the book IT by Craig Groeschel is by far one of my favorites. That chapter really hits it out of the park and makes the book! But it's also a very hard reality chapter to face... our attitudes towards people outside our church. I can barely read this chapter without stress, worry, frustration, anger, and a dozen other emotions as I think on how is the North American church continuing the mission of Jesus. One chapter in particular I want to put on a plaque on my wall: "If your ministry has become focused on the already-convinced, I'll bet that your ministry doesn't have it . You're not likely seeing many, if any, conversions. Baptisms are few and far between. Membership classes are tiny. You're not experiencing great works of the Spirit of God. New people aren't coming and staying. Long time members aren't growing." OUCH! I've only been in ministry for two years, but I can clearly see how it's SOOOO easy to be con...