One of the questions that’s come up since the release of our newest resource, “Ministering in the Hard Places” is, “What constitutes a hard place?”

I think it’s a great question. My friend Bill LaMorey who co-taught this resource with me says, “A hard place is any place that doesn’t have  a church and a Chick-Fil-A on every corner.”

Seriously, there are areas (like Miami and New England) where the soil isn’t immediately ready for the Gospel. There’s a reason in some areas a church can launch with 300- 500 people and in other areas it’s more like 30-50.

If there’s been very little Gospel presence in the last 50 years, it makes the work of the church planter than much harder. He has to do a lot of the pre-evangelism work before he gets to do the work of an evangelist.

Obviously, there are tough aspects of pastoring in any area. Our goal in “Ministering in the Hard Places” was to provide a resource for the guys that are doing the heavy lifting in areas where no one has been preaching the Gospel for some time.

When you’re in more difficult regions, you have to do things differently. That was our goal in this resource. We wanted to talk about how to do outreach, staffing, preaching, leadership development, and stewardship in the tough places.

If you want to check out our brand new resource, “Ministering in the Hard Places”, you can get more info and/ or pick up a copy by clicking here.