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Please Note: The following Article is a transcript of the podcast.

Introduction

 Welcome to The Pastor’s Podcast. This is a place where we discuss and share everything about the work of a pastor. Also in this podcast, I’ll be sharing some of my own personal experience of being a young pastor. I started my church when I was 24 and it’s been an amazing journey so far. Lots of ups and downs.

There were times of rejoicing, times of pain, but overall It’s been a great journey because God has been faithful and he has helped me lead my church. Now, if you don’t know who I am, my name is Joshua. I’m pastor of Hope City Church in Mangalore. And, uh, by the way, there is another Hope City Church based out of the UK.

Clarification

And I didn’t know that church existed when I was starting my church. And so when I started my church, uh, through prayers and discussions and through ideas, we named the church as Hope City Church. But after a couple of years, I found out that there is another church that is already existing, a much bigger church in the uk, uh, called Hope City Church.

So we are different than them. Uh, though we are the church, the body of Christ, the leadership, the organization is completely independent of each other. And also we named our church Hope City because. My life was filled with hopelessness. I was living in a depressed, very dark state of life, and God came into my life and he gave me hope.

And so at that time, when I was thinking of starting a church, I would always think to myself that one day when I start a church, I’m going to name it as Hope Church. That was what I had in mind. But later, one of our friends told us that you could name it Hope City Church because you are located in the city.

Sounded good. We named it, but later discovered there’s another church as well. So we do not have any connections with them. Now in case you’re wondering why this podcast? Why I, why I started this podcast? Here’s the reason. When I began the church, I was 24 years old, and at that time I thought I knew how to be a pastor, how to pastor a church.

My Background

Because I was a pastor’s kid, born and raised in a pastor’s family. Church was my life. Church was my playground. Church was my vacation spot. Church was everything to me. Now when I say church was my playground, I literally mean that I used to play football. inside the church during the week when there were no services.

That is how my life was. It was all within the four walls of the church. And also I’m a seminary graduate. I have a bachelor’s in theology and also I’m currently pursuing a MA in counseling. So with all this background, I thought I know how to be a pastor. I thought I had the training to run a church, but only after I started the church, I realized how much I do not know.

I needed help!

I realized that I needed help though. I had senior leaders at that time I wanted to talk to pastors who are of my age and learn from their experiences And their mistakes, but unfortunately, I couldn’t find such specific resources at that time And it was a struggle but I had amazing mentors and pastors and especially my dad who helped me through this journey.

So going through that phase, I felt that one day I should start a resource group or a podcast or a website to help young pastors who are starting out in ministry. Those pastors who do not have the resources or people around them. I wanted to start this podcast to share my experiences and encourage and to motivate the young pastors because The calling of a pastor is a very challenging one.

It’s easy to be an evangelist. It’s easy to be a traveling speaker, but it’s very difficult to be in one place to conduct services week after week, week after week, and to hear all the criticisms from different people and continue to do the same thing with excellence. It’s, it’s, it’s a lot of work. It’s a burdensome one.

I know pastors who get burned out all the time. I know young pastors who quit ministry because it’s too much for them. And I wanted to start this podcast so that. young pastors find the encouragement that they need. And also I wanted to start this so that I can share with others who may not be in pastoral ministry so that I can share with them what it means to be a pastor and what a pastor goes through every week in the church.

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So I hope this is going to be beneficial to anyone who’s listening. I hope this will. Help you grow in your ministry and also grow in your understanding of what a pastor does throughout the week Before I close this I want to request you if you’re listening on itunes Or youtube or cast box or google podcast click on the subscribe button so that you can stay updated with our latest content God bless you.

Thank you for listening. I’ll talk to you soon through another episode