I want to say something to upcoming Pastors like me who follow this page. Church Ministry is dynamic and never think that you own the church, or it's people. So let it sink in you that you don't own the people. So don't try to be Lord over them. It is God who owns the people. You are just a vessel that God uses to shepherd his people. Don't ever forget that. In each and every church you will find four kinds of people which are: i. Sons/Daughters ii. Visitors iii. Parasites iv. Helpers Sons and Daughters are those people who were raised in your ministry by the Gospel you preach. They don't go anywhere, they are with you till Jesus comes or till death. Sons and daughters are not members who decided to be your church members. No. They are the people who were born by the message you preach. If you "cut their hearts" you will see the Gospel you preach flowing in them. They might have come as members at first, but through continual listening and participating in the gospel you preach they got born by that gospel and now they are sons/daughters. They don't follow other preachers, they don't follow the voice of strangers but they follow you as a God given pastor to them. True sons and daughters don't follow interdenominational Ministries, they stay in their church. They maintain the one voice that Jesus gave to them (Ephesian 4:11). Those who come to your church and also feature in many Interdenominational groups are still not yet sons and daughters so don't worry about them. Let them be. But you focus on your sons and daughters. Visitors are those who come for a while, they are not permanent like sons. Most pastors mistaken them for sons but they are not. They are just visitors who are there for something they want from you. They participate in some of your church programs and they come for one or two Sundays in a month, and in some of the Sundays they don't come because they would've gone to their churches to mark the register. Never treat visitors as sons. Don't ever try to please visitors thinking that they will change their minds and stay. I used to do that mistake. I used to give more attention to visitors thinking that they will stay but they always leave. Don't waste your time building visitors. Someone rightly said don't pastor people who have pastors. Usually during the church service, a pastor may give too much attention to visitors while neglecting the sons and daughters. Don't do that. No matter how you please the visitors they won't stay permanently. They just want something from you and when they get it they leave. In our church, we celebrate visitors, we love visitors but we don't give them too much attention. They don't deserve it. It's for my sons and daughters in the faith. Most of the times I don't even pray for the visitors that much. I pray too much for my sons and daughters. Visitors are good, but they must not take the attention reserved for the sons and daughters of the house. Parasites are those blood suckers. They benefit from your ministry but they never give back or help the ministry to move on. They don't care about your church vision or mission. All they want is to suck out spiritual benefits from you and leave. I know one of my sons who had a church full of parasites. When the church failed to pay rent, the pastor decided to stop going to the service thinking that his members will come and plead with him and pay for the venue. But they didn't do that. When he stopped going to church, no body cared about it. They also stopped going there and the church was shut down. He had parasites in church. Any ministry that is full of parasites has a suffering pastor. You will see the pastor struggling to pay church bills by himself. He will call for offerings but no one will give a dime. All they have come to do is to benefit from your spiritual gifts and when they get what they wanted they leave. The only time you see them is when they are in problems again, so they come to collect deliverance and breakthroughs before they disappear again. They know you carry their solutions but they are not willing to commit themselves to be under your ministry. Parasites are different from visitors. Visitors come and go. Parasites don't do that. They stay but only to suck blood out of you until you die and when you are dead as it were, they go to another church. Parasites don't like to put a hand in anything that the church is doing, all they want is to suck out blood as it were till the church is closed down. This is why you can find a church with 100 members yet failing to pay $50 rent monthly. It's a church full of parasites not sons. Helpers are those people who don't want to be part of your church but they like to help you to achieve your goals and mission. Usually helpers are people who go to another big church somewhere but they are also inspired by you so they help you here and there to raise the new church you lead. I have had helpers in my ministry. I've had people who don't worship with us but financially they have stood with me for a long time. Don't make a mistake of trying to make helpers your sons and daughters. They are simply helpers who come for a season. When their time is up they disappear. They are not blood suckers, they are not visitors to your church, they are just helpers who admire your zeal and your way of preaching or ministry. Some pastors make a mistake of inviting helpers to attend their church services. Please don't. Let them go to their churches but continue to minister to them privately. So God raises helpers for every ministry. He knows you need their help and he knows you can't pastor them, so don't force them to be your sons. If God sends you helpers, don't call them sons/daughters because they are not your sons/daughters. They are just helpers. When they leave don't be angry, it simply means their time is up so let them leave. Why God sends helpers to you? Usually when you are in the early stages of your ministry the church will be full of poor people who can't help much financially. They are your true sons and daughters but they are still rising up financially so during the time they are growing up to be financially stable, God sends you helpers. I've had one helper who gave me $500 per month in my early stages and he didn't even feel it. To him giving $500 was like giving $50. When his time was up, he left. Soon after he left God raised another helper, this one was a woman who is based in the States. She gave us $550 every month and at that same time God raised another one who gave us $300 monthly for nearly a year. They didn't know each other but they helped us a lot. When one of them left, the other left too the same month. It was like they were communicating to each other yet they didn't even know each other. It was God who brought them and it was God who removed them from us. So I have had many helpers since I started full-time ministry on 7 September 2008. I was still a university student that time studying Engineering at UZ. Some helpers paid my university fees that time and some gave me some money to add for my wedding to be a success in 2012. Pray for helpers. Ask God to send you helpers while your sons and daughters are growing in your ministry. When God sees that you now have sons and daughters who have good financial muscles to stand with you financially, he will minimize the ministry of helpers in your life. Blessed is a Ministry with sons and daughters. It will go far and take territories. So as a Pastor, raise sons and daughters. Take that seriously. No matter how poor they are today, raise them in Christ and the anointing in your life and ministry will bless those sons and daughters and make them rich. Focus on your sons and daughters. Pray for them for hours. I don't want to lie to you, I have sons and daughters who are rich today, but when we started with them they were extremely poor. They had nothing to their names. But for two decades I have raised them in Christ. Besides soul winning, I put my focus on building them through teaching, preaching and praying for them. Daily I spare 3 hours to pray for my sons and daughters. They are not so many so I know all of them by name. When I hit my knees on the ground to pray, I mention all their names to God one by one. I try my best. I know that they are the future of my ministry. A ministry without sons and daughters is going nowhere. When the founder dies, that ministry also dies. But a ministry with true sons and daughters will live beyond the founder. That's how it is. - Apostle Alistar Chibanda