Category Archives: seven sd

Hell on Earth- Pastors Burning Up and Flaming out

31 Saturday May 2014

Posted by in 7SD, Church, Church Leadership, God., jeremy, jeremy mcgarity, leadership, mcgarity, pastor Jeremy, patience, retreat, seven church, seven sd, sevensd church, Uncategorized

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I’m currently attending the final residency phase of my Doctor of Ministry program and I’m working on my final Doctoral Project. I’ve been digging in to research on pastoral burnout and how it effects churches all across the nation. With 80-85% of churches declining or dying across America and with pastors leaving the ministry every day– there is a clear correlation between pastoral burnout and church decline . I’ve been shocked to read the latest research and find that last year over 1,700 pastors quit or were forced to leave the ministry every month…I’m gonna say that again…every month. That number is rising…

My project is focusing on the causes and correlations between burnout and decline in churches and the correlation between healthy pastors and healthy growing and multiplying churches. If we lose our leaders the research is showing we lose our churches. Since we trust Jesus’ words that his “yoke is easy and his burden light”
— what is causing such burnout among church leaders? So far, the research is that crushing expectations, no time off, always in “crisis mode”, wanting to please people and wanting to always be “On” and the pressure of putting together a good message for Sunday are all factors in burnout, moral failure and quitting amongst pastors in America. My goal is to help pastors and churches and find preventative methods and cures.

Here’s where you can help. If you know of a burned out pastor- either currently out of full time ministry or formerly burned out but back at it- please let me know by emailing me jeremy@7sd.org. I would like to interview pastors and leaders and draw some conclusions and provide some solutions.

Gracias and peace,

Walk Through at Wolf Canyon

30 Saturday Aug 2008

Posted by in 7SD, Church, jeremy mcgarity, seven church, seven sd, wolf canyon

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We had our walk through at Wolf Canyon and we are thrilled to report that it seems like a perfect facility for 7SD. We are having a Grand Opening Launch party for this new location on September 14. Tell your friends, neighbors, co-workers, fellow students, etc., come help us kick off and celebrate this new location.

Missions Meeting

26 Thursday Jun 2008

Posted by in Church, jeremy mcgarity, seven sd, sevensd church

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Getting ready for a missions meeting of sorts. We are partnering with San Miguel Community Church to do a community wide Youth Olympics for kids in K-6th grades. We will also do this in conjunction with a church from Houston Texas who will send a team of 25 young people here to help us with this event. It’s really cool to be able to partner with other churches in and near the community as well as churches all over country. We really need to have a team mentality when trying to reach this huge community. So, this is one event where a couple of churches will reach out to the community together to show we are ONE CHURCH. Today’s meeting will be full of planning, laughing, pizza, and excitement as we figure out how best to get the word out and get some kids fired up to participate.

A Great Week

20 Tuesday May 2008

Posted by in Church, jeremy, mcgarity, PD, purpose driven, seven sd

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It’s been a great week. We had Sagemont Church from Houston Texas in town for the week helping us with missions work in the Chula Vista community. This is a college group of 22 people that gave up a week of their vacation to make a difference in our community. They are such a great group…what a blessing to have them out here. All their hard work in the community paid off. On Sunday we had our largest attendance since we’ve moved to the theater. It’s exciting seeing what God is doing in such a young church.

Sagemont helped us survey our community and continue to get the heartbeat and pulse of Otay Ranch. Questions that were asked on the survey included: 1. Do you go to church (if yes, we said thank you and moved on). 2. If not, why not. 3. What would a church need to pique your interest to go? 4. Any suggestions for a brand new church starting in your community? After they completed the survey we asked if there was anything we could help them with, i.e., yardwork, etc. We are compiling the information and looking forward to seeing the results so we can better serve the people God has placed in our lives.

Now, I just drove up to Saddleback Church with Koby Orr (our worship leader at Seven SD). We’re at the Purpose Driven Network conference in Lake Forest, CA. It’s great visiting with friends and meeting with National Leaders, learning and growing. I am a learner (according to “Now Discover Your Strengths”..Marcus Buckingham) so an environment like this really fires me up. Just heard a great comment, “the mind can only absorb as much as the seat can endure.” my seat is a hurtin’ man but mind is absorbin’….been here about 10 hours now…lots going on…all good.

Trunk R’ Treat and Block Party in Otay Ranch

09 Friday Nov 2007

Posted by in halloween, seven sd, trunk r' treat

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Copy this link into your browser FOR PICTURES OF THE TRUNK R’ TREAT. http://s242.photobucket.com/albums/ff157/sevensandiego/



The Trunk R’ Treat went awesome! We were pleasantly surprised with the turnout. I think there was about 300 or so, my wife thinks more like 200 or so but I like the evange-lastic- number better. Still, by just doing door hangers in the area and having a crazy lady on the street corner all lighted up (my mom) waving people into the park it was a very electric atmosphere. Numerous people thanked us for doing this for the community. It’s just another one of those community grass roots events that lays the foundation for more events in the future. We may only get a few people from this event to come check us out on a preview Sunday but this event along with the many we have planned to do in the future, and the ones we’ve done in the past start to add up and people start to pay attention to this church that is always doing something relevant in the community.

It was a steady flow of people from 6pm to 9pm. Lots of kids playing in the park, grabbing hot dogs and rummaging through the several trunks lined up full of candy and glow sticks and glow/bouncy eye balls! We actually ran out of candy and hot dogs at one point and had to make a quick run to the store to pick up more which was promptly devoured by more people showing up later in the night.

We also got help from a couple from HDC that had just moved to Otay Ranch two weeks ago! By chance (divine appointment really) we handed them a door hanger in the park a week before the event. They looked at it and said, “Seven!” We’re from HDC, we just moved here two weeks(because of a job transfer) ago and heard you guys were here somewhere but didn’t know where!” It was so cool to see them come to the Trunk R’ Treat and help out!