Church Growth

2008-03-28T14:34:00.003-04:00

(Written on the occasion of a friend’s seventeen year old son who recently passed away).

Dominique was seventeen years old when he died. At the age of five years old, his body began to show signs of an inherited disease named “Sanfilippo”. This disease manifests itself in young children. Infants usually appear normal but as the child grows, symptoms begin to occur, including dwarfism of the body.

Children with this disease become increasingly immobile and unresponsive, often requiring wheelchairs, and develop swallowing difficulties and seizures. The life-span of an affected child does not usually extend beyond late teens to early twenties. Dominique could not walk and required constant 24/7 care. Though he qualified to be placed in a nursing facility, his mother and father refused this option and took care of Dominique his entire life in their home.

___________________

Death is always an intrusion into our lives and its interruption is never convenient. Death is always that cruel blow to our soul that causes us to grieve and feel such horrible sorrow. Death is the unfriendly disturbance that forces us to rethink our perspective on life and it painfully reminds us that life is always too short for us and for our loved ones who pass away.

Death is that great imposition for which we never find ourselves fully prepared-our busy lives must stop.........which propels our memories to abound as we think about precious moments we enjoyed in days and years gone by.

Death makes our world to abruptly stop.............yet, life continues on and the world around us may only pause to read the obituary, visit the funeral home, send a
card, stop along the highway as the funeral procession passes by, or simply ignore the fact that someone has passed from this life to the next.

Death is that last great enemy over which we have no control. And, death cruelly reminds of our own soon final act. We suppress that thought to the recesses of our minds, yet, we are constantly bombarded by this haunting Joker in the deck of cards of life. It seems as though he laughs at us and it seems as though he is glad. But, there is something far beyond this gruesome adversary. There is something far beyond that exceeds our very grasp.

It is that place called heaven: walls of jasper, gates of pearl and golden streets. There are family members and friends who are there...anxiously awaiting our entrance through those pearly gates. They know what is waiting for us: a perfect palace, a perfect body, and a great and glorious reunion when make a grandiose entrance into that holy Temple.

There is no time in heaven and there is no schedule to keep. There are no worries in heaven and there are no tears to shed. There is no fear in heaven and there is no sin anymore.

No, in heaven there is such beauty that the human eye and mind cannot begin to understand. Those who have gone on before us fully know what we now can only make a feeble attempt to comprehend....how wonderful this called heaven really is. And, those who have gone on before us know that once we make our majestic appearance into that Upper Room, there will be desire to return to this old and cold and cruel sinful world.

It is there in heaven that we come to know that it was worth it all while we lived on the earth: that it really was worth it to follow our precious Lord.

It is there in heaven that we will come to know that, while we lived on earth, God treated us with dignity and respect and He always looked upon us as cloaked with robes of royalty and heralded with crowns.

And, it is there in heaven that we will finally say to Him:

“So, You were in everything after all. Now, I see Lord that You really were there in those difficult places of life. You were really there in those deep and dark valleys when I thought You had forgotten me. You were really there when I thought You didn’t care about me. You were really there when I felt like I couldn’t go on. I see, now, that You were there in everything, carrying me like a Father carries His little child to lay him down in the bed at night.”

“But, was that you, God, in the storms that railed against me and thrust my life into the pit”?

“Yes, My child that was Me”.

“And, was that you, God, in that lonely valley I walked through in those dark and lonely nights”?

“Yes, My child that was Me”

“Was that you, God........”?

“Yes, My child, it was always Me”.

The victor seems to be death......but death never actually wins.

Jesus is the victor and He is the One Who wins. And, though it seems as if our hearts are broken and it seems as though our hearts will never heal, our loved ones who have gone on to heaven now rest in the Victor’s arms and enjoy His presence that is beyond our comprehension. And, one day soon, we shall join them over there.

Death is not the victor... death can only sting. Jesus is the Victor and death is never the end!

Recommended reading:

2008-02-02T12:22:00.000-05:00

"Reveal:Where Are You?" by Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson

Three year self-examination by Willowcreek.

"Oh, God, I pray that we would, in every church, be humble, like Willowcreek, and admit falling short in growing healthy believers and seek to grow healthy churches.

Church Growth Or Growing The Church?

2008-01-31T17:11:00.001-05:00
The following is a quote by Bobby Welch:

“It is shocking how many church leaders do not understand the difference between church growth and growing the church.

Church growth is about filling a building with people. Growing the church is about equipping and mobilizing the people in the building so they can leave the building to go out into the world and fill the kingdom with souls whom they rescue off the road to hell.”

Church History in the year 3009

2008-01-31T17:06:00.000-05:00
Future History
By James L. Smyrl
Executive Pastor of Education at FBC, Jacksonville, Florida
www.loyalheartministries.com

If the return of our Lord occurs 1001 years from today, what will be the assessment on the church of today by historians in 3009? When Vines, Patterson, Rogers, Falwell, Criswell, and Graham are reduced to a few summation paragraphs in a tattered book, what will historians write about their perception of the church in 2008? We look back at the monastic times and ask, “How could godly men hide the gospel from the world?” We ponder scholastic days and ask, “Why did the reasoned study of scripture not produce the salvation of many souls?” We examine the days of awakening and revival and wonder, “Why did spiritual renewal not lead to hermeneutical integrity?” So, what questions may historians ask as they reflect on us?

They may ask, “How could the church in America have been so driven by numbers, yet disregard the 1.8 billion people in the world that had no access to the gospel?” They will see demographic studies that reveal America made up less than 5% of the world’s population, yet 95% of the western world’s Christian resources remained in America. With perplexed looks and indiscernible gazes, the historians of the future will ponder the ability of a church so consumed by stats, yet so oblivious to the one stat that should have mattered.

They may ask, “How could a people known as ‘people of the Book’ stray so far away from biblical ecclesiology in their organization?” No doubt the future historians will debate why corporate America set the standard for employee relations, budgeting processes, and ministry plans within the church. Conferences will convene with scholars presenting assumptive reasons for the limited view of biblical sufficiency evident in the church today. They will ponder how such dogmatic statements could resound from the pulpit, yet immediately go silent in the planning sessions. Future historians will wrestle with reconciling a church that prided itself on conservatism, yet modeled itself according to pragmatism.

They may ask, “How could ministers proclaim a gospel that leads to suffering, yet spend so many Kingdom dollars on making the gospel appeal to pagans?” Carefully preserved samples of ministry marketing campaigns will be on display in vacuum glass cases. Seminary students and future historians will parade by these displays in awe. Their curiosity will peak as they reflect on a church that claimed the power of the Word, but seemed to invest more in making it appealing than in simply proclaiming it. The historians of the future will look at the poverty statistics in our cities and the needs of missionaries around the world, and stand confounded at the line items earmarked for making the gospel pretty.

We still have time to answer their questions. There is still time to provide the future with a model of the church that is pure, undefiled, and a sweet offering to our Lord. Will it take a revival to make such a transition from a business and marketing-led church to a theology-led church? NO. We stand in need of another reformation. Revival will only stir the church to do more of the same. What is required is a reformation that rattles until the fault lines of our faithless foundations are torn in two, and all that remains is a pure gospel that is offensive to a lost world and singularly sufficient to change that world.

Surrender? Never!!!

2008-01-24T13:28:00.000-05:00

Nancy Leigh Demoss writes in her book, “Surrender: The Heart God Controls”, pages 17-18, 2003):

On March 10, 1975, almost thirty years after the end of World War II, Lt. Hiroo Onoda finally handed over his rusty sword and became the last Japanese soldier to surrender.

Onoda had been sent to the tropical island of Lubang in the Philippines in 1944, with orders to conduct guerrilla warfare and prevent enemy attack on the island. When the war ended, Onoda refused to believe the messages announcing Japan’s surrender.

For twenty-nine years, long after all his fellow soldiers had either surrendered or been killed off, Onoda continued defending the island territory for the defeated Japanese army. He hid in the jungle, living off the land, stealing food and supplies from local citizens, evading one search party after another, and killing at least thirty nationals in the process. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent trying to locate the lone holdout and convince him that the war was over.Leaflets, newspapers, photographs, and letters from friends were dropped in the jungle; announcements were made over loudspeakers, begging Onoda to surrender.

Still he refused to give up his fight.

Some thirteen thousand men had been deployed in the effort before Onoda finally received a personal command from his former commander and was persuaded to give up the futile, solitary war he had waged for so many years.

In his autobiography entitled, “No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War”, Onoda describes the moment that the reality of what had transpired began to sink in:

I felt like a fool...What had I been doing for these years?...For the first time I really understood....This was the end. I pulled back the bolt on my rifle and unloaded the bullets...I eased off the pack that I always carried with me and laid the gun on top of it.
____________________________________________

The war, for Onodo, was finally over.

But, yet, the war rages on for some of us.

And, that war is raging inside of us because, not unlike Hiroo Onoda, we fight and refuse to surrender. We rebel against God’s authority and we defiantly resist Him.

Why? Because “flesh” is hostile to submitting to God’s authority. The “flesh” attempts to do things its own way. And, the “flesh”, strong and powerful that it is, seeks to live without surrendering to God.

Surprisingly, the Sovereign Lord allows us, in our “flesh”, to do things our own way.

Why? He knows that, sooner or later, we will discover that we can’t accomplish anything of eternal significance in our “flesh”. And, He knows that we will find that, in our “flesh” and in our refusal to submit, we will fail miserably. He loves us too much to force Himself upon us. And, in His compassion and graciousness, He allows us to discover that when we surrender and submit, we find the pathway to freedom and deliverance from the stranglehold and putridness of the “flesh”.

And, so the war rages on ...and on ...and on. No surrender. No submission. No raising of the white flag. No throwing in of the towel. No laying down of the gun like Hiroo Onoda.

No! Absolutely not! The “flesh” shall fight to the end: “I can do it!”

And, so, while we refuse to surrender and refuse to submit, others around us have to endure the agony. Many residents on the island of Lubang suffered and many died at the hands of Hiroo Onoda because of his unwillingness to surrender. Likewise, our spouses, our family members, our friends, our co-workers, other believers, and our ministries, suffer the extreme pain and terrible consequences of our pride and our “flesh” and our refusal to surrender to the almighty hand of God.

Many have surrendered and found their freedom and their joy. Others have raised the white flag of surrender and found their peace.

But, no, not the “flesh”. It seeks to have its own way. It is stubborn, inflexible, immovable, and obstinate. The “flesh” is at war and will fight to the bitter end.

And so, the war rages on...and on...and on...and.........................

Biblical Christianity is not about................

2008-01-16T11:25:00.000-05:00
• Biblical Christianity is not about going up but it is about going down.

• Biblical Christianity is not about going to a higher level but it is about going to a lower level.

• Biblical Christianity is not about what I can get from God but it is about what I can give to God.

• Biblical Christianity is not about what God owes me but it is about what I owe Him. I owe Him my life.

• Biblical Christianity is not about what I can get from other people but it is about what I can give to them.

• Biblical Christianity is not about if I can teach the word of God but it is about why I teach the word of God.

• Biblical Christianity is not about if I can preach the word of God but it is about why do I preach the word of God.

• Biblical Christianity is not about if I can sing but it is about why do I sing.

• Biblical Christianity is not about going to the front of the line but it is about choosing to go to the back of line.

• Biblical Christianity is not about being recognized but it is about making myself of no reputation.

• Biblical Christianity is not about my rights but it is about relinquishing my rights.

• Biblical Christianity is not about me being recommended to a larger church but it is about being approved by God.

• Biblical Christianity is not about me being asked to preach at the next BIG pastor’s conference but is about being thankful that others get to preach.

• Biblical Christianity is not about “why don’t they ask me to preach at the next BIG pastor’s conference?” but it is about “giving thanks in everything” and “for everything” even if they don’t ask me to preach.

• Biblical Christianity is not about “why do they always ask that other pastor to preach at all of the BIG pastor’s conference?” but it is about “giving thanks in everything” and “for everything” and for everyone that God blesses.

• Biblical Christianity is not about “why does she get to sing all of the solos in church?” but it is about “giving thanks in everything” and “for everything” and for everyone that God blesses.

• Biblical Christianity is not about “why don’t they ever ask me to sing a solo?” but it is about “giving thanks in everything” and “for everything” even if they don’t ask me to sing.

• Biblical Christianity is not about “why don’t they ever ask me to preach when the pastor is gone?” but it is about “giving thanks in everything” and “for everything” no matter what doesn’t happen to me.

• Biblical Christianity is not about me writing a book.

• Biblical Christianity is not about “why don’t they ever ask me to write a book?”

• Biblical Christianity is not about what I can get accomplished but it is about what God can accomplish.

• Biblical Christianity is not about what God can do through me but it is about what God can do.

• Biblical Christianity is not about “what is God’s will for my life?” but it is about “what is God’s will?”.

• Biblical Christianity is not about my agenda but it is about God’s agenda.

• Biblical Christianity is not about my little kingdom but it is about God’s kingdom.

• Biblical Christianity is not about my plans but it is about God’s plans.

• Biblical Christianity is not about my life but it is about His life.

• Biblical Christianity is not about me determining what I need but it is about God determining what I need.

• Biblical Christianity is not about moaning and groaning about what I don’t have but it is about being thankful to God for what I don’t have.

• Biblical Christianity is not about my possessions but it is about my one Possession: Christ lives in me!

• Biblical Christianity is not about me being master but it is about me being a servant and a slave.

• Biblical Christianity is not about someone else taking out the trash at the covered dish supper but it is about me taking out the trash at the covered supper.

• Biblical Christianity is not about someone else cleaning the bathrooms at the church but it is about me cleaning the bathrooms at the church (shhhh......and not telling anyone).

• Biblical Christianity is not about someone else picking up trash around the church but it is about me picking up the trash around the church (shhhh......and not telling anyone).

• Biblical Christianity is not about me having a special parking space at the church but it is about special parking spaces for guests who come to our church.

• Biblical Christianity is not about me having special privileges but it is about me not having special privileges.

• Biblical Christianity is not about me expecting a discount at local businesses but it is about me not thinking that I should receive some discount at local businesses because I’m in the ministry.

• Biblical Christianity is not about how I want to react to the situations and circumstances in my life but it is about me asking “what would Jesus do?”.

• Biblical Christianity is not about me finding God but that He found me.

• Biblical Christianity is not about me............

• Nor is it about you.....................

• Nor is it about anyone else...................

• But, biblical Christianity is about..................................................

• Well, I’ll let you write the rest of your story and His
story.........................................................................................................................................................................................

Valley of Vision

2008-01-11T10:34:00.000-05:00
Many times in our lives we find ourselves in the valley. Sometimes, it is the valley of pain or the valley of unpleasant circumstances or the valley of a great crisis in our lives. It is difficult to understand why we have to go through these valleys so often in our lives. We know that life is full of valley experiences yet it is hard for us to accept that reality. We want our lives to be free from pain, both physical and emotional, but we understand the stark reality that life has its valleys.

Perhaps you are going through a valley right now. May I suggest to you that the valley you are going through can be considered a “valley of vision”?

It is in the valleys that we gain more insight into the character and nature of God. It is in the valleys that we begin to see more clearly the things that are most important to God and what should be most important to us. And, it is in the valleys and the depths of life that we gain a greater perspective of God’s desire for a deeper, more intimate relationship with us.

The Puritans had the following perspective about valleys.

Lord, high and holy, yet, meek and lowly,

You have brought me to the valley of vision,
Where I live in the depths but I can see You in the heights;
Hemmed in by mountains of sin, I behold Your glory.

Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.

Let me find Your light in my darkness,
Let me find Your life in my death,
Let me find Your joy in my sorrow,
Let me find Your grace in my sin,
Let me find Your riches in my poverty, and
Let me find Your glory in my valley.

(Adapted and edited from: The Valley of Vision, A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions)

Preaching

2008-01-03T17:34:00.000-05:00
I have started thinking about “regrets” in my life. The older a person is (and I am 55 years old now and I feel about 75 years old) the more a person thinks about the “regrets” of life. The result is wishing for, what I call, “do-overs” (“I wish I could do over again......”).

One of my regrets that I wish I could “do over” is that, when I was a pastor, I should have had a few people in the congregation that I trusted to evaluate the sermons that I preached each week and to evaluate my communication skills (Did I get my point across?). This process would have helped me in becoming a more effective and more improved communicator.

Every believer, no matter what they do in life and in ministry, should strive to become more effective in what they do, to do their very best. No matter what the occupation and no matter what the ministry, every believer should have the desire of striving for improvement. A pastor can do this by having trusted members of the congregation evaluate his sermons.

The article below is written by Bill Hybels, pastor of Willowcreek Church in Chicago. At the end of the article I have inserted a link to assist in searching for evaluation forms/material, if so desired.
(And, by the way, live your life in such way that when you are older the regrets and the “do-overs” will be miniscule.)
______________________
Keeping Ourselves on Target
A good reminder for preachers and teachers.
by Bill Hybels
From the book Mastering Contemporary Preaching

When I first began teaching publicly, as a youth minister in the early seventies, I taught in a conversational, dialogue style. After all, there were just twenty-five kids. When my material wasn't all that useful, one of the students would raise a hand and say, "Can we move on?" Then I'd realize I was missing the mark, or I had overstayed my welcome in the Book of Leviticus, and we would move on.
I stayed with that style for more than a year, but then we started outreach programs, and all of a sudden the group jumped from 25 to 150. My teaching style soon became inappropriate for the larger group; I actually had to start putting together formal messages. In a panic, I went to a senior pastor friend and said, "I have to start giving full-blown messages to 150 high school students. What do you suggest?"

He said, "Well, if I were you, I would get a copy of Berkhof's Manual of Christian Doctrine and just start at chapter 1 and teach these kids." Sounded fine to me. So I read the first chapter of Berkhof, did some underlining and preparation, and that night began delivering it to a roomful of students.

Five minutes into that talk, I started to see glazed expressions. Students were looking around the room to see who was there. Others were looking at their watches, passing notes to each other, drawing on the backs of the chairs in front of them.
Right then, I knew this teaching was not useful. I was so disheartened by what was happening that I stopped about a third of the way into the message.

"I have to apologize," I said, "for the fact that I am missing the mark tonight. What I prepared to say is obviously not on target. And I want to make a commitment to you students. If you'll come back next week, I'm going to talk about something straight out of the Bible that is going to make a difference in your understanding of God, in your appreciation of the Christian faith, and in how you live your daily life. And if you'll give me another opportunity, I'd like to prove that to you."
The next week most of them returned, graciously, maybe just to humor me. But from that day on, I have lived with a sanctified terror of boring people or making the relevant Scriptures irrelevant. That experience helped me die to pride on the issue of having my teaching evaluated.

Every preacher is evaluated, one way or another, by every listener. I want to get evaluation that will help me be most effective in reaching people with God's truth. I consider getting accurate evaluation part of my job.

The Right Questions
Constructive evaluation won't happen, though, no matter how willing I am to receive it, unless I'm asking the right people the right questions at the right time.
By right people, I mean people with great discernment whom I have learned to trust. It will only distract, confuse, or harm me to get input from everyone. Instead, I want to go to wise counselors.

By right questions, I mean that I want to find out how I'm communicating at a variety of levels:
• Each illustration—did it communicate what I intended?
• Each message—did it serve its function in the series?
• A year's worth of messages—are they covering the topics and passages this congregation wants and needs to hear?
• My preaching as a whole—is it helping to accomplish the goal of my ministry?

Finally, by right time, I mean I want to receive evaluation when it's most effective. Obviously, that's when I can do the most about it. Finding out after I deliver a message that it was slightly off track is somewhat useful. But how much more productive it is to find out before I put twenty hours into something that wasn't well aimed! So increasingly, I ask "evaluation" questions during the planning stages before I preach. Each weekend, for example, I preach the same message three times—once on Saturday night and twice on Sunday morning. I try to get evaluation immediately following the Saturday night service, so I can make adjustments before I preach the same message two more times. As a result, some Sunday mornings have found me in my office at 5:30. But getting evaluation early keeps me from making one mistake multiple times.

Asking someone to evaluate your preaching is a delicate operation, and the people, questions, and timing are going to vary with each pastor and church. But let me share how I have tried to gain the information that would make my preaching better.

Evaluating One Sermon
The elders at Willow Creek would always respond truthfully when I asked them about the accuracy or relevancy of my preaching. But unless I asked, they wouldn't say anything. So over the course of time, we have formalized the process. Now the elders evaluate every message that I preach, and they give me a written response to it within minutes after I complete the message. One elder—our most discerning when it comes to preaching evaluation—collects responses from the other elders, summarizes them, and writes them on the front of a bulletin and gives it to me before I leave.

For example, on a recent Wednesday night I gave a strong call to honoring the lordship of Christ. One elder called me (though usually his comments would just be written on the bulletin) and said, "I really do appreciate all of what you said and the style and the tone of what you communicated Wednesday night. Now that you've made that emphasis, I feel it's important for you to remind the people regularly in ensuing messages of the assisting work of the Holy Spirit. We need his power to submit consistently to that kind of lordship."

I said, "Good word." That's the kind of correction I need, because sometimes I will feel so strongly about a subject that the sheer force of my personality causes complications I didn't intend. People think I was angry about something. And so hearing how my tone and demeanor come across is very important to me.
This past Wednesday night, I again spoke on the lordship of Christ, and several elders remarked that they appreciated the spirit and tone with which I spoke. In this message, they said, I was not strident, but gave a loving call to discipleship. That meant a lot to me.

I realize the thought of having elders evaluate every message—or any message—is a frightening thought for many pastors. I confess that the primary reason this system of accountability and evaluation works in our setting is because of the enormous trust and love that has been built between my elders and me. When I work sometimes twenty-five or thirty hours on a sermon, and pour my life into it, and pray over it, and write out three drafts—if the evaluation is not done with great sensitivity and with no ulterior motives from the evaluators, the system would be imperiled. If I ever, even once, sensed a private agenda or hobbyhorse one particular elder wanted to ride, this form of evaluation we enjoy might unravel.
Having said that, however, we have taken several steps to ensure effective evaluation.

First, I freely admit to them I'm sensitive about having my preaching evaluated. I have told the elders probably a hundred times, "I am extremely vulnerable about these evaluations in the first four minutes after I get down from the pulpit. I would appreciate very much if whoever's doing the evaluating would put a lot of time into thinking about how to present constructive criticisms to me." The elders have understood that and worked hard on it.

Second, we filter all the evaluations through one person. It used to be that if I had said something a little off the mark in an illustration, by the time I got to my office, I'd heard about it seven or eight times. After the third elder would say something, I would say, "Enough already; I got the point." But each one felt responsible to say something. So finally I went to the elders and said, "Time out. The seven pats on the back when I preach well are nice, but the seven slaps when I blow it are excruciating. Let's filter all the comments through one elder so I'll hear things only once."

We chose as the person to collect responses a man who has a rare ability to affirm that which should be affirmed. The agreement is this: If an elder senses a message was right on the mark, then there's no need to find this elder appointee and say anything. If the message was incredibly insightful—I think it's happened once or twice—then make a point of telling the appointed elder. And if there's a problem in the message, naturally, the elder appointee should hear about that. But there isn't a formal caucus after each message, because over the years this particular elder's evaluation has been recognized as almost always illustrative of the feelings of the group. And usually he will talk to two or three elders before he talks to me.

A third principle that makes the system work for us is that there's give and take on the evaluations. A lot of times, the elder appointee will say something like this: "You might reconsider the use of such-and-such a word, given the fact we have so many former Catholics." I'll ponder that and say, "I didn't realize that would offend them. It's no big deal to replace a word there. I can use another word, and everybody's happy."

But other times he'll say, "Might you consider not making reference to the football player?" And I'll say, "If this is one of those 'might you reconsider,' I think no; it's very important for the non-churched men I'm trying to reach." As many times as not, the elder will say, "I can understand that."

Of course, periodically, there are the comments such as, "Please change this; please delete the use of that word; please delete that illustration. We can talk about it later, or call me at home, but we have strong reservations about that concept." And in those cases, I change it. The elders (and board members and staff people, whom I occasionally ask for evaluation) are discerning people who know when I hit the mark and when I forgot to load the gun.

I used an illustration one time about sitting next to a black attorney on a plane returning from Washington, D.C., and went on to talk about our conversation. One of the board members stopped me on the way out after the service, smiled, and said, "Was it necessary to say that attorney on the plane was black? Were you proving that you're impartial? What were you saying there?"

"It never crossed my mind," I said. "I was just reporting the facts. He was black."
He said, "I would guess that as many people wondered why you noted that he was black as benefited from the point of your illustration."

I said, "Now that's a good insight." To me, I was just reporting the facts, but reporting that fact clouded my illustration in many people's minds; that one word made them miss the whole point of the illustration.

I know I've heard other speakers mention offhandedly in an illustration, "I saw this obese woman," and I'm painfully aware that if I said that, many people in my church would have their self-esteem destroyed. They would be out of commission the rest of the sermon and not hear anything else I said. And the offhanded comment had nothing to do with the point of the illustration!

In fact, I got so tired of having ancillary (auxiliary or secondary) issues become the dominant issues in my preaching, simply because of carelessness, that I now write my sermons in three drafts and include every word of every illustration. Now I'm not suggesting for a moment that other preachers inflict themselves with a discipline that I have chosen willfully and joyfully to submit to. I just got sick of reading, "Did you realize who might have been hurt by your reference to that? Your off-the-cuff remark about this may have meant this …"

Writing out sermons does offer many fringe benefits. I've found it helps me structure a sermon, because I can see the main points emerge. And writing helps expand my vocabulary. When someone talks, he tends to use repetitive word forms. When he writes, he realizes that two pages ago he used that particular word so it would be inappropriate to use it again. But the primary reason I write out a message is so that when I reread it before I deliver it, I can ponder. Who is that going to trip? What ancillary issue will that make dominant? It helps me say exactly what I want to say and not raise other issues that block the main point.

If, after reading the sermon I'm preparing, I still have a question about the appropriateness of a certain point, I may talk it over with an elder. This is especially true of messages for Wednesday night, when there's no second chance to fix them. The elders and I meet to pray before services, and if there's a troubling issue I'm going to get into, I'll say then, "I feel I have to mention this certain topic, and I was planning to handle it this way. Are you all going to feel comfortable with that?"

Having elders or other trusted people evaluate each sermon sounds like work. It is. But this evaluation has saved me so many times from saying something I would regret later, that I have reached the point where I wouldn't want to preach without it.
Evaluating a Year's Worth of Sermons

Sometimes, though, I need to step back and look at more than one message or series. The zoom lens is fine, but sometimes you need to use a wide-angle lens to get everything in. I've found it natural to look at a year's worth of messages at one time.

The only way I can do this, though, is to get away from the church for an extended period in which I can pray, read, and look back over my previous year's sermons. I have started taking a summer study break each year, and I'm convinced it has improved my teaching. Only when I'm away from the crush of the daily routines can I see patterns of strengths or neglected areas. Suddenly I notice topics or themes that have gotten lots of attention and others that have been overlooked.

But when a year's worth of preaching is at stake, I don't want to wait until it's over to listen to people in the congregation. After 100 messages, evaluation comes almost too late. What I need more is to hear people's interests and concerns before I start the year.

As a result, I have developed a three-step approach to planning a coming year's sermons, and I get input from people at every step.

In April, I select eight or nine people from the congregation. I choose people who are members of our main target audience (suburban business people who wouldn't feel comfortable in many traditional church settings). Sometimes I'll add someone who is highly creative, or who represents a large segment of the congregation in terms of his or her age, career, family situation, or whatever. I give these people an assignment: "Circulate in your social circles and find out on what issues people would like clear teaching from the Word of God. Then, based on that, put together what you feel would be an ideal sermon series addressing those needs. Come up with a series title, how you would break down the topic, and what your emphasis would be. You can work with anybody you want, and you have thirty days to do it."

People think, “Hey, this might change what I have to listen to!” and they get motivated. They talk to their friends and people they work with. Some of them invite groups of people to their homes for input.

Then this group and I go away together for two and a half days. We meet from 8 A.M. till midnight, with a few hours off to eat and let the jets cool. The main thing I do is listen and take notes. I ask the first person, "Read me one of your series titles and the sermon titles that would be a part of that," and we discuss it. Usually one idea will trip another idea, and we'll end up with thirty or forty viable sermon series.

For example, I just preached a series entitled "Seasons of a Spiritual Life" that included four messages: "The Season of Spiritual Seeking," "The Season of Spiritual Infancy," "The Season of Spiritual Adolescence," and "The Season of Spiritual Adulthood." That title and breakdown of messages came straight from this group.
After that I launched a series about Jesus entitled "Someone You Should Know." What a great title! Later I worked on still another idea from this group: "Families in the Fast Lane."

During the month following this meeting, I go over all the ideas the group came up with. I rule out any topics I just covered in the past few months, as well as any that are extraneous to the scope of Willow Creek's ministry. From the remaining proposed sermon series, I choose twenty I feel I could really work with or that stimulate some interest in me.

Then I convene a second group made up of elders and senior staff members. We go away for three days and make the final selections for the coming year—which of the twenty contenders we will preach, and in what order.

It's amazing to me the wealth of wisdom that comes out of a plurality of godly people who look at life differently than I do. Last year, in the first planning session, someone had proposed a series of sermons on fear: a message on the fear of failure, another on the fear of living alone, another on the fear of dying, and so on. When the person proposed it, I thought. That series will never make it. Those fears were simply not things that kept me awake at night. But I did leave it in as one of the twenty contenders for the second planning group to consider. When the elders and senior staff began to discuss it, I told them frankly I just couldn't see it working. But these highly discerning people looked at me and said, "Bill, just because you don't wrestle with these fears doesn't mean other people don't. People have these fears—normal people. Take our word for it that this subject is pleading to be spoken to."

So I agreed to preach the series, even though it wasn't one I would have chosen. But as they suspected, it was tremendously beneficial for our church. In fact, "The Fear of Dying" was one of the most highly requested tapes in recent years!

How Well We Meet Our Overall Goal
So far I haven't mentioned the usual barometers we use to measure our preaching: informal comments from people after services, letters they send, the number of tapes ordered, or comments from our spouse at home. Not that I don't think these measures are important. The problem is that I (and other preachers, I suspect) tend to put too much importance on them. And if we're not careful, that can lead to a subtle imbalance in our preaching.

It happened to me. Here's how.

Over the last thirteen years, the period in which Willow Creek has developed, society has fragmented at a frightening pace. When we started the church, maybe 5 percent of our congregation was made up of people who were so badly wounded they were dysfunctional. They grew up in homes with alcoholics/ or were sexually abused or verbally abused, or were abandoned, divorced, or victimized in one form or another. Now, as a result of trends in society, that percentage has grown to probably 15 percent.

During this time, I have been careful to use the normal ways of listening to people and getting feedback about my preaching. I have a commitment to stay after a service as long as anybody wants to talk. After a typical service, I'll have serious conversations with probably thirty people. In addition, people write to me; I'm contacted by between 100 and 150 people a week.

But what I have not been sharp enough to pick up on, until recently, is that this sample of conversations and letters doesn't reflect the total congregation. It's skewed. Why? Because the people who will take the time to stay after a service in order to talk, or who will take the time to write a letter, are from the segment of the congregation that tends to be dysfunctional. They are so wounded that they write impassioned letters, and they are so hurting they are willing to stand for forty-five minutes in order to talk to me.

What I didn't notice, because it happened so subtly over time, was that I was not being contacted by the 85 percent of the congregation who are fairly functional, normal people who want to get on with their lives and grow. The preponderance of my interaction was with the 15 percent: wounded, needy people who were screaming out for me to be helpful. They did not want me to talk about picking up a cross and carrying it to serve Jesus Christ. They did not want me to talk about denying themselves. They did not want me to talk about making a difference with their lives. They wanted to be helped and loved and encouraged and nurtured.

So when I would give a message on "God will be with you even in your pain," or something like that, all the normal indicators of preaching effectiveness would go sky-high. Letters and phone calls would start coming that said, "Thank you for that tremendously helpful message." People would stand in long lines to tell me that message was just what they needed. I looked at all that and thought. If I really love the flock, if I'm here to serve the flock, that's the kind of preaching I'm going to do.

Then I went on my summer study break. As I evaluated the past five years of sermons, I began noticing subtle shifts. Five years ago, I realized, 70 percent of my messages were what I would call firm discipleship or gospel-oriented messages. Only 30 percent were more general, helpful messages. But over the years, those numbers have almost flipped. I was floored.

I reread Loving God, and when I finished, it dawned on me, Chuck Colson thinks we ought to be producing fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ in our churches. All I'm trying to do is patch up people's lives. All I'm trying to do is lift burdens off sagging shoulders.

I began to ask myself. What about the 85 percent? Who is challenging these people to full discipleship? And who is asking these people to become kingdom men and women? Who's asking these people to lay down their lives for the cause of Christ? I'm not. And I'm the only preacher they have.

I could say very honestly I had not done anything consciously to preach a cheap gospel. I was trying to proclaim a compassionate gospel. Let any sensitive pastor talk with 125 people a week, the preponderance of whom are wounded, victimized, and crying out for help, and it takes a toll. You begin to think. How can I add the burden of kingdom responsibility onto the shoulders of people who are bent over already? I don't have the heart for it. My authentic motivation for that subtle shift was to be more responsive to a broken people.

But as I spent days earnestly seeking the mind of God, it became clear to me that even though the motivation for the subtle shift was admirable, continuing down that path would be disaster.

When all this crashed in on me, it was both exhilarating and devastating. For weeks, I wrestled with what had happened. I came back and talked to the elders about it, and the minute I alerted them to this, everybody could see it. They said, "We knew something was happening, too." But no one had the luxury that I had of spending several weeks trying to hear what God was saying. The elders are godly people; I only had to mention the change in a cursory fashion and they said, "That's it. It's got to change."

Our solution has been to offer regular seminar and workshop teaching and therapy on all of these areas of victimization and pain. We are able to say to the 15 percent, "There is a place for you; there's hope for you; there's a context for you to receive the nurturing and expertise that are going to really solve your problem." But it's primarily in our counseling center, not in our Sunday service. And that makes sense.

Allan McKechnie, the head of our counseling center, has pointed out to me that lasting change rarely comes out of large-group therapy, which is what I was attempting. It comes in the context of small groups or one-on-one discussions.
That frees me to be able to do the kind of teaching that exhilarates me and fulfills me and that is a true representation of who God made me to be. It's with the 85 percent.

Take, for example, a recent Wednesday night message. A theme of this whole ministry is "You Matter to God." During that recent message, the first or second after my study break, I said, "We talk a lot around here about the fact that you matter to God. That's right, and that's true. But let me ask you this: Does God matter to you?"

It's interesting what has happened as a result of our sharpened focus. I used to drive home on a Sunday feeling as though I had been run over by a truck. I would talk after the service with dozens of people who were struggling to make it through another day, and I would feel totally defeated. I would come in the house, and Lynne would say, "That was a great message this morning." And I'd say, "What message? I don't even remember preaching."

But since this new understanding has come, I talk to just as many people, but because of the subject matter I'm preaching these days, the conversations invigorate me. People are wrestling with what it means to be a man or woman of God. Even the wounded people see their need in a spiritual way. I'm not doing therapy; I'm doing discipleship. And that kind of talking doesn't exhaust me; it infuses me with energy.

From this experience, I have learned some important lessons. First, for my preaching to be effective, it's imperative I know—and stay riveted to—the overall goal of my ministry. At Willow Creek, we ask ourselves, "What do we want the end product to be? There's this enormous machinery—buildings and staff. But after the people finally come through our ministry, what are they supposed to look like?"

We have answered that, "We want to develop fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. They should think Christianly, act Christianly, relate Christianly."

I know I haven't drawn that target on the wall often enough. Too often I've been caught preaching as if the goal of my ministry were to help people lead happy, well-adjusted lives and be more helpful to each other. Baloney! We have to shoot much higher than that. I want to preach in such a way that I help produce people who can rise above petty scrapes and get on with following Jesus Christ.

Second, I rigorously and regularly have to measure my preaching against this bull's-eye. Are the messages I'm preaching contributing to that? Are they really leading people to become more devoted to Christ? It's so easy to drift, incrementally and unconsciously, from that goal. But when that happens, my preaching, no matter how clever or prayed over or prepared, is undermined.

Why Fool with Evaluation?
Sometimes I'm tempted to think. It really would be so much nicer if I didn't have the elders reproving me every time I slip up, and if I could just preach the way I want to preach and forget about anybody's evaluation.

But then I realize why I have to take evaluation seriously. It's because I preach, as every pastor does, before a righteous and holy God, and I know he evaluates my work. Every time I take out a new pad and write a new sermon title with a passage under it, I pray, "Lord, I would like this to be an unblemished lamb, a worship sacrifice that you would really be proud of. I'm not going to be happy, and you're not going to be happy, with a sick, dying, blind, diseased, ravaged lamb. I will not offer it; you will not receive it." So to me it's a holy thing to start a new message. If God has given you speaking gifts and called you into the ministry, he expects unblemished lambs.

But that's also a good, freeing realization for me. I give a lot of messages that I don't think meet the standard I would have liked. But then I can go back and say. Did I really do my preparation effectively? Did I pray on my knees as I should have? Was it biblical? Did the elders say that it was approved? If I can say yes to those questions, then I'm done with the message, and I can walk away from it, no matter what anyone thinks. If those who came through the line said they didn't appreciate it, and if I got ripped apart by an extremist on either side of the message, it doesn't affect me. I did the best I knew how in trying to offer an unblemished lamb.

That's the extent of my responsibility.

The rest is God's. I never have the final word on any passage or on any topic. When I get to the end of myself, that's where the real message starts. My prayer, when I'm driving home from church, is "Now, Holy Spirit, that I'm done and out of the way, do your real work. I tried to give you enough truth and opportunity to work with. But the result in these people's lives is up to you."

Copyright © 1989 by Christianity Today International

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Conflict And Church Staff

2007-12-30T12:30:00.000-05:00
Conflict is inevitable when people are involved in any endeavor. Few people enjoy conflict and this is especially true in a church.

Conflicts are inevitable when one considers the dynamics of working on a church staff. But, even though a church staff can expect conflict to occur, this doesn’t mean that the staff should not attempt to avoid, and work through, this issue. When a church staff is at odds with each other, the church will be hindered in its attempt to accomplish its goals in the kingdom of God.

One source of conflict for a church staff comes in the form of ideas, plans, schedules, and communication. The following procedure might be helpful for church staff who desire to avoid as much conflict as possible and who desire to be great team players.

Evaluation of my relationship to God:

· Have I been spending time alone with God?

· By reading the word of God (He talks to me).

· By praying to Him (I talk to Him).

· Am I obeying God in the specific areas of my life that He is working?

· Is my love for God growing on a consistent basis?

· Is there any known sin in my life that needs to be confessed to God and dealt with in my life?

Evaluation of my relationship with my spouse:

· Have I been spending time with my spouse?

· Is there anything I need to talk about with my spouse?

· Is there anything my spouse needs to talk about with me?

· Have I offended my spouse in any way that I need to go and "make things right" with her (or him)?

· Am I harboring a grudge towards my spouse that I need to go and "make things right" with her (or him)?

· Am I approachable so that my spouse feels she (or he) can come to me and talk about anything she wants to?

· Am I submissive to my spouse? (Ephesians 5:21)

Evaluation of my relationships with other people in my life: my children, my relatives, my friends, my co-workers, etc.

· Am I spending quality and quantity time with the other people in my life that are important to me?

· Have I offended anyone, in such a way, that I need to go to and "make things right" with that person by asking for their forgiveness?

· Am I harboring a grudge towards someone that has offended me? Do I need to go and "make things right" with that person by asking for their forgiveness?

· Do I have a submissive attitude towards those in authority over me? (Hebrews 13:17)

· Do I have a submissive attitude towards other people in my life? (Ephesians 5:21)

“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed". (Proverbs 15:22) "As iron sharpens iron, a friend sharpens a friend". (Proverbs 27:17)

IDEAS

What are my ministry ideas for:

· The next month

· The next two months

· The next three months

· The next six months

· One year from now

Have I discussed these ideas with other church staff and other believers whose opinion I trust?

Do I allow them the freedom to give their positive or negative feedback about my ministry ideas?

After receiving feedback/opinions from those I trust, do I have the proper attitude to consider their opinions, and if necessary, make the necessary adjustments to my ideas.

Have I presented my ideas to God to see what He thinks?

Have I informed every person that needs to be informed about my ideas?

Have I involved every person that needs to be involved about my ideas?

PLANS

What are my ministry plans for:

· The next month

· The next two months

· The next three months

· The next six months

· One year from now

Have I discussed these plans with other church staff and other believers whose opinion I trust?

Do I allow them the freedom to give their positive or negative feedback about my ministry plans?

After receiving feedback/opinions from those I trust, do I have the proper attitude to consider their opinions and, if necessary, make the necessary adjustments to my plans?

Have I presented my plans to God to see what He thinks?

Have I informed every person that needs to be informed about my plans?

Have I involved every person that needs to be involved in my plans?

Have I made sure that my ministry plans are not in a scheduling conflict with other church staff/ministries’ plans in my church?

Have I received the approval of my ministry plans from those in authority over me?

Have I communicated, in advance, the schedule for my ministry plans?

Do I have God’s approval for my ministry plans?

For Those Who Suffer

2007-12-27T12:29:00.001-05:00
From: A.W. Tozer

“Those who have gone through some ‘long night of the soul’ realize that there is a limit to man’s ability to live without joy. Even Christ could endure the cross only because of the “joy set before Him”.

The strongest steel breaks if kept too long under unrelieved tension. [But] God knows exactly how much pressure each one of us can take. He knows how long we can endure the night, so He gives the soul relief, first by welcome glimpses of the morning star and then by the fuller light that harbingers the morning.

Slowly you will discover God’s love in your suffering. Your heart will begin to approve the whole thing. You will learn from yourself what all the schools in the world could not teach you-the healing action of faith without supporting pleasure. You will feel and understand the ministry of the night; its power to purify, to detach, to humble, to destroy the fear of death and, what is more important to you at the moment, the fear of life. And you will learn that sometimes pain can do what even joy cannot, such as exposing the vanity of earth’s trifles and filling your heart with longing for the peace of heaven.

What I write here is in no way original. This has been discovered anew by each generation of Christian seekers and is almost a cliché of the deeper life. Yet it needs to be said to this generation of believers often and with emphasis, for the type of Christianity now in vogue does not include anything as serious and as difficult as this. The quest of the modern Christian is likely to be for peace of mind and spiritual joy, with a good degree of material prosperity thrown in as an external proof of the divine favor. Some will understand this, however, even if the number is relatively small, and they will constitute the hard core of practicing saints so badly needed at this serious hour if New Testament Christianity is to survive to the next generation.”

Trust Promises, Not Providences

2007-12-27T12:28:00.001-05:00
by Jon Bloom, Executive Director of Desiring God

In a pamphlet titled, “Honey Out of the Rock,” Puritan Thomas Wilcox writes,

“Judge not Christ’s love by providences, but by promises.”

Experiences are very powerful. They often feel more powerful than promises. So it's tempting to interpret prosperity and ease as God’s blessing and tribulation as God’s displeasure. And sometimes they are. But often they are not.

Actually, what we see all the way through the Bible is the Lord training his disciples to trust his promises more than providences. Think of Abraham and Sarah waiting for Isaac, or Jacob losing Rachel or Joseph in slavery and prison, or Job’s suffering, or David running from Saul. Think of Lazarus and the heartbreak of his death and the constant tribulations of Paul. And of course Jesus set the ultimate example by looking to the joy set before him as he endured the cross (Heb 12:2).

Strange, isn’t it? In the Bible pain is often the path to unspeakable joy and prosperity is often an obstacle to it. What’s going on?

Simply, God wants us to treasure what we can’t see more than what we can.

“For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Cor. 4:18).

And we find out that it is pain more than prosperity that makes us look for what our eyes can’t see, and long for a satisfaction that doesn’t exist in this world.

So Thomas Wilcox’s advice is worth heeding. For those of us who are experiencing a bitter providence, Wilcox goes on to say,

Bless God for shaking off false foundations, for any way whereby He keeps the soul awakened and looking after Christ; better sickness and temptations, than security and superficiality

If It Ain't Broke.....

2007-12-27T12:26:00.000-05:00
Responding to the "If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It" Crowd
By Stan Toler

My home church in Columbus, Ohio, is now closed. Just 30 years ago, that church thrived as one of the largest in the city. Their mistake? Believing the theory, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" With community changes all around them, they didn't change.

I visited the church nine months before it closed the doors on December 14,1997. (My parents stayed with the church until its final service.) While there, I made several observations. For example:

They continued in the same nonessential traditions without giving thought to what the rest of the world was doing. They opened Sunday School as they did in the '60s— singing the same birthday song, handing out the same pencils for birthdays, and allowing pencil recipients to put pennies for missions in the same plastic birthday cake they used when I was a teen.

Nothing was innately wrong with any of their dated traditions—except they were competing with the "church down the street" that had fine-tuned its outreach to specifically target contemporary needs.

It is important to note that my home church never changed its belief in the Word of God, the ordinances of the church, or the essentials of the faith, and they should not have! We must have an anchor in time of change. But neither did that church change its presentation of that "anchor." Staying the same became their downfall.

Robert Kreigel wrote a book in 1992 titled, If It Ain't Broke, Break It! The target audience was corporate America. The book explored the concept of working smarter and the idea of unleashing creative thought in the workforce. Certainly, the church can learn from the marketplace about cultural relevance. There are times when we need to break our nonessential traditions.

When I was trained to witness, we were told to confront the culture. Confrontational evangelism was the norm! Today, most people do not respond to that style as readily as they do to relational evangelism. As we face the 21st century, we must build a relationship bridge if our churches are going to survive. It is our job as church leaders to keep up with what works now. Methods change, but the message never changes.

When some things need "breaking". Five specific characteristics denote whether some things need breaking in a church. First, the church is focused on itself, rather than the needs of the world around it. Sadly, in many churches, "meism" can surface in the form of church members complaining about the mud the unruly neighborhood children tracked in during Sunday School. Instead of praising God for all those muddy little feet, the meism crowd might gripe about having to pay the custodian overtime to clean the new carpet.

A second sign that some things need breaking comes in the form of perpetual conflict with church members standing opposite of one another. When the pastor has to suspend his service to God in order to play referee between church factions, the congregation will not win souls.

The third sign that some things need breaking surfaces when the church has no vision for the future. This lack of vision can be translated in two ways: no vision for the future of the church, and no spiritual vision, also known as spiritual blindness. Focusing on self and perpetual conflict are definite signs that there is a lack of spiritual vision.

Further, a lack of vision leads to the fourth sign that change must occur: membership has reached a plateau or declined. In other words, there is a downward spiral both in numbers and in spiritual growth.

The fifth "something needs breaking" warning signal—unkempt facilities—is actually easy to remedy. Regardless of the church's age, a fresh coat of paint, updated color schemes, and flowers on the church property denote life to visitors and increase the enthusiasm level of members.

When I accepted the pastorate of Trinity Church in Oklahoma City, I inherited a church with an excellent 63-year history, good pastors, and a track record of ministry success in the community. At the same time, the church had remained almost the same in attendance for the last 25 years.

During the past year, I have led the congregation in some definite steps toward establishing a new vision plan. As a result, God has blessed us greatly with an 18 percent increase in worship attendance, 13 percent gain in Sunday School, and 12 percent growth in finances.

Steps toward "breaking" and "fixing". The following steps detail what our Ministry Vision Team did to respond to the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" crowd:

1. Every Sunday evening for four weeks, we conducted "church town meetings" in lieu of the Sunday evening service. Eleven team leaders were trained in small group assessment and evaluation methods, asked to read Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Church, and given specific discussion quotas for each meeting. Surprisingly, evening attendance shot up instead of down as was predicted by some of the "don't fix it" crowd.

Additionally, the team leaders met each Wednesday evening and discussed what went on in their small group meetings. Based on congregational feedback, we were prepared to move forward in ministry for the 21st century.

2. The Ministry Vision Team refined the mission statement of the church. Concern was given to the inclusion of wording that reflected the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. Here is what we came up with:

3. A vision plan was written to reflect our plans to reach out through "Building on Relationships."

Focus on relationships: church, neighborhood, community, school, business, clubs.

Renew our commitment: to prayer, to encouragement, to soul-winning, to discipleship, to ministry.

Invite to participate: worship, special events, small groups, pastor's brunch, baptism/communion, membership, baby dedication, salvation.

Equip to minister: prayer training, encouragement/care training, evangelism training, discipleship training, Lay Institute To Equip (L.I.T.E.), Strategic Advanced Leadership Training (S.A.L.T.).

Network the body: Sunday School, music/drama, children/youth, care circles, women's ministry, men's ministry, senior adult ministry.

Demonstrate God's love: hospitals, shutins, widowed/bereaved, Angel Tree ministry, First Fruits ministry.

Serve with gladness: Lay Ministry Partnership, prisons, mobile meals, Love Link ministry, service projects.

4. We designed a values statement to hold us steady in a time of change. We included seven core values:

• We value the souls of the lost (Luke 19:10).

• We value personal integrity (Prov. 10:9).

• We value corporate worship (Heb. 10:25).

• We value the Word of God (Deut. 6:6-9).

• We value the gifts of God's people (Eph. 4:11-13).

• We value wholesome fellowship (1 John 1:7).

• We value God's family (Ps. 133:1).

5. The committee system was changed to ministry action teams. The newly organized teams were empowered to act and to spend funds according to a preset budget. They were released to do ministry based on our new vision plan.

6. A welcome center was designed and built to meet the needs of our guests. Information packets were designed to share with our special visitors each Sunday.

7. A pastor's welcome class was started for the purpose of sharing our vision for reaching our community for Christ.

8. Our friendship ministry team began a pastor's brunch that follows the Sunday worship service every 60 days. All guests who attended during the previous two months are invited to have lunch with the pastoral staff and key lay leaders.

9. The Sunday School underwent some innovative changes. A "Generation Xcellence Class" was added and special electives were offered.

10. Cultural and leadership training opportunities were offered in the form of Lay Institute To Equip (L.I.T.E.) and Strategic Advanced Leadership Training (S.A.L.T.). These opportunities began to move us toward becoming a learning organization.

11. The traditional worship service received a "facelift" and became a blended service, incorporating hymns and praise choruses into our worship. Future plans include another worship service with the GenX crowd as our target audience.

Key questions. During these important steps, I kept four key questions before the leaders of the ministry teams:

• Who are we and what do we value?

• What are our demographic possibilities for outreach?

• Does our church belong to God or to an internal controlling faction?

• If we believe we are living in the end times, are we willing to work like it?

With the winds of change, there will always be those who resist every forward step, even a history-altering program like

Sunday School. Sometimes the members who resist the most in the beginning will surprise everyone and later be the greatest proponents of change. But there will always be those who dig in their heels and refuse to cast aside their wellworn methods. These folk must be handled with care. They are valuable, too! Sometimes, all they need is to feel that they are a part of what is going on. Include them and love them through the process! Often God will work miracles in the attitudes of the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" crowd.

Frequently, in my work with John C. Maxwell and the INJOY Model Church Seminars, I remind pastors and church leaders about the importance of focusing on the positive aspect of unity with those who resist change. Really, sometimes all these dear old saints need is to experience some of God's pure joy through their pastor's love and appreciation, and they will make the change!

In short, methods change from one generation to the next, and the church must adjust in order to reach out and grow. More of the same does not bring growth, as attested to by the many churches that have relocated only to maintain a more fashionable status quo.

When I was a child, the flannel graph was a popular way to teach children. In fact, my mother would reward me with a cookie and a pat on the head if my Sunday School teacher selected me to place the little figure of Joseph on the felt board.

Today, in the midst of computers, technology, television, and Veggie Tales videos, flannel graph holds less appeal for children. (Me, too, for that matter!) We must seek new methods for next-century ministry and, at the same time, anchor to the Word of God and what we value

It's All About Us?

2007-12-19T14:44:00.000-05:00

From Spurgeon
"We have plenty of people nowadays who could not kill a mouse
without publishing it in the Gospel Gazette.
Samson killed a lion and said nothing about it.
The Holy Spirit finds modesty so rare that He takes care to record it.
Say much of what the Lord has done for you,
but say little of what you have done for the Lord.
Do not utter a self-glorifying sentence!"

Dumbed-Down Preaching

2007-11-26T14:01:00.000-05:00
We don’t have to dress up the “gospel” or use gimmicks, like cantaloupes below, to help people understand what we are trying to say. I am not against using illustrations. But, I think sometimes we go too far, just like reference to cantaloupes below.

I like John MacArthur’s philosophy of preaching and using illustrations. When he needs to illustrate a point in his sermon, he will use an illustration from another part of the Bible. I realize that some people in our churches may not know and remember all of the characters/situations in the Bible and therefore couldn’t relate to an illustration from Scripture. But, that is also an opportunity for us to ask them to find the illustration in the their Bible which will assist them in getting more familiar with the word of God.
Kenny

(In the promo material below for Ed Young, it confuses me to read “that trust is always tethered to tangible things”.)
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(Promotional material for a person to purchase a sermon series by Ed Young, Jr.)

Cantaloupe (from- http://www.edyoung.com/)

Trusting God with our resources

God gives everyone a certain pile of cantaloupes—the fruit of his blessing in our lives. And he asks us to trust him when it comes to managing that fruit. But trust is not a one time choice. It is a decision followed by a process. Using Proverbs 3 as the foundation, Ed Young shows us that trust is always tethered to tangible things. And when we choose to trust God everyday with everything we have, we will discover the joy of investing our cantaloupe in his eternal work.

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From Kenny:

C. H. Spurgeon, once said:

'I fear there are some who preach with the view of amusing men, and as long as people can be gathered in crowds, and their ears can be tickled, and they can retire pleased with what they have heard, the orator is content, and folds his hands, and goes back self-satisfied.

But Paul did not lay himself out to please the public and collect the crowd. If he did not save them he felt that it was of no avail to interest them. Unless the truth had pierced their hearts, affected their lives, and made new men of them, Paul would have gone home crying, "Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?"...

Now observe, brethren, if I, or you, or any of us, or all of us, shall have spent our lives merely in amusing men, or educating men, or moralizing men, when we shall come to give our account at the last great day we shall be in a very sorry condition, and we shall have but a very sorry record to render; for of what avail will it be to a man to be educated when he comes to be damned?

Of what service will it be to him to have been amused when the trumpet sounds, and heaven and earth are shaking, and the pit opens wide her jaws of fire and swallows up the soul unsaved?

Of what avail even to have moralized a man if still he is on the left hand of the judge, and if still, "Depart, ye cursed," shall be his portion?'"

["Soul Saving Our One Business," The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol. 25 (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1879), 674-76.]

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John MacArthur: Adapted from: John MacArthur, The Truth War

"Biblical ignorance within the church may well be deeper and more widespread than at any other time since the Protestant Reformation. If you doubt that, compare the typical sermon of today with a randomly chosen published sermon from any leading evangelical preacher prior to 1850. Also compare today's Christian literature with almost anything published by evangelical publishing houses a hundred years or more ago. [Some] Bible teaching [and preaching]has been deliberately dumbed-down, made as broad and as shallow as possible, oversimplified, adapted to the lowest common denominator---and then tailored to appeal to people with short attention spans.

Sermons are [sometimes] brief, simplistic, overlaid with as many references to pop culture as possible, and laden with anecdotes and illustration. (Jokes and funny stories drawn from personal experience are favored over cross-references and analogies borrowed from Scripture itself.)

Typical sermon topics are heavily weighted in favor of man-centered issues (such as personal relationships, successful living, self-esteem, how-to lists, and so on)---to the exclusion of the many Christ-exalting doctrinal themes of Scripture."

Turning Your Staff Into Multipliers

2007-11-08T10:25:00.000-05:00
The following presents a different, but in my opinion a biblical, approach to what should be the primary focus of a pastor and ministerial staff in a church. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that someone should lose their job for "doing" this kind of ministry but I like this because it fulfills the admonition of Paul, that we should "equip the saints for the work of the ministry".

From: http://www.mondaymorninginsight.com/

"If we catch you doing ministry, you may lose your job." That's what one pastor tells the paid church staff. I was stunned until I heard the reasoning behind such a warning. It's all about multiplying ministry.

At a "Me to We" training at Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, I met an incredible couple, Pastor Vernon Armitage and his wife, Charlene. Vernon and Charlene have been at Pleasant Valley Baptist Church in Liberty, Missouri, for 38 years. The church has grown from around 100 to more than 4,000, and it's one of the best examples of an equipping church in the country.

One of the fundamentals at Pleasant Valley is that paid staff members aren’t hired to “do” ministry; they’re hired to train and equip others to do ministry. While most churches are constantly on the prowl for ministry talent, Vernon and Charlene have come to realize that they don’t want adders; they want multipliers. That means they want to find people who understand a certain ministry but also have the skill set to develop teams and individuals, who are the frontline people. Prima donnas and superstars need not apply.

Imagine getting fired because you were doing ministry. But if your job is to be developing others, than yes, it makes sense. When it comes to embracing the equipping value in churches, the strongest resistors are often staff members because the transition to equipping ministry requires them to revise their self-image. That’s because the traditional ministerial mindset is “I’m here to use my talent and to serve you.” But that’s adding ministry. No wonder so many churches feel stuck, so many staff members feel overworked, and it seems like you never have enough people to cover the bases.

Obviously, this transformation has taken a few years, but now Vernon and Charlene no longer look for staff members who are the best talent and “doers.” They look for people who understand a skill or ministry and also have the ability to develop others. This is a different approach than most. The more difficult areas tend to be in worship, technology, and administrative assistance. Not everyone made the transition. For example, informing a typical administrative assistant that his or her new job is to develop a team of unpaid officer workers doesn’t seem to make sense. But it works. http://www.pleasantvalley.org/

One of the biggest challenges is that staff is used to enjoying the benefits that come from being ministry doers. We get more strokes for “being there” and “sharing our gifts.” It’s far more humbling to watch others get affirmations and be perceived as God’s servants. But that’s what multiplication is all about. In Exodus 18 Moses began taking a backseat as he started developing those who’d oversee groups of 10, 50, 100, and 1,000. This sort of logarithmic progression helps us to avoid pastoral burnout and minister far more effectively. Plus, by developing others we raise their commitment, provide them with fulfilling roles, and create a culture people enjoy.

Start thinking about what you can do to move your ministry leaders into minister developers, not doers. Help them discover the joy of serving behind the scenes, knowing that they’re ministering to far more people when they equip others for ministry. This is a natural ego-checking process, requiring that we step out of the limelight at times and share the ministry stage with many others.

Alan Nelson

Alan Nelson is the executive editor of Rev! Magazine, the author of a dozen books, and has been a pastor for 20 years.

Kenny
www.churchgrowth1.blogspot.com
http://360.yahoo.com/kennethcorn
www.mudcreekchurch.org
www.fruitland.edu

TEN WAYS TO GUARANTEE YOU WILL BE A “SUCCESS” IN MINISTRY (haha)

2007-10-30T16:20:00.000-04:00
What I have written below has been adapted and edited from an article by J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma Magazine, http://www.charismamag.com/fireinmybones/

(The style of writing is called: tongue-in-cheek, that is, in an ironic manner, not meant to be taken seriously).

TEN WAYS TO GUARANTEE YOU WILL BE A “SUCCESS” IN MINISTRY (haha)

1. Live a prideful, untransparent life. Because you are a special leader like you are means you don’t have to admit that you have any issues. Keep in mind that you are a perfect individual who thinks that everyone else needs to experience the miracle of God’s mercy but you don’t. You don’t have any weaknesses, so, take yourself seriously. Because you know you are perfect, you don’t need a close relationship with any mature mentors or trusted peers. And always cling to the fact that everyone else needs to get right with God but you don’t.

2. Don’t be open to correction. Work in isolation and surround yourself with “yes” men. And as your ministry grows, decrease the number of close friends in your life because, after all, no one else knows better than you how to grow your ministry. If your colleagues are rubber-stamping everything you do, consider that a confirmation that you are the best and God really does like the way do everything. If people tell you they can’t correct you because you are either authoritarian or subtly controlling, just tell them God has given you the “anointing” and He has placed you in charge of the church. If they don’t like the way you do things, they need to get the “anointing” immediately or just go ahead and leave the church.

3. Never examine your actions and attitudes. What would that matter? God doesn’t really care about all of that stuff, does He? And it doesn’t matter whether you tell the truth or not. Who cares whether you exaggerate how many you had in attendance at “Bring A Friend Day” at your church? Don’t feel like you have to answer to anyone about the finances of church. You are in charge and you can do whatever you want with the money in the church. And don’t have any checks and balances set in place so that you always have to comply with the law regarding the IRS, the church finances, and your personal taxes. Everybody lies just a little on their tax forms don’t they? And, what the government doesn’t know can’t hurt them. Right? And don’t worry about that sexual purity thing? What’s it gonna hurt if you look at a little porn on the internet when no one is looking while you are secluded in your office by yourself?

4. Don’t stay in touch with the real world. Ministry is all about who you know, how much you know and how much you can impress people with your knowledge. Loving people that hurt? Forget about them. Don’t you think they are just a bunch of wimps who can’t handle the real world? And those people who don’t smell good, don’t look good, and live in poverty? Why, those “kinds” of people wouldn’t fit in at your church anyway so why waste your time making an attempt to minister to them. And you certainly don’t need to visit the sick and the dying who cry in pain. Let the doctors and nurses take of them. Anyway, that chaplain at the hospital is trained to minister to them. Just let him do his job and don’t get in his way.

5. Allow people to make you a celebrity. Before Jesus began His ministry, the devil showed Him the kingdoms of the world and offered Him fame and fortune and Jesus refused that kind of notoriety and celebrity. But, that was Jesus and you are not Him. So, go ahead and accept all of the adulation and praise from your church members, your fellow pastors, and all of the “big name” people you know. Hey, they are right about you: you are a pretty good deal. Become a star. Let people put you on a pedestal. And, if the spirit of celebrity is seducing you, embrace it and expect other people to wash your feet (and clean your car and cut your grass). You’re special and don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.

6. Don’t make family a priority. You have so many other important things to do: meetings to go to, revivals to preach. You don’t have time for your family. God will take care of them. Surely, your family doesn’t expect you to cancel important meetings and revivals in order for you to spend time with them?

7. Live extravagantly and give modestly. You need to be sure everyone sees you driving an expensive car, live in an expensive home, and wear expensive clothes and jewelry. Giving to others? Nah, you need to be sure that you have all the money you need in order to live the kind of lifestyle that lives up to your image. Giving to the church? Why, isn’t that like paying part of your own salary? Just keep that money that would be your tithe. It is just going to come back to you in a paycheck anyway.

8. Build your own kingdom. Name your ministry, your church, or your web site after yourself. That’s what all the other “big boys” do. You are the one-man show. And what’s up with all this talk about teamwork. You don’t need a team because you can do it all by yourself. Don’t you agree that those who think they can’t “do it all” by themselves and need a team are a bunch of wimps? They just need to grow up and put their “big boy pants on”.

9. Don’t worry about asking others to pray for you. You are special and you don’t have any concerns that would require others to pray for you, anyway. Consider yourself to be one of the best preachers/pastors around. So, why would you need to ask anyone to pray for you?

10. Finally, don’t worry about maintaining your relationship to God. People who experience moral failure are just a bunch of losers, aren’t they? You know you that you should think highly of yourself. And even though you know other pastors who have fallen, you would never ever think about committing adultery with that woman who came up to you last week where you preached a revival. She said she had never, ever heard anyone preach so wonderfully like you did. Then, she asked you if you could meet her somewhere for coffee and counseling. And, now that you think about it, what would it hurt to meet her? Aren’t you supposed to help those who need counseling, no matter who it is and no matter where they live?

Oh, wait a minute!!!! I forgot:

Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall. (Proverbs 16:18)
A man's pride will bring him low...(Proverbs 29:23a)

Kenny
www.churchgrowth1.blogspot.com
http://360.yahoo.com/kennethcorn
www.mudcreekchurch.org
www.fruitland.edu

The Good Shepherd and His Sheep

2007-10-26T13:44:00.000-04:00
John 10

Jesus said:
10"...I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
12 He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.
13 He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
14 “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me,
15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.
16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.
17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” (ESV)

· Characteristics of Sheep

Unlike goats, casual observation reveals that sheep seem to need each other. The flock, their "community," is their identity.

Not only do sheep need each other, they also need a shepherd they can depend on. Goats don't need a shepherd to watch out for them; they are independent to the point of being "head-strong". The shepherd is the main-stay in the sheep's lives. Without his attention and care they would quickly find themselves in trouble.

Sheep are notoriously stupid. Hold up a stick in front of the lead sheep in a procession of the flock and the lead sheep will nimbly leap up and over the slight barrier. The remaining sheep will also obediently leap up to clear the stick - even if the obstacle is removed after that first sheep jumped it. All the other sheep leap to avoid something that isn't there. The strength of their flock mentality forces them into the air.

· Characteristics of a Shepherd

In the culture that Jesus lived in, sheepherding was an important task.

A good shepherd always knew the habits and characteristics of his sheep and could predict their behavior and understand their peculiarities. The shepherd knew the characteristics of his sheep so well that he was never surprised or caught off guard by their actions.

A good shepherd was always at ease with his sheep, comfortable with their company, and enjoyed the responsibility of taking care of them. But, the life of the shepherd was extremely hard; never off duty and never any time off from his shepherd responsibilities.

A good shepherd would sometimes have to discipline his sheep. Because fields of grass were sometimes hard to find, the sheep were prone to wander looking for grazing opportunities.

Therefore, the shepherd had to keep constant watch over his flock. One rebellious sheep could lead the other sheep astray. So the shepherd would break the legs of the wayward sheep to prevent it from straying away from the flock and leading other sheep astray.

After this disciplining process, the shepherd would then carry the sheep on his own back to teach the sheep that, even though the sheep needed discipline from the shepherd, the shepherd still loved the sheep deeply. Being carried on the back of the shepherd, the sheep developed a more intimate relationship with the shepherd.

The shepherd’s task was not only constant but also dangerous because he had to guard his flock against wild animals and against thieves and robbers. Constant vigilance, fearless, courage, and patient love were necessary characteristics of the shepherd.

Lastly, the shepherd was responsible for taking care of the physical diseases that his sheep might contract.

A good shepherd’s responsibility, then, was to provide for all the needs of his sheep. Food, water, direction, protection, and healing were all his responsibility.

And what was the responsibility of the shepherd’s sheep? To have a relationship with the shepherd, and to follow him and to obey him. As long as the sheep maintained its relationship with the shepherd, followed him, and obeyed him, then all of the sheep’s needs were met. Should a sheep rebel and go off on its own to get its needs met (food, water, etc.), the sheep could expect the discipline of the shepherd (the breaking of its legs) but could also expect the love of the shepherd and a more intimate relationship with the shepherd by being carried on the shepherd’s back.

What’s the point in all of this?

Jesus uses the illustration of the good shepherd and the sheep to explain spiritual truth.

Jesus is the Shepherd and we are His sheep.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He is not just a shepherd. He is not one among many shepherds.

There is only ONE Shepherd and His name is Jesus.

I am a sheep and you are a sheep.

I am not the only sheep in the flock.

You are not the only sheep in the flock.

There is only one Shepherd but there are countless numbers of sheep.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, loves His sheep: He lays down His life for the sheep.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, intimately knows His sheep and He knows us as intimately as the Father knows His Son (John 10:15).

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, provides for His sheep. His responsibility for His sheep is to provide food, water, direction, protection, and healing.

What is our responsibility as His sheep? To have a deep and intimate relationship with the Shepherd, and to follow Him and to obey Him. As sheep, our relationship with the Shepherd must be maintained and must continue to grow. As long as we do this, Jesus will provide everything we need.

But, some of His sheep rebel and stray away. Therefore, He has to discipline them because He loves them and because they might lead other sheep astray. Sometimes, the Shepherd has to “break the legs” of His rebellious sheep. Because they belong to Him and because of His holiness, He has to discipline those who are rebellious because His primary concern is for their spiritual health.

And then, as the Good Shepherd, He carries the disciplined sheep on His back to demonstrate His love and compassion for them. His discipline is evidence that the rebellious ones belong to Him and but it also teaches them that He will not tolerate their rebellion. Carrying His sheep on His back teaches disciplined sheep that He still loves them. (Hebrews 12:7-11)

Making It Personal

Where do you find yourself today in your relationship with Jesus? Are you maintaining a deep and intimate relationship with Him and trusting Him to supply all of your needs? Or do you find yourself rebelling against Him and trying to get your needs met outside of your relationship to Him?

If I could talk to you today and ask you, “Tell me about your relationship with Jesus today.” What would your response be?

YBH: Yes, but how?

Do everything you know to do to maintain and develop a more intimate relationship with Jesus. At all costs, pursue Him no matter what your circumstances are. Seek to follow Him and obey Him with everything you’ve got. And I suggest you pray the following:

“Dear Jesus, You are the Good Shepherd and I am one of your sheep. Jesus, please teach me more about my relationship with You. Reveal to me the areas of rebellion in my life that hinder my relationship with You. Then, Lord, teach me more about Your responsibility as my Shepherd. Teach me more about how you will supply every need I have. And, Lord, teach me how to take care of my responsibility as one of your sheep to have an intimate love relationship with You.”

Psalm 100:3-Know ye not that the LORD, He is God: it is He that hath made us and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

Psalm 95:7-For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

Responsibilities of the Shepherd:

Lead the sheep
Provide for the sheep
Discipline the sheep
Responsibilities of the sheep:
Relationship with the Shepherd
Follow the Shepherd
Obey the Shepherd
One final point: On The Abundant Life "... I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”. (verse 10).
The potential of abundant life for each of us is only fully experienced in our relationship with Jesus. When we rebel, we miss out on the kind of life that only Jesus can give. The abundant life can only be realized in a personal, intimate, love relationship with Him.

Confessions of a Happy Pastor: It’s Monday Morning, so somebody please remind me Why I Do This?!

2007-09-17T17:13:00.000-04:00
Confessions of a Happy Pastor: It’s Monday Morning, so somebody please remind me Why I Do This?!
by David Foster

www.mondaymorninginsight.com

Being a pastor/church leader does not make me immune to the Monday Morning Blues, especially after a weekend of intense and focused engagement where I’ve loved, led, helped, created, pulled people together, taught, preached, led small groups and managed crises. Like everyone else, I need to be reminded why I do what I do.

So here are the reasons why I love being a pastor:

1. It’s my calling. It’s what God called me to do. I know deep down in my bones this is what I was made for. If you don’t have a calling, you may never understand why we often say we can’t walk away from the ministry. That would be to live in open defiance to God. And that’s not something we can do.

2. I love the gospel. It’s changed my life. I’ve lived it many decades and it’s still as powerful, still as sweet as it ever has been. Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so still moves me as much as it did 35 years ago when I met Jesus Christ.

3. I love people. I love being around people who come together with the same purpose, same heart, organized around a great mission to accomplish something really great for God and good for people.

4. I’m a leader. I was born that way. I’ve also been working hard to be made that way. I love leading people, influencing people to become more together than we ever could become separately.

5. I love pastors. I love being around them. The majority are loving, good, committed people; smart, fully-engaged, learners, leaders who love God and want to make a difference in the world.

6. I love what happens when a person is converted as a follower of Jesus Christ. I love seeing life change. I love seeing marriages being put back together. I love seeing people be set free from addictions and sinful habits that are destroying their lives, into a lifestyle of love, freedom, and joy.

7. I love being part of something that redeems culture in the world in which I live. I love being a part of a movement that knows no geographic or cultural barrier; that like water, finds its way into every crease and crevice of humanity.

8. I love being a pastor in leadership and ministry because it forces me to engage the Scripture in a way that transforms my life. I’ve never had a problem in the false dichotomy between reading and studying the Scripture for my own personal improvement, or reading and studying to teach. I can’t divide the two. I have to teach out of the overflow of what’s going on in my life as I engage the full scope of Scripture.

9. I love the Bible: not the pages, not the ink, not the leather; but the words, the ideas, the concepts that teach me that I serve a great God.

10. I do this because I believe that the gospel is the only hope of the world, that when church is done right, it is absolutely amazing.

11. I continue to do this because I accept the fact that the church of Jesus Christ can at one moment be an amazing and healthy, loving, growing environment, and in another can be a very toxic, destructive place. How could we expect anything different when we get broken people coming together confessing the reality of their own sin and brokenness? There are bound to be sharp edges among us.

12. I do this because I believe in advancing the good. The best way I can do that is promoting the redemptive mission of the gospel.

13. I do this because it is the best way I can spend my life. I’ve got to do something. I might as well be doing something that matters for eternity.

14. I love pushing myself to greater understanding and innovative ways of redeeming culture.

15. I love being around people who don’t get it, who struggle, who have questions, but are hungry and are open. I love presenting the gospel to them knowing it’s not my job to convert them.

16. I am in this work because I’m a seeker of truth. I love the truth. I embrace both mystery and certainty all at the same time. I do believe that Jesus is the answer, but not all the answers are available to me right now in the state I’m in.

17. I do this because I love being a part of a worldwide movement that has indeed changed the world and it continues to change it. It is not bound by lines on a map, or by race, creed, or color.

What not to do when you preach a funeral

2007-08-31T10:13:00.000-04:00
Don’t talk about yourself.
Don’t discuss “lessons about life” that you have learned from your golf game.
Don’t talk about yourself.
Don’t preach 5,438 sermons during the funeral.
Don’t talk about yourself.
Don’t preach while you pray.
Don’t talk about yourself.
Don’t be long-winded.
Don’t talk about yourself.
Don’t try to be Jerry Seinfeld (or you can substitute the name of your favorite comedian).

Worship

2007-08-30T11:23:00.000-04:00
Events and circumstances, moments in our lives, and crises that we experience, can sometimes define and determine who we are and how we respond to other situations in our lives. When we look backwards at those events, sometimes we can gain some modicum of understanding as to the influence our circumstances have had on us in developing our character. impacting the way we live, and, ultimately, teaching us more about God.

Whether good times or bad times, our circumstances, and our reaction to those circumstances, influence our lives in many different ways. And it is in these difficult places of life that we find ourselves intimately drawn to God in worship.

So, it was in the life of the prophet Isaiah, who records a major event in his life that would define and impact his life and his ministry: the death of King Uzziah.

Isaiah 6

1 In the year of King Uzziah's death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.

2 Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

3 And one called out to another and said, " Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory."

4 And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.

5 Then I said, " Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."

6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs.

7 He touched my mouth with it and said, "Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven."

8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I. Send me!"

Uzziah was the tenth king of Judah and, for most of his reign, lived a godly life. He was highly influenced by the prophet Zechariah and, unlike many of the other kings before him, never rebelled against God..............................................until the end of his life.

Under his influence, the southern kingdom attained power, wealth and success unlike any it had enjoyed since the days of Solomon. Because of his successful reign as king, Uzziah was well-respected and the people of his nation looked up to him as one of their greatest leaders.

In Second Chronicles 26, we find the following information about Uzziah:

1 All the people of Judah had crowned Amaziah’s sixteen-year-old son, Uzziah, as king in place of his father.

2 After his father’s death, Uzziah rebuilt the town of Elath and restored it to Judah.

3 Uzziah was sixteen years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-two years. His mother was Jecoliah from Jerusalem.

4 He did what was pleasing in the LORD’s sight, just as his father, Amaziah, had done.

5 Uzziah sought God during the days of Zechariah, who taught him to fear God. And as long as the king sought guidance from the LORD, God gave him success.

6 Uzziah declared war on the Philistines and broke down the walls of Gath, Jabneh, and Ashdod. Then he built new towns in the Ashdod area and in other parts of Philistia.

7 God helped him in his wars against the Philistines, his battles with the Arabs of Gur, and his wars with the Meunites.

8 The Meunites paid annual tribute to him, and his fame spread even to Egypt, for he had become very powerful.

9 Uzziah built fortified towers in Jerusalem at the Corner Gate, at the Valley Gate, and at the angle in the wall.

10 He also constructed forts in the wilderness and dug many water cisterns, because he kept great herds of livestock in the foothills of Judah and on the plains. He was also a man who loved the soil. He had many workers who cared for his farms and vineyards, both on the hillsides and in the fertile valleys.

11 Uzziah had an army of well-trained warriors, ready to march into battle, unit by unit. This army had been mustered and organized by Jeiel, the secretary of the army, and his assistant, Maaseiah. They were under the direction of Hananiah, one of the king’s officials.

12 These regiments of mighty warriors were commanded by 2,600 clan leaders.

13 The army consisted of 307,500 men, all elite troops. They were prepared to assist the king against any enemy.

14 Uzziah provided the entire army with shields, spears, helmets, coats of mail, bows, and sling stones.

15 And he built structures on the walls of Jerusalem, designed by experts to protect those who shot arrows and hurled large stones from the towers and the corners of the wall. His fame spread far and wide, for the LORD gave him marvelous help, and he became very powerful.

16 But when he had become powerful, he also became proud, which led to his downfall. He sinned against the LORD his God by entering the sanctuary of the LORD’s temple and personally burning incense on the incense altar.

17 Azariah the high priest went in after him with eighty other priests of the LORD, all brave men.

18 They confronted King Uzziah and said, “It is not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the LORD. That is the work of the priests alone, the descendants of Aaron who are set apart for this work. Get out of the sanctuary, for you have sinned. The LORD God will not honor you for this!”

19 Uzziah, who was holding an incense burner, became furious. But as he was standing there raging at the priests before the incense altar in the LORD’s Temple, leprosy suddenly broke out on his forehead.

20 When Azariah the high priest and all the other priests saw the leprosy, they rushed him out. And the king himself was eager to get out because the LORD had struck him.

21 So King Uzziah had leprosy until the day he died. He lived in isolation in a separate house, for he was excluded from the Temple of the LORD. His son Jotham was put in charge of the royal palace, and he governed the people of the land.

22 The rest of the events of Uzziah’s reign, from beginning to end, are recorded by the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz. 23 When Uzziah died, he was buried with his ancestors; his grave was in a nearby burial field belonging to the kings, for the people said, “He had leprosy.”

When confronted by the priests, Uzziah became furious and raged against the priests. Uzziah’s power led to a prideful heart and his pride resulted in him doing something that was none of his business. Burning the incense was an act of worship with spiritual significance for the priests. But, only the priests were supposed to enter that part of the temple and burn the incense. Uzziah had decided that is was up to him to take care of God’s business.

God had not called Uzziah to do what he did. As a result of his disobedience, Uzziah was stricken with leprosy by the Lord, placed into quarantine and died in that condition. Uzziah is now remembered more for his disobedience than he is for his obedience.

Isaiah was greatly disturbed by all of this and the death of the great king. Uzziah had reigned for 52 years. His death signaled the end of a time of great prosperity and consistency. For Isaiah, the death of the king was an event that would have major impact on him and the Jewish nation. The King's death ushered in a time of uncertainty, change and doubt but his death also made Isaiah and the entire nation understand that their king died because of his sin.

Yet, for Isaiah, this was to be a time of rediscovery and renewal.

What was it that had such a profound effect upon Isaiah's life? Surely, it must have been that he saw the awful result of sin in the King's life. Uzziah was a godly king, yet, at the end of his reign, he decided to rebel against God. It was never his responsibility to enter the temple. It was never his responsibility to burn the incense. But, yet, we find in Second Chronicles 26 that because of his great power, Uzziah became prideful and he sinned against God. As a result, God placed upon the king a deadly disease and he died in quarantine, hidden away, yes, because of his leprosy, but. more importantly, because of his sin.

This had a devastating effect upon the prophet Isaiah, but, the crisis became an opportunity for revival in his personal life and an opportunity to discover more of God. This awful situation, which could have been a dark cloud over Isaiah’s life, was used by the Lord to bring Isaiah to a fresh encounter in his relationship with God.

When Isaiah has this great vision of God, he gains a deeper understanding about God and he develops a greater perspective about:

•God’s Position-“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne”. The throne of God represents His kingship and His rulership over all of His creation. The throne of God is representative of His authority and that He is in charge. There is only one throne and that is God’s throne. You don’t have a throne. I don’t have a throne. None of God’s people has a throne. Yet, we live our lives like each one of us has a throne. We live like we are in charge and we live like we are the center of the universe. We live like there is no other god but us. I live like it is all about me. You live like it is all about you. Forget about the little catchy phrase that has circulated for some time that is used in songs and in preaching: “It’s not about me; it’s all about You, God”. (Big theological word coming now) HOGWASH! We don’t live like it is all about Him. So, why do keep we keep using that phrase over and over and over and over and over (well, you get the idea) again? No, we need to somehow come to an understanding that it is all about God, that He is on the throne and He has all authority. He is King over all of His creation!

• God’s Perspective-“I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up”. God has a different perspective than we do. Isaiah 55:8 tells us that God's ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Sometimes we question God. Sometimes we don’t understand why He causes or allows things to happen. But, we must come to the conclusion that His perspective is different than ours. We see things from an earthly perspective. God sees things from an eternal perspective. The challenge is to try to see events as God sees them. How? “Turn your eyes upon Jesus....look full in His wonderful face and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace”.

• God’s Preeminence-“and the train of His robe filled the temple”. In Isaiah’s day, one would determine a king’s status by his robe and the length of the train of his robe. Isaiah sees the Lord seated on a throne as King and the train of His robe (a wedding dress usually has a long, flowing “train”) filled the whole temple. The implication is that the presence of God crowds out everything and leaves room for nothing else. Oh, that the presence of God would so fill our lives that everything of this world would be crowded out of our lives.

• God’s Purity-“Holy, Holy, Holy”. In theology, there is an area of study that deals with “the otherness of God”. Although we are created in the image of God, there are the characteristics and virtues of Him that distinguish Him from all of creation. One of those characteristics that distinguish Him from us, that is part of His “otherness”, is His holiness.

"Otherness gives us a sense that God is so pure, matchless and unique that no one else and nothing else even comes close. He is altogether glorious—unequalled in splendor and unrivalled in power. He is beyond the grasp of human reason—far above the reach of even the loftiest scientific mind. He is inexhaustible, immeasurable and unfathomable—eternal, immortal and invisible. The highest mountain peaks and the deepest canyon depths are just tiny echoes of His proclaimed greatness. And the blazing stars above, the faintest emblems of the full measure of His glory (Matt Redman)”.

• God’s Providence-“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts”. The Hebrew word for “hosts” is “saba”. The plural of “saba” is “sabaot” or “sabaoth”. In the hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”, Martin Luther wrote these words:

“Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.”

“Saba” is a military term and is defined in English as “army”. “Sabaot(h)” is the plural of “saba” and is translated “armies”. When Isaiah refers to God as the “Lord of hosts”, “hosts” refers specifically to all the angelic armies of heaven. This name denotes His universal sovereignty and that he is the King of all heaven and earth.

• God’s Presence-“the whole earth is full of His glory”. God is omnipresent, that is, He is present everywhere. We cannot run from God. We can only run to Him. If we run to the east, He is there. If we run to the west, He is there. Whenever we try to run from Him, we will always find Him already there.

Then Isaiah says, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth with it and said, ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven’."

When Isaiah comes into the presence of God, he is convicted of his sin and the sins of his people. After his confession and repentance, he is then purged and cleansed of his sin and his sin is forgiven.

What Isaiah discovered was that even though he had a wonderful encounter with God, he was also convicted of the sin in his life. He discovers this principle: the closer one gets to the holiness of God, the more sin is exposed in a person’s life. This worship experience of Isaiah was truly a high point of his life, yet, it also led to the discovery of his own sinfulness. And so also for us: when we worship, we can receive great joy as a result of being in the presence of God, but we must also be mindful that true worship in God’s presence will result in our realization that we fall so short of His glory. Worship that assists us in obtaining a deeper understanding of the “Lord of hosts” will result in our confession and repentance of sin in our lives.

After all of this, Isaiah is spiritually ready to hear:

• God’s Plea- “Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" I love what Oswald Chambers (“My Utmost For His Highest”) says about this:

“God did not direct His call to Isaiah— Isaiah overheard God saying, ". . . who will go for Us?" The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God’s call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude. "Many are called, but few are chosen" That is, few prove that they are the chosen ones. The chosen ones are those who have come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and have had their spiritual condition changed and their ears opened. Then they hear "the voice of the Lord" continually asking, "...who will go for Us?" However, God doesn’t single out someone and say, "Now, you go." He did not force His will on Isaiah. Isaiah was in the presence of God, and he overheard the call. His response, performed in complete freedom, could only be to say, "Here am I! Send me."

Remove the thought from your mind of expecting God to come to force you or to plead with you. When our Lord called His disciples, He did it without irresistible pressure from the outside. The quiet, yet passionate, insistence of His "Follow Me" was spoken to men whose every sense was receptive (Matthew 4:19). If we will allow the Holy Spirit to bring us face to face with God, we too will hear what Isaiah heard-"the voice of the Lord." In perfect freedom we too will say, here am I! Send me." (January 16, updated version by James Reimann).

And now we see the climax of worship and the proper response to worship: obedience. The worship experience is not complete until there is obedience.

And, so it is, that in our deepest hour of crisis or in our times of sorrow, such as happened to Isaiah, that we can also experience a deeper understanding of God through our worship of Him.

The Man of God

2007-08-23T10:35:00.000-04:00
Thoughts on the man of God

It was during his first visit to Britain on a preaching mission, that D.L. Moody heard the words which set him hungering and thirsting after a deeper walk with God and which marked a new beginning in his life. The words were spoken to him by Henry Varley, a well-known evangelist of that time, as they sat together on a seat in a public park in Dublin. The words were these:

"The world has yet to see what God will do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully consecrated to Him."

"He said 'a man'" thought Moody, "he did not say a great man, nor a learned man, nor a 'smart' man, but simply 'a man.' I am a man, and it lies with the man himself whether he will or will not make that entire and full consecration. I will try my utmost to be that man." The words kept ringing in his mind, and burning their way into his soul until finally he was led into the deeper, richer, fuller experience for which his soul yearned. (Source: J. Gilchrist Lawson)

Ezekiel 22

23 Again the word of the LORD came to me:

24 "Son of man, say to the land, 'You are a land that has had no rain or showers in the day of wrath.'

25 There is a conspiracy of her princes within her like a roaring lion tearing its prey; they devour people, take treasures and precious things and make many widows within her.

26 Her priests do violence to my law and profane my holy things; they do not distinguish between the holy and the common; they teach that there is no difference between the unclean and the clean; and they shut their eyes to the keeping of my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.

27 Her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey; they shed blood and kill people to make unjust gain.

28 Her prophets whitewash these deeds for them by false visions and lying divinations. They say, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says'-when the LORD has not spoken.

29 The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice.

30 "I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none.

31 So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done, declares the Sovereign LORD."

God was looking for a man. Not a group of men. Not a collection of men. Not a cluster of men. Just one man. But He found no one. Where was the man that God was looking for?

Because of Israel’s spiritual poverty and spiritual pollution, Ezekiel had prophesied the fall of Jerusalem. But his message fell on deaf ears. The people of God had become worthless and useless to God. They had violated some of the Ten Commandments and they had become proud and disrespectful to God. Their disobedience would eventually lead to their destruction and the corruption was so complete that when God searched for a man to stand in the gap, to build up the wall, none could be found. (Source: Walvoord and Zuck)

Where was the man that God needed? He had always found his man before.

When God wanted a man in the midst of a desperately corrupt culture, He found Noah.

When God wanted a father for His people, He found Abraham.

When God needed an honorable man to save not only His people but the people of a foreign nation, He found Joseph.

When God needed a deliverer of His people, He found Moses.

When God needed a king for His people, He found David.

When God needed a prophet to confront the prophets of Baal, he found Elijah.

When God needed someone to whom He would give a double portion of His Spirit, He found Elisha.

When God needed someone to be a testimony and witness in Babylon, He found Daniel.

But where was the man that God needed? Where was the man that God could use so that He would not have to destroy the land? None could be found.

And where is that one man today?

We have seen that man before in people like D.L. Moody, Charles Spurgeon, Billy Graham, and others: surrendered to God, pursuing God with passion, and consumed with fire from heaven.

But where is that man today? Where is that man for our generation?

There may be some today that would say there will never be another man like Billy Graham, that there will never be another man like Moody, never another man like Spurgeon.

There are some who might say that Billy Graham was a man whom God used in his generation but that the world will probably never see that kind of man and ministry and that kind of response to the gospel again. There are some that might say that we will never see another Moody or Spurgeon. (But this mindset is indicative of Christian leaders who say that we are living in a post-Christian era, giving up on God and sounding like it is time to lock the doors, clock out, and go home).

We know that our culture and our generation are far from what we desire it to be, but, are we past the point when God can use one individual, like a Billy Graham, to call our nation and our world to repentance?

In days gone by, God has usually used one man (sometimes several men) to be His vessel(s) for sending a great movement of His Spirit throughout a nation.

In the First Great Awakening, during the 18th century, in Great Britain and colonial America, God used men like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and John and Charles Wesley.

In the Second Great Awakening, God used men like Francis Asbury, Charles Finney, and Peter Cartwright, a missionary God used to start the Second Great Awakening and who personally baptized twelve thousand people.

Included in the Second Great Awakening, was Jeremiah Lanphier, one man determined to see a great movement of God in New York City. Little did he know that the simple prayer meeting he started by himself during his workplace lunch hour would ultimately result in more than 50,000 people a day praying for revival. And those prayers would usher in, what Perry Miller of Harvard would later refer to as, "The Event of the Century", an awakening formally referred to as "The Layman's Prayer Revival."

During the Second Great Awakening in the United States, scholars estimate that possibly a million people came to Christ in 1857 and 1858. Therefore, in less than one year, nearly 20% of the American population was swept into the Kingdom of God. Three years later, in 1861, even though the Civil War had begun, the revival continued, as both union and confederate soldiers were converted by the thousands.

The latter half of the 1800’s gave the world men of God, such as D.L. Moody, William Booth, Hudson Taylor, George Mueller and great theologians such as Charles Hodge and B.B. Warfield.

In 1904, in the country of Wales, God used Evan Roberts, who prayed, “Lord, bend me”, to bring one hundred thousand souls to Christ in just nine months, from November 1904 to August 1905.

But where is the man of God for our generation?

Where is the man of God who will pursue righteousness rather than recognition?

Where is the man of God who will pursue holiness rather than happiness?

Where is the man of God who will pursue God's approval rather than man's approval?

Where is the one who will be a man after God’s own heart?

Is it you?

Would you be the man who would rise up and say to God?

“Lord, I want to be that one man through whom the world can see what You can do through one individual fully consecrated to You.

I will take the mantle. I will take the next step. I will do whatever it takes.

I will be the one who flings himself upon You, no matter what the cost, no matter what others might say.

I will be the one who doesn’t care about being famous; who doesn’t care about being recognized; who doesn’t even care never to be asked to preach at the next big pastor’s conference.

All I care about is being right with You and being used by You, Lord. I will be the one who wants to know You more intimately and who wants to know You more deeply.

I will be the one who wants to experience more of Your holiness and wants to experience more of Your power.

I will be the one who wants to know the depths of Your love and I will be the one who wants more of You in my life.

Lord, I want You. I want Your hand upon my life and I will be that man who is fully and totally consecrated to You. Lord, I will be your man."

All it takes is one man.

On June 5, 1989, almost nobody knew the man’s name. Nobody outside his immediate neighborhood had read his words or heard him make a speech. Nobody even knows what happened to him even one hour after his one moment that was seen in the world's living rooms through television. But one man stood before a column of army tanks near Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, to protest the Chinese government’s violence towards Chinese students who supported a democratic form of government.

The meaning of his moment — and it was no more than that — was instantly understood in any language, to any age group: millions of people knew what the "tank man" (also know as the “Unknown Rebel”) did.

A small, unexceptional figure in slacks and white shirt, carrying what looked to be his shopping bag, posted himself before an approaching army tank, with a line of 17 more tanks behind it. The first tank swerved to the right; and this one man moved to his left to block it. Then, the tank swerved left; and this one man moved to his right. Surprisingly, the “tank man” then climbed up onto this vehicle of war and said to its driver, "Why are you here? My city is in chaos because of you."

One lone man stood up to the machinery, stood up to the armed forces and stood up to all of the massed weight of the People's Republic of China and stopped a brigade of 18 tanks. As soon as the man descended from the tank, anxious onlookers pulled him to safety, and the waters of anonymity closed around him, his name never known yet will be remembered for his courage. (Source: CNN)

Just one man. That’s all it took.

And maybe that is what it will take for God to send His Spirit to our generation for another great spiritual awakening. He has done it before. I believe He can do it again.

"The world has yet to see what God will do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully consecrated to Him."

2007-08-22T16:55:00.000-04:00
Response to: Letter To Preachers
From: Pastors Everywhere

We wanted to respond to your "letter to preachers". We agree with you and we cry out for the very same things in our own lives that you wrote about in your letter.

Would you mind if we responded to your letter by writing to all of our church members who listen to us preach every week?

Dear Church Members,

We are grateful to God that He has blessed us by sending each of you to our churches and we appreciate you. We love you and we desire God’s best for you in every area of your life. The condition of your spiritual life is of utmost concern to us and we sincerely want to help you.

But, speaking on behalf of pastors/preachers everywhere, we want you to know that we need you to help us. We cannot fulfill God’s purposes for our churches all by ourselves. It takes all of God’s people to do all of God’s work, therefore, you are going to have to help us. We cannot do it alone. We are going to have to work at this thing together.

So here is how you can help us:

We need for you to have the fire of God and the power of God in your lives.

We need for you to have a passion for God.

We need for you to have a hunger and thirst for righteousness.

We need for you to bury yourself in the written Word of God so that you can become more intimate with the Living Word of God.

We need for you to be consumed by fire from heaven so that we may join you in being consumed by God.

We need for you to grow in your understanding of who God is and for you to grow in your intimacy with Him.

As much as we love to hear what is going in your life and in your family, as your pastors, more than anything else, we would love to hear what God is doing in your spiritual life and in the spiritual life of your family. You will never know how much that would encourage us to know that you and your family are growing in your relationship with God.

Sometimes we feel like we are perishing in the pulpit because it seems like we preach to deafened ears and hardened hearts. This is said, not as a criticism, but with a heartcry and a hunger for our churches to be all that God desires for them to be.

So, church members: Rise up with us! Don’t settle for mediocrity and don’t settle for less than your best!

Get all that you can get from God, give it away in ministry and service to others, and then go back and get some more.

Each of you has a part in the kingdom of God so seek to accomplish great things for Him.

May the fire of God fall upon all of us as we work together for the glory of God!

Sincerely,

Pastors Everywhere

2007-08-22T15:15:00.000-04:00
Letter To Preachers

Several years ago, I heard a pastor, (not my pastor) from another part of my state, preach a lifeless, passionless, pointless sermon with no power and no fire. (I am not referring to animated “aerobic exercise class” preaching. Vance Havner, a great man of God, preached with power and passion and fire yet he was not animated but monotone and motionless in his preaching style). The message I heard was a waste of my time and discouraged me.

That message provoked me to write the following to our preachers (and also to myself):

To: Preachers Everywhere
From: Your Congregations

We, the people, are thirsty and we are hungry. We are hurting and we need help. We need the fire of God and the power of God in our lives. And preacher, we need you.

You have a special calling upon your life and God has chosen you to be His voice. But what we don’t need are more cute alliterated sermons, as helpful as alliteration can be in communicating a message.

What we don’t need are more sermons that have three points, six sub-points, and a cute, closing story or poem, as helpful as that may be in communicating a message.

And what we don’t need are more funny, silly jokes in sermons. We are tired of all of that.

What we don’t need is for you to keep referring to yourself when you preach. And what we don’t need is to hear more sermons from the internet or from some book that was purchased at the latest Christian book store or catalogue sale.

What we need is for our preachers to have the fire of God. What we need is for our preachers to have the power of God. What we need is for our preachers to have a passion for the messages that are proclaimed.

What we need is for our preachers to feed us from the written Word of God and then point us to the Living Word of God. What we need is for our preachers to be consumed by fire from heaven so that we, ourselves, may join you in being consumed by God. And what we need is for our preachers to be consumed by their passion for the Word of God.

Please help us, preachers. We know that we have a personal responsibility for our own walk with God. But we need help. We are weak, we are frail, and we are forgetful. We need to hear from heaven.

We don’t need to hear about your fishing trips or your cruises in your sermons. We don’t even need more covered dish suppers at the church.

We don’t need to hear about the local football team or your favorite college team in messages that you preach. And we certainly don’t need to hear of your accomplishments and awards and degrees when you stand before us.

What we want to know, and hear, is that you have been approved by God to proclaim His Word to us.

We are perishing in the pews and we perish because there is little or no vision of God in some of our pulpits. We are tired of hearing Proverbs 29:18 misinterpreted and applied to long-range planning. We are sick of hearing that verse used that way.

We, the people, are perishing because there is no vision of God, not because of a lack of planning for the future!

Rise up! Stand up! And don’t settle for mediocrity! Don’t settle for less than your very best!

Get alone with God, get all that you can get from Him, dish it out it to us, and then go back and get some more.

Pursue God with passion.

Don’t go into the pulpit until you have a message from Him to proclaim to us.

Don’t preach until you know that you are right with God.

And don’t go into the pulpit until you know you are anointed by God and have the fire of God.

It has been said that where there is smoke there is fire. But sadly, though, smoke can also be an indication that the fire has gone out.

Preachers: help us!

(The original post was published in "Heartcry! Journal", Fall 2005, and can be viewed at:
http://www.lifeaction.org/lam/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=873&I...

Dealing With Discouragement

2007-07-30T15:39:00.000-04:00
Recently, a good friend of mine, who is a pastor, sent me an email and described his discouragement and frustration regarding his church (and the lack of attendance, lack of spiritual desire and growth, and even an empty parking lot on a Sunday night).

No one is immune to discouragement. Everyone gets discouraged, no matter their occupation, but in the ministry it is all too common because we work with people and we love them and take care of them and we want the very best for them in their walk with God and in their personal lives. But it can be discouraging and frustrating when they don’t respond to what God desires for their lives and they don’t respond to what the Spirit of God wants to do in their hearts.

I replied to the email:

_______________________

Dear Pastor:

Thank you for sharing with me about your discouragement. One of the most important things you can do in dealing with discouragement is to talk to someone, especially another pastor. After 20 years in ministry, this is one of the areas in which I have fallen short in the past and so have most of the ministers I have known. We think we are supposed to be strong and not let things bother us but our experience is that sometimes we aren't strong and things do bother us but it is hard to talk to others and admit our frailty and weakness.

There have been many times when I have been discouraged. I can remember when I was a pastor at a small church. On a good Sunday we had around 40 people in worship and 20 in Sunday School. There were times my wife and I bought fuel oil so that we could have heat during the winter. I can remember one Sunday, as we were going home, my wife started crying in the car because she didn't think the church was going to make it financially. On Sunday nights and Wednesday nights, we had 9 people (the same 9 people) every night. And this happened the whole 4 years I was there at the church.

So I have been where you are and I know what you are feeling as you describe your discouragement.

You wrote: "I have been very discouraged in my ministry here at my church. The people here just seem so content with the way things are, no growth, no commitment."

Part of your discouragement is good because you are not content for the people of your church to stay where they are in their relationship to God. Never be satisfied with where the people are spiritually-continue to challenge and set an example for them to follow. Also, please know that most pastors deal with the same issues you are dealing with. You are not alone in your frustration and discouragement. It might help you to reach out to other pastors who are also struggling in their churches. This is what the director of missions of your association could be doing (and he may well be doing this). But, again, maybe you can reach out to other pastors who may be discouraged.

You wrote: "I don't know why things are like there are here. My fear is that I am the problem and that the reason the church is declining is me. I don't want that."

Dear brother, be sure that you are right with God and that you are growing in your relationship to Him. Then, if this area is settled in heart, if you think you are the problem then you are not the problem. The only time you might be the problem is when you don’t think you are the problem. The pastors who are the problem don’t have a clue that they are the problem; therefore, they don’t even consider this as an issue.

Because I am assured that you are growing in your relationship to God, you are not the problem and you are not the reason that things are the way they are. The decline of the church is not your fault. These issues are a result of sin. You cannot make people get right with God and you cannot make people stay right with God. You must take care of the "sheep" by feeding them and giving them something to drink and you must "shepherd" them but you cannot force them to follow you and you cannot force them to seek God. Ultimately, they have to grow up and seek God on their own and take responsibility and ownership of their own spirituality.

You wrote: "My want is to preach the word of God, to expound the scriptures and allow God to grow the people."

I urge you to continue preach the word, expound the scriptures, and let God take care of His work in people's hearts and lives. It takes time for the word of God and the Spirit of God to break through the icicles and barriers in hearts that have grown cold and indifferent. But it can happen and it does happen all of the time!

You wrote: At this time there "appears" to be no growth.

Just because you can't "see" growth doesn't mean it is not taking place. When we preach, we are communicating the word of God. And the word of God is "spiritual" in nature. By that, I mean, we can't always see what the word of God and the Spirit of God are doing in people’s hearts while we are preaching because He is working in the area of the spiritual realm and our physical eyes can't see that work going on.

We must trust God that when we preach, He is doing His work. "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." Isaiah 55:11. Also, there are all kinds of “growth”; yes, numerical (membership), but other areas like ministries, missions, maturity, etc. Don’t gauge the growth just on the numbers and what you see. Look for other indications.

And remember what Paul said, “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.” (First Corinthians 3:6). Sometimes there are seasons of planting in the ministry; sometimes there are seasons of increase. Set your heart on planting and trust Him for the increase.

You wrote: "My greatest passion is to honor God, to please Him with my ministry so that His name is honored, so that He is magnified and glorified. I'm just not sure that is happening. Does this make sense???

This makes all the sense in the world to me. I admonish you to please keep your passion to honor God and seek to please Him. You wrote that you are not sure this is happening. I know it is happening because that is your passion and your desire. I would worry about you if this wasn't your passion. If this wasn't your passion, and if you weren’t honoring and pleasing God, you would not mention it nor would you be concerned about it. The pastor who isn’t honoring God and pleasing Him is not concerned about this in his life.

Discouragement is common to most people and it is sometimes difficult to know how to deal with it personally or how to help someone else deal with it. When someone is discouraged, their attention is focused on themselves or their problems, just like a pastor can become discouraged with his church and focus on the problems in his church. This is normal but this is not healthy.

While we must attempt to understand that life is never perfect and people are never perfect, it is easy to allow our attention to be focused on our problems and our feelings. As a result, we become discouraged and we begin to lose our joy and our peace in our relationship with God. Many times I have lost my joy and my peace because of my discouragement and because I focused on my problems and focused on my feelings.

But what can we do to deal with the discouragement?

In attempting to allow God to deal with me in this area of my life, He led me to Matthew 6:25-34 and specifically to verse 33: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you”.

As I studied this passage, I began to try to gain an understanding of what it meant to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33a) and to understand what Jesus meant when He said, “Take no thought” (other translations read, “Do not worry” or “do not be anxious”).

The Greek word translated “take no thought” or “do not worry” is the word “merimna”. “Merimna” means to be drawn in different directions, to have a divided mind and to have a two-sided mind. “Merimna” would result in confusion and chaos in the mind. An example of “merimna” would be: a believer knows they should trust God yet they worry about the situations they face. That is “merimna” and the result is doubt, confusion, worry, fear, anxiousness, and fretting.

If Jesus said not to worry about life, food, clothing, and drink then what should we do? Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness”. Therefore, we conclude that our priority should be to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.

Also, there is a promise in Matthew 6:33. Jesus promises that if we will seek first His kingdom and His righteousness that He will care of “all these things” in our lives. What things? Food, clothing, drink, and everything else in our lives and those “things” are His responsibility.

Whereas, our responsibility is to seek Him first, His responsibility is all of our “things”. As long as we pursue our responsibility of seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness then He will take care of His responsibility of “all these things” in our lives. Our business is to seek Him first; His business is all of our “things”.

Several years ago, I finally realized why, so often, I was discouraged and why I would lose my joy and peace. I would find myself worried, confused, afraid, anxious, and fretting about “things” in my life (circumstances, situations, issues, people). The Lord began to convict me that I had been trying to take care of His business by worrying over the “things” in my life! When I realized this, I was appalled and disgusted with myself.

How dare I try to take care of God’s business and God’s responsibility? He had always been very capable of handling things on His own (like the creation of the universe, for example J) without my help and (shock!) He had never consulted me on my opinion as to what He should do about “things” in my life or anyone else’s life.

As I tried to process this, I discovered that the worry, confusion, fear, anxiousness, and fretting about “things” were red flags or signals given by the Holy Spirit to tell me that I was trying to take care of God’s business. My distracted mind resulted in discouragement ant that was evidence that my desires did not match up with His desires about the “things” in my life. What was His desire for me in dealing with “things”? To seek Him first.

Whenever we are confronted with “things” in our lives, we have two choices: God’s way or our way.

If we do it our way, we will be attempting to take care of God’s business and we will begin to worry and fret and become discouraged. As a result, we may then find ourselves starting to doubt God and wonder if He really cares about us. And then, some people go so far as to think that God is punishing them for something.

What is God’s way of dealing with “things”? He says to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and He will take care of “all these things”. How will take care of “things”? We don’t know how but He promises He will.

One other note on this subject of discouragement and seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness: I have also discovered that if I try to take care of God’s business then I can interfere with Him taking care of my “things”. He will quietly let me try to figure things out on my own and, as a result, lose my joy and my peace. Then He waits until I get frustrated enough with myself that I turn to Him and ask for His help.

Another part of this process of “seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” is submission. We must come to the point in our lives that we submit to the Almighty hand of God; that He is all-powerful and all-knowing and that anything that comes into our lives has been filtered through His hands (Job is the best example). God can do anything He wants, He can cause or allow anything to happen in my life, and He is able to fix anything in my life.

Now, what does all of this have to do with your situation as a pastor and discouragement? It has everything to do with your situation. The way to handle “things” (like pastoring in a church) is take care of your responsibility, which is, to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. That should be your pursuit, your passion, and your priority. But, you may ask, “How do I do that”? I have learned to do this by asking the Lord to teach me what it means to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and then asking Him to teach me what He means by “all these things shall be added unto you”. Also, it helps me, when I find myself worried and discouraged over something, to quote Matthew 6:33.

Seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness includes taking care of your relationship with God. The Greek word for kingdom is “basileia” and in the context of the passage in Matthew 6, “kingdom” means the rule and reign of God in a person’s life. “Righteousness” in the context of the passage means the rules, regulations, standards, and expectations that God sets before us.

Therefore, we are to seek first the rule and reign of God in our lives and we are to seek first to submit to His rules, His regulations, His standards and His expectations. These two principles can be summed up in the word “Lordship” (which is a word that is not used in our “religious circles” much anymore because “Lordship” makes us uncomfortable).

God’s desire for us is to understand that He is in control and we are not. When we try and attempt to take of His business, we lose our joy and our peace. The way to get the joy and peace back is to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. I have found that when I do this, God has a way of working all the other “things” out in my life the way He wants to and He begins to change my perspective on “things” to His perspective. When I pursue the kingdom of God and His righteousness, I find that I really can trust Him to take care of all my “things”.

Hope some of this helps. Keep in touch.

What Can We Do To Help Our Church Grow?

2007-07-30T15:32:00.000-04:00
Sometimes, when churches find themselves plateaued or dying, the church will ask questions like:

"What else can or should we be doing to help our church grow"? Or, "What shouldn’t we be doing"?

Or the church will ask the question in different way, “What can we do to help our church to grow?” My answer is: "That is the wrong question".

There is a principle in church growth that, sometimes, goes unnoticed by pastors. The principle is: if something is healthy, it will grow.

We see this principle in God’s creation. As we look at nature, we know that if a tree, for example, is healthy, it will grow. We also observe this principle in children. If a child is healthy, the child will grow. We don’t have to tell our children to grow. No, as long as we provide for the child and the child is healthy, the child will grow. Every child has been created by God in such a way, that, as long as the child is healthy, the child will grow. This is true of everything in God’s creation.

We don’t have to tell a tree to grow. No, as long as the tree receives proper care and nutrition and remains healthy, the tree, created by God, will grow.

The principle applies this way to the church: if a church is healthy, the church will grow. But, we must understand that there are all kinds of ways that a church can grow. Yes, the church can grow numerically (membership and attendance) but the church can also grow in ministries, in spiritual maturity, in missions, in giving, and in many other ways.

Some churches are located in areas where the population is so small that there would be, virtually, no way that the church could grow to be a mega-church. In other words, the church could never have thousands in attendance.

In a situation like this, a pastor and church have to come to grips with, numbers aside, can they determine whether they are growing without gauging that on the size of the church? The answer is “yes”, if the pastor and church will evaluate the health of the congregation and not the size.

The wrong question to ask is: “What can we do to help our church grow?”

The right question to ask is: What are we doing to hinder our church from growing, because if something is healthy, it will grow. What we must strive for in our churches is to be healthy.

Health has to do with the spiritual condition of believers in a church.

The size of a church has nothing to do with the health of a church. Some people in small churches think that big churches are not spiritual but they think a small church is spiritual. Some people in big churches think that small churches are not spiritual but they think that big churches are spiritual. (I'm not real sure what the medium size churches think about big churches and small churches!)

Size has nothing to do with the spiritual maturity of a church. The more important issue in church growth is church health (i.e., the spiritual condition of the believers). It is not so important how many attend a church but what kind of believers attend a church.

Now, this doesn’t mean that numbers are not important. In the early church (book of Acts), we know that the Lord added to the church daily and that means numerically and that means evangelism was going on.

Evangelism is critical to what we do in the church but every church should strive to be a balanced church. On one side is evangelism and on the other side is discipleship. This is what we find, in what most believers call, the Great Commission, found in Matthew 28:19-20. Jesus says,

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age".

But the grammar of the Greek text does not reveal that the command in the verse is to "go". The command is to "make disciples". Had we heard Jesus that day speaking to His disciples, we would have heard Him say something like this: "As you are going, I command you to make disciples". It is almost as if Jesus assumes that His disciples, if they were following Him, would be in the process of going (evangelism) and His command to them was for them to make disciples (discipleship).

To be a balanced and healthy church, there must be both evangelism and discipleship. That is what we find in the early church in the book of Acts and this is the kind of church that would be fulfilling the “Great Commission”.

The question must be asked: “Which is more important: evangelism or discipleship”?

Well, of course, it is a trick question. Both are important and both should be the priorities in any church. When a church pursues both evangelism and discipleship, that church will be a balanced church and a healthy church.

Evangelism is the heart of what a church does. It can be described as addition, reaching, going, and winning. It is the “how many” of what a church does.

Discipleship is the health of what a church does. It can be described as multiplication, teaching, growing, and training. It is the “what kind” of what a church does.

“Evangelism that does not produce discipleship is not true evangelism and discipleship that does not produce evangelistic disciples is not true discipleship.” (Anonymous)

Top Ten Criticisms From A Church And A Response From The Deacon Board (since everyone ran the pastor off)

2007-07-30T15:24:00.000-04:00

We, the deacons of your church, have listed the top ten criticisms we have received and have decided upon the following solutions for these complaints:

1. “I want more depth in the sermons”: For all sermons we will read the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, therefore everyone in the congregation will be required to take Hebrew and Greek classes. Since these languages require constant study and usage, each member will be required to take these classes until they die.

2. “Nobody noticed when I was gone for three weeks”: From now on, each member of the congregation will be required to have placed on their ankle a tracking device so that we will know where they are at all times, including when they are at the lake, at the golf course, hunting, etc. Also, each member will be required to bring a doctor’s note stating that the member was actually sick and had an excuse for being out of church. The church will also start to use the phone tree system to give everyone a wake-up call on Sunday mornings so that they can get to church on time.

3. “Nobody cares about how I feel”: From now on, we will have a psychiatrist/psychologist/Christian counselor (the member will choose) available on Sunday mornings to help each member understand more about their feeling that no one cares about them. In addition, each member will be required to start caring for others in the congregation.

4. “I don’t know everybody anymore”: From now on each member of the congregation will be required to memorize the names and faces of each member of the congregation, including each new member that joins hereafter. Also, each member will be required wear a photo i.d. for identification purposes.

5. “The choir doesn’t sing my kind of music”: From now on, there will be no more choir or congregational singing but each seat in the sanctuary will be equipped with an IPOD and headphones to listen to your favorite type of Christian music during the worship service.

6. “We shouldn’t let those kinds of people into the church”: Beginning next week, each member will be required to have an “extreme makeover” so that everyone will look the same. Said makeover cost will be the responsibility of each member.

7. “All the church talks about is for me to give more money”: Beginning immediately, there will be no more offerings taken up during the worship services and each member will be required to tithe ten percent of their income by enrolling in a payroll deduction plan from their place of employment or enrolling in an automatic draft of their tithe from their bank. This way we will not have to ask for money again.

8. “The preacher talks too much about sacrifice”: Beginning next week, each member of the congregation will be required to play on a church softball team and advance at least one runner per game to another base by sacrifice bunt or a sacrifice fly so that each person can say they sacrificed something during the week.

9. “The worship services are boring”: Beginning next Sunday, the baptismal pool will have a wave machine installed to make the baptisms more fun. Also, Barnum and Bailey Circus will provide us with clowns to perform during the welcome time and the Harlem Globetrotters will provide us with a demonstration of their basketball skills during the invitation.

10. “The church is not going in the right direction”: Beginning next Sunday, we will no longer have a pastor to preach and lead the church but instead each member of the congregation will be required to go before the church and “share” their feelings about which direction the church ought to going. This should work out extremely well because so many in the congregation seem to know which direction we ought to be going because they have suddenly become experts in the field of church growth and church vision.

Are you responsible for growing your church?

2007-07-30T13:48:00.000-04:00
Our responsibility as leaders/ministers is to assist believers to grow in their relationship with God. It is God’s responsibility to grow the church.

There is not one indication in the New Testament where we find that it is a pastor’s responsibility to grow a church. Sadly, though, there are many pastors who believe that is their responsibility to grow a church. And there some pastors who can!

In the New Testament, we do find the following:

Jesus said, “…I will build My church” (Matthew 16:18
Paul said: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (First Corinthians 3:6)
The following article might be helpful for us as we consider the pastor's role and responsibility in church growth.
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The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-23, titled "Questions and Answers--Part 51." A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. Copyright 2001 by John MacArthur Jr., All Rights Reserved.

Question

You said in the past that you don’t really concern yourself with the breadth of how God blesses the ministry through you and through this church, but your concern is in the depth of your ministry and your personal growth with God. I understand that and I just kind of wanted you to kind of expound a little bit more. What do you do to focus on the depth of your ministry and how do you balance this with the other many responsibilities that you have, including your relationship with your wife and family?

Answer

Well, I think by God’s design, the deeper my commitment to Christ, the better my family likes me. I mean, I’m a better husband, and a better father, and a better grandfather, and a better counselor, and a better spiritual guide and guardian, and a better servant, the more devoted I am to the Lord. So, I can’t compartmentalize my life. I can’t say, “I have to study and I have to preach” and I do that and then I go over here and try to act like a husband and go buy four books on how a husband should act. My role as a husband, my life as a husband, a father, or whatever it is…a friend…is nothing more than the spillover of my life before the Lord.

And so when it comes to ministry, it is much the same. When I say I don’t concern myself with the breadth, that means that I don’t spend my time and energies trying to extend the ministry, trying to get a bigger church. I’m not spending my time trying to figure out ways to advertise Grace Church or ways to build up Grace Church in the public image or ways to creatively draw crowds or get money or somehow reach more people. I never have worked hard to expand our radio into more stations and more stations and more. In fact, I haven’t given in my entire life an hour to that, collectively! My concern is always to do what I need to do to rightly handle, proclaim the Word of God, live out the Word of God, and make sure that the Word of God is rightly represented in the people that are around me.

It’s an old story and I talk to young people about this: if you occupy yourself with success, you will ultimately fail. If your goal is to succeed, you will fail. If your goal is to be excellent, you will ultimately succeed. I don’t care what you’re doing. If you’re working with wood, if all you want to do is succeed, you’ll ultimately fail. If what you want to do is produce something excellent, you will ultimately succeed. And that’s true spiritually.

My life is spent--all my energies for the most part are driven toward truth: understanding the truth, dealing with the truth, implementing the truth; evaluating people--to pull around me--people who have tremendous responsibility around me, and making sure they have the same level of commitment to the truth; making sure they stay sharp on the truth; making sure that I serve them, nurture them, help them, strengthen them, confront them if need be, though that’s a rare occasion (the same they do to me)--that’s what I mean by spiritual excellence. All my focus goes toward the Lord and toward the truth and being the man I need to be, the preacher I need to be, the friend I need to be, the husband I need to be, and what God does with that is really up to him.

But I have long ago learned that spiritual excellence is the goal, not success. I think I first started learning that when I was a football player. When I was a football player in my university days…football can be a very frustrating sport because you have to depend on other guys. It’s much easier to do something that you don’t have to depend on anybody else; you sort of rise and fall on your own merit, you know, like golf or something like that. There’s nobody but you. But in football, you’ve got these people and they can be very disappointing and it can be a very difficult situation.

I learned several things, however, playing football: I could never determine the outcome of a game. I could only determine my own effort. I could never tell you how the game would end. I could only control my own effort. And if I gave the maximum effort that I had within me, not only would I do everything I could do to win, but I would set a tone for everybody around me and hopefully pull them up. So even in those days when I was the captain (because God was already working in me leadership responsibility), I would try to do everything I could for the sake of doing all that I could alone, but also for the sake of saying, “Guys, this is how you play the game” and try to pull everybody to that level.

All we could do is make the maximum effort. We could never determine the outcome. And that was really good to learn that.

So my responsibility became to give the maximum effort myself so that that becomes the standard for everybody around me to follow, and if I ever diminished my effort, then they would find a reason to diminish theirs. And so, the consummate effort then becomes the standard that others around you see. When everybody gives that kind of effort, then you have to leave the ultimate success to God who determines outcomes--I don’t determine outcomes. I can only determine effort.

So does that kind of personally explain it? So for me it’s to be the best--to preach the best I can, to handle the Scripture the best I can, to provide for the people the best ministry I can, to provide around me the best leadership I can, and then let God take it where He wants to take it.
You know, the wonderful that you can bank on in this is that the Lord’s Word never returns void, but it always accomplishes what He intends it to accomplish and I am convinced that He honors his Word. I am convinced that if you’re faithful to the proclamation of his Word, He’ll take it places where you never expected it to go and, I mean, I am just boggled by what happens every single day. I got a letter I think three days ago from a guy in England who is a pedophile, the grossest of all humans in some ways, who wrote me to tell me he was converted and delivered from this through listening to me preach on the radio. I’ll never meet this guy this side of heaven. All his friends are in prison--they were all arrested--and he somehow missed being arrested. He couldn’t give up his pornography on his own. He had so much pornography--he had more pornography in his home, he said, than I think anybody in history, in England, contributing to this stuff. He never could stay off of it until somehow he was smitten with a disease related to his sexual deviancy that made him blind. Then he wrote to tell me how the Lord had saved him and he wanted to thank me for the radio ministry that goes out of London.

Well, I can’t control that! I mean, I have absolutely no control over that. But what I can control is what I preach. He responded to my sermon on Psalm 107, in which I told the story of a guy in our own congregation, Robert Lagerstrom, who was one of the leaders in the Gay Pride community in L.A. who was converted here on a Sunday when I read Psalm 107 and baptized right here. I told the story on that tape and I explained the Psalm in relation to how God could deliver people from these horrible things.

I mean, that’s just an illustration. That’s like the last couple of days, but that comes regularly.

Again, I see time after time, day after day, the work of the Word and so I know that where I want to spend my life is in the Word. That’s why it’s so ridiculous for anybody in the ministry to do anything else. All these pastors that work real hard to be big and successful miss the point; in the end, they fail--in the end, on the spiritual level, they fail. It’s the depth that God wants and He’ll take care of the breadth.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:
Tony Capoccia Bible Bulletin Board Box 119 Columbus, New Jersey, USA, 08022 Websites: http://www.biblebb.com/ and http://www.gospelgems.com/ Email: tony@biblebb.com Online since 1986

2007-07-30T13:47:00.000-04:00
Pre-Marital Counseling Questions

These questions are intended to assist in starting pre-marital counseling. By no means are they intended to be the only questions used in the pre-marital counseling. Answers will provide you with basic info in getting started. These are just a starting point and might be helpful in assisting the couple to talk to one another and to you. Also, the questions could be given to the couple ahead of time for them to write their answers and then bring to the counseling sessions.

1. Discuss your relationship with God.

· Describe your life before you were saved.
· Describe you salvation experience.
· Discuss the relationship with God that you have right now.
· Do you spend time alone with God every day? Why or why not?

2. Do you have family members that have been divorced, and if so, what effect, if any, has that had on your family.

3. Do you consider divorce an option in a marriage that has problems? Why or why not? Explain your answer.

4. Do you like to be around children? Why or why not? Explain your answer.

5. Do you look forward to having children after you are married? Why or why not? Explain your answer.

6. Discuss your philosophy of raising children. Do you want your children to go to public school, private school, or to be home schooled? Do you believe in disciplining a child by spanking the child? Do you believe a child ought to have rules and regulations that are established by the parents?

7. Do you believe that it is important for you and your future mate to attend church? Explain your answer.

8. If you currently go to different churches, have you discussed which church you are going to attend after you are married?

9. The dating relationship before marriage is an indication of what the relationship will be like after marriage. (And, by the way, marriage doesn’t solve dating relationship problems).

· Discuss the dating relationship both of you have now.
· What do you remember as some of the best times both of you have had while you have been dating each other?
· What are some serious conflicts the two of you have had while dating? How did you resolve these conflicts?

10. The toilet paper and paper towels are supposed to hang over the front of the roll and not the back of the roll. Do you agree or disagree? Why do you agree or disagree? Do you squeeze the tube of toothpaste from the end or the middle of the tube? (This is intended to be funny but the answers given, if there is disagreement, can be used to explain that there are always differences in a marriage but the important issue is working through these and developing a solution).

11. What are some characteristics you like about the person you are going to marry? (Explain your answer)

12. What kind of hobbies do you have? What do you do for recreation? Do you have a hobby that would require you to be away from your future spouse, for a period of time, after you are married (like golf, hunting, shopping, etc.)? Have you discussed this with each other?

13. Have the two of you discussed the area of finances (tithing, saving, spending, who will balance the checkbook, who will pay the bills, etc.)?

14. What kind of money manager are you? Do you like to spend, spend, spend? Or do you like to save, save, save?

15. Is it important to you that you have a new car? Is it important to you that you have a new house? Explain your answers.

16. Will both of you be working after you get married? If so, have the two of you discussed how you will take care of household chores (cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc.)?

17. In any marriage, there are always differences that can be sources of conflict. To have a great marriage, every married couple needs to be able to work through, and resolve, conflicts. One area of difference, and a potential source of conflict, can be with future in-laws (the family of your soon-to-be spouse). Every family is different in how they “do family”. As a result, the person you are getting married to was raised somewhat differently than you were in your family. For example, the family you grew up in may be the kind that loves each other deeply, is very close, and calls each other every day. But, your future spouse may have grown up in a family that loves each other deeply but family members can go days or weeks without talking to each other).

· Discuss your own family as you were growing up. (Meals together, family devotions, picnics, family trips, etc?)
· What did you like about your family when you were growing up as a child?
· Do you see any potential area of conflict with your in-laws?
· Discuss the relationship that you have now with your future in-laws.
· Another difference between families, that can be a source of contention, is "visitation". Some families love to visit each other regularly, often traveling to other states to spend time with family members. Other families don't do this very often, or not at all. Both you and your fiancé need to discuss this area.

18. A major source of conflict in marriages, especially in the first few years, is where you will spend the holidays (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Easter, etc.). For example, where will you go on Christmas Day? Or Christmas Eve?

· Does your spouse’s family have a tradition during Christmas that has existed since “the beginning of time” and, therefore, will not be changed?
· Have you discussed what you, as a couple, will do and where you will go, when holidays occur?

19. Discuss the moment when you first knew that you were in love with the person you are going to marry.

20. Describe the love that you have, right now, for your soon-to-be spouse.

The Fear of Man By Del Fehsenfeld, Jr.

2007-07-30T13:45:00.000-04:00
(Adapted from the message: “Fear of Man”)

“The fear of man brings a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD shall be safe.” (Proverbs 29:25)

From Kenny: Del Fehsenfeld, Jr. founded “Life Action Ministries” www.lifeaction.org in 1971. “Life Action” is a revival ministry that God has used in great ways across our nation in churches since its beginning. The message, “The Fear of Man”, was preached several months before Del died of brain cancer in 1989, at the age of 42.

Many years ago I typed out the entire manuscript of the sermon and the following is an abridgement of that message.

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Several years ago our Life Action Revival Ministries executive staff got together for our semi-annual evaluation time. We had devotions and prayer scheduled and then we were going to get on with our business but at 2:00 that afternoon we were still in devotions.

One of our staff members had the nerve to bring up a subject from God’s Word that all of us around that table, the movers and the shakers of our organization, discovered was their problem. And when you have an executive staff around the table and they all find out they’ve got a problem, devotions don’t end in fifteen minutes.

We were amazed, as we went around the table, to do discover that everybody else had the same problem. We thought, “Surely, these capable, qualified men, in positions of leadership in this organization, don’t have this problem”. The devotional that morning was on insecurity and that began a new pilgrimage in my own life of spiritual growth.

The only thing that I remember from that staff meeting was the definition of insecurity: that it is the result of placing my confidence and trust in people or things that can be taken away from me.

In our staff meeting that day, we discovered that just about everything and every person on this earth could be taken away from us: our mate, our ministry, our health, sanity, intellect, personality, all of our friends, our charismatic personality, our dynamic ability to be able to proclaim God’s truth, all the material things of life, and every person that we knew. We discovered that most of us were building our lives by placing our confidence and trust in all of those things and in all of those people.

We also discovered that security, unlike insecurity, is placing our faith and confidence and trust in that which cannot be taken away from us and that there are only two things on this earth that cannot be taken away: one is our relationship to the Living Word, Jesus Christ, and the other is our relationship to the written Word, the Bible.

Therefore, our conclusion must be that the only way we will ever be secure is in building our relationship with Jesus and His Word.

One year after this staff meeting, God brought Bill McCloud (the pastor of the church in which the great Canadian revivals broke loose in 1971) into an area where Life Action had spent about nine months in revival work. He brought all of churches in that area together and announced his subject on a particular night: he was going to preach on the fear of man (which, by the way, is the scriptural term for insecurity or what produces it).

I sat on the front row and thought to myself, “I don’t have fear of man. I preach anything God asks me to preach. If it costs me the meeting, I don’t compromise and I would stand for truth”. And so, I started praying for all those people in the meeting that night, “God, You know that fear of man has held these people back from obeying You”.

I’m not sure anybody else in that auditorium got anything that night except me. By the time God was through pointing His finger at my, he had chopped me up in pieces, stomped all over me, and then put me back together again.

So, how does fear of man, insecurity, affect us? Proverbs 29:25 teaches that the fear of man brings a snare. It imprisons.

For example, some people cannot open their mouths and share the gospel with someone because they are choked by fear of what that person might think of them. They are consumed with fear of man.

There are some parents who can’t discipline their children properly. Because of fear of man, parents can't be firm and loving as well as consistent because they are desperate for their children’s approval and afraid they will lose their children if they discipline God’s way.

There are some who cannot disagree with another person or cannot stand it when someone disagrees with them because of fear of man. Some are totally intimidated and threatened when somebody loves them enough to point out something in their lives that is unscriptural.

There are those who are consumed with fear of man and believe that they are the ultimate spiritual authority. That is close to blasphemy.

Fear of man results in a person keeping everybody at a distance and making sure they are the “tough guy” when dealing with other people.

Some who have fear of man can’t stand it when their children act up. It’s not because they are really concerned about their character and their behavior, and how they have hurt the heart of God and disobeyed Scripture; no, it is because they fear how their children’s behavior makes them look in front of other people.

Fear of man will determine who a person associates with, the clothes and hairstyles they wear and even the neighborhoods they live in.

The fear of man ensnares, imprisons, and holds a person captive. Some, enslaved by fear of man, are chained to their sin habits and the only reason they haven’t received deliverance is because they would have to shame themselves and go to another believer and confess their sin and make themselves accountable. Their fear of being “found out” and what someone might think of them keeps them in the “muck and mire” of secret sin habits in their lives.

In my own pilgrimage, I found myself begging God to forgive me for drive that I found in my life, a drive for approval. I wanted to be approved by other people. I thought to myself, “how self-serving, how self-centered, how selfish, and how wrong”. I kept confessing the sin to God but I never found freedom of forgiveness like I had with other sins I had confessed.

Under the tutorship of the Holy Spirit, I discovered that the drive for approval is not a sin but it is God-created. When Jesus was baptized, the windows of heaven opened and the Father spoke and said, “This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (approve of).

There’s nothing wrong with the drive for approval. Created in us by God, we must understand that the drive for approval was given in order to drive us to Him-that we would “study to show ourselves approved unto God”. (Second Timothy 2:15a).

The A.U.G. degree (Approved Unto God) is one degree that is needed in the life every believer more than any other degree. But it is a degree that is not conferred by any Christian school or university. It is a degree conferred only by God. I believe the day has come that we need to ask God for a godly contempt for the approval of man and ask Him for an insatiable appetite for the approval of God. Until we seek the approval of God instead of the approval of man (of which I was guilty of), we will never know the joy of true freedom from fear of man.

In trying to understand my approval drive, I discovered that what I had done was substituted relationships, people, position, status, and things, for God. I did this by seeking acceptance, status, and increasing my work productivity.

Some may seek the approval of man by making an attempt to be accepted by as many people as possible. Sometimes a believer will compromise, or lower, his or her standards, in order to be accepted.

Others may seek the approval of man by attempting to achieve a level of status to impress others. People who drive the fanciest cars and move in to more expensive homes, sometimes do so because of fear of man, seeking man’s approval. Others just cannot live without name brand clothes and the finest jewelry substituting status for approval instead of the approval of God.

And then there are others, like myself, that use increased work productivity in an attempt to meet the approval drive. It was so bad with me in the earlier years of our ministry that when we booked a crusade in Des Moines, Iowa, the pastor called me and said, “Del, would you do me a favor and this time stay in town?” I said, “What do your mean”? He said, “Ten years ago when you were with me over in the Buffalo, New York area, if I remember right, you were on seventeen flights and preached six of the seven services in that crusade and all of the other time you were on the phone”.

I would preach Sunday through Friday, we would drive all night to the next crusade, the team would get out of the van exhausted having slept through the night, sit down in a truck stop for breakfast and I’d be on the phone. I would overhear some on our team say, “I’m telling you, that guy is the hardest worker I have ever seen in my life”.

What do you think that did for me? It fulfilled my approval drive apart from God. I would kill myself to be approved through productivity.

Proverbs 29:25-“The fear of man brings a snare”. It puts us in prison. It makes us captive of what everybody else thinks of us. “But whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe”. Proverbs 14:26 states, “In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence”. That’s security. When you place your trust in the Lord and you live “in the fear of the Lord”, you don’t care what anybody thinks of you. It doesn’t matter. Once you’ve been set free, you are like a bird that’s been set free from the fowler’s snare. You begin to understand the reality of soaring with the power of Christ’s resurrection life in your life. (By the way, I was so insecure that when I watched a football game and the players got in a huddle, I thought they were talking about me!)

I remember preaching in the early years of my ministry, coming off of the platform and standing down front with the hope that at least a few people would come forward and tell me how great the message was. When God started dealing with the fear of man in my life, every time I preached He would have me come down off of the platform and, before anybody could speak to me, I would have to go to my knees on the front pew and say, “God, was that okay with You? It really doesn’t matter whether this church likes me or keeps me. The only thing that matters is-was it okay with You.”

I remember, during this time of God dealing with the fear of man in my life, leaving my motel in Florida to go preach for a large church. On the way to that church, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, “Del, if you preach your heart out this morning and there’s no movement, nobody raises a hand, nobody gets saved, nobody gets right with God, nobody moves, there are no tears; is that alright with you if it brings more glory to Me?”

I knew better than to say “yes” to the Lord. I feared Him too much. I knew as sure as I said “yes”, that would be the next test.

Is it acceptable to you if people don’t like you but God does? Is it okay with you if you are ostracized from your friends because you love God so much and you obey His Word and the direction of His Spirit? Or would you cling to those friends and the security of their approval but you wouldn’t have the approval of God?

Here are some of the things that are true of people who have the fear of man and are insecure:

1. Fear of man and insecurity results in a person being unable to confront, privately, another person and unable to accept rebuke or correction from another.

2. Fear of man and insecurity results in a person being self-consciousness (the fear that others are talking about them or looking at them).

3. Fear of man and insecurity results in a person being more concerned about their own reputation than God’s reputation.

4. Fear of man and insecurity results in a person being reactionary and defensive because they can’t stand for people to disagree with them.

5. Fear of man and insecurity results in a person having to maintain control and has to be in charge because they are threatened by others.

7. Fear of man and insecurity results in nervous habits-like biting of fingernails, overeating, oversleeping, talking too much and controlling conversations, laughing raucously, exaggerating, and name dropping.

8. Fear of man and insecurity results in a person not being able to be transparent or honest about where they are in their walk with God.

Many years ago, revival occurred in Fort Worth, Texas, because a Certified Public Accountant stood before his church and confessed that he was a liar and a thief. He testified that had he stolen from his employer (a government defense contractor) by manipulating paper work to the amount of millions of dollars. After receiving a promotion with more money and “security”, God gripped his heart and convicted him of his sin and the CPA had to risk it all in order to be honest and transparent and make things right with his company and with the Lord.

When he turned himself in, it took four to five months for the Pentagon to determine what to do with him. He lost his job, his position, and the security of his salary. A few months later, with God still working in his heart, he remembered that, when he was attending the University of Oklahoma, he had stolen $300 worth of books, including a calculator. So, he wrote a check for the amount of money he owed and sent it the university and asked for forgiveness. After the university newspaper printed his story, news wire services all over the world, including USA Today, printed the story.

The fear of man will not allow a person to be this honest and this obedient. But until a person is honest and obedient, he will not meet God.

7. Fear of man and insecurity results in a person rejecting and criticizing others.

8. Fear of man and insecurity results in a person being frustrated and discontent with life.

9. Fear of man and insecurity results in a person murmuring and complaining.

10. Fear of man and insecurity results in a person being inflexible; everything has to be their way. Nobody else’s way is acceptable.

11. Fear of man and insecurity results in a person having to have the final word, even if they are not asked.

12. Fear of man and insecurity results in a person being unable to make a final decision, especially when the cost is perceived as high.

A pastor was set free from insecurity and fear of man when he stood before his church confessing that he was defensive, always having to tell
his side of the story, even to people not involved. He said he had become of jealous, fearing that others would be loved for their teaching more
than he was loved for his teaching.

This pastor went on to say the he overate to console himself and to fight his inner conflicts. He stated that he found himself constantly angry at
God because his church wasn’t what he wanted it to be. He was filled with resentment for being misunderstood and not being fully appreciated. He lived in constant fear of his ministry failing. He stated,

“I was insensitive to other’s who were hurting. I experienced depression. I didn’t feel loved. I felt like I was no good. A hundred people could tell me they loved me but I could only see the five who criticized me. I couldn’t be tender with my wife or share my heart. I was afraid of breaking down and not appearing to be a real man in her presence. I couldn’t even say to her that I loved her. I couldn’t sit down and talk with my children or my parents. I couldn’t express my needs. I had to appear like I had everything under control and what God showed me in my life was that the root of all of this was pride”.

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For seven years I (Del) had been on this pilgrimage. I had many of my staff praying that God would set me free from insecurity (fear of man). One day during our staff revival, one of our guest preachers addressed the problem of insecurity and he had the nerve to say that insecurity was rooted in pride. I reacted and I had to figure out a way convince myself that he was wrong. But the Holy Spirit began to take me to the cross and force me to deal with my pride. Here’s how:

Each of us has people in our lives that have meant a lot to us. At some particular place in your life, God brought a pastor or friend or spiritual leader to you and they have impacted you and had the answers that you needed. We tend to elevate those people on a pedestal beyond reality.

I have done that with Bill Gothard (a well-known Bible teacher) in my life, whom God used in my life several years ago. Bill Gothard is one of the godliest and biblical men in our nation. I had elevated Bill so high on a pedestal that I didn’t even really want to meet him because he would have me analyzed in sixty seconds because, in my opinion, he sat right next to God and he and God had this thing going.

Our Life Action staff, including myself, was in Chicago for a crusade. One day, while I was out to lunch with a pastor, Bill Gothard contacted one of the staff and invited us to come to his headquarters to lead the devotions. My staff knew I was battling this thing of fear of man and insecurity and they knew that I would have found a face-saving way out of this if Bill had talked to me, so my staff agreed to Bill’s request before I got back from lunch.

That terrible day came! I had to go their headquarters, shake hands with that man, have him sit behind me and I knew that, even though he wasn’t looking at me, he was analyzing me. Some of our staff got up to sing before I spoke when all of a sudden another staff member passed me a note he had written and the note put into perspective the whole thing I was going through.

This is what the note said, “Del, I am praying for you. Today is your final exam in the fear of man”. And when I saw that note, I took off for the cross of Jesus. I said, “God, I don’t care what Bill Gothard thinks. I’m going to give it everything I’ve got and when I get through the only thing that matters is what You think.”

I want to tell you, it took me seven years in that process but there is nothing in the world like the freedom that God brings to your life once you are set free from the fowler’s snare, from being taken captive, from being a prisoner to fear of man.

I wonder where God finds you right now in relation to His truth. Are you tired of having to impress? Are you tired of fearing what others think? Are you tired of evaluating and analyzing all of your decisions based upon what everybody else thinks rather than on what God thinks?

I tell you, that’s a load to carry. Jesus said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32). If you’ve been taken captive there will be a process but I want to tell you that God will set you free. You can get your A.U.G. (Approved Unto God) degree. Where do you start? By simply agreeing with God that you have fear of man and that you live a life of insecurity. The biggest struggle in the fear of man and insecurity is actually admitting it. Once you agree with God, you will start on the most liberating journey you’ve ever taken in your life.

Would you be willing to pray this prayer?

“God, it’s true. I’m so consumed with fear of man. I’m so ashamed. I fear man more than I fear You. I want to be set free. The pride in me is at the root of my sin. Take the axe to the root of that tree in my life, Lord. Cleanse me, unshackle me.”

Feel Like It Is Time To Move On?

2007-07-30T13:35:00.000-04:00
In ministry and in life, we are sometimes faced with situations where we get discouraged and we want things to change. Sometimes, we don’t understand what God is doing or we think He isn’t doing anything at all. A pastor sees no visible results from his ministry. A youth minister is ready to quit and give up because nothing is happening with the youth that he leads. And it happens in life as well.

Sometimes we get discouraged about our lives. We get discouraged because we don’t think God cares about us and we think He doesn’t want to do anything to help us. We get to the point that we are ready to give up or we think that if our situation would just change then everything would get better.

Recently, a friend of mine and a Fruitland graduate sent me an email that contained the following information. He has given me permission to use his email as a basis to write the following-
________________________________________________________________________

Dear Kenny:

After much prayer and wrestling with this, I feel it is time for me to look for a new ministry opportunity. I have been looking and was wondering if you would consider writing a letter of recommendation for me to another church I am interested in.

My situation is:
I have been serving where I am for 6 ½ years now (3 years volunteer, the rest full-time paid).
The ministry has grown from no organized student and children’s ministry to an organized ministry with small groups for middle/ high school students and a solid core of volunteers.
However, we still have some structure issues and whenever I try and propose some help to address this, I am either ignored or nothing happens.
Compensation- I struggle to make it on my salary (which has not changed in 2 years) and when I last talked about this, the door was closed quickly.

When I pray about the whole situation, I don’t know that I am the one who can help to get things to the next level. I am overwhelmed, frustrated, and generally at a loss. So, I am at a point where I am testing the waters and to see if something else is available. I am not totally sure of what to do.
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Dear Friend,
You wrote that you have been serving at your church for 6 ½ years now. (3 years volunteer, the rest full-time paid). I think this is great that you have been at your church for over 6 years!
But you shouldn’t feel like it is time to move on. Sadly, that is what a lot of pastors and youth ministers think and do. But, research has shown that the longer a pastor or youth pastor stays at a specific church, the more fruitful the ministry becomes. Believe it or not, no matter how long someone has been in a ministry, they are always at the beginning, always at the starting line. Why? Because God is able to do exceeding, abundantly, above all that we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20). It all depends upon your attitude. Ready to give up or ready to move ahead?
It is so easy to think that your ministry over. I want to encourage you by saying that your ministry is never over…..unless you quit. I want you to know that, since you have been there for “only” 6 years, you are probably just at the starting line of what God wants to do in your church and in your life. Mud Creek Baptist Church didn’t really start growing, probably, until our pastor had been here for about 7-8 years. He took his time and laid the foundation for the church to be a healthy and balanced (balanced=evangelism and discipleship). Once that was set in place, God began to grow the church in miraculous ways and it is still growing today. By the way, we are celebrating Greg’s 27th anniversary this week. Length of stay does have something to do with fruitfulness in ministry.
Another issue you wrote about was you said that the ministry had grown from no organized student and children’s ministry to an organized ministry with small groups for middle/ high school students and a solid core of volunteers. However, you still have some structure issues and whenever you try and propose some new ideas to help with this, you are either ignored or nothing happens.
Guess what? Who doesn’t have structure issues? Nothing is perfect, including the structure of any church or ministry. There are always things that need to be addressed, improved and worked on. Why? Life is always in a constant state of change and people are always in a constant state of change. Nothing stays the same and that includes ministries and churches.
Also, no one likes change. Change takes time and it won’t happen quickly. Fro example, it is easier for a small fishing boat to change its course in the water than it is for a large cruise ship to change course. So it is in the church and in life.
When you say you are ignored or nothing happens, try not to take it personally. People don’t like to change but they will gradually adjust if you will be patient and allow the Spirit of God to work in their lives. Don’t focus on the unwillingness to change, focus on growing in your relationship to God and focus on assisting the people in your ministry to grow in their relationship to God. The Lord is very capable of getting His work done and very capable of changing people’s hearts and heads.
By the way, you’re being ignored? Welcome to the ministry and following in Jesus’ footsteps.
You also mention in your email about compensation. You said that you struggle to make it on your salary (which has not changed in 2 years) and when you last talked about your salary, the door was quickly closed. Again, welcome to the ministry and join the countless others, not only in ministry but people in their secular jobs, who struggle to make it on the salary they make and haven’t a raise in several years, either. Probably the majority of your congregation is in the same situation. Why should you be any different?
And, what are you worried about regarding your compensation? The Father knows what you need (Matthew 6) and Jesus said not to worry about your life (Matthew 6) and that if you will seek first His kingdom and His righteousness that He would take care of you.
And do you not remember what Paul said, “My God shall supply all your needs” (Philippians 4)? Brother, if the Father knows what you need and He has promised to supply your needs, if you are seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, if you don’t have it, then, you must not need it. (By the way, that would be good message for Thanksgiving: “Thank You, God, For What I Don’t Have”).
Don’t bring up the issue of a pay raise with the church. That comes across as being greedy. Plus, the church may have been thinking about giving you a raise for more than what you might ask for, so they could just go with your lower amount and you would miss out on the larger raiseJ.
You wrote that when you pray about the whole situation, you don’t know that you are the one who can help to get things to the next level. HUH? That is being very self-centered. Not selfish, mind you, self-centered in the fact that you are looking at your self and looking to the Lord.
But, I guess God can’t do “exceeding, abundantly, above all that you ask or think”. I would be disappointed in you, my friend, if you thought you could take it to the next level. You can’t, but, He can. God calls us to tasks that we cannot do in our own strength. That’s where the miraculous power of God moves in. In the flesh, we can nothing of eternal value. If God calls us to a task, then, He provides the necessary power and strength to accomplish the task. That is, if you realize you can’t do it, but, He can do it.
You wrote, “I am overwhelmed, frustrated, and generally at a loss”. Join the fraternity of fellow brothers in the ministry. It is in our weakness, that God’s
grace is totally sufficient to accomplish His work through us. If you were not overwhelmed, frustrated, and generally at a loss, it would probably mean that you were not accomplishing great things, God-sized tasks, in the kingdom of God. Your discouragement is not from God: it is from the ol’ devil.
“So”, you wrote, “I am at a point where I am testing the waters and to see if something else is available”. Who said you should test the waters? Where does that come from? Your head? And where do you find a biblical basis for this philosophy of “testing the waters”? If you can prove this, biblically, then I will be open to you testing the waters, but, I don’t think you can back up that philosophy with scripture.
You told me that you are not totally sure of what to do. I know what you need to do: you need to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33). You sound to me as if you have started trying to take care of God’s business. God’s business is everything you have mentioned so far-“all these things” in Matthew 6:33 means “all these things”. But, if you want, you can keep on trying to take care of God’s business and live in misery….that is, if you want to.
You have started trying to figure everything out. Sorry, but you are wrong for doing that. You will never get it all figured out and, if you try, you will just become more frustrated and discouraged about your situation.
If you try to take care of God’s business, then, you will have a divided mind of confusion, doubt, worry, fretting, and anxiousness. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. That’s the instructions Jesus gives in Matthew 6.
When Jesus says, “Take no thought (KJV)” (other translations read, “Do not worry” or “do not be anxious”), He uses the Greek (root) word “merimna”.
“Merimna” means to be drawn in different directions, to have a divided mind and to have a two-sided mind. “Merimna” results in confusion and chaos in the head and in the heart. An example of “merimna” would be: a believer knows they should trust God yet they worry about the situations they face. That is “merimna” and the result is doubt, confusion, worry, fear, anxiousness, and fretting. The believer who insists on taking care of God’s business, which is what you are trying to do in your circumstance, will begin to suffer spiritually and then the people around that person will begin to suffer. I know this is true because I have experienced this principle in my own personal life.
By the way, the doubt, confusion, worry, fear, anxiousness, and fretting that you are experiencing, is a “red flag”, a warning sign, if you will, given to you by the Spirit of God to let know that you are trying to take care of God’s business and that your desires don’t match up with God’s desire for you. What is His desire for you? Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. Brother, you know what to do because you have heard me say most of this before in the classes you had with me at Fruitland. You just won’t do it.
God is exposing this area in your life right and He is dealing with you in this area of you trying to take care of His business. If you choose not to learn this lesson, (and I am serious about this), everyone around you will suffer, including your wife, your child, and your ministry. The Lord is trying to draw you to this point of seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness. YBH-yes, but how?
You must come to the place that you are sick and tired of trying to take care of God’s business, which is “all these things” in your life and admit and confess this to God.
Then, you must ask the Lord to teach you what it means to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and then ask Him to teach you what He means by “all these things shall be added unto you”. The beginning point of seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness is your relationship to God. It begins there and it ends there. (Also, it helps me, when I find that my desires do not match up with God’s desire over something, to quote Matthew 6:33).
You say you “feel” like it is time to leave…..where do you find that philosophy in the Bible? I do not find any scripture that can be used as a basis for us “feeling” a certain way that would indicate it is time to leave. What I do find in the Bible is that we are to walk and live by faith in an intimate, loving relationship with God. (And what is faith? It is a relationship with God, but, that will have to be explained in another emailJ).
Discerning God’s will is never based upon how we feel. Go back to the seven realities of “Experiencing God”, that you memorized for the 301 final exam, to refresh your memory about this subject. http://swcbc.org/exp_god.html
But remember what I taught you in class: the perfect will of God is not a place, a position, etc. The perfect will of God is a relationship with Him. That is why He created you: to have an intimate relationship with you and that is of the utmost importance to Him. It should be of the utmost importance to you. God pursues you in order to have this kind of relationship with you.
You should pursue Him in order to have a personal, intimate relationship with Him.
(By the way, even though you say that you “feel” like it is time to leave, the Spirit of God does not operate in the area of “feelings”. That would mean that He operates in the area of the “flesh” because feelings are fleshly. The brain is a piece of flesh and it is the organ of the body that controls everything else in bodies, including feelings and emotions. I am not saying that sometimes we don’t feel the Spirit of God. That has happened to me on many occasions. But when we talk about the leadership of the Holy Spirit regarding leaving one church and going to another church (or other important decisions), I just can’t believe that He would work in the area of flesh, emotions, and feelings. James Dobson’s book, “Emotions: Can You Trust Them?” has, as its conclusion, that you cannot trust your emotions. We don’t deny that we have emotions-that is part of how God created us. But, what we can’t do is trust our emotions to make decisions.)
You asked me to write a letter of recommendation to another church you are interested in pursuing. I will not do that. You aren’t ready for another church until you get the above issues worked out personally. Besides, do you think moving to another church will solve your problems. Absolutely not!
That is why some marriages end in divorce. One person in the marriage thinks that if they just had someone else to whom they were married, then, everything would be better and their problems would be solved. AAAARGHHH!!!!!!! That makes me sick and that is ridiculous!!!! The grass is never greener on the other side.
But, you know, pastors and youth ministers do the very same thing. They think that if they can just go to another church or a larger church, that everything will get better and their problems will be solved. Again: AAAARGHHH!!!!!!! That makes me sick and that is ridiculous!!!! Moving to another church will not solve or resolve spiritual issues. That is God’s business and responsibility. Move to another church without Him telling you to move and leading you to move will only expose these spiritual issues in your life that need to be addressed and will only make your life more miserable, your family’s life more miserable and your ministry more miserable. I know that church that you have your “eye” on. If they got rid of one pastor, what makes you think they wouldn’t do the same to you?
My dear friend, all that I have said may seem to be harsh (and extremely longJ), but, it is not intended to be harsh. All that I have said is with a heart of love for you and I want the very best for you in your spiritual life and in your ministry. I wish someone had told me all of this twenty years ago when I first was called into the ministry. It would have saved me from a lot of heartaches and disappointments along the way in many areas of my life.
You know what to do: now, go do it!