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Five Strategies for Being a More Approachable Pastor on Sunday Mornings

By
Sam Rainer
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Some pastors are naturally an approachable pastor. They have a certain charisma that draws people. Other pastors draw in people like an open casket viewing. People approach but with nervous hesitation. Most of us are somewhere in between these two extremes.

Your approachability as a pastor is not limited to Sunday mornings, but it’s a key time when people will develop perceptions about you. I’ve heard one comment over and over from people who meet me for the first time after I preach: “You’re way taller than I expected!” I don’t know what it is about the stage or pulpit, but apparently people don’t pick up on my six-foot-two-and-three-quarters-frame. (The three-quarters is important because that makes me the same height as my little brother.)

There are several theories about how follower perceptions—whether correct or not—affect the realities in which leaders operate. The cliché is true. Perception is reality. Good pastors know this. They understand preaching alone, doctrine alone, vision alone is not enough. Some of the most naïve advice out there is “Just preach the Word.” It’s tantamount to telling a teacher “Just teach good lessons.” Some of the worst teachers are the ones who are only there to dump knowledge. There is a relational aspect to leading. People have to trust you, believe you and yes, like you. Obviously, not everyone will like you, but a segment of those you lead should!

Approachability is only one facet of leadership, but it’s an important part of being a pastor. Your weekend worship experiences are a concentrated time, meaning you have the most people on campus for a short duration. It’s your chance to interact with your congregation and for others to see you interacting. Not everyone will talk to you, but many will see you talking and assume you can be approached.

If you are a lead pastor, there will be many wrong perceptions about you. It’s impossible to stop. People will formulate ideas about who you are, often pulling from ideals and experiences—good or bad—with previous pastors. These perceptions will be corrected over time as you interact with people and as church members communicate with other church members about your true personality. I certainly haven’t mastered the art, but I make an intentional effort on Sundays. Here are some things to consider.

Take the initiative. The most approachable pastors approach others first. In fact, you’re not being approachable if you wait for others to come to you! Get to the service early and simply walk around and talk to people. Interact with your church between worship experiences if you have multiple services. Stay afterward and hang out with those who are talking in the room.

Sit and stand in different areas of the worship space during worship. Don’t get into a rhythm of sitting in the same seat every week. If you have a balcony, then go up there and sing with everyone. Take a seat in the back row. Sit with different people. I try to move around in this way at least once a month.

“Help” the first impressions team. The greeters don’t need your help, but it’s a great place to meet a lot of people as they come into worship. Shake hands. Smile. Hand out worship guides. Help someone find a seat.

Have an extended conversation with an early arrival. Most people who are seated in a worship service early are guests. Spend five or 10 minutes getting to know them. Ask for their contact information and follow up with them. Most guests will appreciate the personal interaction with a pastor.

Invite people to talk after the invitation. We have a time at the end of our services where we invite people to respond. This response time has many different forms. We often pray together. We often call people to action. Though I don’t say it every week, I will let people know during the invitation that they are invited to talk with me or another pastor after the service. While people respond during the invitation time, far more respond afterward.

Your persona on Sunday morning is not the whole of who you are, but it’s often the main way in which church members form perceptions about you. Use the time strategically to become a more approachable pastor.

This article originally appeared here.

Conversations With Someone Not Ready to Change: Rolling With Resistance

By
Brad Hambrick
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Near the top of the list of FAQ’s I get asked as a counselor is, “How do you help someone who needs to change, but is not open to change?” This is truly one of the great questions of counseling. On the list of possible answers is:

  • You don’t. Invest your energy in people who do want to change. Life is too short to waste time.
  • You can only pray because softening a hard heart is the work of the Holy Spirit.
  • You speak the truth more forcefully (yet in love) because it’s what they need to hear. Nothing else will help.
  • You wait. Jesus was patient with your resistance, so you show Christ-like patience with them.
  • You practice church discipline because true Christians are open to needed change.
  • You shift from focusing on the life struggle to the gospel, because they must not be a Christian.

Reading this list, two things strike me: (a) each of these seems like a reasonable, even biblical, response at times, and (b) each of these seems to contradict one another. I think we resolve the tension between A and B by realizing each of these, when appropriate, are talking about different stages in the change process.

So if I can narrow our question a bit, this article is attempting to answer, “What is an effective strategy for early or initial conversations with someone who needs to change but is resistant to change?”

As you consider this question, it may be helpful to think about the type of struggle that is in view. Examples would be:

  • someone who struggles with addiction but doesn’t want to stop drinking,
  • someone who expresses violent anger but says “everyone gets upset from time to time,” or
  • someone who is becoming dangerously thin but won’t acknowledge an eating disorder.

Early in my counseling experience, I found working with individuals in these situations very difficult. I didn’t know how to effectively engage with someone who didn’t want help, or worse, was offended at the notion that help was needed. What was my role? What was my initial goal? What strategy gave the best opportunity for success? These kinds of cases are still difficult, but I believe there is a preferred approach to each of these questions.

  • Role: To serve as a mirror to help the individual see their situation and self more accurately.
  • Goal: To raise their level of motivation and commitment to change as a means of navigating ambivalence.
    • Ambivalence is the feeling of two contradictory emotions about the same thing. In this case, feeling upset that life isn’t going well and wanting key behaviors causing the disruption to remain the same. This 30-second clip for the movie The Secret Life of Pets is a humorous example of ambivalence towards dieting.
  • Strategy: Roll with resistance (the topic of this blog post)

This strategy, “Rolling with Resistance,” is one method developed by the Motivational Interviewing approach to working with addicts. The premise is that if you are working with a counselee (or have a friend) who lacks the motivation to change, then the initial goal (i.e., the first step toward the ultimate goal) should be on raising the level of motivation rather than fixing the problem. Going directly after the problem with someone who doesn’t want to change only creates more resistance.

At one level, that is profoundly simple and common sense. Honestly, that is what I appreciate about the approach. Reading the material you think “that makes sense” and “I could do that.” What is profound is that it shifts the focus. Our instincts cause us to want to argue a loved one out of drinking, being abusive or starving themselves. Here is the basic progression:

  1. We see our friend/loved one/counselees hurting or hurting others.
  2. This pains us. We want better for them.
  3. We start to want change for them more than they want it for themselves.
  4. We try to control or coerce what we can’t control in an attempt to create relief from the pain we feel.
  5. Our friend begins to resist us forcing change on them that they don’t want.

Rolling with resistance is an approach that disrupts this cycle between Point #3 and Point #4. It throws up a warning flag when the dynamic in Point #3 emerges and calls for a different strategy at Point #4.

For clarity, rolling with resistance doesn’t guarantee change. It is just a more effective way to engage with resistance that acknowledges the limits of the helper (i.e., counselor, pastor, friend, etc.) in an interaction with someone who doesn’t want to change. This means when you are talking with a friend, you may still need to:

Safety is always the first concern in any helping interaction. The most helpful strategies of engagement do not remove the responsibility or possibility that these steps will be needed. Rolling with resistance helps ensure that your approach to helping doesn’t become an unnecessary or unhelpful distraction from the help you are trying to offer.

If you want to learn more about rolling with resistance as an approach to engaging effectively with someone who is resistant to change, here is a four-page PDF describing rolling with resistance.

As I have sought to reconcile this approach with a biblical or pastoral counseling approach, which are appropriately more directive in nature, here are a few things that have been helpful:

  • Rolling with resistance is a pre-directive strategy. Rolling with resistance is a strategy used prior to teaching, giving advice or confrontation in order to give the person every opportunity to be receptive to a directive approach.
  • Rolling with resistance is designed to navigate ambivalence. It is a strategy to get around an obstacle to change. Other approaches are needed after resolving ambivalence.
  • Rolling with resistance helps the messenger not become a distraction from the message. Premature confrontation focuses the tension about change on the helper instead of the life struggle.
  • Rolling with resistance doesn’t mean being “soft” or endorsing immoral values. It does entail drawing out the contradictions in how the person is thinking and living from their split emotions (ambivalence). In that sense, it is helping the counselee argue with their emotions (i.e., “I want things to be better” and “I want things to be the same”) instead of with you.

In ministry, we frequently find ourselves in conversations with people who need to change, are experiencing the life consequences that call for change, but are resistant to change. I hope this article helps you navigate the early stages of these interactions more skillfully so that a larger number of them arrive at the ultimate goal we have for these conversations: repentance and reliance on Christ.

If this post was beneficial for you, then consider reading other blogs from my “Favorite Posts on Counseling Theory” post which address other facets of this subject.

This article originally appeared here.

How to Distinguish a Virtuous Leader

By
Vince Miller
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

While many can see the external connection between what you say and what you do, there is another level of integrity. It’s the integration between your motives and the things you say and do. Most will never know your motives unless you reveal them. Yet motivational integrity is integrity at the deepest level. This is a high calling and a great checkpoint for a leader. Great leaders conceal nothing and are readily willing to share their motives so that others can know the deepest level of their integrity. Purely motivated leaders make powerful leaders. Just consider this: Do you trust a leader whose motives are always in question?

They welcome accountability

A leader that finds accountability laborious or resists legitimate feedback might have a gap in their integrity. On the other hand, a person who leads with integrity invites accountability and feedback. They have a disposition for accountability to ensure they don’t lose ground with others, and even use accountability for their personal improvement.

They spend time with people of character

You are not only known by the people you keep company with, but they shape you. If you desire integrity in your work and personal life, then you must spend time with people of integrity so you can learn from them. Your company of friends and colleagues will either strengthen you or lead you to make compromises of character. Since character is more “caught than taught,” you must always invest your time with people of the highest character; they will always make you better.

They practice integrity when no one’s looking

What people see of your life is often like the tip of an iceberg. Much of life is hidden from the view of others, but the leader with integrity makes the same decisions in private that they do in public. That is because deep-level integrity requires consistency everywhere—especially under the surface. These unseen decisions are the tell-tale sign of a truly integrated life.

This article was adapted from 20 Lessons That Build a Leader: A Conversational Mentoring Guide

The Missionary Legacy of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot

By
IvanMesa
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Many of us are well acquainted with the story: Jim Elliot and Elisabeth Howard met as undergraduates at Wheaton College. After a stormy courtship, seeking to reconcile their love for each other and their desire to do missions work, they married. They sought, along with four other families, to evangelize the Auca (later Waorani) people, an indigenous tribe in Amazonian Ecuador. And then Jim and four missionary friends were speared to death. It’s a heroic account that for generations has spurred on the modern missions movement.

Jim and Elisabeth’s only daughter, Valerie Shepard Elliot, has had an unusual perspective in all of this. Soon after her mother’s death in 2015, Valerie stumbled on a collection of her mother’s letters to her father during their courtship. “Every letter has so many profound truths in them that they are unbelievable treasures,” she says. The result is Devotedly: The Personal Letters and Love Story of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot, where Valerie compiled never-before-published letters and private journals about the early years of her parents’ love story.

I corresponded with Valerie and asked about what surprised her most while combing through her parents’ letters, what their missionary legacy has been, how the Lord worked amid her mother’s various health challenges, and more.

Ivan: Many are familiar with your parents’ love story story through Passion and Purity and Shadow of the Almighty. What was most surprising about their story as you worked on this new project?

Valerie: My mother gave me my father’s letters many years before I got to read them (simply because of the number of children I still had at home needing my attention). So when I had the quiet time after the last one left to attend college, I was most amazed by his writing ability and poetic imagery, my mother’s brilliant logic and clarity, and the delightful sense of humor they both had. I also didn’t know how they struggled with not being sure of whether God wanted them to marry, and why and how long it took for my father to know when he had “the green light”!

In a video promotion for the book, you describe how after your mother’s death and preparing for her memorial service you told your husband, “I can’t carry this weight of the legacy.” How heavy is this legacy? And in what ways is it heavy?

I know that in order to honor Christ, my life must measure up with the gospel, but I also know my own inconsistencies and lack of serious perseverance. My gifts and my calling are different from my parents. My concern was how to keep the legacy alive using my own voice. As Eugene Peterson wrote in his book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, I knew my own tendency to be distracted by many other things could get in the way of obedience. But my husband helped me understand it’s not about me; it’s about who Christ is, and he carries the load.

What do you see as your parents’ missionary legacy?

The effect of my parents’ lives and my father’s death, especially, had a huge impact on missions from 1956 through the 1960s. My mother’s books Through Gates of Splendor (1957) and Shadow of the Almighty (1958), changed many people’s lives. She shared my father’s story of working with four other men as missionaries to the Auca Indian tribe, when they were brutally murdered by the very people they were trying to reach with the gospel.

Their story of sacrifice and devotion to God still strikes at the heart of one’s selfishness. That’s why, I believe, it has been and continues to be a powerful catalyst for calling Christian men and women to mission work.

Choosing to become a missionary is a decision to weigh carefully. Doing God’s work doesn’t mean that you’re promised complete safety or guaranteed you’ll see immediate results. But there is immense assurance that you’re following the Lord God Almighty whose plans are far greater than anything you could imagine.

Even though my father and his fellow missionaries’ lives were taken, their work among the Auca Indians was far from over. My mother (and other missionaries) picked up where they left off, living and working among her husband’s murderers. God used her obedience and faithfulness to ultimately reach and transform the tribe for Jesus Christ.

As your mother’s health declined over the last decade of her life due to dementia, how did you see the Lord at work in her life amid the various challenges?

I saw my mother quietly accept what had happened to her, though she couldn’t express it. Before she lost most of her speech, a phrase that she often spoke was “God knows the way through the wilderness.” She seemed peaceful and trusting, and she was delighted when people came to visit her to tell her of their prayers and their love.

She had been such a strong-minded and independent woman, but the dementia gave her an accepting and sometimes a resigned spirit, which just exemplified her trust in the sovereignty of the Lord.

What were some of the favorite stories your mom told you about your dad when you were growing up that helped you get to know him? What did they do for entertainment/rest/fun in the jungle? What lessons from their marriage helped shape your own marriage?

I can’t think of any specific stories, but her joy in their relationship definitely was an example to me of what a courtship and marriage should be. There weren’t many “fun options” for them in their “free time” because there was so much to do every day.

They did believe in resting and reading on Sundays, and if they had any free time, they would’ve gone swimming or taken a hike. They both loved being outdoors and I have the same desire. I think the example of having good conversations, laughter over hilarious situations (my parents were such excellent observers of people and of nature), and enjoyment of one another has grown in our own marriage, especially now that my husband is retired.

What piece of wisdom from your father’s journals has most deeply affected you in your Christian walk?

There are several wise quotes that challenge me and all boil down to the same thing: genuinely living for God’s glory, not my own. His maxim “Determination, not desire, determines destiny” has helped me in these last two years as I contemplate my own “wants” as opposed to my determination to apply the disciplines I know God wants of me. My subconscious phrase I’ve lived by has most often been “plenty of time” (to do what I want!) because I tend to have unrealistic expectations of what can be done in one day.

I also love the prayer that my father wrote in his journal: “I have covenanted with the Father, that He would either glorify Himself to the utmost in me, or slay me.” I want to live as he did—all out for God’s glory—and be just as eager for death, so that God may be seen in either. This quote spurs me on to prayer that I will simply be God’s child, being obedient, radiating his glory, and not looking for praise from people.

As my father wrote, “Lord, make my way prosperous not that I achieve high station, but that my life be an exhibit to the value of knowing God.”

This article originally appeared here.

10 Questions to Refocus Your Life

By
Brian Jones
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

Hey friends, here are 10 questions I use to refocus my life each month during my monthly prayer and planning retreats in the mountains. Find out how to refocus your life here.

Yesterday I hiked the Kittatinny mountains and thought I’d share what I did and the questions I asked myself in case you wanted to go on a prayer and planning retreat too. Here goes…

  • I hiked the Appalachian Trail through a place called “Knife’s Edge” to a rock outcropping called “Bake Oven Knob” which looks down on the valley below.
  • From that beautiful vantage point, I pulled out a set of questions I’ve been using to evaluate my life and ministry for the past 25 years. They were written by a gifted leadership coach named Bob Biehl.
  • I closed my eyes and took a series of deep breaths for a couple of minutes to still my heart and focus my mind.
  • Then, with the questions in front of me and the valley before me, I asked God to help me completely re-evaluate everything I’m doing.
  • One by one I answered each question, slowly. The process usually takes two hours and I end up filling the entire sheet with notes, front and back.

When I pack up, I always leave with a list of to-do items, numbered in order of priority, to implement as soon as I get back. These are things I know God is asking me to do, stop or delegate. I leave knowing that I heard from God as best as I could.

Scripture tells us that when Jesus needed to make an important decision, he went away by himself to the mountains to pray (Mt 14:23). I have discovered over the years why he did that. I do not exaggerate when I say that this is the single most important and rewarding day of the entire month because I always leave with two things: greater clarity and greater conviction.

If you’re wrestling with something right now, I’d really encourage you to put a day on the calendar, print off the questions, throw on your hiking boots, and head to the mountains.

10 Questions to Refocus Your Life

“A leader knows what to do next, knows why that’s important, and knows how to bring the appropriate resources to bear on the need at hand.” – Bob Biehl

  1. What is my single greatest strength? (What do I “do” the best?)
  2. What three decisions are causing me the greatest stress?
  3. What is overwhelming me?
  4. What impassable roadblock has me stuck?
  5. If I could only do three things before I die, what would I want to do?
  6. What should I resign from, or drop out of? “Efficiency is doing things right, effectiveness is doing the right things.” – Peter Drucker
  7. What can I postpone?
  8. What things on my “to do” list can someone else do at least 80 percent as well?
  9. What are the “elephants” in my schedule? “If you’re Noah, and your ark is about to sink, look for the elephants first.” – Pareto.
  10. What are the three things I could do in the next 90 days to make a 50 percent difference?

———————

Hey, while I have you, let me give you a quick update on a few things…

  • In January I hiked what is called “The Jesus Trail”—the route Jesus would have taken when he left his hometown of Nazareth to begin his ministry on the north side of Galilee in Capernaum. I had a stress fracture in my left foot and wore a boot during November and December, so I wasn’t sure I’d be able to go, but thankfully I recovered in time. The views were simply breathtaking. I highly recommend it. I’m taking another group of leaders on a trip in February 2020.
  • I continue to receive encouraging feedback about how my latest book, Finding Favor: God’s Blessings Beyond Health, Wealth and Happiness, has opened people’s eyes to how God uses difficult circumstances to bless us. It’s now in its second printing. If you know of someone who needs encouragement or wants to discover rare insights into God’s word that few realize are in the Bible, please share the book with them. I created a resource bundle for pastors who would like to use it for a sermon series.
  • I’ve been jamming to this cover of the old spiritual “Ain’t No Grave” by Molly Skaggs and Bethel Music as high as I can possibly crank it. I didn’t think anyone could sing it better than Johnny Cash until I heard this.
  • Finally, now that Lisa has finished her doctorate (PhD Immaculata University) we’re exploring starting a new Bible study group together. Not sure what that will be or who that is for, but we feel a burden to create an environment to make more and better disciples, together. I appreciate your prayers in that regard. We still need clarity on that.

Friends I hope you’re doing well. I so appreciate you reading my scribblings. I use Instagram and Facebook and Twitter a lot, so would love to have you connect there. I love Instagram for photos.

This article originally appeared here.

Trip Lee: ‘Naming and Claiming’ Healing Is Not True Faith

By
Jessica Lea
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In his speech at The Gospel Coalition’s 2019 National Conference, rapper and author Trip Lee challenged the audience that healing is not something Christians “name and claim” from the Lord. Rather, it is something we request out of humility, recognizing the character of the one we are approaching. Lee’s message was even more powerful given the fact that he has suffered from a chronic illness for the past 12 years.

“The kind of faith that the Bible’s talking about is very different than what we do…where sometimes we will just come up with something and say, ‘I have faith that God is going to do that.” But “giving God an assignment and holding Him to it” is not true faith, says Trip Lee. Rather, “faith is believing that God is who He said He is and will do what He said he will do. And if we are clearer that that’s what faith is…then we will be clear what it means to try to persevere in that faith and hold on to that faith.”

Trip Lee: Learning from the Leper and the Centurion

The scripture passage that Lee chose as the basis for his talk was Matthew 8:1-13, which describes Jesus healing a leper, as well as the servant of a centurion. Lee emphasized the importance not only of approaching the right person with our brokenness but also of approaching Him in the right way. Both the leper and the centurion had confidence that Jesus had the power to help them, and they had deep humility in how they made their requests. The leper, for example, knelt before Jesus. Lee points out that when the leper said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean,” he used the phrase, “if you are willing.” This makes it clear that the leper is not demanding to be healed. The leper also says “you can.” He does not question Jesus’ ability, but His willingness.

“Real faith isn’t demanding,” says Trip Lee. “He doesn’t say, you’re Jesus, you gotta do this. He doesn’t say, you healed other people, now it’s my turn.” 

The centurion also exhibits great faith and humility when he asks Jesus to heal his servant. The centurion says to Him, “Lord, my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.” When Jesus offers to come to his home to heal the servant, the centurion says he is unworthy for Jesus even to come under his roof, but that he knows Jesus can heal the servant just by speaking. Again, Lee points out that the centurion has remarkable faith (which amazes even Jesus) and humility. This humility, says Lee, is similar to when Isaiah stands in the presence of God and says, “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips,” or when John the Baptist says he is not worthy to untie Jesus’ sandals. This, says Lee, is how we ought to approach God with our requests.

Tests of Faith

“To read passages like these, if I’m honest, can be difficult,” says Lee. He has chronic fatigue syndrome and says that dealing with that illness has been “the hardest part of every part of my life.” That past week, there were several times when he slept a full night and then had to spend another 10 hours in bed the next day. A passage like Matthew 8 makes it sound so easy for Jesus to heal people. So why not him? And why not the other people in our lives who are suffering and who haven’t been healed yet?

There are several truths Trip Lee believes we need to keep in mind. We need to be careful about how we apply passages like Matthew 8. That passage is not intended to teach us that God will heal us any time we ask Him to, if we only have enough faith. The idea that God will heal us if we have enough faith is false teaching. It’s also helpful to remember that Jesus’ miracles were a special evidence at the time of His kingdom and the credibility of His ministry.

Another important truth is that God does not allow anything in our lives to “slip by” Him unnoticed. He uses everything we experience for our good. This is hard to accept, but we also need to recognize that if we expect God to give us what we want (even if we have good requests) and lose faith if He doesn’t, we are turning God into a genii who answers our wishes on demand. Lee says, “Some of us are struggling with our faith in Jesus because He hasn’t done things that He never said He would do in the first place.” And even if we don’t struggle with our faith, we often “struggle with gratitude and contentment as long as we don’t understand that every single thing we have is a gift from Jesus.”

Finally, God’s “no” is not the end of His story, which promises ultimate healing and restoration. So while God could miraculously heal us now, if He chooses not to, the worst case scenario is that His answer is “not yet.” Even if He chooses not to heal us at this time, we need to persevere in our faith and feed it by dwelling on His word, which reminds us that God is good, holy, and faithful.

Lee closes by saying, “So for those of us who are struggling with what life looks like in this broken world…the good news for us is we’re no longer searching for the one who is willing and able. We know who it is. And if there’s something in our lives that He hasn’t made whole yet, we’re not looking for someone else to do it. We’re waiting for the day that He will.”

Gospel Wonder: How the Gospel Keeps Wonder Alive

By
Sam Luce
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

In all my years of kids ministry, I have always been so amazed at the wonder kids have. I have been equally amazed at how uncomfortable I can be and many adults can be with the idea of wonder itself. Here is the problem with wonder. You can’t explain it. You can’t reason with it. It is what it is.

I try my best to keep wonder alive in my kids. My 3-year-old loves the color pink. I ask her every time she says she loves pink and it’s her favorite color, “Baby, who made the color pink?” She says, “Daddy, God did.” I say, “That’s right He did because He loves you so much.”

I want my kids to grow up with no box to put Jesus in. We start off as kids thinking Jesus can do anything because he can. We then spend our entire life trying to fit Jesus into our carry-on luggage. Something we successfully do with every pat answer we are given and we give others. I love what C.S. Lewis says in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe: “He is not a safe lion but he’s good.” I can think of no quote that sums up how we must always view Christ to maintain that heart of wonder. A few years ago I began a journey that I believe has lead to the greatest tool in keeping wonder alive. In rediscovering the gospel, much of my striving turned to grace-filled wonder. I moved from trying to earn my father’s love to grace-filled gratitude for his love he demonstrated to me in Christ Jesus.

How does the gospel keep wonder alive?

1. The gospel address our sinfulness and His sufficiency. It makes no attempt to solve every mystery. The gospel is good news. It’s a declaration, not a doctrinal dissertation. Should we search things out? Yes. Does Theology matter. Absolutely. But if we think have an answer to every question of the human heart…we are mistaken. The surest way to kill wonder is to believe you have an answer to every question.

2. Bring everything back to Jesus. There are few things that I have found that have brought me to a place of wonder more than the meditation on scripture. When you start to think and speak of the greatness of the majesty of who Jesus is and the power of what He has done, you are overcome with wonder because the grace of God is truly wondrously amazing.

3. Wonder springs from the a place of passion. I believe law kills wonder because you are so worried about do what is right, about being good enough, about trying harder. When you really believe that there is a God who loved you enough to send his one and only son into the world because He thought you and I were worth saving. It creates wonder. It instills passion.

4. When you start to understand the power of the gospel you see the sovereignty of God at work. The more aware I am of the sovereign work of God in my life and in lives of others, I am filled with worship and wonder because I am constantly reminded He is God and I am not.

As we celebrate Easter let your mind drift to the wonder of His grace.

This article originally appeared here.

Leadership Advice: Develop Where You Are

By
Ron Edmondson
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

I’ve seen so many potentially great leaders waste opportunities because they were waiting for the perfect scenario before they began to develop as a leader.

A few scenarios:

They don’t enjoy where they are currently in life or work so they think there is nothing to be gained where they are now.

They aren’t in their dream job so they don’t look for the learning potentials in their present situation.

They don’t respect the leader they are supposed to follow so they close themselves off from learning anything—whether good or bad—from him or her.

They don’t plan to stay in their current work location for long, so they fail to use the time for personal growth opportunities.

They don’t enjoy the people with whom they work, so they burn bridges and miss building future relational connections.

They are waiting for the “right” opportunity, so they never give their best effort to their current opportunity—not realizing their “off-paper” resume (what others say about them) is often more important than what’s on paper.

What a mistake!

Here are a few things I’ve learned by experience:

There is no guarantee your next location will be any healthier.

There is no guarantee your next leader will be any stronger.

There is no guarantee your next will like it any more.

If you don’t work well with the people you are currently working with—what if the problem is more you than them?

You may end up being in a worse opportunity. The grass, which appears greener on the other side, often turns out not to be.

Here’s my advice:

Take advantage of where you are now.

Learn all you can now and from every opportunity.

Grow where you are now.

Give your best now.

Build relationships now.

Develop where you are today.

Build your character. Increase your relational skills. Grow in knowledge. Learn from every experience. And, for best results, keep a journal of what you are learning along the way.

It will make you better prepared when you reach a job you do love, in a place you do love, with a leader you want to follow.

And, most importantly, it’s the right thing to do.

If you don’t see yourself in your current position for at least five years, or even one year from now—that’s OK—give the next whatever time you have the best you’ve got. Bloom where you’re planted.

There are lessons, principles and wisdom to be gained in every situation. Never waste those opportunities. 

Help all of us. Describe a time when you developed as a leader in an environment you didn’t enjoy.

This article originally appeared here.

God Remembers the Barren and So Should the Church

By
Jennifer Hesse
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

I walked in the door to a foyer teeming with children. My husband and I entered the sanctuary and sat down in the back, where I began counting the number of pregnant women in the pews around us.

We had just moved to a new town and were trying out a church. My husband had to drag me there, because I didn’t want to go. I thought it would be painful to be surrounded by what I wanted desperately, but God had not yet given.

My assumptions proved correct. As I flipped through the bulletin, I saw listed several ministries the church offered various adults: singles, newly marrieds, families with kids, empty nesters. Nothing for childless, not-wedded-yesterday couples.

I was already feeling rejected by God. Now, I felt left out of His church.

The truth of His promise

Though I was impatient with His timing, God was patient with me during my years of infertility. Even before He brought us our two sons, He granted abundant grace and revealed more of His character to me in a personal way.

During and after this season, God grew my compassion for others facing these trials and my desire to search His Word for true comfort, discovering how God interacted with women in the Bible who struggled to bear children.

One of the most prominent examples is Hannah, who is so distraught over her childlessness that she pours out her soul to the Lord in the temple and is mistaken by the priest as a drunk. She leaves with “her face no longer downcast,” and once she returns home, God answers her cry.

“And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife, and the LORD remembered her.” (1 Samuel 1:19)

The word “remembered,” when used with God as the subject doing the “remembering,” appears elsewhere in Scripture when He delivers His people: Noah from the flood (Genesis 8:1), Abraham and Lot from Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:29), the Israelites from Egypt (Exodus 2:24), and the Israelites from the desert (Psalm 105:42).

In all these examples, God doesn’t forget His people as if they slipped His mind. That would be impossible—it would go against His omniscient character.

Instead, God “remembers” His children by bringing His promises to pass.

He saved Noah, like He said He would. He saved Abraham and the people of Israel, like He said He would.

He enabled women like Hannah to miraculously conceive because He made a covenant (promise) to provide a lineage that would eventually produce a miraculously conceived Savior.

The Bible doesn’t guarantee that every couple will bear children. But it does confirm a powerful promise that God is committed to redeem the sorrows in our lives through the death and resurrection of His Son.

Left out of the club

Even with this biblical comfort, couples that struggle with infertility can feel forgotten and isolated—especially in environments like church that emphasize families and childrearing.

As the leader of an infertility support ministry, I’ve heard from women describing upsetting circumstances when someone at church made a comment implying that their infertility was caused by sin. This assumption adds to the shame those dealing with infertility already face, making them feel excluded from fellowship in the body of Christ.

One woman in an online support group describes her loneliness:

“I find church the hardest place to be at the moment. The lack of understanding has floored me. I can’t bear more hurt by other believers.”

In my experience, it seems most insensitive comments about infertility stem from ignorance about the subject. It’s hard to understand what you haven’t personally suffered.

As with other rarely discussed health issues, many people aren’t aware of the ramifications of infertility.

They don’t know that it’s a disease affecting one in eight couples. They haven’t felt the embarrassment of being the only couple in church without kids to send to Sunday school. They aren’t experiencing the month-to-month roller coaster of emotional and sometimes physical pain, only to be told by someone in Bible study the well-meaning but hurtful advice: “You just need to trust God and relax.”

Instead of perpetuating unwitting insensitivity, the church can seek better understanding about infertility to build one another up in unity of faith.

Bearing one another’s burdens

Armed with greater knowledge and empathy, those of us who lead or even just attend church can, by God’s grace, help carry the burdens of those who are suffering this type of disappointment. Working together, we can create an environment of compassion, rather than exclusion from the baby club.

Teaching

We know from Scripture that children are a blessing (Psalm 127:3-5), and are familiar with the command to “be fruitful and multiply,” though some miss the Old Covenant context within which God delivered this mandate and construe it as an assurance of reproductive ability. But how many churches have spent time expounding upon the many accounts of delayed fertility recorded in the Bible?

In miraculous displays backing up His declaration in Genesis 18:14, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” God enables seven women whom the Bible describes as “barren” to conceive for His divine purposes: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Samson’s mother, Hannah, the Shunammite woman in 2 Kings and Elizabeth.

If you’re a pastor or other ministry leader, you can preach sermons and offer Bible studies examining these stories, not as a prescription for fertility success, but rather to demonstrate God’s attentiveness to His children who are longing for a blessing, corresponding to the gospel truth of our longing for a Savior.

Recognition

Mother’s Day is difficult to endure for women experiencing infertility and miscarriage. Having to stay seated while most every other woman in the congregation stands for applause or receives a rose shoots like a dagger to the heart of a woman who desires but hasn’t yet been given children.

While it’s appropriate for pastors and churches to honor moms on that Sunday, you can also acknowledge the sorrow this day stirs for those who’ve lost a baby or haven’t been able to conceive. Rather than making an ostentatious display showing the haves and have-nots, make it a point from the pulpit to commend all women who do important work “mothering” others in practical and spiritual ways and affirm the value of every believing woman as a daughter of Christ.

Apart from Mother’s Day, consider planning an annual service honoring the losses associated with miscarriage and infertility, such as the Service of Memorial and Lament priest and author Tish Warren offered at her church this January. Similarly, just as churches hold infant dedications or baptism services, provide prayer times for couples waiting for children, petitioning the Lord for healing, peace and wisdom on behalf of those undergoing medical tests and treatments or who are pursuing adoption.

Focus adjustment

Churches have traditionally emphasized marriage and motherhood as worthy aspirations, and for good reasons. Yet somewhere along the way, the role of mother got propped up as the ultimate calling for all women, to the point that some women’s ministries are structured solely around mom life activities and events.

Though well-intended, this emphasis can become so overblown that it devalues women who don’t have the label of “mother,” and dismisses the vital role all women play in the church.

To better serve and utilize the giftings of women, those who are in church leadership can broaden its focus on the Kingdom callings of women to include motherhood AND other areas of service, such as administration, outreach, teaching, organization, communication and many other facets that are all needed to keep a church alive and thriving as one body growing up in Christ (Ephesians 4:15-16).

Support

Infertility is a life crisis that entails a grieving process. To help people in the congregation as well as reach out to your community, you can host and/or help individuals start support groups, providing safe places for people to share their struggles and comfort one another with the comfort God supplies (2 Corinthians 1:4). If you offer a resource library, keep on hand books specifically written for those facing infertility, infant loss and childlessness. Thanks to increasing awareness, we have more faith-based resources addressing these issues at our disposal today than we did 10 years ago, and we need more still.

God “remembers” couples experiencing infertility by keeping His promise to work for the good of all His children. Everyone in the church, from pastor to parishioner, can love those who are suffering in our midst by encouraging those who are aching for a child and pointing to Christ as our ultimate hope for a fulfilling life.

This article originally appeared here.

How One Software Developer Is Helping Thai Evangelism

By
Stephanie Martin
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

Statistics about Christian converts and church plants in Southeast Asia have been tough to come by. But with 21st-century technology, missionaries are now maintaining databases to map the Gospel’s spread.

In Thailand, which is 94 percent Buddhist, the Rev. Dwight Martin developed a database called Harvest to pinpoint unreached areas. Martin, who grew up in Thailand with missionary parents, has an MBA in technology management and worked in the software industry for 30 years.

In 2006, he and his wife, Mary Kay, moved to Thailand, initially to provide Christian materials in digital form. Soon Thai church leaders asked him to track statistics, which led to the world’s “most robust and ongoing” national Christian database, according to Todd Johnson, director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity.

ThaiChurches.org provides maps and a directory, with search options to narrow down provinces and languages. An app Martin developed lets church leaders add a human element by noting each new convert’s age, gender, photo and more.

Map Reveals Potential for Evangelism

Although Protestant missionaries had worked in Thailand for almost two centuries, only five percent of villages had a church. Martin’s detailed maps seemed bleak at first, but members of the Free in Jesus Christ Church Association (FJCCA) saw great potential. They began setting and exceeding evangelism goals. In less than two months, local teams launched 74 house churches and saw 782 Thai people come to faith. During one service in January, 520 new believers were baptized.

FJCCA, now the fastest-growing church movement in Thailand’s history, lets the Holy Spirit work through local people to reach their neighbors. “Thailand will be reached by the Thai,” says Martin. That changing mindset has spread throughout global missionary work, with Westerners empowering indigenous people to spread God’s Word

Affiliated with the Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand, FJCCA was founded by Somsak Rinnasak, a mechanic with no formal pastoral training. In 1984, he started a Christian church because the closest one was 80 miles from his house. As that congregation grew and split, Rinnasak began FJCCA, which experienced tremendous growth in 2016. Thailand’s longtime king had died, so FJCCA canceled a large Christmas celebration and replaced it with smaller events in 17 villages, leading to faith commitments by 700 people. Since 2016, the association has added 400 house churches.

Shepherds Count Sheep, Know Their Names

Martin, curious about FJCCA’s strategy, asked leaders how they learned to birth churches exponentially. Confused at first, one finally answered, “We just read what Jesus and Paul did in the Gospels and Acts and do the same thing.”

Martin’s mapping receives support from the U.S.-based ministry Reach A Village, founded by Bob Craft. The two men point to the New Testament’s example of listing specific place names and crowd numbers. Even though St. Paul traveled extensively, they note, he took time to greet individuals by name in letters. “Shepherds count their sheep, and they know them by name,” Craft says.

“Martin came at our time of need,” says a former Thai church leader. “It’s helped us to progress in doing evangelism and church planting.”

Statistics aren’t the end goal of outreach, of course. But through technology, missions workers can see evidence of how smaller-scale local evangelism changes lives.

New Report: ‘Fortnite’ Is Harmful to Kids and Their Families

By
Jessica Lea
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impact fortnite
Screengrab Youtube @PlayStation

The Boston Globe has come out with a new report that healthcare professionals are increasingly seeing harmful effects on children as a result of them playing the popular video game Fortnite. According to the Globe, Fortnite is contributing to a rise in obsessive behavior in kids, behavior that is hurting their health and their personal lives.

“They are not sleeping. They are not going to school. They are dropping out of social activities. A lot of kids have stopped playing sports so they can do this,” says pediatrician Michael Rich, who is also the director for the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Rich says he met one boy who was so determined to play Fortnite that he smashed the family car’s windshield in order to get to his device, which he thought was locked in the car. There are kids who are losing weight as a result of going for hours without eating because they are unwilling to stop playing the game. The doctors who see them at first think the children have a disease until they find out that the kids have been skipping meals because they’ve been so focused on playing Fortnite. The tension this behavior puts on families is such that therapists are reporting seeing marriages break down because of arguments over how out of control a child’s gaming has gotten. One therapist told the Globe, “One of the parents will get to the point of almost considering a divorce. It’s similar to working with parents who have a child addicted to drugs.”

And it’s not just children who are letting the video game consume them. A study found that 200 couples in the United Kingdom who got divorced between January to September of 2018 mentioned Fortnite and other online games as one of the reasons why the relationship failed. Prince Harry even recently criticized Fortnite, saying, “That game shouldn’t be allowed,” and asking, “Where is the benefit of having it in your household? It’s created to addict, an addiction to keep you in front of a computer for as long as possible… It’s like waiting for the damage to be done.” The Globe has also reported that obsessing over Fortnite has impacted the level of commitment some professional athletes have toward their sports.

What Is Fortnite and Why Is It So Compelling?

There are two versions of Fortnite, but the one that is so popular is Fortnite: Battle Royale. The “battle royale” genre of gaming is one where multiple players try to kill each other until one is left standing as the winner. Fortnite is also a “sandbox” game, meaning that rather than having a linear storyline, players enter an open world and roam around it. One of the elements that sets Fortnite apart is players’ ability to build walls, ramps and forts in order to access different parts of the world or to gain an advantage over the players they are competing against. The Globe observes that some have described Fortnite as a cross between The Hunger Games and Minecraft.

Arguably two of the most compelling aspects of Fornite, however, are its imaginative storytelling and the fact that it is communal. The Fortnite world is aesthetically pleasing, cartoonish and always changing, giving the game’s producers a lot of freedom to be creative. The creators keep players anticipating what will happen next in the Fortnite world, as they did last year when they put a comet in the sky and kept everyone wondering for weeks what was going to happen when it hit. When it finally did, it transformed part of the world called Dusty Depot into Dusty Divot. Part of what makes that so exciting, as this author points out, is that it was something you had to be there for. If you missed it, you missed it. More recently, there are new excavation sites showing up throughout the Fortnite map, including one at Dusty Divot, and people are speculating about what they will find as they dig. So the game is about more than competing and winning. It’s also about exploring and solving mysteries, and beyond that, doing so in community with other gamers. When people play Fortnite, they compete with people all over the world. And while players can go solo, they can also join their friends on a team and compete against other teams.

There is more to know about Fortnite and why it’s so popular (not least of which are the live streaming platform, Twitch, and online gamer, Ninja). For more information about the game, as well as some practical suggestions, we recommend Axis’s “A Parent’s Guide to Fortnite.”

Remember, There Are Deeper Issues

While it’s easy to demonize video games, it’s important to remember that a game like Fortnite is powerful because it appeals to good desires God created in us, such as our longings for community and for our lives to have purpose. It’s also helpful to keep in mind one point that Michael Rich makes, which is that any compulsive behavior is a symptom of a deeper problem. Rich says that his clinic is approaching obsessive Fortnite playing, “not as a diagnosis, but as a syndrome, a group of symptoms of diagnoses ranging from ADHD to anxiety, depression or mood disorders that manifest themselves in the interactive media environment.”

With this in mind, Fortnite can be an opportunity for parents to evaluate the deeper issues their children are dealing with and to point them toward the richer, more meaningful purpose God has for their lives.

An Easter story – she did what she could

By
Linda Jacobs
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

This Easter story has a little different slant than most posts you’ll read about Easter. This Easter story is written to capture the heart of anyone ministering to children of divorce, of single parents, or in blended families.

A few years ago, right before Easter, my church minister Dr. Brad Reynolds preached on Mark 14. I had heard this chapter preached on many times before. You probably also remember it:

“While He was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on His head.” (Mark 14:3)

I was taking notes and listening when my eyes jumped ahead and fell on one particular verse. The words seemed to jump out at me. Verse eight says, “She did what she could.” I re-read that: “She did what she could” (Mark 14:8).

Very simple, easy to understand, and it said to me that all of us can only do what we can. This lady had broken her bottle and poured the contents over Jesus. She was preparing Him for burial. What an important role, but it all seemed so insignificant to the bystanders.

“Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, ‘Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages, and the money given to the poor.’ And they rebuked her harshly.” (Mark 14:4–5)

But, oh my, what power there was in this act of pouring the perfume over Jesus! He knew how powerful the woman’s act was. She was preparing Him for His future. Jesus even told the others to leave her alone.

“‘Leave her alone,’ Jesus said. ‘Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to Me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have Me. She did what she could.’” (Mark 14:6–8a)

Isn’t that a lot like those of us who work with the children of divorce? What we do might seem so insignificant to others, but we are preparing these children for their future. We do what we can!

If you struggle with children of divorce attending your church on a regular basis, just do what you can. Love them when they are there. Send them a card, or a give them a call when they miss a week.

Maybe they aren’t at the church Easter egg hunt. Put a few eggs aside for them, so when they do return, you can pull out those eggs and take a moment to recall the Scriptures about Easter. Many children will save those beautiful eggs, and they will become treasures reminding the children of a loving church leader.

Most importantly, let these children know that there is a God who will never forsake them or leave them. This God sent His son to die on a cross for their sins. You’d be amazed at the number of children of divorce who don’t hear this at home.

“She did what she could.” Let that sink in for a minute. Just imagine Jesus saying, “Leave them alone. They are doing what they can to further My kingdom.” One third of all children in the United States are being raised in single-parent homes, and if we don’t love them and work with them, we will not be furthering the kingdom through those children and their future children.

Jump ahead 5 or 10 years. A former whirlwind kid who’s now a young man happens upon you at the mall. He’s with his mom and says, “She [you, his church worker who cared enough to save a few Easter eggs] has done a beautiful thing to me” (Mark 14:6).

When you minister to the child of divorce, you are impacting the kingdom in ways that you will never realize. Jesus realizes it, though.

She did what she could—can we do any less?

This article originally appeared here.

Creating a Parent & KidMin Connection

By
Corey Ray Jones
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

6 Ways you benefit when parents serve in their children’s kidmin

So you’re struggling to find enough volunteers for your kids ministry (it’s OK—you’re not alone!). You’ve created job descriptions and added titles to the flowchart. Now you’ve begun asking anyone standing around in the church lobby who doesn’t look busy if they’d like to volunteer. But you’re still coming up short. Let me ask you this: Have you ever considered a strong recruitment push toward the parents of kids in your ministry? 

No, I’m not talking about making another Sunday morning announcement, writing a newsletter article or adding a post to social media. I’m talking about actually sitting down face to face with parents and talking with them about the mutual benefit of serving in the very place where their kids learn.

There are great advantages for both the church and the family when parents serve in kids ministry. Unfortunately, they are hidden benefits, so doing our part to communicate them is vital to getting the word out. But when you do, you’ll find that your church will be healthier when parents serve alongside their kids.

Here are six great reasons that having parents serve in your kidmin is an advantage for you—and them:

1. DIRECT ACCESS TO YOUR CHILD’S PASTOR

Most children’s pastors are busy. Each week they act as teacher, event planner, financier, stage designer and counselor, so it might be difficult for the average parent to simply sit down and hear the heart of their child’s pastor. When serving on the children’s pastor’s team, parents become part of his flock and the pastor will begin more intentionally to shepherd them directly. For example, instead of a dad awkwardly trying to find a way to let the children’s pastor know about his son’s surgery, he could—as a parent serving on the children’s pastors team—simply mention the prayer request in a preservice huddle.

2. INCREASED FAMILY TIME

With the growing pressure for kids to excel in school, the popularity of traveling sports teams and ever-changing family dynamics, it’s an understatement to say that families today are busy. In most churches, when a family arrives at church they immediately split up to attend church in their separate environments. But when a parent is serving in the kids ministry, the parent gets more time with his or her child. Parents who serve in their kids’ ministry are building memories that most other families will never get to experience.

What’s more, no longer will a kidmin event or outing pull the family apart. Because the parent servers as a volunteer who attends the outing, kidmin gatherings become a family event. That means the kids ministry in hour church actually can be a catalyst to bring families together.

3. OVERFLOW OF SUNDAY’S LESSON INTO WEEKDAY LIFE

When parents pick up their children after church, they usually ask them if they had fun and if they learned something. Unfortunately, the lesson often ends there. It’s not that parents don’t care about their children’s experience. But the conversation goes no further because of the parents’ lack of familiarity with the kidmin and the fact that most of them don’t personally experience the lesson.

This all changes when parents begin preparing for the lesson at the beginning of the week, when they laugh out loud during the skit, when they see firsthand the illustration the teacher presents, when they teach the lesson for themselves. During the week, parents will begin asking their kids if they are applying the Bible lesson they learned at church. This simple engagement leads to a learning opportunity by pointing them back to something they both experienced on Sunday morning.

4. IMPROVED MINISTRY EFFECTIVENESS ]

Instead of creating a parent panel for feedback, simply recruit parents who can give you insight about your ministry’s effectiveness. Ask parents how the lessons are connecting with their kids and which illustrations are making the gospel presentation come to life. Ask the parents who are serving in your ministry to give you feedback on the first-time visitor process—and then empower them to improve the experience. The more diverse a group of parents you have, the more varied their backgrounds and experiences, and the more collective wisdom you’ll have to draw from.

5. CHILDREN CONNECTED TO SPIRITUAL MENTORS

When parents are part of a team of kidmin workers, they get to know the other small-group leaders. This allows them to strategically pursue ones who can help them speak truth into their children. Through consistently serving, parents will see that their kids are developing strong Christ-centered relationships that benefit the family.

It’s weird, but often parents can tell their child a hundred times to do something, without it sticking, but when another adult suggests they do something, it sticks the first time. Through relationships made with other leaders on their team, parents can comfortably find a mentor they trust to speak truth into their child.

6. THROUGH-THE-ROOF BUY-IN

Most people never become a raving fan or even an advocate for an organization until it makes a difference in their lives. Sure, the children’s ministry in your church is impacting the kids, but many parents don’t realize the difference it truly makes until they see it firsthand. And when they see it, their buy-in goes through the roof.

They begin recruiting other parents to serve just because they are talking about it in their small groups. Serving parents are in-the-know, and they naturally begin to ask other parents if their kids will be attending events. Some parents might even begin contributing financially to the mission of the church because of the impact your kidmin has had on their family.

Overall, your families and your church will be healthier when parents serve in their kids’ ministry. It might be your responsibility to communicate the benefits. But when you do, God will open the door to these conversations and create a parent-kidmin connection. So take some time today to craft a compelling vision that will reveal the hidden benefits of parents serving in your kidmin.

This article originally appeared here.

Buildings and Other Things Leaders Shape

By
Eric Geiger
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

The great (and true) quote that “we shape our buildings and our buildings shape us” is credited to Winston Churchill. Other less insightful quotes are credited to him on the Internet as well, but this quote is really good because it is so true. As I shared in this post, leaders form their organizations by forming the values, mission, strategy, measures and leadership development approaches of those organizations. Today I want to offer five more things leaders can shape that in turn shape the organizations they lead. Here is part two of 10 things leaders shape that in turn shape the organizations they lead.

  1. Values
  2. Mission
  3. Strategy
  4. Measures
  5. Leadership development

6. Buildings

Kenton Beshore, my predecessor and genius friend, walked me to the center of Mariners church campus one day, a spot right outside our worship center. He said, “Tell me what you see and don’t see.” After I stood there unsure of what to say for a few seconds, he said, “You can see every entrance to every building but you cannot see a car in the parking lot. The facility was designed to keep you here. When you leave a worship service you do not see your car or a parking lot. We wanted that so that it would help you stay and connect with others.” The facility choices at Mariners have formed the culture I enjoy, as people really do stay and connect with one another.

7. Moments

There are moments in a ministry or organization that form the culture. Moments where there is clarity of belief or direction. Moments where memories are made. Moments where people are invited to internalize and commit to what is most important. Moments of honest dialogue with leaders. Wise leaders steward these moments well and don’t rush through them.

8. Structures

How an organization or ministry is structured is no small matter. The structure declares who will collaborate together and who will just politely nod at one another in the hallway. The structure impacts who is ultimately accountable, how communication occurs, and what priorities receive the most attention. Leaders shape the organizational structure and the organizational structure shapes them.

9. Systems

Andy Stanley once said, “Systems create culture.” A system has a powerful impact on shaping the culture because it operationalizes an important value. For example, if there is an effective system for recruiting and training leaders, the system helps create a culture of leadership development. We cultivate the cultures of our organization by the systems we create and communicate.

10. Policies

Because policies impact behavior, they impact how people in an organization relate to one another. By policies I do not mean the “rules” in writing that no one takes seriously or have not been updated in years, but the standards that really matter (by the way, these should be the actual policies too). Leaders have the ability to set and shape these standards as they definitely shape the culture. Sometimes the policies conflict with the vision of the team, and when this occurs the policy must be changed as quickly as possible. A common example I noticed when I consulted churches was a church leader who would articulate a desire to develop future staff and hire from within the church, yet a policy that stated all staff must have a specific degree. The vision and the policy were at odds and the policy actually impacted the behavior, in most cases, more than the vision did.

We shape our buildings, moments, structures, systems and policies, and they in turn shape us. So shape wisely, leaders, shape wisely.

This article originally appeared here.

Three Ways We Hide From God (and Others)

By
Josh Weidmann
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

Let’s have a show of hands—who has had a “naked-in-public” dream? Come on, admit it. I bet just about everyone has, including me.

You know the one: You show up for a big presentation at work or school, or you’re riding a bicycle through rush hour or working the first day of a new job, and you suddenly realize everyone is looking at you strangely. Some of them laugh and point; others turn away in shocked indignation. Puzzled, you look at yourself and discover—Horror!—you forgot to put on clothes that morning. All day long you’ve been cruising around stark naked. In your birthday suit. Au naturel. In the buff. Exposed!

For me, this kind of dream usually shows up when I am under unusual stress:

Overworked…

Overwhelmed…

Over my head with some task or project…

Or, feeling guilty over something I don’t want other people—or God—to see.

It’s my subconscious mind’s way of tapping me on the shoulder to say, “Hey, Buddy, you’re not nearly as together as you pretend to be.” The dream details will differ, but if you are like me it always ends the same way: You run. You hide. You grab anything you can to cover your nakedness. You wake up in a panic, desperate to get away from all those accusing eyes. What a relief to find out it was only a dream!

Or was it?

The truth is, most of us go our whole lives feeling “exposed,” even when we are awake. It is an inescapable dimension of human nature. Deep down we know we don’t measure up, and we live with the constant, nagging fear that we’ll be found out at any moment. We feel naked on the inside and there is nothing to be done about it, no matter how fast we run or how cleverly we hide. It doesn’t matter who you are: rich or poor, pretty or plain. Sure, there’s the occasionally day when things go our way and we feel like the king or queen of the world…until the next time we look in the mirror or slow down long enough to be alone with our thoughts. Then we hear that familiar voice accusing, “Who are you kidding? Everyone is laughing at you—want to know why? Because you’re naked—totally exposed with nowhere to hide!”

Doesn’t this sound a bit familiar?

Of course, this common human condition isn’t a recent development. It is not simply the result of the pent-up stress of modern living. No, the story of humanity began, literally days after creation, with the mother of all “naked-in-public” nightmares. Just ask Adam and Eve. Here’s their story…

Trouble in Paradise

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and it wasn’t just good—it was awesome! Mountains and verdant valleys; rivers, lakes and oceans; a playful and wondrous variety of plants, animals and fishes; the sun, the moon and stars in the sky. It was a perfect paradise, a lush and fertile garden called Eden. And on the sixth day of His work, God created something really special—people, made in His own image, and after His own heart…a man and a woman who would inherit all this newly created splendor and live there in perfect, unhindered communion with the earth, with each other, and—most importantly—with God.

And it worked! For who knows how long Adam and Eve frolicked freely in paradise with God Himself. Like a dad and kids rolling in the grass together, spotting shapes in the clouds, telling stories and laughing—they were utterly absorbed in each others’ company. In those days Adam and Eve were every bit as holy as the Creator Himself—what could be better than that? Oh, and there is one minor detail I left out: Adam and Eve were naked. As a pair of jaybirds.

But here’s the cool part: They were so free, so accepted, so innocent, they didn’t know they were naked. They didn’t even know what naked was. Why should they? What was there to hide, and from whom? God created them as they were, perfect and complete in His eyes, so that’s how they saw themselves as well. It is like when my wife allows our toddler to run loose in the backyard to play on a summer day—no diaper, no clothes and absolutely no awareness he is naked. What difference does it make, when there are butterflies to chase, sprinklers to run through, and popsicles to eat? What a life!

Of course, it would be nice if the story had ended there: “And humanity lived happily ever after.” But we all know the next chapter in the saga. Inevitably, Adam and Eve blew it. Like most toddlers, they had a small issue with boundaries. Well, boundary, really, because God placed only one restriction on them. They could eat anything they wanted in the whole garden—anything at all—except for the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He warned them that, if they did this, they’d surely die.

Eventually, along came the serpent—Satan—who had his own lurid history of rebellion against God. He said, “Really? You buy all of that? Here’s what I think—God doesn’t want you to eat that fruit because he knows that, when you do, you’ll be just like him. Surely you won’t die. Just take a bite.” Who knows how many times the serpent had already come around to pitch this con to Adam and Eve? A hundred? A thousand? Maybe this was the very first. In any case, on that day something in his argument appealed to Eve. She was convinced, and she took the fruit and ate it. Adam was right there and didn’t mind helping himself as well.

Bam! Pow! Sure enough, their bodies didn’t die; but something on the inside did. Oh, their bodies carried on the appearance of life for some time, but deep within, something was terribly wrong.  In retrospect, we know God hadn’t been talking about immediate literal death, but the end of innocence, the end of the holy life they had known. Suddenly—and here’s the part you’ll be able to identify with—they realized they were naked, and had been all along. Now, just as the tree’s name implied, they knew the difference between right and wrong—and saw that they had been wrong. They were exposed and vulnerable for the first time ever. Only moments ago they’d enjoyed perfect safety and freedom in God’s garden.

If our present-day dreams are any guide, what do you think they did next? You got it. They ran. They hid. They grabbed the first leaf handy and covered themselves to escape their shame. And we’ve been hiding ever since.

You see, eventually, we all blow it too. Why? Well, it actually has nothing to do with our actions or the poor intentions of our heart. Because of Adam and Eve’s decision to defy God, sin is now a part our very nature. “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).

All men. No exceptions.

That fact makes us feel as naked as Adam. We may not even know why we feel so exposed, but it doesn’t matter why. We just know we don’t measure up for some reason, so we run and hide—from ourselves, from each other, and—above all—from God. Adam and Eve retreated to the closest hiding place they could find. They sat under the cover of dense undergrowth and dirt of the garden, desperate to remain unseen. They made themselves small and quiet and hoped the all-seeing, all-knowing God who lovingly crafted them out of the dust wouldn’t see them cowering there in the dirt.

They hid from Love Himself. “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid,” Adam said to God. He grossly underestimated the presence of God by thinking he could hide. Even worse, he said he was afraid because he was naked—“That is why I hid myself.” I am sure this fear was not only of God’s impending judgment but also the terror of thinking he’d lost the intimate relationship he loved the most. Now he stood bare with nothing to his name except the shame on his face. He hid like a kid crouched behind the couch after eating the forbidden candy bar, with the evidence of chocolate smeared all over his face. I’ve been there; I’ve felt Adam’s fear. After the deed is done, I can’t help but quiver in my soul to think I just disappointed my Creator who I love to please.

Preacher, Strive for Clarity

By
Joe Hoagland
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

There are so many important elements of a sermon: showing Jesus to all who hear, powerful introductions, engaging storytelling, effective illustrations and so on.

But, one thing that is missing in a lot of sermons I hear is a simple principle: clarity. You can have great power, great stories, great exegesis, great insert whatever you want, but if you are not clear your audience will not be sure what to take home with them.

Here are some ways to achieve clarity in your preaching:

It’s All About Jesus

One way to achieve clarity in your preaching is to always connect the “topic” or passage to the Gospel. Without the good news of Jesus dying on the cross and being resurrected so we could be saved from our sins, whatever topic you are preaching on would be ultimately meaningless.

Your people need to know this. They need to know that preaching is more than moralizing, and living as a disciple is about more than living a good life, or overcoming obstacles.

Preacher, you will never be clear in your preaching until you forget the moralizing and the feel good motivation and instead share the ultimate truths given to us by the power found in Jesus’ sacrifice.

Hit on One Key Take-Home Truth

One way we limit how clear our sermons are is we have many points that we want our audience to take home with them.

Exegete your passage and find the one key truth the author was teaching and make sure your audience knows what it is.

Be creative and compelling and this will stick.

Limit Long Blocks of Greek and Hebrew

I know. I know. You worked years on your Greek and Hebrew, you have kept that muscle fresh. You found an absolute gem in the text you are preaching on this week. The motivation is to go on and on about it.

The honest truth? Most of your audience does not care, and you are just making the message less clear. By all means use your language skills to help you craft your sermon, by all means bring out quick nuggets every now and again, but do not fall back on this week in and week out.

Focus on One Key Passage

Another way to be as clear as possible as a preacher is to focus on one key passage each week. This way you are not spread too thin jumping from one passage to another.

Exegete one main passage as clearly as possible and your audience’s brains will thank you when they are processing what they need to remember.

This article originally appeared here.

Helping Find Truth for Kids in a World Blaring Lies

By
Jonathan McKee
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

Helping find truth for kids in a world of lies.

Last week on a radio show the host asked me, “Jonathan, in your book If I Had a Parenting Do Over, you talked about seven vital changes you’d make in parenting today. What is the one biggest parenting practice you wish you could do over?”

Without hesitation I responded, “I wish I had spent less time trying to block out the lies and more time focusing on the truth.”

Martin Luther King Jr. said:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

That’s amazing parenting advice, and it’s relevant today more than ever before. Today ‘Generation-screen’ is inundated with distractions: porn just a click away, poor role models infesting their Instagram feed, music with misleading lyrics, and every form of enticing entertainment imaginable from YouTube to Netflix. It’s easy for parents to become scared about these influences, panic and overreact. Sometimes we become so focused on finding the perfect defense we forget about our offensive line! (I know that well, I’m a Denver Broncos fan). Here lies the mistake. Once we find the perfect porn filters or software monitoring, we subconsciously think, “Whew. Now my kids are safe from the lies.” The question remains: So who’s gonna tell them the truth?

Mom and Dad have the amazing opportunity (not to mention responsibility) to talk with their kids about truth. Common Sense Media makes this clear in the very beginning of their article 5 Ways to Block Porn from Your Kids Devices:

You can set all the blockers, filters and parental controls in the universe, and not only will your kids still see porn, you still have to talk to them about what porn is, why it exists and why it’s not for them. In fact, using tech tools to limit adult content works best when combined with conversations that convey your values about love, sexuality and relationships.

In a world so potent with lies, today’s parents need to be that much more proactive about engaging their kids in conversations about truth. The big question is—what does this actually look like?

Here are three ways I have observed parents experience success setting the stage to dialogue about truth:

1. Don’t just drop your kids off at youth group
Key word: just. Church, youth groups and Bible studies are awesome ways for kids to learn more about God, build community with other believers, and connect with positive adult mentors. And yes, that two or three hours of church each week can be powerful, because the Gospel message is powerful (“the power of God at work saving everyone who believes,” Romans 1:16, NLT)… but that doesn’t mean your job is done.

When my kids were young, I remember a very eye-opening evening where our family was talking and laughing together in a hotel room (with my speaking schedule we spent many a night in hotels when my kids were growing up) and somehow the subject of “Father Abraham” came up. In a matter of moments we realized our kids had no idea who Abraham was. My kids had literally spent years in Sunday School. We just assumed they knew the story of Abraham and Sarah, or at least the silly song… Father Abraham had many sons…

I remember asking them, “Well you guys at least remember the story of Jacob and Esau… the two brothers who fought over their birthright?”

Silence.

“Joseph?” I pressed on, hoping for a spark of recognition. “Coat of many colors. Sold into slavery by his brothers? Became ruler of Egypt?”

More silence.

“Moses? Ten Commandments?”

“Oh yeah,” my son finally spoke up. “The Prince of Egypt” (referring to the animated film).

Lori and I sighed and looked at each other like, What are our kids doing in Sunday School each week…because they sure aren’t learning any Bible? But that blame shifting only lasted for a few seconds because it became obvious to us, maybe we should be proactively talking about this stuff as a family too! Duh!

Yes, I’m confessing that we really didn’t do family devotions of any kind up to that point. But at that moment…everything changed. And we started in Genesis 1, which was really easy because I had just taken an Old Testament class in seminary and Lori had just finished an inductive Bible study on the book of Genesis at our church.

Which leads me to another proactive practice…

2. Get rooted in scripture
Key word: rooted. Think of the tree in Psalm 1 planted by the river. It grew strong and green when everything not connected to a life source was dry and dead. When mom and dad grow roots, that’s when they produce fruit.

Yeah…that means it starts with us.

I remember hearing some amazing parenting advice for dads: If you want to be a good parent, it starts by being a good husband. A good marriage rubs off on the kids. We’re talking about the trickle-down effect. The more mom and dad become transformed by scripture, the more the truth naturally flows from them.

So allow me to meddle for just a moment. What are you personally reading in God’s Word right now? If you aren’t, you could start in the book of Luke. Just read a chapter a day. Then move onto Acts. Finish that? Then try Paul’s letters (Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians). It doesn’t matter if you’ve never read it before. It’s amazing how potent getting away and reading the word is (just ask Chance the Rapper when he opened Galatians for the first time).

The more it changes us, the more God will change our family. It will change the way we talk. It will change the way we react when our kids test us…which brings up one more proactive practice…

3. Create a safe place
Key word: safe. Do your kids feel safe to ask you questions about anything?

“Mom, I don’t know if I believe in God?”

“Mom, what does bl**job mean?”

How are we going to engage in dialogue about truth if our kids are too afraid to ask us questions? When I surveyed kids, “Why don’t you ask your parents your honest questions about sex?”…by far the most common response was, “Because I know they’ll freak out.”

I realize this is difficult for parents because we are always leaping to the question behind the question. If our kid asks us about sex, we wonder, are they considering sex? With who? Is it that boy Chris? I KNEW I SHOULD NEVER HAVE LET YOU HANG OUT WITH HIM!  (Sound familiar?)

If our kids are experiencing doubts about their faith, our tendency is to take it personally and respond poorly. “I never raised you like this!” On the contrary, we should be glad when our kids feel safe enough to verbalize their doubts. Like Kara Powell so profoundly put it, “It’s not doubt that’s toxic to faith, it’s silence.”

Are you creating a climate of comfortable conversation in your home?

The more we are personally in God’s Word, praying, submitting and allowing him to transform our thinking more like His, the more we’ll respond like Jesus when He encountered sinners. This enables us to “set our minds” on things above and respond better when people drop a bomb on us…like, “Oh, I’m Bisexual.”

* * *

And yes…when you pursue these three practices above, that sets the stage to opening up the Bible after dinner and reading the word together as a family. If you feel ill equipped to read the Bible and answer your kids’ questions, don’t hesitate to use some fun devotional resources (my friend Greg still says his best family devotions were always when he went through my Zombie Apocalypse Survival Guide for Teenagers…which is basically an “our daily bread” for teenagers). Whatever method you use, make time to read truth together as a family (and here’s a few more ideas of what that can look like).

Rooted
I admit it—I have one of the best-looking lawns in the neighborhood. Lush, green, perfectly mowed and edged. Because of that, my neighbors ask me, “How do you get rid of crabgrass?”

My honest answer: “I don’t know. I’ve never had it.”

I’ve always started fresh with my lawns and I’ve never allowed crabgrass to take over. How? By fertilizing every six to eight weeks with a good TurfBuilder. It makes the lawn so strong that weeds rarely penetrate. Yes, on occasion I’ve had to pluck a stray weed or two, but it’s never become a problem, because my lawn is strongly rooted with the good stuff.

What is your family rooted in?

We will not hide these truths from our children;
we will tell the next generation
about the glorious deeds of the Lord,
about his power and his mighty wonders.
(Psalms 78:4, NLT)

Jonathan McKee is the author of over twenty books including the brand new The Bullying Breakthrough; The Teen’s Guide to Social Media & Mobile Devices; If I Had a Parenting Do Over; and the Amazon Best Seller – The Guy’s Guide to God, Girls and the Phone in Your Pocket. He speaks to parents and leaders worldwide, all while providing free resources for parents on his website TheSource4Parents.com. Jonathan, his wife, Lori, and their three kids live in California.

This article originally appeared here.

Church Flipping Pastor Rescues Buildings on Life Support

By
Stephanie Martin
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

In addition to being a senior pastor, the Rev. Paul Marzahn has a second calling: rescuing struggling churches before developers can swoop in and buy the buildings.

Marzahn, 55, leads Crossroads Church in Lakeville, Minnesota, but he’s receiving national attention for his groundbreaking work as a “faith community developer,” or church flipper. He may even be featured on a pilot for a new TV show.

‘There is a business side to every ministry’

Marzahn formed a nonprofit and consults with churches nationwide about how to rehab buildings and use spaces wisely. “I have an eye for properties that have value,” he says. “I fix them up and bring the partners together and make the finances work.”

With church attendance on the decline, up to 10,000 U.S. churches shut their doors every year. That’s led to a growing market for religious buildings among profit-hungry investors, but Marzahn sees “a different potential.” He obtained a commercial real estate license, has become an expert in building maintenance, and works with his family members who have expertise in everything from historic preservation to accounting.

“I still pastor,” Marzahn says. “I understand that my primary role is preaching the Gospel of Jesus. But there is a business side to every ministry that sometimes pastors neglect and parishioners neglect.”

Marzahn Finds New Life for Old Buildings

With all his connections, Marzahn has become a property matchmaker around Minneapolis. While driving by church buildings that are for sale, he thinks, “Who do I know who would be a good fit?” His calling, he says, is “to see churches or nonprofits save some of these great buildings.”

Strategic planning is key, he says, which is why he helps churches with options such as sharing or renting out space. “Just like a marriage, when it’s going on the rocks, go get a counselor, right? Same thing if your church is dying,” Marzahn says. “Get some help and you can come up with a strategy or plan to keep the church or partner with some other nonprofits, some way to keep the financial model going.”

Last year Marzahn’s nonprofit purchased Wesley United Methodist Church, built in 1891, and sold it to Substance Church, preventing the building from becoming a nightclub. “Its purpose was to be a church in the community, and now it is,” he says.

Thanks to Marzahn’s help, a former Catholic Charities building in Minneapolis is being transformed for use by Breakthrough Ministries, which serves poor and homeless people. The Rev. Dave Engman, Breakthrough’s CEO, says he “probably wouldn’t have taken on this project” without Marzahn. “Paul brings peace and comfort in a stressful situation.”

Not every church building can be saved, unfortunately. “There are times when they are not structurally sound,” Marzahn says. “They have deferred maintenance for too long, and in those cases you can’t keep them up.”

But most buildings have great potential. Ben Ingebretson, a regional director of new church development for the United Methodist Church, says churches need more people like Marzahn. Many startup churches would love to have a building to call home, Ingebretson says. “The opportunity in North America is huge.”

Dr. Tony Evans on Social Media: ‘Please Pray for My Wife’

By
Jessica Lea
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

Pastor and author Dr. Tony Evans shared on social media this week that his wife’s cancer has returned. He posted the news on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, asking people to join him and his family in prayer for Lois’ healing.

Friends, Please pray for my wife, Lois. Lois has been a cancer-free patient under care for a while. However, her last routine scan revealed that her rare gallbladder cancer has returned. We need God to intervene as we continue our search for an effective treatment. We are going to trust God in the dark for a solution, and we are asking you to fervently pray to that end.

Choosing to Believe

The Evans family has suffered several significant losses over the past year or so. Dr. Evans’ niece, Wynter Evans Pitts, died suddenly in her sleep in the summer of 2018 at age 38. Pitts was the founder of the ministry For Girls Like You and mother of actress Alena Pitts, who played Danielle Jordan in the movie War Room. And only six months before Wynter’s death, Dr. Evans lost his brother. In his post, Dr. Evans said that the return of his wife’s cancer is a new level of testing for him:

I’m sure this news about Lois is shocking. It is shocking to us too. In recent days, we have had quite a bit on us as a family as you know. My faith is being tested in a way I’ve never experienced…but I trust God. I choose to believe—our whole family is choosing to believe that, even now, He knows what He is doing.

Dr. Evans said he doesn’t have much information to offer apart from the fact that the cancer has returned. He wrote, “This news is fresh and we don’t have many answers to give,” adding that the family will provide updates as they are able. But in the meantime, “as you wait—while we wait—we are asking for your prayers.”

Lois Evans has put up some posts pertaining to her cancer’s return, including a recent tweet with an image that says, “I am fighting for you.-God.” She offered it as an encouragement to her followers, saying that it was a reminder she needed herself.

People’s Reactions

Many people have responded to the news with encouraging comments, saying they are praying for Lois and for the Evans family. One Instagram user said, “God please give the Evans family strength right now to endure the test that you have set before them. I ask that you comfort them as they encounter the unknown.”

On Facebook, one person commented, “Praying for you Mrs. Evans & thank you for your wonderful godly example of being a daughter of God,” while another wrote, “We are standing with you.” One woman posted, “Watching your family go thou [sic] life struggles has given me so much hope. Thank each of you.”

In his post, Dr. Evans expressed hope in God’s faithfulness and mercy: “Even during these uncertain times, we are strengthened by the joy of the Lord. We know that we will be strengthened also by the prayers of the saints in the days to come.”

Craig Springer: What You Need to Know About Millennials and Evangelism

By
Jason Daye
-
thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

Craig Springer is the executive director of Alpha USA, an organization which helps churches invite non-Christians to explore questions of faith in a welcoming environment. Craig has a broad personal church background including non-denominational megachurches, Vineyard churches, evangelical Presbyterian churches, and international church planting. He currently serves at Cherry Hills Community Church in Denver. Craig and his wife, Sarah, have a son and a daughter.

Key Questions for Craig Springer

– What did you learn from the Reviving Evangelism study, specifically about the future of evangelism?

– What does Scripture tell us about how Jesus approached evangelism?

Key Quotes from Craig Springer

“47 percent of Millennial Christians believe it is wrong to share their faith.”

“94 percent of Millennial Christians believe that the best thing that could happen to anyone is that they would come to know Jesus…There’s not a decline in passion among Millennial Christians for their friends and family to know Jesus. ”

“Millennial Christians have more non-Christian friends than any other preceding generation.”

“Millennial Christians and Gen Z Christians are dealing with this far-more inflamed polarized tone in our culture. We have to do much more to disarm and to build trust and create spaces of belonging before we can even have a conversation.”

“The top priority that a non-Christian believes would help them consider faith with a conversation partner is someone who listens without judgment and the second top priority is someone who doesn’t force them to draw a conclusion.”

“Jesus asked 307 questions and he only directly answered eight questions…That’s his approach to bringing the Kingdom to bear in people’s lives, is listening, storytelling, creating space for conversation.”

“When we’re focused on helping people understand us or our doctrine, not giving them space to process out what they’re thinking, we’re not creating that sense of home, that sense of belonging before they believe.”

“We need to rethink our evangelism training. How much training are we giving Christians in the art of listening? If we were following Jesus’s methods of evangelism, we would be the best listeners on the planet.”

“82 percent of people who complete an Alpha Course from start to finish end up developing a relationship with Jesus somewhere along the way.”

“Nothing lights up your prayer life more than praying for someone to meet Jesus and then they do before your eyes.”

“With churches that are really thriving evangelistically, you’ll see that there’s a white-hot fire of prayer and worship beneath that.” If you want your evangelistic temperature to rise as a church, you won’t be able to carry the burden and opportunity of that if your prayer and worship temperature don’t rise with it.”

Mentioned in the Show:

AlphaUSA.org
Reviving Evangelism Study
Jesus Is the Question

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