Theological Cartography Syndrome

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January 1, 2019

Sometimes, when one falls under the influence of a particular author or scholar, one comes to see their opinions as indisputable. They become a theological map-maker (cartographer) for us rather than a trail-guide or teacher.

When was the last time you took serious issue with a scholar most of your peers seemed to agree with—say Walter Brueggemann, Scot McKnight or N.T. Wright? If you did, what would the fans of that scholar likely say? Somewhere in there might be an attitude conveying, “Who are you to argue with the great Brueggemann, McKnight or Wright?”—a suggestion none of the three aforementioned scholars would endorse. Such an attitude is developed, often, with too much reading and too little thinking critically about what we’ve read. It’s better to learn lots and think lots, with the “epistemic humility” (thanks, Dr. Fred Aquino) to learn thoughtfully.

If we metabolize what the author we’re reading is saying, and they’re saying anything of substance, we should question some of their assertions.

No, really. We should.

The stakes are high when one does theology with such a platform and influence. We do ourselves and those we teach no favors by uncritically accepting what we read as fact or dismissing those who might challenge what we’ve read and love.

For the record, I’ve been significantly and positively influenced by all three of the aforementioned scholars. Save Dallas Willard, they have probably impacted me more than any other three. Yet, I have some points of deviation with each of them. At times, when discussing those points of deviation with friends, we’ll reach the inevitable, “He’s right because he’s Wright,” moment. Ironically, these intellectual giants made their contributions by critiquing and improving upon the “facts” of the theological authorities before them. That’s part of the beauty of theology. It’s an ongoing, thoughtful dialogue about God that really matters.

Theological Cartography Syndrome is vicious. It creates an environment in which constructive dialogue and critical thinking goes to die. Not all learning. Critical thinking. Where theological or ideological cartography reigns supreme, people become reluctant to question or to prod further discussion. In other cases, they are simply dismissed because they paddle against the ideological current. This leads inevitably to narrow, rusty thinking over time. It makes science out of theology, when theology is not science.

Pastoral Cartography Syndrome

The same can be true in the field of ministry. It’s sometimes assumed that everything a guru or amazing church says is, by nature, correct. It may be. It may be for a hundred years. But, it may also be assumed correct incorrectly for just as long.

Everyone knew the earth was flat.

Everyone knew everything orbited around the earth.

Everyone knew these things because the authorities (even the church) told them so. To question it was heresy or to be thought of a fool. While our disagreements over the issues of our time may not be “flat earth” in substance, they can be “flat earth” in ideological rigidity.

Let’s not make popes out of pastors or science out of another’s ideas or experiences. They don’t want that anyway.

I’m so thankful for the guidance I receive from what I read and hear from various teachers in theology, ministry and biblical studies. However, they aren’t cartographers for me—telling me where the very earth begins and ends factually. They are open to critique, and they can handle it. True scholars and leaders welcome it.

Thoughts? Have you seen this at work?

This article originally appeared here.

If I Were the Devil

By

Daniel Henderson

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December 31, 2018

Life is war! Our enemy is powerful, cunning, experienced and supernatural. His minions are multitudinous. His ways are devious and destructive. He is a ravenous lion (1 Peter 5:8), appears as an “angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14), and is working 24/7 all around the globe to undermine the work of the church and hurt the heart of Christ.

If I Were the Devil

In recent months, I’ve thought a lot about the tactics of our enemy. In my limited understanding I will never comprehend the full strategies of the devil. Still, I want to consider one aspect of his work by postulating what I might do if I were in his shoes.

What I would KNOW…

While the devil is NOT all-knowing, he is brilliant, supernatural and shrewd from thousands of years of experience. There are some things he certainly knows.

The Bible – James 2:19-20 tells us, “You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!” Satan and his demons are well-versed in biblical information. They seek to twist, undermine and cast doubt with respect to the Bible. They also know what the Bible says about them and their work. When it comes to our battle against evil, they are familiar with our classic instruction about the war and supernatural weapons we have for the battle. As it says in Ephesians 6:18, “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.”

Church History – For millennia the devil has been engaged in spiritual warfare. He is fully aware that his greatest defeats have come during seasons of spiritual awakening and revival. It is during those times that the church has advanced in supernatural power—converting lost souls, transforming society in countless ways, and counteracting evil in its many forms. He is also aware that every one of these seasons of exponential Christian advancements has been rooted in movements of united, biblical prayer which fueled repentance, powerful preaching and massive ministry expansion.

Human Nature – The devil cannot read our minds but is an expert in observing human behavior. He knows our tendency to live independently of God’s supernatural provision for our lives. He was active in Laodicea, for example, as he assisted that church in living by their own riches, efforts and sufficiency rather than pursuing intimacy with their Savior. He likes things this way.

What I would DO…

So, if I were the devil I would use my best deceptive tools to keep Christians from praying together. I would keep them busy and isolated from one another. I would do everything possible to keep them distracted and disinterested in biblical, balanced, revival-style prayer gatherings.

To accomplish this, I would do the following…

Fuel the Spirit of Rugged Individualism – By keeping Christians independent of each other, I would keep them independent from God. I would do everything possible to make sure they believed that the only way to pray was at home in a “closet” even though the New Testament evidence is overwhelming about the priority of praying together. I would keep them frustrated in their personal prayer lives by preventing them from learning to pray by praying together.

Dig Ruts of Boring Prayer – When they did try to pray together, I would make sure the prayer meetings were based on old, traditional approaches that focused more on human needs than God’s power. I would do everything possible to encourage boredom and gossip in these gatherings so most people would stay away from these sleepy, passionless “prayer” times.

Delight in Theological Orthodoxy Without Spiritual Passion – I would know how effective it is to get Bible-loving Christians to delight in theological correctness without spiritual intimacy. It worked very well for me in Ephesus (see Revelation 2:1-7) a once-great church that fell out of love with Jesus, even though they had great theology and teaching. I would let them be content with good sermons and grand theological ideas, as long as they stayed off their knees in trying to make it real in their hearts.

Encourage “Idle” Preaching on Prayer – I would know that sermons on prayer frequently fall on deaf ears, especially when the leaders do not model prayer. I would keep pastors content to just talk about inspiring prayer ideas as long as they did not actually lead their people into extraordinary gatherings of prayer. I would know that prayer information without prayer action just anesthetizes Christians from spiritual reality. This would be a “win” for my team.

Promote “Success” in the Ministry – Crazy as it sounds, I might even promote church growth as a replacement for real revival. I would encourage an interest in numbers, activities, strategies and events. This would keep them away from brokenness, repentance, and passion for God’s transforming presence. This would distract them from a real pursuit of the awakenings that have undermined my malevolent work.

Knowing that I could not keep people from eternal life because of the power of the Gospel, I would at least try to keep them from eternal reward by getting them to rely on their own flesh rather than the Spirit of God in their ministry efforts.

Yes, if I were the devil, this strategy would be one of my most important. I would amass all of my most subtle and deceptive troops and tools to prevent spiritual awakening at all costs. As long as Christians were sincere but isolated—active but powerless—entertained but shallow—I would win. And I would love it so.

This article originally appeared here.

What Does the Bible Say About Giving?

By

Art Rainer

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December 31, 2018

What does the Bible say about giving? What does it mean to give? How does it look? You may know intuitively that you should give but not know much beyond that.

What Does the Bible Say About Giving?

The good news is that the Bible tells us what our giving should look like. Our generous God reveals to us four giving principles throughout Scripture.

Principle 1: Giving is to be a priority.

We are given resources so that we can give resources.

For most, giving is an afterthought. It’s what takes place after all of the needs and wants are taken care of. But in the Bible, giving is a priority.

The Bible repeatedly shows us that we are to give our first and our best to him. For example, Proverbs 3:9 says, “Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first produce of your entire harvest.” For the Israelites, this meant that whatever crops or livestock were produced, they were to set aside the first and best of their crops or livestock for God.

What does this mean for us? For most of us, it means that we are to give some of our gross income to God. Before taxes, before retirement savings, before debt repayment, and even before bill payments, we give.

Principle 2: Giving is to be done proportionately.

This means that those who have more give more, and those who have less give less. Your giving should be proportional to what you have been given.

Proverbs 3:10 says, “Bring a full tenth into the storehouse so that there may be food in my house…” says the Lord of Armies. ‘See if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing for you without measure.’” Throughout Scripture we see the idea of proportional giving. As God blesses us, so should we be blessing others.

Principle 3: Giving is to be done sacrificially.

In God’s economy, amount sacrificed always supersedes amount given.

When King David went to offer God a sacrifice, a man tried to give him land and animals at no cost. In 2 Samuel 24:24, we read King David’s response: “No, I insist on buying it from you for a price, for I will not offer to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”

He knew that God would find greater delight in an offering that cost him something.

In Luke 21:1-4, we find Jesus pointing out a widow who gave two coins as the person who gave most. Why? She gave all she had. She sacrificed. Jesus is less concerned about what is put in the offering plate and more concerned about what is left at home. God tells us to give sacrificially.

God designed us not to be hoarders but conduits through which his generosity flows.

Principle 4: Giving is to be done cheerfully.

In 2 Corinthians 9:7, Paul says, “Each person should do as he has decided in his heart—not reluctantly or out of compulsion, since God loves a cheerful giver.” God does not want a bunch of grumpy givers. You would refuse a gift if it was accompanied with bitterness and reluctance. God is not interested in those types of gifts either.

What I love about these four principles is that God does not only tells us how to give; he leads us. God gave his first and best, his one and only. He gave us Jesus. Giving was a priority. The creator and owner of all things gave us an unfathomable gift, one that can never be matched. He gave us Jesus. He gave proportionately. The Father sent his one and only Son to die on a cross for our sins. He gave us Jesus. He gave sacrificially.

At times the principles of sacrificial giving and cheerful giving may seem to contradict each other. How can you give out of sacrifice and still be happy?

God shows us how.

Isaiah 53:10 reads, “Yet the Lord was pleased to crush him severely. When you make him a guilt offering he will see his seed, he will prolong his days, and by his hand the Lord’s pleasure will be accomplished.”

God found pleasure in the crushing, or the crucifixion of his Son. But how? How can God find delight in the midst of the pain?

He focused on eternity.

He focused on the lasting outcome that would result from the crushing of Jesus; his seed, us, will be with him for all eternity. And it is through the lens of eternity, storing up treasure in heaven, that we can be cheerful givers, even in the midst of sacrifice.

Giving is to be a priority. We are to give proportionately and sacrificially. We are to give with cheerful hearts. We are to reflect the generosity of our generous God.

This article about what does the Bible say about giving? originally appeared here.

10 Things Every Worship Leader Needs to Work On

By

Mark Cole

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December 31, 2018

Every worship leader needs to work on these 10 things. No matter how long I have been a worship leader, there are always areas that I need to improve on. When you are doing well, it is too easy to get comfortable. But the truth is, none of us ever arrives. My prayer is that this list challenges you, like it challenges me, to move ahead with what God has called us to do!

Here are 10 things every worship leader needs to work on.

1. Every worship leader needs to work on: Never stop growing

• Are you practicing your singing and playing on a daily basis?

• Are you taking lessons and improving your craft and leadership?

• Are you changing and growing with the new trends, styles and songs?

2. Every worship leader needs to work on: Develop your organizational and admin skills.

• Are you writing (or buying) great charts for your band?

• Are you running organized and productive rehearsals?

• Are you creating timely schedules for your musicians and planning ahead on the church calendar?

3. Every worship leader needs to work on: Keep working on a good relationship with your pastor.

• Do you have a regular meeting with your pastor?

• Are you supporting your pastor in private and public?

• Have you ever had your pastor and his wife over for dinner?

4. Every worship leader needs to work on: Take time to mentor new leaders.

• Are you looking for and developing the potential leaders on your team?

• Are you giving room for new leaders to lead a song or worship time?

• Jesus spent over three years developing His team; are you following His example?

5. Every worship leader needs to work on: Develop a great team.

• Do you have a system for bringing along new musicians?

• Are you developing multiple musicians for each position?

• How are you helping your team grow spiritually?

Why You Should Stop Focusing on Goals This Year

By

David Santistevan

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December 31, 2018

I don’t know about you, but I struggle with focusing on goals. Sometimes I set them and forget about them. More often than not, I never meet them. I feel like a failure most of the time.

Of course, the problem isn’t with goals. Goals are a wonderful tool. I’ve even started using Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner and love it. Highly recommended. But if you’ve been disillusioned with goals, I recommend trying a different route this year.

One of the best books I’ve read this year is Atomic Habits by James Clear. There are many books on habits. I also enjoyed this one. But what I loved about Atomic Habits is how motivating and actionable it was. It got me thinking about habits for those of us who lead a worship team in a local church.

I won’t go into too much detail about habits in this article. I’d recommend picking up one or both of the aforementioned books. For our purposes here, this is the main idea:

The Power of habits is in the power of automation.

Habits enable us to automate important tasks so we don’t have to think about them. Based on experience, much of local church ministry is spent reacting. We set goals, but oftentimes don’t meet them.

Instead, we put out fires on a regular basis. Finding a drummer for next weekend, picking songs for this weekend, and responding to emails eats up most of our time. Rather than being proactive about our schedules, we react to everyone else’s demands and don’t focus on what’s really important for the areas we lead.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

James Clear

Goals won’t get you anywhere if your systems are broken.

Here’s what I mean:

What if instead of having a goal of adding five new team members this month, you created a system of regular recruitment?
What if instead of a goal to get ahead in your song planning, you created a system for staying five weeks ahead in your song lists?
What if instead of a goal to do a live recording, you created a system of regular songwriting appointments with your team?
What if instead of a goal to communicate with your team, you create a regular communication system of emails, text messages and phone calls on certain days of the month?
What if instead of a goal to increase congregational engagement, you created a system to review your creative service programming on a monthly basis?

Every singular goal can be exchanged for a regular commitment.

You no longer need to rely on willpower. It’s a system. It’s on the calendar.

Imagine if you didn’t have to think about scheduling because it’s on your calendar to schedule from 9-10:30 on Mondays. Imagine you didn’t have to think about recruiting because it’s on your calendar to make phone calls on Thursday afternoons.

Make your calendar a sacred space. Keep the appointments you agree to. This creates sustained productivity over time.

What’s also great is these activities become regular appointments. Then you’re not recruiting only when it’s crises mode and you have no drummers. It’s a regular rhythm. You’re not picking songs last minute, you’re regularly maintaining a habit of staying ahead.

I’d love to hear from you. What are you struggling with in your team? What would change if you went through the process of creating a habit in that area?

This article about focusing on goals originally appeared here.

5 Tools to Help People Grow Spiritually This Year

By

Rick Warren

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December 31, 2018

All living things grow. It’s evidence of life. If a child doesn’t grow to physical maturity, that’s a tragedy. And if people in our congregations don’t grow spiritually, that’s a tragedy, too. How can you help people grow spiritually this year?

Many churches focus on getting people in the doors and maybe making a salvation decision. But that’s only a small part of our responsibility.

Jesus gives us another example. During his ministry, he started by urging people to “come and see.” And they did! People began to follow him. But then Jesus slowly turned up the heat. He began adding qualifiers, statements that start with “You’re my disciple if”:

You love one another (John 13:35)
You abide in his Word (John 8:31)
You deny yourself (Matthew 16:24)
You make Jesus your prime allegiance (Luke 14:26)

Eventually, Jesus took it a step further and said that a person had to “come and die” (Luke 14:27) to be a disciple.

But Jesus didn’t start with “come and die.” He moved people slowly from “come and see” to “come and die.”

That’s what discipleship is all about. And I learned early in my ministry at Saddleback that I couldn’t grow the church. God told me clearly when I was nearing exhaustion in the first year of the church that growing Saddleback wasn’t my job.

The message from God was that if I focused on growing people, he would grow the church. In fact, The Purpose Driven Church was never about growing the church. It was all about growing people.

Over the years, we’ve developed several tools at Saddleback to help people grow spiritually one small step at a time. Here are five of those tools.

1. Help People Grow Spiritually With Sermon Notes

People typically forget most of what they’ve heard in 72 hours. We need to do better than that if we’re going to help people apply biblical truth to their lives. Retention goes up if people aren’t just hearing what you’re saying but are also writing it down. The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory.

That’s why we provide sermon outlines every week. The outlines include the relevant Scripture passages for the week and fill-in-the-blank outlines where attendees can fill in the missing words and also circle and underline other important words.

People hold on to these outlines for years. Sometimes they stick them away in their Bibles. Other times they file them away at home. They tend to give people multiple opportunities to engage with the teaching.

2. Help People Grow Spiritually With Spiritual Growth Covenants

We use four covenants at Saddleback as part of our CLASS 101-401 system. People sign the first one, the Membership Covenant, when they join the church. They sign the second one, the Maturity Covenant, when they commit to the spiritual habits necessary for growth (joining a small group, having a quiet time, giving, etc.). The third covenant allows people to express their commitment to using their SHAPE (Spiritual Gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality and Experiences) in ministry at Saddleback. When people commit to the fourth covenant, they agree to participate in some kind of PEACE mission trip.

Covenants are biblical. You’ll find them throughout Scripture. You’ll find them throughout church history. Frankly, if you have a membership class but no membership covenant, it’s like a wedding ceremony without vows. The time when a couple makes a commitment to one another is the most important part of a wedding. The same is true for a membership class. It doesn’t make much sense to tell people what you expect from members if you don’t ask them to commit to doing what you expect.

3. Help People Grow Spiritually With Commitment Cards

For people to grow, we must challenge them to make commitments. That’s why we built Saddleback on our weekly commitment card. It’s not just about the commitment to come to Christ or to join the church. We have about 30 different commitments people can make at our church. I never preach without preaching for commitment. Why? Commitment is how people grow.

Everything starts with a decision. I know many pastors who preach great sermons but walk away before drawing the net for salvation. You should draw the net for salvation every time.

But don’t stop there. Give people specific applications for every sermon you preach. Don’t just tell people to be better parents. Ask them to make a commitment to a specific practice that makes them better parents. Every single sermon you preach comes down to two words: “Will you?” Will you apply God’s Word to your life?

The commitment card gives every person in your congregation an opportunity to say “Yes!” when you ask that question each week.

4. Help People Grow Spiritually With Small Groups

We grow best when we grow together. Babies don’t just grow up on their own. They need a family of some kind. And the people in our churches need a family to grow. One of the great myths of modern Christianity is that you can grow to spiritual maturity without the help of others. In America today, we have Christian movies, Christian radio, Christian bookstores, Christian podcasts and Christian rallies. For many people in our churches, it’s tempting for them to think they can build their own spiritual growth, on their own terms.

But that’s not the picture of growth we get in the Bible. You can’t grow without the church—and the church is more than just people sitting and soaking in sermons each week. The church is about relationships. There are 58 “one another” statements (such as “love one another,” “serve one another,” “pray for one another”) in the New Testament. Your congregation can’t obey any of those commands without other people in their lives.

5. Help People Grow Spiritually With Spiritual Growth Campaigns

Every year at Saddleback we host at least one spiritual growth campaign. And we often have two: one campaign in the spring and the other in the fall. You’ve probably heard of some of them (such as 40 Days of Prayer, 40 Days in the Word, What On Earth Am I Here For, Transformed, and Daring Faith). By far, the best way to engage people in spiritual growth is through multiple reinforcements, where you teach the same biblical truth by hearing it, reading it, discussing it, doing it and memorizing it together as a church family.

That’s what we do during our campaigns. People in our congregation don’t just listen to a sermon series on a particular truth; they’re also reading a book about it, discussing it in their small groups, and memorizing Scripture on the topic. These campaigns have been responsible for thousands of baptisms and tens of thousands of spiritual decisions at Saddleback.

These tools help people take gradual steps of faith, moving from “come and see” to “come and die.”

This article about how to help people grow spiritually originally appeared here.

Christian, You Are Not the Center of the Universe & It’s Not All About You

By

Amy Simpson

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December 31, 2018

I recently revisited an old post on this blog about it’s not all about you, and I was struck by how relevant it still is and how helpful it might be to post it again (you can read the original here, if you’d like).

Surrounded as we are by sales pitches, hysterical rhetoric and outright propaganda, it’s far too easy for us to develop a skewed view of what is happening in the world around us. Self-centered as we are, it comes naturally to think of ourselves as the center of the universe and to believe that our concerns define the human experience. And unfortunately, we often allow our small and distorted perspective to limit our awareness of what God is doing.

Back when I originally wrote this post, I had recently finished reading a book that introduced me to the history of the Christian church in Japan, which dates back at least to 1549—and some believe it may go back much farther, to 400 AD. In the 1600s, a period of intense persecution drove Christians underground or to their deaths and helped fuel the severe isolationist policy of Japan that lasted until the late 1800s. But the church, although a tiny 1 percent of the population, has survived and continues today.

I decided to do more reading, and I discovered several reports that claimed what this Christianity Today article describes: In the wake of the devastating March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Northern Japan, Japanese Christians had an audience—unprecedented in our times—for the gospel among their fellow citizens. This was in a country long known as the least receptive to Christianity.

Add that to ongoing news about the growth of Christianity in China, where one credible estimate from several years ago says there are at least 67 million Christians and some estimate more than 100 million. And consider the startling growth of the church in India, where one estimate says there are now more than 58 million Christians. In both nations, Christians are experiencing increasing persecution, yet Christianity is growing exponentially.

Then there’s this report from a few years back, illustrating the number and distribution of Christians throughout the world. While Western Christians have bemoaned the decline of the church in our own part of the world, the faith has spread dramatically around the globe. “Christianity today—unlike a century ago—is truly a global faith,” the report claims. It has spread so pervasively, “no single continent or region can indisputably claim to be the center of global Christianity.” In fact, 36.7 percent of the world’s Christians now live in sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. I’m not sure many Western Christians are paying attention to this movement.

Information about these spiritual movements around the world is set against a backdrop of warnings and dire predictions about the declining influence of the church in the United States—and the consequences for the world. Like you, I’m regularly assaulted by propaganda-laced forwarded emails and social networking posts, mostly fueled by political conflict. If they are to be believed, God’s kingdom is at serious risk, dependent on the United States government for its lifeblood. The assumption is that God’s work in the world lives or dies with the status of American cultural Christianity.

Don’t get me wrong. I know there is much to grieve in our world. I know life is not what it should be. We can be reasonably certain we are not truly safe, we won’t all get along, and we will not make it to the end of our lives with everyone we love by our side. Our world and our culture are deeply troubled. And we can and should stand up against darkness and grieve whatever grieves God.

I also know it’s only human to grieve a loss of influence, and much of our alarm is motivated by a sense of frustration and powerlessness to make the world the way we believe it should be. But it is not ours to mold. If we believe God is sovereign, we must join his work and quell our craving for power. We must let go of our own sense of self-importance. We do not live at the center of the universe. God does not depend on the American (or any other) church to keep himself on his throne.

In the mix of human affairs, we are powerful people. And our choices are important. But our concern over our culture’s momentum is disproportionate to the momentum of God’s work in the world. Do we really believe his plans hinge on the functioning of our government? That he’s waiting to see what happens with the economy before he creates his budget for next year? That God’s kingdom depends, even a tiny bit, on ours?

We need a bigger perspective.

When Jesus was on earth, many people thought he was building a kingdom in this world, planning a revolution to defeat the powers of their time and make the world more like they thought it should be (Luke 19:11). This is how he responded: “My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom…my Kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). His work went far beyond what they could see, ask for or imagine. And it went far beyond them, spanning the space and time of everyone in history.

God is always doing something much bigger than what people want him to do. His work is not done. And it is about us—but not in the way we like to think. Our vision is more global than ever. But we’re still so Western-centric that we mostly view other people and places only as in need of our help—not as objects of God’s work independent of his relationship with us.

If someone would have told our forebears that at this point in history, Nigeria would have more than twice as many Protestants as Germany, where the Protestant Reformation started, they would have been astonished. If they had known that the world’s largest church would be firmly planted in South Korea and the Chinese church would be growing faster than the church in any Western country, they would have known that something marvelous was happening. Many of us who are witnessing this work of God are instead bemoaning the loss of something we want and we think God needs.

Heads up! Be encouraged! God is not limited as we are. He is not confounded by politics, apathy, economic woes or weakness. His ways are higher than ours; he does not see the world from our perspective. And his work certainly is not limited to what we can see.

Next time you feel anxious after watching a cable news broadcast or reading a tweet, remember we worship the same God Daniel did: “Praise the name of God forever and ever, for he has all wisdom and power. He controls the course of world events; he removes kings and sets up other kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the scholars. He reveals deep and mysterious things and knows what lies hidden in darkness, though he is surrounded by light” (Daniel 2:20-22).

This article about it’s not all about you originally appeared here.

6 High-Yield New Year’s Resolutions Every Leader Should Make

By

Carey Nieuwhof

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December 31, 2018

If you’re like many leaders, you’re busy making resolutions this week. I think that’s a great idea.

Michael Hyatt outlines a number of compelling reasons you should actually write down your resolutions. The most persuasive for me is that you are 42 percent more likely to reach your goals if you write them down.

I was reminded of that this past week. When cleaning out my office recently, I came across a list of written goals from four years ago. There were over a dozen. I was both surprised and grateful to see I achieved 80 percent of them, and am on track to complete them all within the next two years (some were BIG goals).

You will have some resolutions that are specific and personal to you—which is great.

But there are some goals that every leader could benefit from accomplishing.

Here are six that continue to inspire and challenge me.

1. Work on your character as seriously as you work on your competency.

It’s rare that competency fells top leaders; but character does.

As I’ve said before in this space, your competency will take you only as far as your character can sustain you.

A young leader I know recently took a weekend away to work on his character: He chose a time away to pray, reflect, journal and grow. Personally, I think that’s amazing.

Here are a few ways to develop your character:

Pray about it. Seriously, nothing will grow your character as much as direct time with God asking him to show you what you need to work on.

Ask others how you’re doing. I love the question Jeff Henderson asks: What’s it like to be on the other side of me? If you’re prepared to hear the truth, you’ll grow.

Spend some time away working on it, like the young leader I mentioned did.

I realize this kind of effort might sound strange, but the truth is you’d spend three days at a conference sharpening your skills without thinking about it. Why not spend that much time developing your soul?

Think about the benefits of a goal like this.

If you only work on your competency, you become better at work. But if you work on your character, you become a better spouse, parent, friend and person.

The benefits are life-changing.

How to Make 2019 Your Best Year in Children’s Ministry

By

Dale Hudson

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December 31, 2018

As I write this, I am looking at the calendar. December 27. Only a few days left until we begin a new year.

A lot of great things took place in this past year. Pause for a few minutes and look back. Think about the victories that God gave you. Meditate on the blessings He poured out for you. The times He walked with you through trouble and turmoil. He was there in 2018. Even during the times when you felt alone…you were not alone. When you saw great things happen in your ministry…He was there. When you were struggling with the ministry…He was there.

And He will be with you in 2019. In fact, as I type this, I am praying that 2019 will be your best year ever in children’s ministry. You’re going to see more fruit. You’re going to see more kids and parents become followers of Christ. You’re going to see your attendance grow as you engage more and more kids and families. You’re going to grow your own faith deeper and your relationship with Jesus is going to become closer than ever.

As you prepare to walk in the blessings of God in 2019, let’s look at some key things you can do to make 2019 your best year ever.

Walk with Jesus. This is the starting point and where success in ministry comes from. Notice what this verse says in Mark 3:14. Notice what the first calling of the disciples was—”that they might be with Him.” And then they would go out and share the Gospel.

Your first calling…my first calling…is to walk with Jesus. Out of that relationship will come the power you need to see people’s lives changed.

The temptation is to get so busy working for Jesus that we begin to neglect spending time with Jesus. But we must remember that nothing of eternal value happens without prayer. Let 2019 be the year that you begin to walk with Jesus at a deeper level. And out of that foundation will come your best year of ministry.

Yield yourself to the Holy Spirit and rely upon Him. 2019 will be a great year not because of your talents, gifting, charisma or work ethic. It will be a great year as a result of the anointing of the Holy Spirit upon your life.

We are reminded of this in Zechariah 4:6. It says “not by might nor by power but by My Spirit says the Lord.”

2019 can be your best year ever, if you’ll do this. Walk in the power of the Holy Spirit. Each morning when you get up, stop and ask the Holy Spirit for His blessings upon your day. Tell Him you need His power. Tell Him you can’t accomplish anything unless He steps in.

Every time you are speaking this year, ask the Holy Spirit to place His hand of power upon your life.

As you plan your ministry calendar, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you. His power is available, if you’ll ask for it in 2019.

Build your volunteer team. Success in 2019 will not come from what you can do. It will come from what you can empower others to do. The effectiveness of your ministry in 2019 will rise and fall on the strength of the volunteer you build. Make enlisting, equipping and empowering your top priority. It should dominate your calendar.

You can get a proven formula for building a volunteer team in my book The Formula for Building Great Volunteer Teams. It’s available at this link.

Evaluate and make adjustments. There are some things you should stop doing in 2019. And there are some things you should amp up this coming year. How will you find out what they are? Evaluation. Take a hard look at everything you are doing. What is not working anymore and should be dropped? What needs tweaking to make it more effective? What should be replaced with something new and fresh? What is working well and should be given more time and attention to?

If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll get the same results. You’ll stay where you are right now. You won’t make any progress.

Perhaps, just perhaps, 2019 is the year to make the changes needed to help your ministry go to the next level. Change is not always easy, is it? But it’s worth it. This is the year to make the adjustments you’ve been thinking about.

Focus on being productive rather than just being busy. It’s easy to be busy in children’s ministry, isn’t it? There is so much to do. Get lessons ready. Plan events. Pull off events. Follow up with guests. Enlist and equip new volunteers. Camp. VBS. Parent and child dedication. On and on we could go.

Busyness is not something you should measure. Productivity is what should be measured. A jam-packed calendar is not a sign of success. Seeing kids and families lives being impacted is what you should strive for instead.

This coming year, think about erasing some of the things on your calendar. Only leave what you think will make a big impact. Measure and focus on things like guests, volunteer retention, baptisms, dedications, attendance, success of events, etc.

Be accountable. My heart has been grieving as of late as I have watched leaders that I admired and learned from fall out of ministry due to immorality, burn out, financial greed and other temptations.

If you want to be successful in ministry, then here’s a big, groundbreaking strategy. Ready for it? It’s…to stay in ministry. Wasn’t that profound? It’s simple but true. Success in ministry is measured by faithfulness. It is applauded by “well done, good and faithful servant.”

How will you stay in ministry? A big one is to have people that hold you accountable. People who can help you identify your blind spots and overcome them. People who can both encourage you and call you up as a leader.

If you don’t have those people in your life, one of your top priorities right off the bat should be to enlist two to three people who will hold you accountable.

Paul sums it up in 2 Timothy 4:7-8 when he says, “I have fought a good fight. I have finished the work I was to do. I have kept the faith.There is a crown which comes from being right with God.”

Fight a good fight in the coming year. Finish the tasks God has for you in the coming year. Keep your heart close to the heart of God in the coming year.

Listen and learn more than you talk. Listening is a key part of growing as a leader. If you stop listening and stop learning, you will stop growing as a leader.

There is something you can learn from everyone if you’ll search for it.

Don’t be a know-it-all this coming year. Instead, be a learn-from-others person this coming year.

As you learn and grow, you will see growth in your ministry.

Rick Warren said he focused on growing himself first. As he grew, his church grew.

It’s a great principle. Focus this coming year on growing yourself first and foremost. Out of that will flow the growth of your ministry, volunteers, children and families.

I’m praying with you that this coming year will be your best year ever. Can’t wait to see how God is going to bless so many of you with an incredible year of ministry.

Your Friend. Your Fan.

Dale Hudson

This article originally appeared here.

Ten Reasons I Am Optimistic About the Church in 2019

By

Thom Rainer

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December 30, 2018

Despite the tough reality many congregations face today, I remain an obnoxious optimist for the church in 2019. Just yesterday, I received an email about a church that I thought was headed for closure. Through a series of God-blessed events, the church has turned the corner and will remain a presence in the community.

Ten Reasons I Am Optimistic About the Church in 2019

That one anecdote has been a common theme for so many congregations: There is hope. God is not done with us yet. And here are 10 reasons why I am optimistic for the church in 2019:

More church leaders are admitting their churches are struggling. On the surface, this reason seems more like a reason for pessimism. I don’t see it that way. You can’t begin to get healthy until you admit you are not healthy. It is a vital first step.
Churches are increasingly connecting with their communities. They are breaking out of their holy huddles and becoming a witness and a positive presence in the neighborhoods and towns where God has placed them.
There is significant evidence of greater Great Commission obedience. We recently conducted a survey of 1,700 church leaders. The number one area where they are seeking to improve is evangelism and outward focus.
Toxic church behavior is less tolerated. Many churches struggle because issues such as bullying and toxic leadership are swept under the rug. Just yesterday I spoke with a pastor who was celebrating the reality that we talk about these issues openly and frankly.
Church revitalization has become a major movement. This one reason excites me beyond measure. Such is the reason I created the non-profit organization Revitalize Network. I wanted a place where we could connect and help one another.
More young pastors feel called to lead a church revitalization. Related to the revitalization movement is the incredible number of young leaders who are and will be leading churches toward revitalization. I can’t wait to see what God will do!
More church leaders are seeking coaching and consultations. I love the humility and vulnerability I am seeing with these leaders. They are seeking God’s wisdom, and they are calling on others to help their churches move forward. I know. We at Church Answers are receiving more requests for coaching and consultation than at any point in my ministry.
Churches are working together toward fulfilling the Great Commission. There are so many areas where we can work together even if we come from different denominations or non-denominational churches. For three decades many of our churches and church leaders have criticized and fought each other. More than ever today, we realize we are on the same team.
Church planting and church revitalization are not perceived to be either/or. We need both. We must have both. They are each critically important. I love the dual emphasis that is taking place.
The multi-site and multi-venue movement is entering an era of growth and maturity. Because of this movement, existing congregations are finding new opportunities for Great Commission growth. Because of this movement, fewer churches will close their doors.

These are exciting days to be a church leader and church member. While we don’t deny the reality of struggling churches, we embrace the excitement about God’s work in so many congregations.

I really believe it: 2019 will be an incredible year for thousands of churches.

I can’t wait to see what God will do.

This article about the church in 2019 originally appeared here.

7 Pre/Post-Service Activities That Help Kids Build Friendships

By

Brandon Horst

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December 30, 2018

I heard someone say once, “Show me your five closest friends, and I’ll show you your future.” That’s why we need to help kids build friendships.

While I don’t believe that is 100 percent true, it does make an important point: We are very strongly influenced by the people, especially peers, we spend the most amount of time with.

And that is why we believe it is really important in the Kid’s Ministry at our church to create space for and help kids form relationships.

Key times for this are before the Large Group and after our Small Groups when kids have freetime to hangout.

We’ve been really intentional in making things available that encourage kids to come together.

Here are seven of the activities available during or pre/post-service times that help kids build friendships.

1. Kids build friendships with Foosball.

Kids young and old love to team up and play foosball.

Relationships go two ways: Teammates bond, and the competing teams bond (although sometimes our volunteers have to step in and gently remind them of this fact).

A great place to purchase a foosball table for next to nothing is on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist.

2. Kids build friendships with Air Hockey.

Kids love this classic game!

We even provide four air hockey “sticks” to create even more room for kids to come together.

I’ve even seen pentagonal air hockey tables where up to five kids get their own goals (if you can find one that’s affordable, which we haven’t, you should go for this option).

Again check out Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist for people practically giving these away.

3. Kids build friendships with Arcade Basketball.

Nothing starts (and sometimes ends) friendships like a few rounds of arcade basketball.

You can start your search on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, but I always see online sales for these that are well under $100.

4. Kids build friendships with Jumbo Legos.

This is probably the most expensive item on the list, but also among the most popular with the kids in our church.

You can grab them off Amazon here.

Basically these are giant legos that our kids, especially our boys, love to get together and build giant towers, forts, etc.

As kids decide want they want to build and then work together to do it, great relationships are formed.

5. Kids build friendships with Wii.

I know there are mixed opinions on video games in church, but this is something that our kids absolutely love doing together and it really does help them bond.

The two most popular games are Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros.

Girls tend to like Mario Kart more, and boys tend to like Super Smash Bros. more.

You can get the Wii and games on the cheap by visiting Ebay.

6. Kids build friendships with Board/Card Games.

We have a bookshelf filled with different board/card games that some of our kids love to play.

Here are some of the most popular: Connect 4, Uno, Checkers, Beanboozled, Apples to Apples Kid Addition, Pie Face and Jenga.

This is also popular with our volunteers to engage kids who are more shy or withdrawn.

All of these games can be purchased at Amazon, Target, Walmart, etc.

7. Kids build friendships with Chalkboard Wall.

Our more artistic students love to have an entire wall as a canvas.

Every week we see kids coming together to draw side-by-side.

This is another great option for kids who are more shy or withdrawn to have an opportunity to ease into getting to know other kids.

The paint is relatively inexpensive at Home Depot or Lowes, and if you purchase dustless chalk, cleanup isn’t all that bad.

Application Question: What one to three of these options could you implement within the next month?

Add to the conversation: What activities do you have available at your church that encourage relationships to form?

Share: If this post was helpful to you, pass it along by sharing with one person you believe would benefit.

This article originally appeared here.

Your Church Is Not Your Platform

By

Timothy Paul Jones

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December 30, 2018

In 1932, the University of Southern California started stenciling “Property of USC” on athletic t-shirts for the purpose of preventing theft. Their anti-theft strategy backfired when the stenciled attire became more popular than the original unstenciled t-shirts. USC turned this problem into a profit by producing and selling “Property of USC” shirts to students. Today, nearly every university and sports team in the United States stocks and sells some sort of “Property of” sportswear.

Kansas_City_Royals_58_x_48_Property_Of_Blanket_Throw The phrases “kingdom of priests” and “holy priesthood” (Exodus 19:6; 1 Peter 2:5) are like “Property of” t-shirts that God places on everyone he has chosen and purchased as his own. When God referred to Israel as a “kingdom of priests,” he was declaring his people to be “Property of God.” The apostle Peter applied this terminology to the church, identifying new covenant believers as a chosen community devoted to God’s purposes.

Leadership in a Holy Priesthood

United with Christ the great high priest, the new covenant people of God become God’s property, devoted to God’s purposes. This devotion of the whole community frees leaders from at least two deadly delusions about their role in the church. Through this devotion to God’s purposes, leaders are released

from the delusion that the people are the leader’s property and
from the delusion that the leader is the people’s property.

The Delusion That the People Are the Leader’s Property

It is a privilege to lead the people of God—but the privilege of being a leader of God’s people never transforms the people into the leader’s property. Godly leadership results in humble stewardship, not prideful ownership. Church leaders are not called to stand above a conglomeration of individuals as if the purpose of these people is to fulfill our vision. God calls us to serve as shepherds in the midst of a flock that has been wholly devoted to his purposes.

And yet, the delusion that the people are our property remains a persistent temptation.

Some expressions of this delusion are obvious. There’s the dictatorial pastor who’s driven to rage when people don’t measure up to his expectations, the bullying elder who silences dissent by abusing the gift of church discipline, the unaccountable leader who demands control over the church’s finances. A leader may rack up charges on the church’s credit card that don’t clearly contribute to the purposes of the church. In each of these instances, the people and their resources are clearly being treated as if they’re the leader’s property instead of God’s property. Dietrich Bonhoeffer described the despairing results of this delusion well when he wrote:

The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community…enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly.… He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

The Temptation of Treating the People as a Platform

The delusion that the people are the leader’s property also manifests itself in more subtle ways—in ways that may be hidden or even accepted among church leaders.

Sometimes, the delusion is revealed through our complaining and impatience when the church doesn’t immediately applaud our best-laid plans. Other times, it’s treating a small congregation or an associate ministry role as a passing inconvenience until a more prominent position becomes available.

Increasingly, this pattern is seen when a church is used as a pastor’s platform to promote his own personal brand for the purpose of gaining book deals, multiplying his popularity in the world of social media, or landing lucrative speaking gigs on evangelical conference platforms. “With the Internet being what it is, local church ministry is no longer local church ministry,” Barnabas Piper has pointed out. “Pride is an occupational hazard for all of us: If you have a byline, if your name is on a book, or you have a podcast, it comes with pride.”

The church is not a platform to send a pastor’s visionary ideals into orbit around his own wishful dreams. Neither is the church meant to serve as the source of our social stature or emotional well-being. The church is the blood-bought property of God. For a pastor to treat the people as his platform is an act of treasonous theft, stealing for himself that which Christ our great high priest has purchased at the cost of his own blood. The church is not a tool to be manipulated for our benefit; it is a holy communion in which we share a sacred stewardship.

The Delusion That the Leader Is the People’s Property

“Let me tell you something, Dr. T.,” the deacon leaned over the lunch table to make certain I didn’t miss a single word he had to say, “if your wife ever has to call me about this again, I will personally take over your calendar so that you’re home when you need to be.” More than a decade in retrospect, I realize that this threat from a deacon who loved me probably saved my ministry.

I had served four years as this church’s associate pastor when the senior pastor left to lead a church plant. A few months after the pastor resigned, the congregation asked me to take his place, and I accepted the call. But there was a problem: Even after calling an additional staff member, I wasn’t letting go of the roles I’d had as associate pastor. And so, in addition to leading the staff and preparing multiple messages each week, I was still overseeing monthly trainings for Sunday School teachers, attending every youth and children’s ministry committee meeting, playing guitar in the youth worship band, and helping with the logistics for three upcoming mission trips. The result was that my wife was spending far too many evenings at home alone with our first daughter.

My wife tried to talk to me about releasing some of my previous responsibilities, but I didn’t see the same problems that she was seeing. So Rayann called a faithful deacon named Mark and described what was happening in our household. And that’s how I ended up being interrogated over lunch at Applebee’s about why I was spending so many evenings enmeshed in church meetings instead of heading home.

That afternoon, I began the process of delegating and reassigning a long list of responsibilities, but I found the release to be much more of a struggle than I thought it would be. After an hour or so of wrestling with the list, I came to a painful recognition: I was living under the delusion that the church could not accomplish any of these tasks without my direct involvement. One result of this delusion was that I was living as if I belonged to the people and programs of the church instead of living first and foremost as an adopted of God.

In some ways, the notion of living this way seemed noble and sacrificial. I recalled hearing older pastors boast about spending all their evenings at church and even admonishing younger pastors, “You take care of the church, and God will take care of your family.” But Scripture does not support such a split in responsibilities. According to the apostle Paul, our integrity as leaders in the church is grounded in our habits of leadership in our homes (1 Timothy 3:4-5). A pastor who neglects his family and acts as if he is the church’s property isn’t demonstrating sacrificial love for the church. What he’s revealing instead is his own unwillingness to develop and deploy the people of God for the work of God (Ephesians 4:12).

In many cases, leaders who live as if the church depends on them are forced to live behind a mask of strength, never revealing their weakness. They cannot afford to disappoint or disillusion anyone, because they are the essential property without which the church cannot function—or so they believe. The problem with this pattern is that none of us can successfully isolate our interior life from our exterior life. Whenever we neglect the unseen aspects of ministry, we eventually find ourselves unable to engage in the visible practices of ministry in the power of Christ. What makes matters worse is that too many churches celebrate leaders who are overly busy and who fail to delegate responsibilities. When churches treat their leaders as the congregation’s indispensable property, the people of the church miss opportunities to use the gifts that the Spirit has given them.

So what’s the answer to this struggle?

The pastor must learn to see his central identity not as a property of God’s people or even as a leader of God’s people but, first and foremost, as a child of God and a follower of God’s Son. The pastor is the church’s servant but the church is never the pastor’s master. Leaders and laity alike are not the property of each other; together, they are the devoted property of God and God alone.

To learn more about healthy church leadership, take a look at my book The God Who Goes Before You.

This article originally appeared here.

Is a Plurality of Elders Necessary in the Local Church?

By

Dr. Josh Buice

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December 30, 2018

Is it absolutely necessary for the freedom and vitality of the United States for a president to lead the people? While there may be many opinions on that very subject, it would not be necessary for our nation to be led by a president. If our nation decided to change the way we structure things and be led by a plurality of presidents, it would not be wrong to move in that direction. Neither one is mandatory. When it comes to professional baseball, must the team be led by a coach who is often referred to as a general manager? The fact is—there is no absolute answer to that question. A new management process could be developed that may do away with the general manager position and the owners of the baseball team would not be in error if they went in that direction. We have freedom in politics and the world of athletics.

When it comes to the local church—we must remember that everything we do should be evaluated through the lens of Scripture. If the Bible provides us with the necessities of both life and the practice of our faith—how the household of God functions really matters. Therefore, if God established a specific system and we choose to operate under a different model simply because of pragmatic rationale or a commitment to some form of modern trends or historic traditions—it must be noted that we don’t have such freedom to make those alterations.

There are great benefits to a church being led by elders (a plurality of pastors). Some of those benefits to the church as a whole would include a shared oversight through multiple men rather than just one man. Such shared authority protects the church from the cult of personality and bad decisions that could harm the church for years to follow. This shared oversight provides support for the lead pastor who serves as one of the pastors in the group. This shared authority includes shared responsibility and accountability. However, the main reason for organizing the leadership of the local church with a plurality of elders is not based on the benefits since this is not a pragmatic decision. The reason a plurality of elders is necessary is because of the fact that it’s clearly modeled in Scripture as the God-ordained pattern of leadership for a local church.

Alistair Begg writes, “Leadership in the church should always be shared—that is one reason that the apostolic pattern was to appoint a plurality of elders rather than a solitary elder in all the churches (Acts 14:23).” [1] God has a purpose in all that he does, and we must honor his plan for church government. We see a plurality of elders in individual local churches throughout the New Testament:

According to 1 Peter 5:1-4, the pastor’s responsibility is to provide food, protection, discipline and love. That task is utterly impossible to accomplish alone regardless of the size of the local church. Pastors need assistance from other pastors within the context of the local church family. For a pastor to think that he has all of the gifts necessary to oversee, equip, discipline and lead the church is beyond arrogance. Needless to say, such a man has an elevated opinion of himself. Far too many local churches are self-governed or led by a group of deacons while the pastor simply preaches on Sunday. That’s not the biblical model.

When a church is led by a plurality of elders it not only provides joy for the pastors—but it should provide joy for the church as a whole as they become encouraged by the intentional oversight and care for the body of Christ. In short, true shepherds of God’s flock understand that the church belongs to God and they are merely appointed leaders to do the work of God. Therefore, the church should be established and organized to follow the biblical pattern.

Having staff positions who serve beneath the pastor and work alongside him is not the same as having a plurality of pastors who are equal in position. The pastors and the church both should be under authority. Mark Dever provides a helpful explanation as he writes:

So the Bible clearly teaches that New Testament churches are to be led by elders. At the end of the day, this question is just another way of asking whether or not we are going to allow the Scriptures to be the sole authority in the life of the church. For though there are lots of pragmatic reasons to have elders, from the perspective of a pastor, there are more pragmatic reasons not to have them. Elders can slow a senior pastor down, they can disagree with him, they can even tell him on occasion that he’s wrong. Pragmatically speaking, who would want that? [2]

When we ask if a plurality of elders is necessary it’s like asking if the Bible is sufficient? Interestingly enough we don’t argue with the organization of a plurality of deacons in a single local church, but we often have people who intentionally avoid having a plurality of elders in a local church. While there is biblical evidence to support a plurality of elders and a plurality of deacons in a local church—there are far more passages that discuss a plurality of elders than discuss a plurality of deacons.

If you are moving to a new town or looking for a church home—consider looking for a local church that has intentionally organized their church government to include a plurality of elders (pastors) who lead, oversee, care for and equip their local church and a plurality of deacons who serve the church.

Alistair Begg, On Being a Pastor, (Chicago: Moody Press, 2004), 218.
Mark Dever, “Should a Church Have Elders?“

This article originally appeared here.

How To Talk To Your Sound Tech (A guide for worship leaders)

By

Mike O’Brien

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December 30, 2018

In many churches, communication with the sound tech is a touchy subject. Most worship leaders can rattle off a list of offenses [of] interactions from techs they have worked alongside. Likewise, most sound techs have countless horror stories of aggressive, diva musicians committing relational and technical fouls on stage before, during and after church services.

The solutions are more relational than technical (although gear runs a close second). Below are a few ways to engage your tech and make your church culture one that honors these valuable servants:

1. Become Their Chief Encourager

Most technical people in church only get attention when something is wrong. Many have been shamed and ridiculed from the stage when things have gone wrong. Insecure musicians and communicators will often place blame on sound and media people from the stage. Stop…. Right…. Now…. and ask God to reveal any techs from your past that you might have offended. Message, text, call and make it right.

After each and every rehearsal and service I strive to pinpoint a specific expression of kudos for the sound techs.

“Thanks for always being on time, it really makes a difference for us.”

“That kick drum sounded massive today!”

“The vocals were spot on tonight — I loved how easy you made it.”

“When you took time to help Sue with her bass amp, it really helped make the rehearsal go easy.”

Brand this phrase on your leadership heart: “what is rewarded is repeated.” This one concept has guided my leadership style more than any other in creating positive and healthy relationships in worship ministry.

2. Ask “How Can We Help?” vs. “Give me this or that!”

Instead of thinking that the sound tech is there as your servant, ask how you can help them achieve the best sound. We are ALL serving Jesus on equal ground and this IS NOT a consumer/customer retail situation. Sound techs have dozens of variables involved at any given time and you have only one or two. Inviting their input will help build trust. Teach your band this idea too. Your players should be interacting with the sound tech with honor and respect vs. yelling or demanding.

“Jim, is there anything we can do to help you get what you need out there?”

“Dave, when you get a chance do you mind turning down the kick drum in my in-ears? Thank you.”

“Julie, please tell me which setting is better for you.”

When something is not working on your end with the sound or monitors, instead of blurting out your problem, wait until the tech is ready and let them know your need in a calm, non-anxious tone.

3. Learn and Speak the LANGUAGE OF SOUND

Worship leaders that know some of the language of sound will better be able to communicate with their techs. Spend some time Not Leading Worship (volunteer for [the] sound team) and learn your soundboard basics. Ask questions and become aware of what it takes to make a band sound good in your room. Learn their language so you can communicate clearly. There is a lifetime of knowledge to learn here, but here are some basics:

Gain – A microphone or guitar needs extra power to make the sound go from the instrument, through the cables to the speakers. This amplification is called gain. Too much gain and the sound will distort, too little gain and the sound will be weak and hard to expand. If you notice the volume of your instrument going up or down in your ears the sound tech might be adjusting your gain.

Equalization (EQ) – Most instruments/voices will benefit from raising or lowering certain frequencies on the sound spectrum. You can and should know what a good EQ curve is for your instrument(s).

Balance – The relationships of the instruments with one another. Can you clearly hear the different parts of the mix while enjoying the whole mix? Getting multiple guitars, keyboards, and vocals to blend well will require a good exchange between the stage and sound.

A Sampling of Language

The following are a sampling of phrases I might communicate with a sound tech during a rehearsal:

“Is there anything you need from us?”

“Sam, my voice just jumped in volume, are you adjusting gain, or is that something on my end?”

“Jim, it sounds really good from up here, thank you!”

“How’s the stage volume from back there, if we turn up will it be ok?”

“How well are the drums sitting in the mix from the congregation?”

“How’s the vocal balance out there, is Jenny cutting though?”

My Best Advice

If you spend more time encouraging your tech than correcting them, you will build trust for the journey which will allow for excellence to flourish. Would love to hear any other tips or ideas you have on sound tech communication; how do you honor your techs in how you talk to them?

Here’s A Training Opportunity for your sound techs: USE CODE SS15 for 15% off the Vineyard School of Worship Sound Summit in Columbus OH January 31-Feb 2, 2019.

Lead Yourself First—The 30-Day Challenge

By

Dru Dalton

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December 28, 2018

Before you can lead others, you must first be able to lead yourself. I’m going to share one of my favorite lead yourself first hacks. I won’t touch on the what of leading yourself, simply the how. There are plenty of people out there telling you to add this practice to your morning, or to do this one thing daily for instant success. This isn’t that kind of post. I don’t claim to have those kinds of answers.

I am, however, going to share the how with one of my favorite how techniques.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Luke 12:48 (NIV):

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

I don’t take this verse lightly. It’s the fuel to my constant push for personal improvement in the stewardship of all I’ve been entrusted with.

One thing I do to put this in practice is something I call the “30-day challenge.” The basic idea is to decide on a practice you want to commit to—whether it’s something you want to start doing or stop doing—and simply commit to doing it every day for 30 days. That’s it. 30 days.

There are several reasons why I like 30 days. First off, the commonly shared timeframe of taking 21 days to form a new habit, in my opinion, is far too short. Honestly, 30 days isn’t even long enough for most people, but it’s often long enough to decide if you want to continue the practice.

An important point to remember here is that the point of establishing a new practice or ritual in your life is not to start something for ritual’s sake, but to add a benefit or an improvement to your life. If your new habit or practice doesn’t deliver the desired benefit, stop doing it and try something else!

There’s no sense in doing something if it’s not yielding the benefits you’re after. It was Albert Einstein who shared the definition of insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

If you don’t get the desired result, change your approach. And 30 days is the perfect amount of time to see if your approach is working, or if it’s time for a change.

Additionally, 30 days has a natural rhythm to it in the course of a calendar month. I like starting a new practice each month. I personally don’t even track the days of my challenge this way. I simply know that I started on the first day of the month and therefore know how many days in I am, how many I have left, and what my current “win” streak is as well. The calendar date shows me how far I’ve come and how far I have to go without any external tracking system needed.

So, let me tell you about one of my latest challenges and how it came to be.

I recently took Seth Godin’s altMBA course. It’s an intense, four-week sprint course for people who want to be effective leaders. When I received my orientation email, the schedule looked something like this:

Tuesday & Thursday evenings from 6-9 p.m. & Sundays from 8 a.m.-5 p.m.

Again, this was for four weeks in a row.

Seeing this, I had a “my wife is going to kill me” moment. We have four young kids (Noah, Aiden, Eli and Adele) and we were in the middle of selling, buying and moving homes during this same four-week time period. Being absent for three primetime “dad-timeslots” during the week for four weeks was not going to excite my wife about my altMBA experience (understandably so).

Not wanting to set off the volcano, I looked for an alternative and found out that the London cohort of the course met at the same time, except on London time. Therefore, their 6-9 p.m. slot was 1-4 p.m. New York time and their 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday slot was 4 a.m.-noon New York time. Perfect I thought, I’m in!

Now a part of the London cohort, I joined 25 other individuals, all from European and Middle Eastern countries.

One of my classmates was Sabastian. Sabastian lives in Germany and worked as a consultant for a number of years. As the consultant lifestyle goes, Sabastian worked 80+ hour weeks and was away from home Monday through Thursday. Each week, he’d return home for the weekend exhausted.

While on a vacation, as is typical for many European cultures, Sabastian’s wife hit him with something two weeks into the trip. She said, “You know Sabastian, you’re really a different person when we get away for a while.”

Not understanding what she exactly meant, Sabastian dug deeper (a true consultant he is).

Through the conversation, his wife shared that he was far more pleasant to be around, now two weeks into the trip, than he was a week ago and certainly than was typical in their everyday lives. He was happier, more joyful, more patient with his children, and a more loving husband.

Sabastian’s hypothesis to this change in his behavior was the additional two to three hours of sleep he was getting while on vacation. Rather than his traditional five to six hours of sleep per night, he had been averaging eight to nine hours. This piqued Sabastian’s interest in the study of sleep, setting him off on a several-year-long exploration, leading him to be a firm believer in the power of sleep.

Fast forward to my time with Sabastian as a classmate, the topic of sleep emerged.

I shared with my group that for years, I’ve been almost purposefully ignoring the trending topic idea of getting more sleep. I read Adriana Huffington’s Thrive years ago and dismissed the concepts as interesting and dreamy, thinking “oh sure, one day I’ll be able to sleep more, but not right now.” I felt the idea of being more productive after getting more sleep was nice in concept, but I don’t have time for that.

Appealing, nice in theory, but not for me. Not right now, at least. After all, I operate pretty well on six hours of sleep, right? I never feel tired. I’m happily married, my kids seem to like me, business is going pretty well, why rock the boat?

However, in my typical 30-day challenge style, I told my group I would commit to getting eight hours of sleep per night for the entire month of August. I’d go to bed when I went to bed and simply set the alarm for eight hours later. I felt challenged, but overall it was a pretty easy commit.

However, Sabastian fired back. He said, “I want to challenge you further, don’t set an alarm.”

Yikes! That one actually scared me. Don’t set an alarm? What if I sleep the day away (who am I kidding, I have four young kids!). What if I sleep nine or 10 hours?

Between balancing family time, running a company, buying/selling our home and taking this course, how am I supposed to risk losing one or two precious hours of the day?

However, the simple fact that the idea of no-alarm did indeed scare me was exactly what I needed to know that it was the right challenge. The fact that I was scared fired me up! So I committed.

Starting August 1, 2018, I completely banished an alarm clock. I left my phone charging in the kitchen at night and always went to bed around 9:30, plus or minus 30 minutes. I tried to always be off my computer by 8:45 and in bed reading by 9 p.m. to give myself 30 minutes of “wind down” time before lights out.

With that, I very consistently woke up 7.5 to 8 hours later, between 5 and 5:30 a.m., without an alarm. I followed this for 30 days, knowing that it may take some time for my body to catch up and feel truly rested once again.

Reporting back on the 30-day experiment, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the consistency my body has shown in the time it desires to rest each night. My mood has certainly been no worse and I like to think my focus and clarity of thought have been heightened.

With that, I decided to continue the challenge, enjoying the “sleep until I wake” idea.

And now, I encourage you. Find your 30-day challenge. What have you been wanting to do and have been putting off? What is tugging at you to add to your routine? Is it a meal routine? A new morning routine? Working out? Meditation? Sleep? A task system? A family ritual?

Whatever it is for you, give it a try. Set your 30-day challenge and go!

This article originally appeared here.

The Gospel of an Imperfect Service

By

Eric Schumacher

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December 28, 2018

imperfect service — Adobestock #968462561

I subscribe to Seth Godin’s blog. I enjoy his short, pithy posts, often full of wisdom about life, productivity and service to others. Saturday morning, I opened my email to find a new post from him in my inbox—“A note from 2020.” The content was simple and insightful: “Twelve years from now, your future self is going to thank you for something you did today, for an asset you began to build, a habit you formed, a seed you planted.”

The first thing that struck me, however, was not the content but the math error. 2020 is not 12 years from now. I followed the link to his blog, which opened to the same title but quickly refreshed to “2030.” Seth had caught his error.

I laughed. And I relaxed. This was good news. Even Seth Godin, a master of social media and blogging, knows that moment of panic and frustration when you discover your error five minutes after it publishes. The content of Seth’s post served me, even with the error. It reminded me that I don’t have to be perfect to serve people well on social media.

The same holds in our corporate worship services.

Those of us who lead services, serve in music, prepare service guides, preach sermons, read scripture, pray publicly, manage audio-visual components and attend worship serves need to hear this message: Mistakes preach good news.

What Does Not Happen?

Do you know what does not happen when you make a mistake in the worship service?

We are not handed over to Satan.

The redemptive plan of God is not overturned.

The Holy Spirit does not go away in disappointment.

Jesus does not become ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.

The Father does not forsake us or annul our adoption as his children.

What Does Happen?

Do you know what does happen when you make a mistake in the worship service?

God still reigns—and he works through those mistakes to accomplish his purposes.

Jesus still loves you—and he sympathizes with your weakness.

The Holy Spirit works in you to make you more like Jesus.

A Sigh of Relief

When mistakes happen, imperfect people breathe a sigh of relief. Imagine being a first-time guest, an awkward teenager or (who am I kidding?) a long-time staff pastor whose life seems to be falling apart, who is overwhelmed by everything they’re failing at, and who feels unworthy of approaching God. You walk into a church that is perfect. The welcome team doesn’t miss a beat. The musicians are all A-listers. The décor makes your home look like a dump. The happy, smiling members are decked out in the latest fashions—the likes of which you’ve only seen perfected on Instagram.

Inwardly, you groan. Is this place for me? you wonder. It soon translates to, Is God for me? If this is what the body of Christ looks like, do I belong among them?

And then it happens: The lead musician blows the intro. The cordless mics cut out and quit altogether. The pastor mixes up his words and says something hilarious (or entirely inappropriate). And then they laugh, and smile, and take it in stride, and say, “Bear with us folks, we’ll get there…” And you relax, and breathe a sigh of relief, and realize that these people aren’t perfect and that the church is a place for imperfect people.

This is what it is like to glimpse Jesus. He is a the Perfect-Imperfect Savior. (I know that sounds heretical. Stick with me here.) Jesus is perfect. Christ is fully God and fully man. He lived a sinless life. He is the Righteous One.

But he didn’t look perfect. “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). Those who knew him saw him as little more than the carpenter from Nazareth. The message of a crucified Messiah seemed to be “foolishness” and “weakness” (1 Corinthians 1). The resurrected Lord has scars (John 20:27). Even in the glory, the Lion of Judah appears as a Lamb who was slain (Revelation 5:5-6).

If you want a Savior who bears no scars or marks of humility, you’ll need to find another. Jesus doesn’t qualify.

If you want a religious community without weakness, mistakes and scars, you shouldn’t visit a Christian church. Jesus’ body is conformed to his image.

Pharisees can’t stand this Savior or his gathered people. But sinners find refuge there.

Perfectionists Challenged

When mistakes happen, perfectionists are challenged. They’ll cover their perfectionism with religious language. “Undistracting excellence” is what I call it. I want our services to be done well so that the attention of attendees is focused on Jesus and not distracted from his glory. This service is about honoring God, so I want it to be the best it can be.

That’s what I say. But, often, what’s going on deep down is that I want people to think well of our church and me. I know that (some) people are judging me and us by external appearance and performance. I want them to keep attending. I want them to approve of me. I want them to pick us. But that’s not the gospel.

The gospel is the message of a Savior who sees our mess, our mistakes and our outright rebellion and chooses to enter into the midst of it. He didn’t come for the healthy, but for the sick. Jesus didn’t come for the righteous, but for sinners. He didn’t come for the perfect church service winners—he came for the losers who don’t have it all together. The Messiah loved them. He dwelled with them. Christ experienced the discomfort of their imperfection, dying on the cross for their sin so that they could be counted as righteous through faith in him.

If you leave the church on Sunday venting to your spouse and messaging your friends about what you didn’t like and what went wrong, I encourage you to meet Jesus sometime. He’s not doing that. He can set you free from that. If your love for your church is based on the flawlessness of their performance, spend less time looking at your church and more time looking at the crucified and risen Savior.

You know what else happens? The church forgives you (if it noticed at all). Honestly, unless it is huge, no one but the over-picky perfectionist even noticed—and those who did probably don’t care. They’ve forgotten it before the waitress seats them for lunch.

Admire Your Eggs

Hershael York, my preaching professor in seminary, told us, “If you lay an egg, stand back and admire it.” Amen.

Friends, when the mistakes happen on Sunday morning (and they will!), stand back and admire the grace of God. Remember a Savior with scars who loves and dwells with imperfect people. Remember that the reason you gathered is that there is none who is perfect but God alone. And in the cross of Christ, he has purchased grace for imperfect people.

This article originally appeared here.

“I’m in God’s Will”: NFL Hall of Famer Attempts Suicide—21 Years Later, He Reveals His Real Calling

By

Stephanie Martin

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December 28, 2018

Ahead of an upcoming ESPN 30 for 30 documentary about his life, two-sport athlete Deion Sanders is speaking out about the struggles that led him to Jesus. The 51-year-old father of five, now a commentator for the NFL Network, discusses a 1997 suicide attempt that resulted in a “tremendous turnaround.”

Sanders, known as “Prime Time,” is the only athlete to compete in both a World Series and a Super Bowl. He played Major League Baseball for nine years, including a 1992 World Series appearance with the Atlanta Braves. And he played in the National Football League for 14 years, winning the Super Bowl in 1995 and 1996 with the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys, respectively.

In his 1997 autobiography Power, Money & Sex: How Success Almost Ruined My Life (Word Publishing), Sanders describes driving off a 40-foot cliff—without sustaining major injuries. At that point, he was “going through the trials and tribulations of life,” including a divorce. “I was pretty much running on fumes,” Sanders says. “I was empty, no peace, no joy. Losing hope with the progression of everything.”

Deion Sanders Switches to “God’s Team”

Growing up in Florida, Sanders was deserted at age 7 by his father, a drug addict. But his mother was religious, and Sanders says church and Sunday school attendance was “mandatory.” At the peak of his playing career, Sanders realized fame and fortune couldn’t fill—or fulfill—him.

After surviving the suicide attempt, he “finally just got on my knees and gave it all to the Lord.” Sanders says, “I had to get a lot of Word in so that I could fight off the enemy.” Thanks to Bible study and assistance from spiritual mentors such as T.D. Jakes, Sanders went “from the enemy’s team, being one of his soldiers, to God’s team.”

A Faith-Filled Life for Deion Sanders

Sanders now realizes you can’t be “at your optimum without your faith.” He admits, “Sports is sports; it’s a game. My faith is everything. It’s the gas that propels the courage, the truth, keeps me going. It’s the wind, it’s the wings, it’s the air that pumps into my lungs, that provokes me to live. Faith is everything.”

Sanders attends the nondenominational Vision Regeneration Church in Dallas. He partners with Stand Together, a local agency that fights poverty and youth violence. “Finding someone that’s likeminded at this age and stage of my life is a delight to me,” Sanders says of his work with the group. “They give with no expectation, give from the heart.”

Although Sanders shares his experiences and faith story with other people, he doesn’t label it as a ministry. “What people call ‘in the ministry,’ I call it ‘in my will.’ I’m in God’s will. I don’t really get down with a lot of titles,” he says. “If [God] called me to minister to a group, or setting, or whatever…that’s what I’m gonna do. I don’t really desire a title to go and do what I’ve been called to do. I think it’s only right to go.”

ESPN’s 30 for 30 feature-length documentary about Sanders airs on January 31. It focuses on a 24-hour span in October 1992 when Sanders played a football game in between two baseball playoff games in different cities.

Top 35 Pastor Conferences for 2019 in the U.S.

By

Christine Yount Jones

-

December 28, 2018

Top 35 Pastor Conferences for 2019 in the U.S.

We put together this list of the top 34 pastor conferences for 2019 in the United States so you, pastor and church leader, can get the training, refreshment, and encouragement you so deserve in 2019. This is a multi-denominational list in chronological order because the church is multi-denominational. Our hope is you find the training you need.

JANUARY 2019 PASTOR CONFERENCES

Encounter Conference

The Encounter Conference is the flagship event for Encounter Ministries where we seek to gather leaders of revival in the church to encounter God’s refreshment, encouragement and impartation of greater anointing for ministry. Conference participants can expect an atmosphere of spirit-filled worship in the presence of God, mass, inspiring and transforming keynote speakers, breakout sessions, eucharistic adoration, a healing service, fellowship and many opportunities for prayer ministry and growth in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Dates: January 3-5, 2019
Location: Toledo, Ohio
Sponsored by: Encounter Ministries
Speakers: Jeff Cavins, Fr. Mathias Thelen, Neal Lozano, and more

G3 Conference

The mission of the G3 Conference is to educate, encourage, and equip for the work of ministry and for the glory of God. Our mission is built upon the foundation of the holy Scriptures and upheld by three pillars – gospel, grace, and glory. It is our goal to see the people who attend the G3 to reach the neighborhoods and the nations with the gospel. Includes a Spanish conference on Wednesday, January 16th.

Dates: January 17-19, 2019
Location: College Park, Georgia
Sponsored by: Heart Cry Missionary Society and others
Speakers: David Platt, John Piper, Martha Peace, Voddie Baucham, and more

Accelerate Conference

Accelerate Pastors Conference is for pastors, spouses and associate pastors to be refreshed and refilled. The pressure and stress of day-to-day ministry can stifle your gifts. It is a time to get your gifts out of your head and begin using them again.

Dates: January 24-26, 2019
Location: Naples, Florida
Sponsored by: New Hope Ministries
Speakers: Grant Thigpen, Duane Sheriff, and Bob Yandian

Jacksonville Pastors’ Conference

Join us in Jacksonville this January 2019 for a special time of mutual encouragement and equipping. Come and sit under the preached Word, and attend break-outs that are designed for practical instruction and collaboration. Bring along other church leaders for a time of fellowship that will be sure to spur us on to love and good deeds. Don’t miss the annual Pastors’ Conference at First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Florida, and our inaugural Women’s Biblical Counseling Conference, featuring Joni Eareckson Tada, on the topic of suffering.

Dates: January 24-27, 2019
Location: Jacksonville, Florida
Sponsored by: First Baptist Church of Jacksonville
Speakers: Albert Mohler, Matt Carter, Steve Gaines, H.B. Charles Jr., Bob Russell, and more

2019 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors + Church Leaders

The 2019 Bethlehem conference for pastors and church leaders has the theme: Gospel Joy: The Bold Pursuit of Pleasures Forevermore in Ministry. This three-day conference has pre-conference events, seminars (including Spanish-language and women’s ministry sessions), and 7 plenary sessions.

Dates: January 28-30, 2019
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Hosted by Bethlehem College and Seminary
Sponsored by: Crossway
Speakers: 34 speakers, including John Piper, H.B. Charles Jr., Luis Mendez, Mary Willson, and more

February 2019 Pastor Conferences

Christ Fellowship Conference

Christ Fellowship Conference is designed specifically for YOU to lead with excellence, empower the next generation and use your creativity to bring life-change to our world. Through inspiring speakers and various breakouts to choose from, you can expect not only to be fulfilled but also equipped. You will be resourced with the effective tools necessary to create and build a healthy culture within your church as well as help strengthen The Church.

Dates: February 6-7, 2019
Location: West Palm Beach, Florida
Sponsored by: Christ Fellowship Church
Speakers: Earl McClellan, Tom Mullins, Robert Morris, John Maxwell, Levi Lusko, and more

SE Calvary Chapel Pastor’s Conference

An annual 3-day conference, hosted this year by Pastor Malcolm Wild at Calvary Chapel Merritt Island. The theme for 2019 is “The Riches of the Servant’s Walk.”

Dates: February 18-20, 2019
Location: Merritt Island, Florida
Sponsored by: Calvary Chapel Merritt Island
Speakers: Joe Focht, Jim Gallagher, David Guzik, and more

C3 Conference 2019

We believe healthy leaders talk about the raw and real of leadership. C3 Conference is a two-day event where leaders from around the world gather together for intensive coaching, inspirational teaching, incurable learning, and intentional relationships to advance the Church!

Dates: February 20-21, 2019
Location: Dallas, Texas
Sponsored by: Fellowship Church
Speakers: Ed Young, Craig Groeschel, Chad Veach, Stovall Weems, Michael Todd, and more

Cultivate Gathering

More to your faith than belief, more to the church than attending an event, and more to your hope and imagination for what it looks like to tangibly join God in renewing and restoring your neighborhood and beyond. So we welcome you for the Cultivate Gathering in San Diego, Feb 22-23, hosted by the Parish Collective in partnership with like-hearted organizations like CCDA, Global Immersion, Thresholds and many more. We are part of a collective of grassroots gatherings all over the US, the UK, Canada and Australia, with a common passion to join what God is doing to restore our world as we inhabit our neighborhoods, towns and cities in the love of Jesus.

Dates: February 22-23, 2019
Location: San Diego, California
Sponsored by: Parish Collective
Speakers: Jonathan Brooks, Shane Claiborne, Alexia Salvatierra, Kindra Green-Carson, Leroy Barber, Jon Huckins, and more

Renegade Pastors Conference

You’re invited to join Nelson and special guests for a memorable and motivational special event completely focused on equipping YOU to abandon average! Enjoy three packed days with your fellow Renegade Pastors full of encouragement, fellowship and eye-opening training!

Dates: February 27-March 1, 2019
Location: Orlando, Florida
Sponsored by: Nelson Searcy and Church Leader Insights
Speakers: Nelson Searcy, Pat Williams, Harold Bullock, and more

March 2019 Pastor Conferences

Exponential 2019

The Exponential Conference is the largest annual gathering of church planters on the planet. Every year, thousands of the world’s church planting leaders come to Orlando to learn what’s new and what’s actually working right now in church planting. This year’s theme is, “Made for More: Mobilizing God’s People, God’s Way.” Join over 5,000 other leaders who are pursuing the paradigm shift of Mobilizing God’s People, God’s Way.

Dates: March 4-7, 2019
Location: Orlando, Florida
Sponsored by: Exponential
Speakers: Over 200 speakers in over 200 different sessions, including Francis Chan, Dave Clayton, John Mark Comer, Dave Ferguson, and more

Shepherds’ Conference

The mission of the Shepherds’ Conference is to provide the opportunity for men in church leadership to be challenged in their commitment to biblical ministry and to find encouragement together as servants of the chief Shepherd.

Dates: March 5-8, 2019
Location: Sun Valley, California
Sponsored by: Grace Community Church
Speakers: John MacArthur, Sinclair Ferguson, H.B. Charles Jr., Albert Mohler, Ligon Duncan, and more

NW Mincon 19

NW MinCon started over 40 years ago as a “Christian Education Conference.” It quickly gained the reputation as a conference of excellence, offering an incredible hands-on experience at an affordable price for teams and churches all across the Pacific NW. This conference is for pastors, technology arts, worship, children’s ministry, and children’s/family ministry.

Dates: March 29-30, 2019
Location: Bellvue, Washington
Sponsored by: Northwest Ministry Conference
Speakers: Rick Bundschuh, Jesse Campbell, Mona Furstenau, and more

April 2019 Pastors Conferences

The Gospel Coalition 2019 National Conference

To fan into flame our smoldering commitments to evangelize, we plan to think through a selection of Jesus’s interactions with individuals and small groups—to listen in to conversations with Jesus. So at The Gospel Coalition’s 2019 National Conference, the keynotes are devoted to thinking through a selection of “conversations with Jesus,” in the earnest hope that they will spur us not only to gospel faithfulness, but also to gospel proclamation. Moreover, we are devoting some of our workshops to various facets of evangelism and apologetics, along with our usual wide range of topics.

Dates: April 1-3, 2019
Location: Indianapolis, Indiana
Sponsored by: The Gospel Coalition
Speakers: John Piper, Tim Keller, Jackie Hill Perry, H.B. Charles, and more

Catalyst West

Catalyst West is a 2-day conference to help leaders like you build great churches, grow strong teams, and be a catalyst for change. At Catalyst, we come to work every day thinking about how we can best equip you to flourish right where you’re planted. We’re meticulous in choosing great speakers and worship leaders, and we curate every detail of the event to be life-giving, energizing, and fun.

Dates: April 4-5, 2019
Location: Orange County, California
Sponsored by: Catalyst
Speakers: Andy Stanley, Dr. Caroline Leaf, Ian Morgan Cron, Jamie Ivey, and more

Small Town Pastors Conference

Join pastors, church staff, and small group leaders who believe that the mission of the church matters. We’ve gathered some of the nation’s best leaders to share their wisdom with you.

Dates: April 8-10, 2019
Location: Morton, Illinois
Sponsored by: Rural Home Missionary Association
Speakers: Lee Eclov, Duane Litfin, Ed Stetzer, Stephen Witmer, and more

ARC Conference

Our goal is to see pastors and leaders encouraged, refreshed, and equipped to continue on the journey God has called them to. We hope that during your time with us, you will be able to relax, build new relationships, and leave more excited about this calling than ever before.

Dates: April 9-10, 2019
Location: Birmingham, Alabama
Sponsored by: ARC Churches
Speakers: None listed yet

The Outcomes Conference

To excel as Christian leaders in today’s complex world we must be both deeply rooted in Christ, and strongly connected to one another. That’s why the theme for The Outcomes Conference 2019 is “ROOTED.” We are rooted in Christ, by examining our hearts as leaders, and prioritizing our relationship with Christ above all else.

Dates: April 16-18, 2019
Location: Tampa Bay, Florida
Sponsored by: Christian Leadership Alliance
Speakers: Santiago “Jimmy” Mellado, Michael Oh, Mandy Arioto, Skye Jethani

Q Conference

A place for church and industry leaders to thoughtfully navigate today’s culture. From the ideas and current issues shaping society, to the truth that transforms the world, you will be informed and gain confidence that God is at work in his mission to renew all things. Education by thought leaders and stories from change-makers will inspire a hopeful way forward. Join us to be equipped for the difficult conversations and extraordinary opportunities that lie ahead.

Dates: April 24-26, 2019
Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Sponsored by: Q Ideas
Speakers: Frances Fitzgerald, Dr. John M. Perkins, Cassandra Dorsaint, Margaret Feinberg, Andy Crouch, Paula Faris, and more

International Pastors & Leadership Conference

The International Pastors and Leadership (IP&L) Conference is where thousands of entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and leaders will unite from April 25-27, 2019, in Tampa Bay, Florida. Over the span of three days, you’ll glean deep insights on how to catalyze the greatest impact in your enterprise at this highly anticipated leadership conference.

Dates: April 25-27, 2019
Location: Tampa Bay, Florida
Sponsored by: T.D. Jakes Ministries
Speakers: T.D. Jakes, Craig Groeschel, Toure’ Roberts, Bishop Dr. Pat McKinstry, and Cynthia “Cynt” Marshall

8 Life Reminders From 2018

By

Chuck Lawless

-

December 27, 2018

We still have several days to go in this year—which means that life could still bring difficulty and/or great joy even before a new year begins.

Nevertheless, here are eight life reminders that have grabbed my attention this year:

Life really is precarious. The unexpected and tragic deaths of my friends and teammates, Randy and Kathy Arnett, in the spring of this year reminded me of this truth. Even still today, I find email exchanges I had with them. Pam and I miss them.
Health is a gift. Several years ago, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The doctors continue to watch it closely, but God has been graciously faithful to take care of me. With every regular checkup, I’m reminded of His grace.
All of us—that is, every one of us—is susceptible to a fall. Any of us who thinks moral failure is not a possibility is not thinking wisely. Just look around this year—the Internet now makes failures more public than ever.
Grace is real. With each passing year, I think of how much God has forgiven me over the years. He knew when He called me to Himself that I would remain a sinner who doesn’t always win the battle, and still He saved me. I am who I am only because of grace.
I’m blessed to do what I do. I too often take for granted the gift of employment. I’m deeply, deeply blessed to serve at Southeastern Seminary and the International Mission Board. Not only do I have jobs, but I enjoy all that I do. That’s a sweet gift of the Lord.
God’s people are special. I know some believers drive others crazy (and I may be one of those believers on some days); nevertheless, church people are incredible examples of the love of God. They’ve caring, giving, compassionate, encouraging, forgiving, thoughtful and patient.
Access to the gospel is an incredible gift. I know that truth intellectually, but I don’t really think about it enough. This year, I’ve traveled in multiple places where millions of people know nothing about Jesus. All of us who have no such barriers are blessed indeed.
I still have much to learn. Like how to rest well. And not let worry consume me. And give more attention to personal evangelism. And pray more. And love my wife more sacrificially. And read for relaxation. And on and on…. In God’s plan, life is always a classroom.

What reminders have you learned this year?

This article originally appeared here.

5 Factors That Should Move Your Church to Add Another Weekend Service

By

Rich Birch

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December 27, 2018

Is your church wondering whether to add another service on Sunday mornings?

Are you looking to the future and trying to figure out when you should add a second, third or even fourth time to meet on a Sunday?

Wrestling with the right timeline to add a new service is an important process for your church as you balance the growth taking place against the amount of work required to service that growth. Many churches encounter different factors that drive them to add another service to their weekend line-up.

5 Factors That Should Move Your Church to Add Another Weekend Service

I’ve recognized five such factors that should move your church to begin the process of adding a new service. You don’t necessarily have to tick off all five boxes—any one of these may be enough to spur your decision-making process. However, if you do identify with several items on this list, that underlines the urgency for you to move forward.

Churches can stunt their own growth if they simply don’t have enough places for guests to sit! If your physical buildings are maxed out, it will discourage people from inviting their friends. When their friends do finally come, they’ll have a sub-optimal experience which harms your church’s ability to grow and impact people. See if any of the following factors speak to your situation to help determine whether you should add another service to your church.

70 Percent Full Service

It’s often been said that a church service that is 80 percent full is functionally maxed out because at that level most rooms look and feel full. I think this is generally true in most contexts; however, there may be exceptions where you can fit a few more people in before it feels like there isn’t any room left. The reason you want to be proactive before you reach 80 percent is that, in most churches, it takes a tremendous amount of work to carry out that decision and to rally the volunteers needed for an additional service.

If you have at least 70 percent capacity in any of your services, you need to begin having serious conversations with your team about adding another service. There are probably only a couple of windows a year where you can do this, so starting the conversation now is an important structural decision.

Crazy Kids’ Areas

Take a few moments this weekend to watch what happens as families come and go through your space.

Are the experiences around kids’ ministry filled with joy, or do they feel chaotic? Is your preschool area too busy and disorganized as parents try to drop off and check-in their kids (and all their stuff) and then repeat the process at check-out?

The reality is that if parents feel like the kids’ areas are way too crazy, they won’t come back. In fact, it’s even more damaging if the experience feels hectic; they’ll be less likely to invite their friends because no parents want to invite a friend into something chaotic.

Parking Lot Pressure

A lot of church leaders have no idea what happens in their parking lots on a Sunday morning because they arrive before the first car comes and typically leave after most everyone else has left. My challenge to you is to spend an entire Sunday morning in your parking lot to simply watch what takes place. If you can’t do this in person, you could put a small webcam on top of your building and record a few weekends of parking lot activity. A good rule of thumb is to have one parking spot for every two seats in your main auditorium—if your main auditorium seats 200, you’re going to need 100 parking spots.

If you don’t (or can’t) meet that ratio, you will find an incredible amount of pressure on your parking lot on any given Sunday morning, which can discourage people from attending. If people arrive and there’s no place for them to park, you’d be amazed to see how many turn around and drive home. People, especially first-time guests, are looking for an excuse not to attend, and an overcrowded parking lot is an easy one.

Count the number of spaces that are available, and work with your parking team to maximize those spaces or find other reasonable solutions. Like the main auditorium, if you are reaching somewhere around 70 percent capacity in your parking lot during a service, then you need to start thinking about adding another service.

Volunteer Stagnation

Think about the quality of your volunteers’ experiences as they serve with you.

What has happened recently that adds something new and exciting to their experience? In what ways are you articulating the vision and calling them to a higher standard? If your volunteer community has stagnated and is not growing, that alone may be a reason to add an additional service. Why? Well, the challenge of adding another service and engaging a whole new team of volunteers can be a growth catalyst for your church.

If your volunteer community isn’t growing and seems disengaged, consider adding an additional service. It may be a stretch for your community, but it could also be just what the doctor ordered. While this factor alone may not be reason enough for adding another service, it could be a contributing factor that pushes you across the decision line.

Growth and Plateau Patterns

Review the last few years of growth statistics at your church.

Do you notice a pattern where your church’s weekend attendance numbers grow up to a certain point and then plateau for a while, and then retreat for a while, and then grow up against that plateau again, and then go down again on repeat? I like to call this “bumping off the ceiling.” If you’re seeing this growth and plateau pattern, you’re bumping off a growth ceiling that you need to address.

One of the reasons this could be happening is that you simply don’t have enough room in your weekend services to invite guests to come and be a part of the community. This “bumping off the ceiling” pattern can be a sign of the limitations to your church’s long-term growth; it feels like you’re growing, because new guests are coming all the time, but you’re not retaining those people. Again, look at your data over the last three or four years to give you some clarity around what is happening with these patterns.

Is it time to start working on adding another service?

This is a perfect time of year to start thinking about when in the coming year you could add another service or two to your Sunday mix. While there are a lot of decisions to be made about timelines and mobilizing team members to make it happen, the first decision that needs to be made is whether this is the time to add another service. If you are experiencing one of the above factors at your church, I think that’s enough to move into discussion mode with your team. If you see two or three factors, I would say the time is near. If you have all five, then your church is being held back by not adding another service, and ultimately, you’re stunting the redemptive potential of your community.

This article originally appeared here.

If I Were the Devil

What Does the Bible Say About Giving?

Here are 10 things every worship leader needs to work on.

1. Every worship leader needs to work on: Never stop growing

2. Every worship leader needs to work on: Develop your organizational and admin skills.

3. Every worship leader needs to work on: Keep working on a good relationship with your pastor.

4. Every worship leader needs to work on: Take time to mentor new leaders.

5. Every worship leader needs to work on: Develop a great team.

Over the years, we’ve developed several tools at Saddleback to help people grow spiritually one small step at a time. Here are five of those tools.

1. Help People Grow Spiritually With Sermon Notes

2. Help People Grow Spiritually With Spiritual Growth Covenants

3. Help People Grow Spiritually With Commitment Cards

4. Help People Grow Spiritually With Small Groups

5. Help People Grow Spiritually With Spiritual Growth Campaigns

1. Work on your character as seriously as you work on your competency.

Ten Reasons I Am Optimistic About the Church in 2019

Here are seven of the activities available during or pre/post-service times that help kids build friendships.

1. Kids build friendships with Foosball.

2. Kids build friendships with Air Hockey.

3. Kids build friendships with Arcade Basketball.

4. Kids build friendships with Jumbo Legos.

5. Kids build friendships with Wii.

6. Kids build friendships with Board/Card Games.

7. Kids build friendships with Chalkboard Wall.

Leadership in a Holy Priesthood

The Delusion That the People Are the Leader’s Property

The Temptation of Treating the People as a Platform

The Delusion That the Leader Is the People’s Property

1. Become Their Chief Encourager

2. Ask “How Can We Help?” vs. “Give me this or that!”

3. Learn and Speak the LANGUAGE OF SOUND

A Sampling of Language

What Does Not Happen?

What Does Happen?

A Sigh of Relief

Perfectionists Challenged

Admire Your Eggs

Deion Sanders Switches to “God’s Team”

A Faith-Filled Life for Deion Sanders

Top 35 Pastor Conferences for 2019 in the U.S.

JANUARY 2019 PASTOR CONFERENCES

February 2019 Pastor Conferences

March 2019 Pastor Conferences

April 2019 Pastors Conferences

Nevertheless, here are eight life reminders that have grabbed my attention this year:

5 Factors That Should Move Your Church to Add Another Weekend Service

70 Percent Full Service

Crazy Kids’ Areas

Parking Lot Pressure

Volunteer Stagnation

Growth and Plateau Patterns

Is it time to start working on adding another service?

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