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What Is the Rapture? (1 Thessalonians 4)

By
David Chapman
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

This article is part of the Tough Passages series.

13But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18Therefore encourage one another with these words.
—1 Thessalonians 4:13–18

Informed Belief

Paul introduces this new topic by stating “We do not want you to be uninformed” in order to accentuate the following discussion (cf. 1 Cor. 10:1; also Rom. 1:13; 11:25; 1 Cor. 12:1; 2 Cor. 1:8). Paul desires the Thessalonians to be informed appropriately about “those who are asleep.”

Sleep serves as a common NT metaphor for death (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:6, 18, 20; also Matt. 27:52; Acts 7:60; 13:36). This sleep metaphor often appears in contexts in which the future resurrection of believers is discussed. Sleep is thus a particularly apt symbol. The dead in Christ have merely fallen asleep, awaiting their awakening in the coming resurrection (e.g., John 11:11; Eph. 5:14). This need not imply a lack of conscious awareness in the intermediate state between death and resurrection (e.g., Luke 16:19–31; 23:43; Phil. 1:21–23; Rev. 4:4; 7:1–17).

Paul discusses this issue in order that “you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Some assume mistakenly that this verse implies that Christians should never grieve at all. However, even our Lord grieved the death of his friend Lazarus and wept for the pain of separation that Lazarus’s death caused his family and friends (John 11:33–36; cf. Acts 9:37–39). Paul elsewhere encourages believers to weep together amid the travails of life (Rom. 12:15; 1 Cor. 12:26). For believers, death does not have the final word, but it does cause a separation between us and those we love, which naturally produces grief.

Nevertheless, Paul encourages believers to have a different kind of grief from unbelievers—“not…as others do who have no hope” (cf. Eph. 2:12). Christians grieve while still living hopeful of the future regathering of believers at the resurrection (John 11:25–26).

Christian Hope

Paul heralds the basis for Christian hope: Jesus “died and rose again” (cf. 1 Cor. 15:1–11; Rom. 6:1–5; 1 Thess. 5:10). Jesus’ resurrection confirms his victory over sin and death and displays the pattern of resurrection life that he will grant his followers at his return (cf. 1 Cor. 15:12–58; Phil. 3:20–21). Thus, in Jesus’ resurrection the church has confidence that God will raise their dead brothers and sisters in Christ. Indeed, these risen believers will be an integral part of his second coming.

Word From Jesus

Paul repeats a truth that he comprehends “by a word from the Lord.” Paul knows Jesus’ instructions to his disciples concerning eschatology, though possibly he has also received prophetic revelation from Jesus. Much of what follows clearly parallels Jesus’ teaching found in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24–25; Mark 13; Luke 21; cf. also comment on 1 Thess. 1:8–10). This includes the return of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven (Matt. 24:30), the trumpet call (Matt. 24:31), the gathering of the elect from the ends of the earth and heaven (Mark 13:27), the inability to know the day of the Lord’s return (Matt. 24:42), and Jesus’ return being likened to a thief in the night (Matt. 24:43).

Key to the next few verses is Paul’s division between those Christians who die prior to Christ’s return (“those who have fallen asleep” or “the dead in Christ”) and those who are still living on earth when Jesus appears (“we who are alive” or those “left until the coming of the Lord”). Paul demonstrates that the dead in Christ are indeed raised at the Lord’s return, even prior to the still-living believers’ welcoming Christ.

Indeed, the dead in Christ are raised “first” (1 Thess. 4:16). Or, as Paul puts it in verse 15, “We who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.” The “coming [Gk. parousia] of the Lord” is a common NT phrase designating Christ’s return in order to establish his eternal kingdom and rule (cf. comment on 2 Thess. 2:1).

Order of Events

In the next two verses, Paul provides a basic order of events at Jesus’ return, emphasizing that the dead in Christ experience resurrection glory. This sequence of events follows the contours of Jesus’ own eschatological instruction (esp. Matt. 24:30–31; Mark 13:26–27; Luke 21:27).

First, the Lord “will descend from heaven.” As Jesus mentions (quoting Dan. 7:13), the Son of Man will come “on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matt. 24:30; cf. Mark 13:26; Luke 21:27). Many images in Revelation overlap here, but especially the coming from heaven of Jesus as the rider on the white horse, escorted by angelic armies, while an angel cries out in a loud voice (Rev. 19:11–21).

This appearance is accompanied by three sounds: “a cry of command,” “the voice of the archangel,” and “the sound of the trumpet of God.” Paul elsewhere describes Jesus’ being “revealed from heaven with his mighty angels” (2 Thess. 1:7; for angels, cf. Matt. 13:41, 49; 16:27; 24:31; 25:31). The sounding of a “loud trumpet” is also mentioned explicitly in Matthew 24:31 (cf. 1 Cor. 15:52). The blowing of trumpets during the eschatological return of the people of God is known in the OT (e.g., Isa. 27:13), and trumpets are featured in the book of Revelation as well (esp. chs. 8–11).

The Most Important Thing You Could Do for Students This Week

By
Aaron Helman
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

Last week I wrote messages. I planned events. I went to meetings. A lot of meetings

I spent time training up a few volunteers. I even took the time to have a meal with a student.

That’s all good stuff. Certainly those are the things that had a lasting impact, right?

Not the message. Not the events.

Definitely not the meetings.

It wasn’t even the training or the one-on-one time I spent with a student.

I didn’t do anything last week that mattered more to my students than the time I took to write them personal notes.

At the beginning of every week, I try to make time to sit down and write letters and postcards to handfuls of students. My goal is to write at least 10 a week.

Sometimes it’s for the leaders who really stepped up…

…and sometimes it’s for those who just need to be lifted up.

I send congratulations to students who just got accepted into college or who just made the soccer team, and I send encouragement to those who were rejected and cut.

Last week I scribbled out quick sentences on the backs of pre-printed postcards and I sat down with notebook paper to write letters that went into envelopes.

And just like it happens pretty much every week, I heard back from their parents.

Students were touched, encouraged, thrilled and even moved to tears to receive a piece of written correspondence from me to them.

I don’t have a deep psychological understanding or cross-applicable economic principle that will rock the way you do ministry.

But virtually every single week, I hear more stories about the things I write to students than the things I speak, and I think it’s an idea that should be shared.

I still take the time to regularly hand-write notes not because I’m old-fashioned or technologically-challenged…

…but because it still works better than pretty much anything else I do.

I’ve got a challenge for you.

 Take the time to write just five notes to students this week.

 Share a comment if you’re in. I want to hear if this works for you too.  

Young Leaders: Who Will Replace Eugene Peterson and Other Giants We’ve Lost?

By
Carey Nieuwhof
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

Just a few days ago, Eugene Peterson died. Like you and so many others, I felt the loss quite deeply.

In the last few years, not only have we lost Eugene Peterson, but also Billy Graham and Dallas Willard among others.

When a giant voice in ministry disappears from us, the question that’s really on my mind these days is who will replace them? Do we have a younger generation of voices being forged who are able to offer the depth of wisdom, insight, grace and perspective that we’re losing when we lose a giant?

To be sure, age and wisdom are frequent companions. To expect a 30-year-old to say what 65-year-old Dallas Willard or Eugene Peterson would say is unfair.

Fast forward a few decades and imagine a world in which perhaps thinkers like Ravi Zacharias, Tim Keller, Barbara Brown Taylor, N.T. Wright and others are no longer with us…and then what?

Of course, no one can truly replace the unique voices lost. But isn’t it our hope that every generation will have its voices?

Deeper, though, is this question: Are the conditions even favorable today for producing men and women who can step into the void?

I fear the answer is no, or at least I’m not really sure.

Why? Well, for a voice to endure—to have real significance—it needs depth, not just breadth.

We live in mostly in the age of breadth. And that makes me worry just a little bit for our collective future.

If you want to get a sample of what living a life in the unforced rhythms of grace is like, listen in on the interview I was privileged to have with Eugene Peterson in the summer of 2017. He was 84 years old at the time, speaking from his home in Montana. I was in my home north of Toronto.

I was in awe of how he said what he said as much as I was what he said. There’s no question he had spent a lifetime drinking from a deep well. His answers were unhurried, honest, unscripted and real.

My interview with him was also one of the last he ever gave. The week after we recorded, he announced his retirement from public life and interviews. A few months later, I received a handwritten letter from Eugene and his wife, Jan, thanking me for the way I did the interview. I will hang onto that letter forever.

You can listen to it below, or for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

So what does it take to cultivate a voice that has depth? What would it take for you to nurture a voice that speaks meaning into the lives of others during your lifetime, and perhaps beyond?

There are at least seven things I’ve noticed that the voices I admire have in common. I am not claiming to have done any well; these challenge me as much as they may challenge you.

But they’re real nonetheless.

1. YOUR INPUT SHOULD ALWAYS EXCEED YOUR OUTPUT

Any of the great voices you admire, not only in theology and ministry but in any discipline or field, have spent their days reading, reflecting, listening, learning, processing, wrestling and in the case of Christians, praying, far more than they have speaking, writing, broadcasting or sharing.

In other words, their input exceeds their output. And that’s where the riches lie.

We live in an age where, I fear, in many cases, the output of many leaders exceeds their input. That’s dangerous.

In the financial realm, when your output exceeds your input, you go bankrupt. Your intellectual, emotional and spiritual life is exactly the same.

Because we now have media and an audience at our fingertips and in our pockets, and we can all be celebrities in our tiny universes, the temptation to speak out, broadcast and opine (see below) is constant.

If you want to live a life worth living and have a ministry worth following, your input should always exceed your output.

2. YOUR PRIVATE WALK NEEDS TO BE FAR DEEPER THAN YOUR PUBLIC TALK

In a similar vein, the private walk of almost every significant voice is far greater than their public talk.

As you watch the tragic and almost constant implosion of pastors, politicians, athletes and business leaders today, you have to wonder if at the root of it all is a private walk that couldn’t sustain the public talk.

Jesus had no public life for 30 years. He simply prepared for three decades, building a solid foundation that not even betrayal and death could shatter. (He was, remember, fully human as well as fully divine, so this wasn’t just for show.) Then he taught, fulfilling his ultimate mission in three years.

That’s a 10:1 ratio of preparation over accomplishment.

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone today who spends 10 hours preparing for every hour leading or speaking. Honestly, most of us barely spend an hour preparing for every 10 hours of leading. Hence, the shallowness of soul we suffer from these days.

If you want to your public talk to truly resonate, deepen your private talk.

3. MAKE THE WORK THE REWARD

We live in a culture that’s hopelessly motivated by reward. From the number of followers you have, to how much money you make, to the fame and notoriety more and more people seek, our culture is fascinated with fame and reward.

Most thought leaders never set out to be famous. In fact, they usually find the notion foreign.

Too many leaders today see the reward as the reward—the fame, the sale of a start-up to a VC firm, 70 bajillion downloads of your podcast.

If you’re seeking to be famous, you may find your few minutes here or there.

But for any legacy that lasts, just know this, the work is the reward.

So make the work your reward. Do the deep work whether anyone is listening, reading, watching. One day, you may look up and discover other people are listening.

And if not, no worries. You already got your reward.

4. DON’T OFFER YOUR OPINION ON EVERYTHING

Notice that many of the thought leaders you so deeply admire don’t offer their opinion on everything.

They’re not weighing in on every act by politicians, or every move by business leaders. As Eugene Peterson said in my interview with him, “I don’t read the newspaper much. I can’t find much about God and Jesus in them.”

Instead, he worked on translating Galatians from Greek to English during the race riots in Baltimore in 1968. Peterson says ordinary citizens arm themselves with guns and weapons, but Peterson said that while people were worried about what was happening in the city, he was worried about what was happening in people.

So he brought the biblical text to them in a fresh translation. That was the origin of the Message. (And when the riots stopped, he didn’t stop translating the Bible. See point 3 above.)

We live in a reactive culture, where too many of us think we need to have an opinion on everything. You don’t.

No, giants will speak out on some major issues of the day (think of Bonhoeffer in WWII Germany, or Christine Caine on human trafficking), but mostly they’re not reacting, they’re following a different track.

In a world drowning in information, giants focus on meaning. Meaning takes time. Opinion doesn’t.

You know what our culture needs? Less opinion, more thought. Less information, more meaning.

5. FOCUS ON THE TIMELESS, NOT THE TIMELY

One precept of publishing is that the more current a book is, the more dated it becomes.

If you’re talking about being on your Snapchat listening to Drake while sipping your cold brew coffee, you’ve pretty much located yourself firmly in 2018.

A timely word is almost always a timeless word.

What makes the voices we admire most is that their writing and meaning transcends time.

You can read C.S. Lewis almost 60 years after he died because he speaks into the human condition and eternity in a way that still resonates well into a world he never lived in.

The word that makes the best sense of the times always roots itself in what’s timeless.

So enjoy your cold brew, but stretch back and move forward far beyond it.

6. WORK TWICE AS HARD ON YOUR CHARACTER AS YOU DO ON YOUR COMPETENCY

It’s so easy to work on your competency.

When I was in my 20s, I believed your true potential lay in taking the lid of your competency. Read some books, get the degree, hustle, network with all the best leaders and go to conferences, and you’ll develop your skill set so well that the sky’s the limit.

Well, over time I’ve learned that competency gets you in the room. Character keeps you in the room.

I imagine that one of the things you admire most about the thought leaders you follow is their character. And truly, the reason they had a lifetime of contribution to make was because they didn’t let their character disqualify them from public life.

Because you’re driven enough to read to (almost) the end of a blog post, I think you’ll do just fine working on your competency.

But if you really want to live a life worth living and have a message worth sharing, work twice as hard on your character as you do on your competency.

7. CHOOSE PURPOSE OVER PLATFORM

This has been a recurring theme of this post, but it’s because we are all so ambitious these days. In moments ambition can be godly, but it is also a deadly trap.

I love how Eugene Peterson explained the origins of the Message to me in our interview. The furthest thing from his mind was to write a Bible translation that would be widely used, let alone sell millions of copies around the world and change how a generation interacted with scripture.

It was the 1960s. Peterson, he told me, had a small group of men at his local church in Baltimore that he met with for Bible study. None seemed interested in the Bible.

So Peterson decided one day to go back to the Greek and translate a passage freshly, to move the ancient words into the idiom of the day. He brought his fresh translation to the men the following week, and they engaged. They’d never heard scripture like that before. So Peterson kept transcribing passages for that small study. Thirty-five years or so later, the final version of The Message would emerge.

In an age of striving celebrity and instant internet fame, never forget that purpose can give you a platform, but platform will never give you a purpose. In fact, platform pursued for its own sake will leave you stunningly empty. It will betray you and consume you and spit you out, your body strewn about as the latest wreckage in yet another spectacular crash.

Purpose is different. It endures whether you have a platform or not. It endures whether you’re alone with your wife in a home in rural Montana or the author of a best-selling book, whether you are sought after or forgotten.

Best yet, it will give you a fulfilled life. Fulfillment alone doesn’t happen because you became well known, grew a church or organization.

True success happens in the little things, which are really the big things: when your wife or husband loves you more today than they did when you got married. When you have a rich relationship with your kids. When your friendships run deep and when you wake up every morning in the steady assurance that you are loved and are caught up in a story so much bigger and better than you.

That’s the good stuff.

Can I give you one last current example? Yesterday, I got news that a bucket list kind of thing happened…I got invited to speak in a place where Christians, especially pastors, rarely get invited to speak. It was a drop-the-phone-kind of moment.

But as I sat down for dinner last night with my wife (it’s just us now in our home…the kids are grown and on their own), I told her how wonderful it is that we can truly celebrate this moment together. We’ve had our share of struggles over the years, and we’re at a place we never dreamed we’d be.

I have a friend who received an international award a few years ago and flew across the world to accept it…alone. His marriage had crumbled. (This isn’t judgment, I have so much empathy and affection for him.)

I was reminded once again that in life, it’s not what you do, it’s who you do it with.

My wife and I will head to that event together, happily, and that matters more than doing the event itself.

One of the things I’ve loved most about Eugene Peterson—it came out again in our interview—is the obvious closeness he had with his wife Jan.

So how do you cultivate a deeper life?

A big part of the battle is overcoming the things that get in the way. Talk to the giants you admire, and you realize they’ve had to battle cynicism, fight off or avoid burnout, wrestle down their pride, and stare the emptiness of a life devoted to self in the face.

I write about all of those things and how I’ve battled through them in my own life in my book Didn’t See It Coming: Overcoming the 7 Greatest Challenges That No One Expects and Everyone Experiences. 

In the book, I show you how to battle to the other side of cynicism and reclaim hope, how to move through burnout and figure out how to stay out of it, how to avoid moral compromise and find fulfillment in success rather than the emptiness so many leaders find.

Join the 10,000+ leaders so far who have picked up a copy of Didn’t See It Coming and are realizing the way it is isn’t the way it has to be. I’m praying this book does for your soul what the journey has done and is doing for mine.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

What voices do you admire, and what do you think the ingredients are to craft a life worth living?

This article originally appeared here.

Jeff Sessions Called Out by ‘church friends,’ This Time in Person

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

Urging him to stand by the tenets of his faith and care for people in need, two clergy members interrupted attorney general Jeff Sessions on Monday as he was beginning a speech. Sessions was addressing the topic of “The Future of Religious Liberty” at the Boston Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society, a conservative group.

Soon after the attorney general started speaking, the Rev. Will Green of Ballard Vale United Church in Andover, Massachusetts, stood and recited portions of Matthew 25: “Remember the words of Jesus,” Green said. “I was hungry and you did not feed me. I was a stranger, and you did not welcome me.”

Protesters Ask Sessions to Follow His Faith

Before being escorted out of the room, Green continued: “Brother Jeff, as a fellow United Methodist, I call upon you to repent, to care for those in need, to remember that when you do not care for others, you are wounding the body of Christ.”

In response, Sessions said, “Thank you for those remarks and attack, but I would just tell you we do our best every day to fulfill [our] responsibility to enforce the laws of the United States.” 

As Green was led away, another pastor rose to defend him. The Rev. Darrell Hamilton II, pastor of Boston’s First Baptist Church of Jamaica Plain, said pastor Green “represents the Christian tradition, the faith that everyone here professes to believe in, actually sharing the words of Jesus himself, the words of Jesus that are represented in the book of Isaiah.”

Audience members booed Hamilton as he, too, was escorted out by security. “I thought we were here to protect religious liberty,” he responded. “I am a pastor of a Baptist church, and you are escorting me out for exercising my religious freedom. That is very hypocritical.”

Before continuing, Sessions said he wouldn’t let a “heckler’s veto” prevent him from speaking as planned. “I don’t think there’s anything in the Scripture and my theology that says a secular nation-state cannot have lawful laws to control immigration in its country,” he said. “[It’s] not immoral, not indecent, and not unkind to state what your laws are and then set about to enforce them, in my view.”

The Pastors Explain Their Motives

Afterward, Green defended his actions, saying the attorney general’s “entire political agenda is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ.” As a fellow Methodist, Green says he has a “responsibility to call [Sessions] to account about the harm he’s doing.” His challenge to Sessions, he added, was “in the Methodist, Wesleyan tradition as an expression of social holiness.”

Referring to Sessions calling Green’s statements an attack, the pastor said, “Sometimes when we encounter Jesus, it does feel like we are being attacked because…we can see clearly that what we are doing on this earth is an obstacle to Jesus.” He added, “You really can’t do religious liberty without taking into account how people practice their religion, which includes social witness and social action.”

Faith in Action, a group that specializes in grassroots organizing for social causes, later said Green was working with them.

Hamilton, who maintained that “Jeff Sessions is not a champion of true religious liberty,” said protests are part of his faith tradition, too. “As a Baptist preacher, in the long legacy of Baptist preachers such as Roger Williams and John Leland, I disrupted Jeff Sessions to defend the protection of both soul and religious freedom of all people as a true witness of Christian religion practice.”

Immigration Issues Are at the Forefront Again 

This latest opposition to Sessions likely stems from the so-called migrant caravan heading from Central America through Mexico and reportedly to the American border. President Trump has cast aspersions about the types of people traveling in the group, saying, “These are not angels.” According to news reports, the president is ordering up to 15,000 U.S. troops to the border to keep migrants out.

American Missionary, Father of 8 Killed in Cameroon

By
Megan Briggs
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

An American missionary was shot and killed in Cameroon on Tuesday, October 30, 2018. Charles Wesco was traveling in a vehicle with a fellow missionary, his wife, and one of his sons when bullets penetrated the windshield, striking him twice.

“While this is a terrible tragedy and we want the perpetrators to face justice, we are trusting God that He is going to do something good through all of this, though we just really don’t know what it would be,” Dave Halyaman, assistant pastor at Believers Baptist Church in Warsaw, Indiana, told the Washington Post.

Believers Baptist Church is the Wesco family’s sending church in the United States, the senior pastor of which is Wesco’s father-in-law. The Wesco family had only just arrived in Cameroon on September 18th after a three-year-long campaign to raise the necessary funding to go.

On Tuesday morning, Wesco was traveling to go shopping. It is not clear who shot at the vehicle, but Cameroonian Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo indicated it was “a group of terrorists.” According to Halyaman, “There’s no telling why [Wesco] was singled out and shot. There’s just no way to tell at this point.”

Doctors Without Borders told the Washington Post that one of their ambulances transported a man who is believed to have been Wesco to a hospital in Bamenda, Cameroon, and that he later died there. Halyaman says Wesco was unconscious at this point, and that “doctors attempted to resuscitate him but were unsuccessful.”

The family had been settling into a suburb of Bamenda, a city in the northwest Anglophone region of Cameroon. Tensions are high in this part of the country, which has historically had strained relations with the rest of the country, which generally speaks French.

On the couple’s Facebook page, they had just posted a picture a week prior to the shooting with the caption “View by our house…”

Charles and Stephanie Wesco have eight children, ranging in age from 2 to 13.

According to a prayer support letter posted to the family’s website, the Wescos were still adjusting to a strictly enforced curfew for the English area in which they were staying. Charles and Stephanie Wesco wrote:

We were blessed to celebrate our first Lord’s Day with some Cameroonian Christians at Faith Baptist in Bamenda. They had been forced to close down the previous two Sundays, due to different types of all day curfews imposed on October 1st and 7th, due to the political unrest. We also had some time to meet some of our neighbors around us, including a few in the little mud-hut village just down the hill behind our home. Monday, was a strictly observed weekly “Ghost Town” day, when English section civilians are not allowed to safely leave their homes or operate their businesses without risking loss or death. The election results were also announced yesterday, and so far the expected conclusion seems to have been accepted as well as could be expected. It is a limiting situation in spreading the gospel to have this 6PM daily curfew in our section of Cameroon (this is roughly the time of year-round dusk in Cameroon). Keep praying earnestly for a return of peace to the English and French sections of Cameroon!

The Governor of Indiana, Eric Holcomb, issued a statement on the death of Wesco, mentioning Wesco’s brother, Timothy, who serves in Indiana’s House of Representatives. Holcomb writes, “We ask that all Hoosiers join us in offering prayers and condolences to the Wesco family.”

7 Reasons Pastors Get Fired When a Church Is Growing

By
Thom Rainer
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The note to me was neither cynical nor critical. The pastor had a powerful point to make.

“Thom,” he said, “as you provide leadership toward church revitalization, please communicate one thing very clearly to pastors in these churches. Sometimes a pastor gets fired because the church does grow and is revitalized. I know. I just got fired.”

I could sense the pain in the pastor’s words. And he is right. Even in “successful” revitalizations, it does not always turn out well for the pastor. Why is that? My list is not exhaustive, but here are seven common reasons:

7 Reasons Pastors Get Fired When a Church Is Growing

  1. Members who can’t deal with significant change. Most of them are OK with gradual decline because it can be imperceptible day by day. But revitalization can bring major change, at least in the eyes of some church members. They would rather see the church slowly die than suddenly become healthy.
  2. Threats to power brokers and power groups. Growth brings new members. New members dilute the base of the power brokers. Most power brokers don’t like that, so they create lies and innuendos to force out the pastor.
  3. Relational disruption. One of my most memorable, and saddest, moments as a pastor took place when a woman told me God had told her I should be fired as pastor. I naturally asked her why. She responded that it was hard for her to get to know all the new people joining the church, and they were changing relationships in the church. She further said all the new Christians did not understand how we did church. Translation: She wanted her holy huddle and no more.
  4. Idolatry of the past. Many church members will say they really want revitalization, but their real desire is to move the church to 1988. When growth moves the church to the future, however, it’s time to get the pastor out.
  5. Empowered bullies. Church bullies take every opportunity to encourage complaining church members to vent and complain more. Those negative people become additions to the bully’s power base to force out a pastor who is leading change and growth.
  6. Staff who feel threatened. A pastor who leads a church to revitalization and growth can threaten a staff member who feels pulled out of his or her comfort zone. I know of an executive pastor who worked with a personnel committee and a church bully behind the scenes to force out a pastor who was leading the church to growth. Such acts of cowardice are too common in too many churches.
  7. Innuendo, gossip and lies. The first six scenarios are often exacerbated by innuendo, gossip and lies. The personnel committee noted above accepted the rumors and gossip conveyed by the executive pastor without ever asking the pastor his side of the story. Truth was just too inconvenient.

Sadly, pastors can get fired when they lead their churches to growth and revitalization. In my post next Monday, I will share some ways other pastors have addressed these dangers successfully in their churches.

This article originally appeared here.

6 Systems Every Executive Pastor Needs to Evaluate This Year

By
Rich Birch
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

Are you an executive pastor wondering where you should focus your time and energy?

Are you wondering exactly how things are really going at your church?

Are you a bit mystified about how to evaluate what’s really happening under the hood of your church?

Executive pastors are an incredible gift to growing churches. The best executive pastors sit at the intersection of vision and reality. That is to say, they spend their time balancing the bright future of the church on one hand and the facts of where the church is today on the other. In order to move a church from where you are to where you believe God is leading you as a community, you need a series of robust systems. Systems are simply repeatable processes that “Save You Stress, Time, Energy and Money.”

Executive pastors need to think about how these systems are performing across all areas of the church. In a very real way, the executive pastor is like a farmer cultivating a garden of systems by balancing each of the varying needs and requirements of the church against each other. An executive pastor should spend a considerable amount of time evaluating how well each of these systems performs and adjusting them accordingly when they don’t function the way they should.

This is a perfect time of year, the season of change, to build a plan for evaluation and adjust the systems required to help your church move forward.

Here are six systems you should consider when leading as an executive pastor:

Outreach

How does your church attract people through a variety of channels?

Your church needs to have a consistent flow of new guests arriving on a regular basis. Churches that are healthy and growing consistently find ways to reach out to the world around them and invite new guests to join them.

If your church’s ability to reach new people begins to slow, you’ll eventually plateau and might even slip into decline. Evaluate your outreach efforts and how you use marketing and communications to increase your community’s awareness and interest in your church. Keeping a close eye on the outreach efforts of your church needs to be a core function of every executive pastor.

Connection

How does your church move people from their first visit to feeling fully at home?

It’s not enough for churches just to reach people in their community and have them come to church once. We also need to move people toward a deep sense of connection.

The healthiest and fastest growing churches in the country spend a tremendous amount of time and energy thinking through the exact next steps for transforming new visitors into plugged-in advocates of the church.

Deliberately measuring this process to see if your connection systems are performing at a high enough level is an important task of an executive pastor. This could be looking at the numbers for new-here guests, people joining groups and those getting plugged into volunteer teams. The trick here is to test both the total number of people connected along with the velocity of people moving toward further connection with the community.

Service

How does your church mobilize people for volunteering and service within the church?

Above and beyond getting people connected, we need to find a way to see more people in your church serving others. The core message of the Gospel is that our lives are to be oriented around other people, and therefore the church needs to orient a tremendous amount of its effort and resources around serving.

Does your church have an adequate number of people serving? If not, what adjustments do you need to make as an executive pastor to ensure that more people are serving than ever before? Looking closely at the overall volunteer experience to measure both the number of volunteers as well as the quality of their experience is a system that you should consider.

Giving

How does your church develop people that willingly give to the vision of the church?

Giving metrics continue to be an important part of testing the health of a church. When a person decides to give to the local church, that giving indicates a deep level of connection.

However, the goal here is not to leverage guilt against your community but to set up systems and approaches that keep the vision of the church in front of people in a way that compels them to give on a regular basis. Another part of this process is to study how people are moving from infrequent giving to regular giving to the radical generosity that we see modeled in the New Testament. A deepening sense of commitment to a church across a wide spectrum of individuals is a core issue that executive pastors need to be studying regularly.

Leadership

How does your church move people from places of serving into volunteer leadership?

It’s not enough to just invite people to serve—aspects of the mission need to be handed over to be led by volunteers within the church. While this distinction might seem subtle, it is incredibly important to the future of your church. Finding ways to evaluate where your church is developing new leaders is all about predicting the future health of your church.

If your church stops developing or stops passing parts of the ministry off to new leaders, then you are essentially truncating the future development of the church.

Again, looking at the total number of new leaders is important, but also considering what aspects of the ministry are delegated to them is important for every executive pastor to consider. How your church identifies potential leaders and then applies effort and energy toward developing that leadership potential is a critical concern for every executive pastor wanting to translate vision into reality.

Planning

How does your church evaluate all the other systems in order to move toward constant improvement and growth?

Churches that make a difference are constantly asking the question, are we improving on what we’ve done recently? Rather than sticking to our current outlook, we need a process by which we can evaluate everything that we do.

In fact, everything begins to atrophy the day after the greatest success. That is to say, the decline of a church begins the day after the best things happen in its life, and it’s at that moment that executive pastors need to ask the question, what do we need to change to get to the next level?

A regular planning regime needs to be asking, what got us to Point A that won’t get us to Point B? How are you evaluating the systems you’re developing to ensure that they’re consistently improving and growing?

Which of these six systems do you need to improve on?

When you consider the above six areas of your church, which one jumps to mind as an area that you need to improve upon?

Are there aspects of your ministry that you don’t apply enough time, effort and energy toward?

Are there things happening in your church that you’re not giving your leadership to?

Prevailing executive pastors that spend their time thinking through these six systems lead growing and healthy churches. As you consider how to make changes in the above areas, I strongly encourage you to consider three aspects of systems that you may need to alter:

  • Schedule – What is the schedule for evaluating and adjusting the systems?
  • Metrics – What are the key metrics you need to consider on a regular basis to see whether this system is growing?
  • People – Who is associated with a given system that you can meet with regularly to understand how that system is developing in the life of your church?

This article originally appeared here.

Are My Kids on Track: Helping Your Child Discover Who They Are in Christ

By
Sissy Goff
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” If you’ve seen the movie or read the book The Help, you know these words. You also know the moving scene when they’re spoken. If you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Kathryn Stockett’s heartwarming characters, let me introduce you. The scene takes place in adorable 2-year-old Mae Mobley’s bedroom with Aibileen, her beloved housekeeper. Aibileen walks into the room, smile wide and arms outstretched. She takes Mae Mobley into her arms, holds her close and repeats these words with her: “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” They’re words that are foundational. They speak the truth into Mae Mobley’s life of who she is, how God made her, and how deeply she’s loved by her Aibileen.

The picture of Mae Mobley and Aibileen is what we often think of when we think of growing a child’s identity. Nurturing…comfort…security. Giving them a sense of how deeply they’re loved, of how God sees them, of how we see them. We talked about that type of knowingness, being known and loved in the last chapter. In this phase of life, however, they want more. They want not just to know, but to experience that knowledge and love. In these years, we want to go deeper with those foundational truths and dig down into helping a child develop their unique, God-given identity.

Seven to 12 years of age are some of the most important in terms of a child’s life—particularly, their capacities for growth. (We say 7 to 12, but each child develops at a different rate in every aspect of their lives, not just physically. These are more guides than they are rules.) Kids in these years are not just growing upward. Their brains are changing as quickly as their bodies. Their muscles are, too. What’s learned in this phase of development has more potential to stay with them than in any other season of their lives. That involves muscle memory such as sports or music lessons, cognitive abilities such as multiplication, and spiritual truths, such as developing identity. But, as always, there are blocks that get in their (and our way) of helping children reach this crucial milestone in their spiritual development.

Stumbling Block: Over-Encouragement

Just as we could call this the Age of Identity Development, we could also call it the Age of Lessons and Practices. For you, it could be called the Age of Carpool. Your child has piano lessons on Monday night. Soccer practice is on Tuesday night. Dance is on Thursday and Boy Scouts are on Friday afternoons, plus a weekend camp out from time to time.

As a parent, you’re not only using these practices and lessons to build their skills. You’re also trying to build their confidence. And you’re exactly right. Because of the way their brains are developing, this is the time these skills have their greatest boomerang effect. What’s learned now is much more likely to come back than what’s learned at 18 or 30.

In the flurry of activities and building confidence, however, we can forget an even greater truth. We spend our time cheering them on, building them up, encouraging them. And, again, rightly so. But in the midst of all of this cheering and building and encouraging, we can place too much emphasis on growing their confidence. We worry so much that their little self-esteems are fragile that we sometimes neglect growing their understanding of grace. We don’t talk about sin because we don’t want them to doubt God’s love for them.

Several summers ago, we were at second to fourth grade camp. I was teaching on one of the “put off” and “put on” list verses, such as Colossians 3. You remember, Colossians 3 starts with putting off “sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust.” We didn’t stress those quite so much with the second to fourth graders. But the verse goes on to add, “doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That’s a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God.” It then goes on to include “bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk and lying.” I’ll stop there… I’m feeling convicted myself.

Anyway, we were talking about this verse from the Message. I asked the kids if they had any idea what they most wanted to “put off.” Several of them said things like, “Sometimes I tease my brother,” “I wasn’t very nice to a boy in my class once.” And then, the always helpful, “I can’t think of anything.”

In the midst of all of these non-admissions, one second grade boy named Caleb stood up. Now, I have to say that Caleb has had really good teaching. I know his parents well and know that they have raised all of their children, Caleb included, to know the Gospel. He stood up and simply but powerfully said, “I lie.” The room was silent. And then it wasn’t. Hand after hand went up of kids who felt free to tell the truth. They spoke of cheating, meanness, bad tempers, grabbing whatever attracted their fancy. They were honest. And during the day that followed, they were freer than any day I had seen them at camp thus far. As Caleb knew, honesty is where grace really starts.

Kids in these years know they don’t do everything right. They know they fail. Make mistakes. They may not be as familiar with the word sin, but they know all too well when they’ve done something wrong. And they’re looking to us for a response.

Dan Allender is the one who said it first—and David, Sissy and I have all quoted it many times. Kids are asking two questions, and they’re asking them at the same time. “Am I loved?” and “Can I get my own way?”

Your child needs desperately to know both. He’s loved, but he can’t get his own way. He tries hard to get his own way in the midst of being loved. At this stage in his life, he’s aware of that trying. A little girl I know told me that she remembered the exact point when she realized if she pushed her mom hard enough, she could get whatever she wanted. You may remember something similar. Their capacity for skills is developing in these years, and so is their capacity for—or at least their awareness of—sin.

I don’t think it will come as a surprise to you, but in case no one has ever said it to you directly, your child sins. Yes, even your adorable youngest, or whichever one in the birth order line is the easiest. He lies. She manipulates. He is selfish. She’s unkind to other kids. They sin—or, as we often say at Daystar, they’re a mess. They know it, in these years. And they expect you to know it as well. It’s the “Can I get my own way?” portion of the question. They need you to see them, their attempts to try to get their own way, and to answer with a strong yet loving no.

Pick up a copy of Are My Kids on Track for more help on building your child’s spiritual identity.

This article originally appeared here.

5 Lessons Church Leaders Can Learn From the “All-Day Breakfast” Trend

By
Rich Birch
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

In October 2015, McDonald’s made a significant change to its menu that made a huge difference to its bottom line and market reach. That month they added all-day breakfast to their offerings, and in many ways it ended up changing the course of history for this corporation.

For years, insiders had been saying that all-day breakfast, while a great addition to the menu, simply couldn’t be done. In fact, the turnover between the breakfast and the lunch menu kept stumping the logistics folks. It was almost a joke that you could get breakfast up until 10:29 a.m., but at 10:30 a.m. the entire kitchen had to turn over to lunch orders only.

People who follow this industry had been saying that offering an all-day breakfast menu was a potential way for McDonald’s to increase its reach and attract customers who normally wouldn’t return later in the day. I know for our little family this change meant a switch in our consumption habits. You see, my wife is the decision-maker when it comes to which restaurants we frequent. Now that she could order oatmeal or an egg McMuffin for dinner, it meant that McDonald’s was now on the list of restaurants that we could go to if we needed to make a quick stop for a meal!

The story of why McDonald’s began offering all-day breakfast is a fascinating one for church leaders to consider. For more than 30 consecutive years, the company had seen increases in its profits and stock value quarter after quarter. It was the darling of the Warren Buffet strategy to blue chip investing because of its consistent results.

However, for the first time, McDonald’s was experiencing a downturn with lower profits than the previous quarter; subsequently, their stock value fell. The company sprang into action and made a number of changes organization-wide. One of those outcomes included the introduction of the all-day breakfast menu. The rest is history: McDonald’s became wildly profitable again, their stock value increased [ref], and they essentially set the trend for all-day breakfast menus in the fast-food industry. A&W, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts and the Canadian chain Tim Hortons all eventually made the switch. The impact of this trend was profound. In fact, there was such a significant increase in the demand for eggs that the price spiked in the year following McDonald’s introduction of this change. [ref]

How does this pertain to church leaders? It’s important that we try to glean lessons from an organization like McDonald’s as they discover the changing trends in their industry, and ask ourselves if there’s anything we can learn as we lead our churches. When considering the all-day breakfast trend, I see at least five clear lessons that you and I can apply to our churches.

What got us here won’t get us there.

McDonald’s decided to offer all-day breakfast because they realized that offering more Big Macs or Quarter Pounders wasn’t going to be enough if they wanted to grow as a company. Instead, they needed to address a core offering that would attract a whole new audience of people.

In terms of our roles as church leaders, we need to recognize that whatever God used in the past isn’t necessarily what He’s going to use today or tomorrow. If our styles, approaches or even ministry models are the same as they were 20 years ago, there’s a good chance that we’ve already plateaued or are in decline.

What are those things that worked at one point in time that aren’t working now?

What part of our regular “menu” do we need to refresh? What new options do we need to consider adding?

Systems are needed to support change.

If you study McDonald’s switch to all-day breakfast, you’ll see that the company needed to make considerable changes in order to actually be able to offer something as simple as an Egg McMuffin all day long. The entire restaurant needed to be reconsidered from the ground up, from the way the grills were engineered to the necessary marketing across many different channels to effectively roll out these huge changes to the public. Since most McDonald’s locations are franchises, it means that (in some ways) corporate can only pitch ideas to franchisees who ultimately decide whether or not they want to implement them. In this case, corporate knew that if all-day breakfast going to work, it would require a high level of network-wide adoption.

At our churches, we often think of the end product, but we don’t consider how to reach that end product or what is required to make it successful.

  • When we think about change at church, are we thinking about the systems behind the change?
  • What new leadership teams do we need to have in place to ensure that the changes we’re making will stand?
  • What investments do we need to make in testing new ideas and/or equipment to see if the changes we’re considering will have the impact we anticipate?
  • What old processes need to be thrown out or redesigned in order to support the change that we’re looking to implement?
  • Do we need to develop entirely new processes to reach our goal?
Continue

Does God Trust YOU?

By
John Bevere
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

“Do you remember how the Lord led you through the wilderness for all those 40 years, humbling you and testing you to find out how you would respond, and whether or not you would really obey Him?” (Deuteronomy 8:2 TLB)

Moses recounts the purpose of the wilderness and reveals that God tested them to see how they would respond. Unfortunately, they consistently complained and rebelled against God. As a result, they forfeited their promotion into the Promised Land. Again, the testing was to see how they would respond. Because they failed the test, a whole generation of Israelites died in the wilderness.

God orchestrates times of testing to see how we will respond. Tests locate a person. They reveal the true condition of your heart. The word “test” actually means, “A procedure intended to establish the quality, performance or reliability of something, especially before it is taken into widespread use.” Other words for “test” include “examination, experiment, check and trial.”

I travel thousands of miles on an airplane every year. I have complete confidence boarding a plane because I am very aware that before the plane was released for widespread use, it first went through a rigorous and exhaustive amount of testing. From the earliest stages of design, these tests were done to ensure its quality, performance and reliability to transport passengers safely to any given destination. In a similar manner, God tests us to see if He can trust us.

The apostle Paul shared how he was tested to be trusted as a messenger. Because of this testing period, he was free from pretense and false motives: “God tested us thoroughly to make sure we were qualified to be trusted with this Message. Be assured that when we speak to you we’re not after crowd approval—only God approval. Since we’ve been put through that battery of tests, you’re guaranteed that both we and the Message are free of error, mixed motives or hidden agendas” (1 Thessalonians 2:3–5 MSG).

How you respond or react under pressure reveals the real you. Just like the Israelites, we all have life-defining moments. They are like open-book tests, but we don’t know we have been examined until it is over.

Can you be trusted?

This article originally appeared here.

Love Is Not God: A.W. Tozer on How Equating Love With God Is a Major Mistake

By
Randy Alcorn
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

A.W. Tozer has had a great impact on my life. His book The Knowledge of the Holy, which profoundly influenced me when I came to Christ as a teenager, is a classic that I think people today need to read.

In the book, Tozer spoke of the attributes of God. He wrote, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Unfortunately, many modern Christians have reduced Him to a single-attribute God. Never mind that the angels in God’s presence do not cry out, day and night, “Love, love, love,” but “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty” (Isaiah 6:3, NIV).

Certainly love is a very important attribute of God. God is love, we’re told in 1 John 4:16, so in some senses it is a defining quality of God. However, this does not minimize His other qualities, and that’s the problem: When you start saying (as I’ve heard people say) we must interpret all of God’s attributes in light of His love, you introduce the error of us imposing our limited understanding of love onto God, and recreate Him into our image.

By all means, we should rejoice in God’s mercy and love. But we must also recognize that our Lord is relentlessly holy, righteous and just. “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong” (Habakkuk 1:13, NIV). The universe exists not for Love’s glory, but for God’s glory.

Here’s what Tozer wrote about the danger of defining God only by His love:

The apostle John, by the Spirit, wrote, “God is love,” and some have taken his words to be a definitive statement concerning the essential nature of God. This is a great error. John was by those words stating a fact, but he was not offering a definition.

Equating love with God is a major mistake which has produced much unsound religious philosophy and has brought forth a spate of vaporous poetry completely out of accord with the Holy Scriptures and altogether of another climate from that of historic Christianity.

Had the apostle declared that love is what God is, we would be forced to infer that God is what love is. If literally God is love, then literally love is God, and we are in all duty bound to worship love as the only God there is. If love is equal to God then God is only equal to love, and God and love are identical. Thus we destroy the concept of personality in God and deny outright all His attributes save one, and that one we substitute for God.

The God we have left is not the God of Israel; He is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; He is not the God of the prophets and the apostles; He is not the God of the saints and reformers and martyrs, nor yet the God of the theologians and hymnists of the church.

For our souls’ sake we must learn to understand the Scriptures. We must escape the slavery of words and give loyal adherence to meanings instead. Words should express ideas, not originate them. We say that God is love; we say that God is light; we say that Christ is truth; and we mean the words to be understood in much the same way that words are understood when we say of a man, “He is kindness itself.” By so saying we are not stating that kindness and the man are identical, and no one understands our words in that sense.

The words “God is love” mean that love is an essential attribute of God. Love is something true of God but it is not God. It expresses the way God is in His unitary being, as do the words holiness, justice, faithfulness and truth. Because God is immutable He always acts like Himself, and because He is a unity He never suspends one of His attributes in order to exercise another.

From God’s other known attributes we may learn much about His love. We can know, for instance, that because God is self-existent, His love had no beginning; because He is eternal, His love can have no end; because He is infinite, it has no limit; because He is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity; because He is immense, His love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea before which we kneel in joyful silence and from which the loftiest eloquence retreats confused and abashed.

Yet if we would know God and for other’s sake tell what we know, we must try to speak of His love. All Christians have tried, but none has ever done it very well. I can no more do justice to that awesome and wonder-filled theme than a child can grasp a star. Still, by reaching toward the star the child may call attention to it and even indicate the direction one must look to see it. So, as I stretch my heart toward the high, shining love of God, someone who has not before known about it may be encouraged to look up and have hope.

We do not know, and we may never know, what love is, but we can know how it manifests itself, and that is enough for us here. First we see it showing itself as good will. Love wills the good of all and never wills harm or evil to any. This explains the words of the apostle John: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.”

…To know that love is of God and to enter into the secret place leaning upon the arm of the Beloved—this and only this can cast out fear. Let a man become convinced that nothing can harm him and instantly for him all fear goes out of the universe. The nervous reflex, the natural revulsion to physical pain may be felt sometimes, but the deep torment of fear is gone forever.

God is love and God is sovereign. His love disposes Him to desire our everlasting welfare and His sovereignty enables Him to secure it.

This article originally appeared here.

James MacDonald Sues Critics of Harvest Bible Chapel

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

Saying criticism of him and his church crossed the line into defamation, James MacDonald and Harvest Bible Chapel are suing two former members and a former Moody Radio host. MacDonald, founder and senior pastor of the Chicago-area megachurch, has been a frequent target of blog writers Scott Bryant and Ryan Mahoney, who left Harvest in 2010. Filing a lawsuit and asking for a temporary restraining order is his way of saying “enough is enough,” MacDonald notes.

According to the filing in Cook County Circuit Court, the evangelical pastor and church claim Bryant and Mahoney have been publishing false and misleading statements on The Elephant’s Debt, a blog they launched in 2012. The resulting damage to the church’s reputation has caused 2,000 people to leave in the past few years, the lawsuit says.

Also named in the suit is Julie Roys, who is alleged to have made disparaging comments about the pastor and church. 

History of the Conflict

Founded by MacDonald in 1988, Harvest Bible Chapel now averages 13,000 weekly attendees in seven locations. It joined the Southern Baptist Convention in 2015. During the past decade, Harvest has been on lists of America’s largest and fastest-growing churches. MacDonald also has a radio ministry, Walk in the Word, and a church-planting ministry, Harvest Bible Fellowship, known for the concept of Vertical Church.

In the legal filing, Harvest says that by 2014, it developed into an organization of more than 100 churches, with 400 employees and assets totaling more than $100 million.

Around 2010, when Mahoney and Bryant departed, the church was reportedly in debt and dealing with leadership conflicts about the appointment of elders. MacDonald has acknowledged past mistakes and apologized to some elders in 2014. But he disputes the bloggers’ claims that Harvest “barely survived a bankruptcy in 2006” and that he has an authoritarian leadership style.

Mahoney used to teach at Harvest Christian Academy, the church’s private school in Elgin, Illinois. In 2010, according to the suit, Mahoney’s contract wasn’t renewed because he spoke out against MacDonald and Harvest in the classroom. Bryant, the church claims, became “equally divisive after being declined a teaching opportunity [at Harvest] that he repeatedly pursued.”

On The Elephant’s Debt, Mahoney and Bryant say they left Harvest because they “were aware of certain issues that were rising to the surface” and “creeping into the pulpit as well.” In 2012, when conflicts arose over the Gospel Coalition’s Elephant Room 2 conference, the bloggers say former Harvest elders and members contacted them about concerns after church leaders refused to address them.

Both Sides of the Story

Mahoney and Bryant say they went public with criticism of MacDonald and Harvest because of the substantial influence of his “national ministry.” They point to “numerous biblical and historical precedents for making a public call for reform when private admonitions have failed.”

Most Harvest-related blog entries on The Elephant’s Debt were posted in 2012 and 2013, and until the recent lawsuit, the blog hadn’t been updated since 2017. Mahoney and Bryant, whose wives were also named in the suit, say being sued is “stunning to say the least.” They add:

“While the authors of this website would never have chosen to resolve our differences in a litigious manner, we are confident that the legal process will ultimately uphold the values of the first amendment right to freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, all of which are essential to safeguarding the values of the Protestant Reformation and our common life.”

Meanwhile, MacDonald defends the decision to go to court, saying previous attempts at reconciliation failed. He writes:

“It isn’t that some of the criticism wasn’t fair. I believe in the marketplace of ideas and of regular, vibrant discussion inside a local church. It’s just that their words were often untrue, their information was incomplete, and over time their tone of reasonableness disintegrated, exposing their obvious goal of ending our ministry.”

Miracle in Pakistan: Christian Asia Bibi Freed From Death Sentence

By
Megan Briggs
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

After nine years in prison, a Pakistani Christian woman has been acquitted of blasphemy against Islam, a crime punishable by death in Pakistan.

“A miracle just happened,” Frank Gaffney, a founding member of the Save the Persecuted Christians (STPC) Coalition. “The Supreme Court of Pakistan ruled today that Asia Bibi, a Christian woman falsely accused of blasphemy—a capital offense under Islam’s totalitarian Sharia code—is not guilty.”

Gaffney also acknowledged the risk the judges who ruled favorably of Bibi would have taken to announce her acquittal. “Particularly miraculous was the courage of the three Pakistani justices who know full well that, in freeing Mrs. Bibi, they have probably signed their own death warrants. Other senior officials there have been murdered simply for speaking up for her and against blasphemy restrictions.”

Asia Bibi Was Sentenced to Death

Bibi, a wife and mother, was arrested in 2009. As the Catholic Herald explains:

Asia Bibi’s “crime” was to drink water from a supply used by Muslims. As a farm worker, she was in the fields alongside Muslim women when she took a drink of water. They objected because she was an “unclean” Christian. Beaten by an angry mob, she was rescued by police, but a few days later she was accused by a local imam, who had not been present at the incident, of insulting Muhammad. She was sentenced to death under Pakistan’s stringent blasphemy laws a year later.

In the beginning of October, Bibi’s husband, Ashiq Masih, visited his wife in prison and told reporters she was “psychologically, physically and spiritually strong” and that she “is ready and willing to die for Christ.” Ashiq said his wife was reading the Bible every day and praying. “She also wanted to deliver a message to the international community that they must remember her in their prayers. These prayers will open the door of the prison, and she will be released very soon,” Ashiq said.

It appears the prayers of Bibi and the international Christian community have been answered, although the road has been a harrowing one. Any advocates of Bibi have been threatened or killed. In 2011, Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab, was assassinated after saying he would fight for her acquittal and release. Additionally, Minority Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian himself, was murdered after he indicated he would work to reform the blasphemy laws.

The Danger’s Not Over Yet

The acquittal sentence was decided in court on October 8, 2018, but was delayed due to threats of violence from angry mobs. According to the Catholic Herald, militant Muslims have offered 500,000 rupees (almost $4,000) for her murder.

As Gaffney explained on his Secure Freedom Minute radio program, “we must now pray for a few more miracles” for Bibi as extracting her from the prison will require a “stealthy” operation to ensure her safety. Indeed, it is critical Christians around the world continue to pray for Bibi’s situation and those involved. As Dede Laugesen of STPC states, “We are also concerned for the safety of the judges, her lawyer and innocent Christians who may be harmed in retribution for her release. We will watch closely to see how Pakistan responds to ensure safety for her and its other Christian citizens.”

UPDATE: Read about the massive protests sparked by the court’s decision to acquit Asia Bibi.

Alan Briggs: How to Overcome ‘Pastor Overwhelm’

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

Alan Briggs is the director of Frontline Church Planting, Multiplying Pastor at Vanguard Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Lead Creative at Stay Forth Designs where he equips leaders and teams for health and kingdom impact. He’s a proud dad of four and a missionary to his neighborhood and city. His books “Staying Is the New Going,” “Guardrails” and “Everyone’s a Genius” help leaders catch a bigger vision for their life.

 

Key Questions for Alan Briggs:

– How can pastors manage expectations—both internal and external?

– What questions do pastors need to ask themselves before they get to the burn out point?

– What advice can you give pastors of small churches that wear a lot of hats?

[SUBSCRIBE] For more ChurchLeaders podcasts click here!

Key Quotes from Alan Briggs:

“Pastors today are supposed to be anything from theologian to inspirational speaker to counselor. The amount of things that are loaded on us…is crazy.”

“Frustration is always a product of expectations unmet.”

“My favorite definition of a leader is someone who disappoints others at a rate they can handle.”

“I don’t think we need any more stories of leaders [failing morally] in the news to believe that our paradigm of leadership–the way we lead and experience life–is upside down. It’s jacked up.”

“Jesus was able to jump in a boat and get away from the crowds and get back to leadership development with his boys; I think we need to be able to find those outlets as well.”

“I think we’re on the edge of a health revolution…I think we’re realizing that throughout culture, from the way people eat and exercise and in the church we realize there’s this missing component of health.”

“We must choose health over impact.”

“If God’s spinning the world on his finger just fine without us, then that’s an invitation to be human and have limits and boundaries.”

“The [moral failure] is devastating when we see those, but I think it’s even more devastating to see people toward burn out in a slow fade, falling out of love with their relationship with Jesus and their practices, falling out of love with their spouses, falling out of love with the church, slowly.” 

“One of the greatest things about ministry is we have a lot of freedom and autonomy with our schedules. One of the worst things about ministry is we have a lot of freedom and autonomy with our schedules.”

“If we start with the statement ‘we can never pull it off’, that becomes a prophetic statement for our life.”

“We actually can’t do healthy leadership long term without a team.”

“It doesn’t all rise and fall on us.”

“We think innovation comes from excess but innovation comes from limits.”

 

Links Mentioned in the Show:

Stayforth.com
FREE The Right Side Up Leader eBook (text rightsideup to 44222)
The State of Pastors

 

How Overcomers Think and Live

By
Daniel Henderson
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thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

While in college I memorized a poem by Walter D. Wintle that said:

If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you’d like to win but you think you can’t,
It’s almost certain you won’t.

Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man;
But sooner or later the man who wins,
Is the one who thinks he can.

While this poem may sound like a dose of “positive mental attitude,” we know Proverbs 23:7 reminds us that “as he thinks in his heart, so is he” (KJV). I find that those who live a victorious Christian life have certain patterns of thought that make the difference. They embrace the importance of Proverbs 4:23: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”

How Overcomers Think and Live

The Inward Thoughts of an Overcomer: A Discipline Toward Praise

An overcomer disciplines his internal conversation toward a focus of praise to God. Discipline involves regulating your thinking and conduct by principle—not emotion, impulse or circumstances.

We see this mental discipline in David when he wrote, “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance” (Psalm 42:5,11 & 43:5). Again in Psalm 103:1-2 he disciplined his thinking with these words: “Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.”

An overcoming life embraces the discipline of Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.”

The Upward Thoughts of an Overcomer: A Delight in Love

An overcomer also looks upward to the risen Christ and experiences a delight in His unfailing love. He constantly rejoices in the source of an overcoming life—the victorious love of the Lord Jesus.

In Romans 8:35-39 Paul expressed this in such a powerful way:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: ‘For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’ Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Consistent victory in the Christian life is the fruit of a deep sense of security that comes in knowing that we are loved. When children know they are loved, they live with a confident freedom to do what is right, focus on others and follow their dreams. The principle applies to spouses, friends and employees.

First John 4:18-19 assures us, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us.”

I always cherish those powerful moments in Prayer Summits when the Spirit leads us to the biblical theme of God’s love for us. Often we take time to praise Christ for His love in words like, “I praise You, Lord Jesus, that You love me even when…” or “I praise You that You love me even if…” It is so empowering to know that we cannot do anything to cause Him to love us less or coerce Him to love us more. He has set His love upon us because it is His character to do so. That is security. That is the delight of an overcoming heart.

The Outward Thoughts of an Overcomer: A Dedication to Faithful Impact

A victorious follower also looks outward at a needy world, resting in the truth of the indwelling, overcoming Christ. Dedication to a life of spiritual impact is rooted in knowing that Christ is faithful to live in and through an abiding heart.

First Corinthians 15:57-58 inspires us: “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” Second Corinthians 2:14 offers similar encouragement: “Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.”

As overcomers we must have resolute confidence that Christ will live through us to express His life and light in a broken and dark world. “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:4-5).

Living in Unashamed Victory

So, as we look inward we discipline our thoughts toward praise. As we look upward we delight in His overcoming love. As we look outward we are dedicated to faithful impact, knowing Christ will live through us.

As a result, we can walk in fellowship with Christ and one another, manifesting His victory and declaring an authentic message. I am reminded of the notable account of a Rwandan man who, in 1980, was forced by his tribe to either renounce Christ or face certain death. He refused to compromise his faith and was killed on the spot. The night before, he had written his commitment, titled “The Fellowship of the Unashamed.” This was found in his room and is a great inspiration for us as we seek to live as overcomers.

The Fellowship of the Unashamed

I am a part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have the Holy Spirit power. The die has been cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ.

I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, and my future is secure. I am finished and done with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tame visions, mundane talking, chintzy giving and dwarfed goals.

I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits or popularity. I don’t have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded or rewarded. I now live by presence, learn by faith, love by patience, lift by prayer and labor by power.

My pace is set, my gait is fast, my goal is Heaven, my road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions few, my Guide is reliable, my mission is clear.

I cannot be bought, compromised, deterred, lured away, turned back, diluted or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of adversity, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity.

I won’t give up, back up, let up or shut up until I’ve preached up, prayed up, paid up, stored up and stayed up for the cause of Christ. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. I must go until He returns, give until I drop, preach until all know and work until He comes.

And when He comes to get His own, He will have no problem recognizing me. My colors will be clear, for “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes…” (Romans 1:16).

This article originally appeared here.

How the Twitter Age Changes the Way People Think

By
Eric Fuller
-
thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

In many church contexts, social media is negatively viewed and even discouraged in some circles. A proper understanding, training and security measures need to be present for all ages of usage. Although the Twitter and social media enterprise possesses dangers, it also presents a plethora of opportunities for the church, ministry entities and individuals.

How the Twitter Age Changes the Way People Think

Let’s re-engineer our thinking of the new Twitter and social media world for just a minute. There are multiple reasons why the church needs to engage social media, but for this article two primary means will be utilized in an attempt to convince you to adopt a strong social media presence.

ATTENTION

Phone calls, mail outs, billboards, pizza and hot dogs, breakfast, and church signs were all used to entice people to attend church each week or for special events. It worked. In years past, throwing up a message on a church sign would draw people to your church or event. Those types of promotional efforts were successful since the attention was captured. Times have changed though. People are no longer looking at billboards, church signs or even care about going through their mail. What are people doing instead? They are looking at their phones. Next time you are driving down the road, just look at how many people are looking at their phones instead of paying attention to their driving. Scary!

Our culture is obsessed with social media, and that is exactly where their attention is focused continually. The church can either discredit the new Twitter age, or they can embrace the overwhelming opportunity of reaching people where their attention is being arrested. Our minds have been altered to first scroll through Twitter for our news, quotes and information. Although there is already a shift arriving within even this framework, the church can maximize their efforts by gaining the attention of people in their community. Once you have their attention, the gospel can be distributed.

Most articles will suggest that you promote your event, post a quote, engage with a question, include a picture or video with your content, and be consistent. All of these suggestions are helpful and needed in your execution of gaining the attention of the people in your community. One missing piece that cannot be overlooked any longer is for your church or ministry to offer value. If your mindset is to see how many people you can invite to your church or tell about your event, your social media plan will fail.

Churches must care about people. When you log in to social media, think of ways you can bring value to each person reading your post. Develop a strategy to see how much you can give to users rather than what you can expect from them. Inspire, motivate, encourage, equip, evangelize and more while on Twitter and social media. Think to yourself: ”How will every person benefit from this post I am about to make after they read it or watch it?”

If your church will give value consistently, people in your community will start to take note. Additionally, when someone makes a post about a problem or success, engage with him or her. You can use someone else’s post to begin a relationship, which leads us to the second priority of social media.

RELATIONSHIPS

Teenagers today are unable to develop relationships. They do not know how to have a conversation with someone. Do these statements sound familiar? We have all heard them and even said them before. In actuality, students are developing relationships and communicating in their language everyday through social media. In many cases, these online relationships lead to face-to-face “real” friendships or partnerships. For example, pastors develop online friendships with other pastors and speakers and extend an invitation to them to speak in their churches. This partnership leads to a real relationship. Twitter, therefore, or other social media platforms, have then become the catalyst to bridge a healthy friendship that will further the Kingdom of God.

Churches can utilize an online presence to initiate friendships that lead to salvations, baptisms and assimilation. Instead of viewing Twitter as the opponent to relationships, develop the mindset that it is a tool, if used appropriately, which can further extend your reach as a local church. In 2018, ministries hold a powerful tool in their hands each day that can be utilized to develop, influence and witness tremendous growth within their communities, nation and around the world. That tool is the smartphone. Twitter and social media can be used as the first step in initiating what many call “real” relationships if the time, money and energy are invested accordingly.

Something may replace Twitter in the near future, but social media is here to stay. Learn it. Engage with it. Use it. Yes, many use it negatively, but you do not have to. Use it for good. Social media is a powerful tool that, if used with wisdom, understanding, strategy and intentionality, will increase your influence to reach many more people for Jesus.

Bridge the Gap Between Church and School

By
Haley Wherry
-
thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

There is no greater place in your community to impact more people for God than at your local schools. For every child that attends a school, there is a family. For every teacher, staff and administrator, there is a family. Many area businesses provide goods and services for the schools. There are very few people in your community that are not connected in some way to a school campus. When a church ministers to a school, it ministers to an entire community.

Now, I know you may have heard someone say, “God’s not allowed in schools, so our church can’t minister there.” God is God. He can go anywhere and do anything He wants. In fact, the Bible says God is omnipresent, so that means He is already at school! And many school administrators are open to the faith-based community because they see the value of collaboration. There is a common goal we share: helping students to thrive.

So, the question is, “How will we work with God in our local schools? ”

Here are five steps and three principles you and your church can use to begin ministering to a school and make God real at the campus:

5 STEPS

  1. Pray for the campus. Ask students and staff for prayer requests. Pray for each student and staff member by name (use a yearbook). Do prayer walks on your campus. Build a Prayer Zone around your school.
  2. Ask for the school’s needs. Ask teachers, administrators and students that are members of your church what they need for their classrooms or areas of responsibility and provide. Word will spread quickly that you are ready and willing to serve and others will request assistance. This will help build trust to open the door for step #3.
  3. Set up a meeting with the administration to ask them what needs they have as a school. Meet with the guidance counselors to learn about needs the students have.
  4. Meet one need. Once you have met one need, begin meeting others. NOTE: You will not be able to meet every need, but you may be able recruit other churches and other businesses who can meet needs your church is unable to.
  5. Start asking “What do you wish for?” Teachers and administrators have a long list of needs…the things they must have in order to educate students. What really gets interesting and creative is when you ask them what they wish they could do for their students. Most teachers and administrators have a “wish list” of things they have always wanted to do for their students but do not have the time, money or energy. Meeting a needs is a blessing, but meeting a wish is something much more powerful! Get involved! Join the parent/teacher organization, the band/athletic boosters, chaperone school dances, proctor standardized tests, mentor and assist students serving in campus ministries at the school…get involved wherever you see an opportunity.

3 PRINCIPLES

  1. Expect nothing in return. One of the first things you will encounter is that the school will suspect you of having ulterior motives and wonder if they can trust you and your church. Most of the time these concerns are legitimate, because they have been burned and mislead in the past by people claiming to have the school’s best interests at heart, when in reality, they had other plans. The school, although desperate for help, will not share their major needs and wishes with you until they know they can trust you. For example, when you provide notebooks for students, don’t slip in a gospel tract or flyer for your youth ministry. When they ask you to volunteer at the school, don’t show up with your Christian t-shirts on.
  2. Ask God to open doors. If you approach every opportunity to serve as an opportunity to “preach,” your ministry at the school will not last long. While school officials are concerned about any ulterior motives you may have, they also understand that there is a greater purpose involved in your service. When serving students or adults at the school, simply meet their need…don’t force any spiritual discussion or direction. Trust that God will use your service to work in the hearts of those you are serving and that He will provide opportunities outside of your service to minister to them spiritually. (By the way, Jesus was a master at meeting physical needs first, them addressing spiritual needs.) So when you are chaperoning a dance, be polite and respectful of the students. If you catch two of them making out, politely ask them to stop but don’t give them a lecture on “True Love Waits.” Then, when you run into the students in the hallway of school the next week, or in Walmart the next day, they may approach you and ask you why you are always at their school—or why you didn’t lower the boom on them like they expected. That’s when God opens the door for ministry to the soul.
  3. Earn and keep trust. Be overly protective of any favor that you gain with the school administration. All it takes is for one person to cross a line or cause someone to complain, and the administration may limit or cut off your ability to serve. This would include blatant “proselytizing,” disruption of class time, or causing a burden to be placed on someone at the school. For example, if you serve the football team bottled water for practice and the school custodian has to put in extra work to pick up all the empty water bottles scattered across the practice field, that person may complain to the administration. Remember that your goal is to relieve stress on the school, not to create it…to be a blessing, not a burden.

The opportunity to minister to schools is wide open! We must simply do so in a way that honors and respects the school and its rules, while at the same time honors God with our servants hearts.

Getting Practical

Here is a list of things our church has done to serve the high school that sits across the street from our church. Please leave a comment and share any ministry ideas you have for schools.

  • The band & ROTC use our gym for band camp and drill team practice.
  • Provide the guidance staff male and female toiletry kits. Serve at the prom each year as bathroom attendants and parking lot attendants and provide hair and make-up artists to fix “wardrobe malfunctions.”
  • Provide breakfast for students and parents at orientation.
  • Provide water, cookies and chips to staff during teacher work days.
  • Provide coffee to assist the PTA serving breakfast to teachers and staff.
  • Serve in crisis response, coordinating teens at the hospital and helping with communication between students, the hospital, parents and the schools. Coordinate with the guidance staff to connect local youth pastors to be available for counseling students after the death of a student. Provide umbrellas for teachers on bus duty.
  • The school’s preschool program used our nursery for two years when their school had mold problems.
  • Youth group participates in prayer events for the campus throughout the year.
  • Provide volunteers for field days and proctors for standardized tests.
  • Administration has used the sanctuary for teacher training when school was undergoing renovations.

The schools need our help and want our help. So, what are you waiting for?

This article originally appeared here.

10 Things No One Told Me About Being a Small Groups Pastor

By
Ben Reed
-
thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

I’ve been a small groups pastor now for five years. Most of my tenure coming at Grace Community Church, and I’m now at Long Hollow.

I love group life. I love recruiting, training, equipping, challenging, scheming, planning, dreaming and writing. I believe that groups are the heartbeat of a local church, and one of the most beautiful expressions of the authentic Christian life.

But being a groups pastor isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. Or if that’s not your thing…it’s not all coffee and bagels. Turns out, this is hard work. but it’s hard work worth every ounce of sweat, every drop of creativity, and every inch of effort you can give.

I’ve had lots of folks tell me that they’d love to get in the small groups space. Some have been high school students ready to jump in to ministry. Others have been guys who are currently in a ministry that they don’t love. Each person has experienced life change through small groups, and would love to invest their lives making that happen. Here are some of the things I’ve told them as a “heads up” before they dabble their toe in the water.

10 Things Nobody Told Me About Being a Small Groups Pastor

1. Not everybody will like you.

Especially when you tell them, “I don’t have a small group for you right now.” Or, “No, we don’t have that kind of group.” Or, “I’m sorry that small group life is difficult.” Or, “Ouch…she said that in your small group?” because no perfect people are allowed. Or, “No, we won’t have a small group where you teach for two hours every week about the coming rapture…about the evils of smoking cigarettes…about how our society is going to Hell because we watch rated R movies…about how all single moms are dirty rotten sinners.” Small group pastors must have tough skin.

2. Small groups are messy. 

If you enjoy coloring in the lines, and having everything neat, pretty and always on schedule, find another ministry. Small groups are messy and difficult because people are messy and difficult. Small group pastors have to find the beauty in the mess. It’s there, like a diamond hidden among the rough. God’s at work right in the midst of the nastiest junk in people’s lives, and that junk comes out in small groups. Get ready for it.

3. Not all of the staff will be fully supportive.

I naively thought that every staff member would wholly embrace small groups with no explanation, no push-back, no confusion and with arms wide open. Turns out they’ve got thoughts, questions and legitimate concerns, too. This isn’t all bad, because it pushes you to answer some hard questions. Just a heads up. Knowing is half the battle, right?

4. Getting life change stories from small groups will be tough.

Mining stories is unbelievable valuable in shifting people’s hearts toward group life. Figuring out the best way to mine those is tough, though. And there’s no one “right” way to do it. Sometimes it’s best to shoot videos, other times to simply send out emails. Other times interviewing on stage is best. But capturing those stories is tough. Get ready for a challenge.

5. If you don’t do anything, nothing will happen.

Small groups ministry doesn’t run on a weekly cycle like student ministry (with Wednesday night programming), children’s ministry or the worship team (with Sunday morning programming). So if you’re not a self-motivated, self-driven starter, you’ll languish. There are certain times every year where groups are launching, but in between those times, you’ve got to keep the wheels moving. If you don’t, things don’t naturally happen. Community doesn’t bubble up from the ground. Structures don’t naturally form. Schedules and timelines don’t magically happen. Know that if you don’t do anything in the down times, nobody else will.

6. You’d better be awesome at recruiting.

A big chunk of the role of the small groups pastor is in recruiting. Whether you’re recruiting a group leader, a coach, a potential hire, a current staff member or a small group leadership board, the small groups pastor never gets a day off. Recruiting can and does happen anywhere, anytime. You’d better be good at it. Or learn to be.

7. You’ll have to constantly teach people what small groups are.

You may not be teaching from stage every week, but “teaching” is a key function of the groups pastor. No matter what your culture is, you’ll have to be teaching people the value of healthy community. Teaching people your process for assimilation, your process for discipleship and your groups structure. You’ll teach new members, existing ones, staff members and new recruits. Always be on your toes.

8. Small group coaches are vital.

The group leader that’s not coached will not be all he or she could be. And you, the groups pastor, can’t coach every leader. Unless, of course, you just have one or two other leaders. If you have more than two leaders, recruit a coach. They’ll help you invest time in leaders, give them a support structure, let them have a voice, and ensure they’re being encouraged, corrected and cared for. Every small group structure has to involve coaches. Or assimilators. Or champions. Or directors. Or advocates. Or whatever you call them.

9. Get a team of supporters. Now.

Build a base of people who understand and support your vision. They don’t have to be small group leaders themselves, but they need to be strong leaders who buy what you’re selling. Vision leaks, and you want others leaking your vision across the landscape of your local church. Know who your friends are. And give them insider information.

10. This is the most fun job in the whole church.

It’s messy. It’s difficult. It’s frustrating. But at the end of the day, your role exists to help people find God’s beautiful gift of community. You get the chance to create environments where people are free to explore faith, and experience church in a transparently safe way. It’s an amazing ride.

Are you a small groups pastor? Know one?

What did I leave out?  

Africa, Animism and the Dangers of the Prosperity Gospel

By
Nick Roark
-
thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

The term prosperity gospel usually conjures up images of a (typically) white, big-haired, American televangelist from the 1980s seated on a golden throne, flanked by artificial ferns, wagging his bejeweled fingers into a camera lens to chasten his faithful parishioners to “sow the seed of faith” in order to “reap the harvest of God’s favor.” Or something along these lines.

This image association is well-merited, as historian Kate Bowler has documented. The entire global movement we now refer to as the prosperity gospel (PG) movement has its roots in this phenomenon within American evangelicalism in the latter part of the 20th century.

Today, however, we are no longer dealing with a solely American phenomenon. This movement has now spread like wildfire to virtually every part of the developing world, perhaps most profoundly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Troubling Numbers

Recent reports from Pew Research indicate that Christianity is rapidly on the rise in Sub-Saharan Africa. Pew projects that by the year 2050, about 38 percent of the world’s Christians will reside in Sub-Saharan Africa. Pew clarifies that their use of the term “Christian” describes anyone self-identifying as such, including Roman Catholics, Orthodox groups, Mormons, Christian Scientists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. An estimated 37 percent of this group belongs to what Pew calls “the Protestant faith.”

If these numbers are accurate, then Sub-Saharan Africa will be home to approximately 1.1 billion self-identified “Christians” in 30 years. If 37 percent of that number will be Protestant, then Sub-Saharan Africa will have 408,813,000 people who consider themselves Protestant Christian. That’s about 86 million more people than the entire current population of the U.S.

What’s in a Name?

As a missionary and a theological educator in Sub-Saharan Africa, I can’t help but question the accuracy of such numbers—not because I disagree with the methodology of the research. My disagreement is theological.

Included under the “Protestant” banner are traditional denominations such as Anglican, Baptist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian. While most of these denominations have some presence in Africa, they are being far outpaced by other “Protestant” groups that don’t really fit in any of these categories, primarily the PG movement.

But how could a movement with such a seemingly limited target audience—spiritually-inclined Americans with televisions—gain such broad appeal among unreached and underserved parts of the world? There are many possible factors: vast amounts of resources at the movement’s disposal, aggressive and innovative media strategies, global fascination with the Western world and American Pop-Christianity. While each of these could have played some part in this movement’s advance, I suspect there is a deeper, more fundamental reason behind its spread: animism.

Reaping What You Sow

Animism has been defined as, “[the] belief that personal spiritual beings and impersonal spiritual forces have power over human affairs and, consequently, that human beings must discover what beings and forces are influencing them in order to determine future action and, frequently, to manipulate their power” (20).

Any textbook on animism will take us immediately to village huts in Africa or rainforests in South America in order to view animism in its most blatant forms. But Mission Alive founder Gailyn Van Rheenen observed that “animism is prevalent in every continent and is part of every culture” (11). Van Rheenen is perhaps more right than he may realize. For when he cites Western examples of animism, he points to things like New Age spiritism, occultism and astrology, which of course qualify. But if someone asked me what the clearest example of animism in the Western world is today, I would point squarely to the PG movement.

“The PG movement is nothing more than humans seeking to discover the forces that are influencing them and then manipulate their power. This is animism at its core, with a few Bible verses and Jesus attached.”

Put simply, the PG operates on the concept of transaction. Input translates to output. Or, to use more biblical (albeit out-of-context) language, “Whatever a man sows, he will also reap” (Gal. 6:7 HCSB). The posited meaning here is that when someone performs an act of religiosity or devotion, this somehow obligates God to return blessing or favor, just as a payment obligates a vendor to render a service. The application point for the PG is that righteous living, believing, giving and praying obligates God to return financial, emotional, familial or professional blessings.

We see this principle espoused on a spectrum that ranges from blatant formulas, such as those of the preening evangelist on a telethon, to the subtler “follow Jesus and he will make your life all you ever wanted it to be” message coming from the pulpits. But behind all of this pseudo-Christian and quasi-biblical lingo is animism. The PG movement is nothing more than humans seeking to discover the forces that are influencing them and then manipulate their power. This is animism at its core, with a few Bible verses and Jesus attached.

6 Dangers of Self-Appointed Leaders

By
Charles Stone
-
thank you notes for children’s ministry volunteers

Malcolm Webber is one of my favorite leaders of leaders. With a PhD and over 20 books on leadership to his credit, he insightfully describes the dangers of a self-appointed leader in his book Healthy Leaders. He draws insight from a self-appointed leader named Korah described in the Old Testament book of Numbers, chapters 16-17. I’ve paraphrased these dangers below and contrasted them with six qualities of true God-appointed leaders.

Self-appointed leaders…

    1. … resist existing spiritual authority (Nm 16.2).
    2. … criticize and question existing leaders (Nm 16.1).
    3. … accuse other leaders of what they themselves are guilty (Nm 16.3).
    4. … aren’t satisfied with the positions they hold. They push for greater authority and position (Nm 16.10).
    5. … murmur against leadership that God has appointed (Nm 16.11).
    6. … ultimately face God’s judgement (Nm 16.31-35).

    God-appointed leaders…

    1. … willingly submit to existing authority (Daniel’s repeated examples).
    2. … when issues and questions arise, they appropriately appeal up the chain of command and go to their leaders in private and in person (Mt 18.15)
    3. … avoid a judgmental spirit (Mt 7.1-5)
    4. … wait on God to promote them (Paul and Moses spent years in obscurity before rising to significant leadership)
    5. … only speak well of their leaders, whether to their faces, behind their backs or in the presence of others (Eph 4.29).
    6. … lead with the eternal goal in mind to hear Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Mt 25.21).

    Of these two lists, which one most characterizes your leadership? If the first list does, what changes do you need to make so that list two most characterizes you?

This article originally appeared here.

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