Pornography Addiction Recovery

Tough subject today. But if you doubt it is a needed one, just check out a couple statistics. A 1996 Promise Keepers survey at one of their stadium events revealed that over 50% of the men in attendance were involved with pornography within one week of attending the event. Maybe you are a pastor saying to yourself, yeah, but those guys were just the non-Christian friends who were invited to promise keepers. Over half of evangelical pastors admit viewing pornography last year. There are countless statistics that I could add to this page. If you want more for your own research, click

here

. Our God is an awesome God and he can help anyone recover from sin of any kind. I am sure there are testimonies of men or women who laid there sin on the altar and God took away all desire to look at pornography from them. I will also let you know, that is not the normal way it seems to go. Satan is a liar, and as long as he can keep the addict thinking that his or her sin is secret, then he has power over them. Just like any other addictive sin, the first step is admitting you have a problem. The second and more important step is admitting it to another human being who can hold you accountable! When that second step takes place, Satan no longer has the same hold on the person’s life! Does that mean that after that, recovery is easy? NO! But it does mean that the person is no longer alone in their struggle. Pastor’s and Lay leaders, if you are reading this and are thinking, Man, he is describing me, but if I tell anyone, I will lose my job or my position in the church! Find someone to hold you accountable! It is a tough step. If there is no one in your community you can talk to,email me and we can set up a time to talk on the phone. It isn’t perfect (unless you live in Pickens County South Carolina), but it is a step. I will probably blog more on this issue in the future. If it makes you uncomfortable, I am sorry, but it is something that is destroying families, marriages and churches across America! Remember, just because you are sinning doesn’t mean you “lost your salvation” it just means you need to ask forgiveness and then “go and sin no more.”

The Body

Yesterday, I was leaving lunch and talking with a friend. Since the conversation was going so well, I failed to notice a step down off the curb to the parking lot. The resulting twisted ankle has made me quite aware of the normal functions of the ankle that it is currently in rebellion against performing. I admit that on a normal day I take the ankle for granted; it is just that part of the body below the leg and not quite the foot. Today, however I am much more aware of it. All that to say that as pastors and leaders, we must constantly be on the lookout to encourage those parts of the body of Christ that may not be in the glory locations. People recognize the music minister, the soloist, even the piano player, but who spends time praising the person who cleans the toilets, or sets up chairs for various functions of the church. Some churches do a great job at this, but if you notice that your church has a hard time getting volunteers, it may be that people feel that certain jobs just aren’t important enough to be worth doing. Leaders set the tone to let people know that every job is important! And Lay people who read this, it is OK to encourage your senior pastor too! His job at the top can often feel thankless and lonely. To all of you who are working diligently for the Kingdom! Great Job! Keep up the good work!

Building on the Rock

Luke 6:48 tells us that the man who puts Gods words into practice “is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built.” Later, Jesus told Peter in Mathew 16: 18-19, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” God has a plan for your church! The context of this blog is that you as a pastor or leader have a choice to make to be in God’s will, and follow HIS plan or you can try to do it according to your own plan. When we plant a church firmly on the ROCK of Jesus Christ, then that church, as long as it follows Gods plan will be the church HE wants it to be. We as church leadership are like the stones planted firmly on a solid rock foundation. It won’t slip or settle. Following God’s plan is solid though not always predictable. Sometimes following HIS plan will mean that the church is growing like crazy, and sometimes not. God’s plan. Sometimes HIS plan is exactly what we think it should be, and sometimes not. God’s plan. Keep on the Rock, and it will keep us out of the quicksand of our own path. I like the words of Steven Furdick on this topic: “It’s better to be a rock that He can build on than a stumbling block that He has to remove.”

Prayer Teams

Prayer support is very important for a pastor. Today’s blog is a little more anecdotal than usual, but something that I did recently as a lay person in my church was go to our pastor and shared with him that I felt it is important to have a group of people praying for him while he is preaching. His response was positive and ended with “Burl, you have a passion for it, so why don’t you get it started?” So after asking a few men in the church if they would either stay late or come early and pray during the service they don’t attend. (Our church has two services) Some of them responded that they had been thinking the same thing, but just hadn’t voiced it. Soon a group of guys are getting together and praying for the service and our pastor while the service is going on in another part of the building. And while hard to prove a direct relationship scientifically, the number of people attending, and more importantly, the number of people asking Jesus into their hearts each week is increasing! God can do anything, and HE doesn’t need us, but HE asks us to pray to HIM. HE can do abundantly and exceedingly more than we can ask or imagine! If you are one of the lay people who read this blog; pray for your pastor! And if you are a pastor and don’t have group of people praying for you, I encourage you to ask some people in your congregation that you respect as people who love the Lord to begin praying for you. You may not have the luxury of having a “Prayer Warrior” in your congregation. But just like young men going off to basic training, they can start praying, and God can turn them into prayer warriors!

Overcoming Fear

Jesus walked on the water, fed thousands with only a few loaves and fish, healed the blind, lame, sick and demon possessed. Why are we in the church so often full of fear? Some of the fears we face are BIG…at least in our small human eyes. Others are not so big. In John 6:20, Jesus said, “It is I; do not be afraid.” He walks beside us through all things if we keep our faith on HIM. What do pastors and churches fear? I can’t begin to say that I understand every pastor’s fear, but here are a few I can think of. Changing worship styles. Reaching out to a new demographic. Try a new ministry. Give away a larger portion of our church budget. All these and more could give a pastor and church leadership a little cause for trepidation, but remember. God is with you always! Do not live in fear!

Tithing

In a blog for pastors, why write about tithing? Every pastor knows the importance of the personal tithe. What about the church? We are quick to exhort people to tithe by sharing with them how God blesses those who give. Do we believe that God will bless a church that tithes as well?
Over and over I have seen churches that practice giving to ministries, missions, and denominations beyond their walls blessed by God in miraculous ways! I have also seen churches who claim not to have a big enough budget to be able to help support other ministries struggle year after year just to meet the bills and keep the doors of the church open. “God loves a cheerful giver” goes beyond the individual level. If your church is not supporting missions or any ministry beyond itself and you feel like it is in a constant struggle to meet the bills, I encourage you to put this idea to a test. Trust God, give generously, and see how our Awesome Omnipotent God will pour out His blessings on your ministry.

My own thoughts...

Today’s blog is a little different. I want to share with you what doing this blog has meant for me in my own life. One thing has been that it makes me think throughout the day of things that might be helpful for pastors and lay leaders in a church. As I concentrate on that stuff, often things pop into my head that I need to pray about in the church where I am a member. A new ministry is birthing in our church in response to one post! The other thing that is more personal has been my own level of witnessing has changed. Since I am writing about things like prayer, evangelism etc. it would be hypocritical of me just to sit back and write about it without actually taking part in the things I write about. I think I have shared the gospel with and/or invited to church more people in the last weeks since beginning writing than I have in the 6 months prior to beginning this project.
Now you are thinking, why is this guy sharing this personal stuff on a blog for church leaders? The point that I hope is made is that when we involve people in leadership or in an area of ministry, even if we don’t see every quality we are looking for in that person, God can do amazing things in their lives as they step up to that next level in their own personal areas of ministry. The old church saying is true, “God doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called.”

After the First Three Years...

A well known church planting fact is that the fastest growth happens in the first three years. Why is it that after that quick growth period, many churches fall into a lull and sadly, begin to decline after only those initial years of growth? When the church is young, there is almost always a heavy emphasis on evangelism. The church plant pastor and sometimes a small band of followers must get out and network and create excitement for the new church plant. This leads to many new Christians. George Barna shares in Marketing the Church that one out of four adults in the United States will go to church if someone invites them. When the church is young and full of passion, people invite everyone they meet. Somehow, that urgency seems to fade after a few years. The pastor who notices that trend setting in at his church has a decision to make. He could just let it happen as it is the natural tendency, or he can do something to be outside the norm. Here are some suggestions, should he choose the second route.
Taking another quote from Barna, in Evangelism That Works he wrote, “A church that strives to evangelize its community without saturating its efforts in prayer is like a race-car driver that jumps into his car at the starting line and discovers that the tank has not been filled with gasoline.” Not only should the pastor be in prayer for the souls of his community, but if he is to be successful, he will enlist those from his church that he can to pray earnestly with him as well. With the ease of blogs and e-mails, a weekly prayer list sent out to a prayer team is not a difficult task.
Once the prayer support is in place, modeling sharing the gospel with the lost is important. The easiest way is just to share one’s own testimony. What was I like before Christ? How did I meet Him? How has my life changed since? There are many approaches to evangelism, and many of them work. I think we can agree that there is no perfect system, but any of them is better than never opening one’s mouth to share Jesus with someone who is lost and going to hell! Perry Noble said that “50,000 people die every single day without knowing Jesus Christ.” Statistics like that should be motivating!
My last suggestion is to reconnect with the community. After a few years, the average Christian no longer has unsaved friends or has very few of them. We need to constantly cultivate new friendships outside our Christian community. Run for school board or city council, even if you don’t win, you get a chance to talk to a lot of people in the campaign process. The church could plan events that reach out to the community that aren’t churchy. While doing those things, the fact that the whole process was bathed in prayer from the beginning will help those involved keep the focus on evangelism.

Going Somewhere?

As a child, most likely you read the book Alice in Wonderland. At one point in the story, Alice comes to a fork in the road and there is the famous grinning Cheshire Cat. She asks him, “Which road should I take?” to which he responds, “Where are you going?” She answers him, “I don’t know.” And so the cat says, “Then it doesn’t matter which road you take.” The lesson for pastors or lay people here is that if we don’t have a plan for where our church is going, then we will most likely end up taking a lot of roads to nowhere. Casting the vision for the church must come from the leadership, but if the pastor and leaders in the church are unsure of God’s purpose and vision for their congregation, then the baby Christian in the pew has no chance of catching that vision and direction. Today’s blog is simple.
1. If you don’t already have a concrete vision for your church, get on your knees in prayer until you do.
2. Share that vision often with your church. As a Spanish teacher, I know that repetition is very important to get the average student to learn something. The same goes for teaching in the church.
3. Make sure the staff and leaders in your church know and share that vision and can share it with the people they are working with.

America's Next Top Pastor

This is just for humor. America's Next Top Pastor is a humorous view of what it takes to be a great pastor.

Why a Pastor of Discipleship?

To grow beyond the small church size, one thing that must be achieved effectively is that the church must move beyond the level of a single cell organism toward multiplication of cells. If your biology class was long ago, the point is that when a baby is conceived the sperm and egg becomes one single cell. That cell does not just grow into a body; the cell grows and then multiplies into two cells, then four, then eight then sixteen etc.
In the church realm, the senior pastor is often looked to in order to provide leadership and participation in all areas of ministry. When the church has 50 people, the pastor very well may also be the janitor, chair setter upper, secretary, youth pastor, counselor, worship leader and many more things that could be listed but would take up a volume in and of itself.
The point of this note is that many churches, after hiring a youth pastor and music minister do not know where to go next. I would like to suggest that a Pastor of discipleship is an important early addition to the church staff.
What would he do? His job description would be to help church members grow in their commitment, competence, character and conviction as they seek to move toward spiritual maturity. Unless church members are capable of becoming leaders themselves, the senior pastor will be continually overworked and in need of more hands. The Pastor of Discipleship would allow the Senior Pastor to delegate much of the workload that is expected of him in regards to teaching Christians to become true disciples of Jesus Christ. When the core congregation can be described as people who disciple others, who have a kingdom vision – showing God’s heart for people outside the church, who see new believers as a great chance to watch God in action and help mentor them, who use their spiritual gifts effectively, who’s character is self sacrificing and Godly, and who see worth in every individual, then the church will continue to grow even when the Senior Pastor leaves or the church has grown beyond the size that he can be a direct influence on each congregation member. The Pastor of Discipleship could be responsible for small group studies and other Bible study groups sponsored by the church. He could be responsible for writing or obtaining discipleship curriculum for specific groups as the need arises. (Example: something written specifically for the single’s ministry.) He could also be a director of ministries within the church leading the lay ministers in caring for new believers, men’s/women’s ministries, prayer ministries, etc.

Laity Unleashed

This post is more for those lay leaders that are reading than for the Pastors out there, but I hope all of you enjoy it.

The Church is made up of many parts. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:12 “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all of its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.” (NIV) In the ministry of the church there seem to be many areas that are all too often left up to the senior pastor or to a few paid staff members. Some of them are the duty of the pastor, but many can be shared by the laity which is why I called this note “Laity Unleashed”. In case you are thinking that all a pastor has to do is get up and speak on Sunday mornings for a few minutes, here is a short list of duties that a pastor often is expected to do.

Pastoral Care
Preaching
Administration
Discipleship
Personal Evangelism
Building Campaigns
Outreach
Visitation
Goal Setting
Church Meetings
Budgeting
Future Planning
Staff Leadership

The list above only includes what are normally seen as “pastoral duties” and doesn’t even touch the many other areas of ministry of a church. If the body of Christ is to work as a functioning unit, the head cannot do all the work of the body. While most pastors would probably not want to give up the preaching part of their job, most would gladly set aside other areas if they felt that the laity of the church would pick up those areas and competently work to see them carried out with excellence! If you are sitting in the pew on Sunday morning just wishing someone would ask you to get involved, be a little proactive and ask where you can be of service wherever you worship.
Other areas of ministry include but are not limited to:

Prayer
Music
Children
Family
Singles
Youth
College
Support Groups
Small Groups/Home Groups
Men’s/Women’s Ministry
Bus
Parking
Greeting
New Member’s Class
Visitation
Nursery
Missions -local/statewide/ national/international
Fellowship
Special Events – Movie nights/Halloween etc.
One on one discipling
Audio/Visual

In no way is this to be viewed as a complete list, but one can quickly see that there are needs in any church for many people in the laity to be involved. I just want to encourage you to find a place in your church wherever God is leading you. As a Christian, we don’t have the option to just take up space. God made each of us differently, but He enabled each of us to be a part of the body of Christ. As we see from scripture, even the churches Paul planted weren’t perfect, but we as part of the body should strive toward perfection and not allow our pastors to throw their up their hands in desperation when they realize that they cannot do it all themselves. Have an awesome day!

The Incredible Shrinking Church

I just finished reading The Incredible Shrinking Church by Frank Page. I must give it credit! I believe that this book is to the pastor trying to revitalize a church that is in a slump what Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren is to Church planters. Dr. Page, pastor of Taylors First Baptist Church and the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention, shares the knowledge he has gained in his career of turning around churches that were on decline. People would have described Taylors and other churches he has pastored in the past as “past their heyday” or just “getting smaller”. The insights in this book could be useful to any pastor who wants to see his church grow into an affective role in the community. It is a must read for any pastor who has become complacent in the ministry and needs to find a new vision for an older church that is in decline. I believe that God has a plan for every church! I also believe that that plan very rarely is for the church to fade off into oblivion.

A Cure for Discouragement

The following is directly from Pastor Steven Furtick's blog, but I thought it was a great post! He is a great speaker and a graduate of the school where I teach! I am proud of him and all that God is doing through him in Charlotte!
Now to what he said:

One of the best things I can do when I feel my attitude drifting toward discouragement is to switch from defense to offense. Instead of sitting around waiting for someone else to encourage me, I try to go on the attack and encourage someone else.

If I’m feeling down because our attendance isn’t where I want it to be, I might call a pastor who is struggling big time in this area, and try to speak increase over his life and ministry.

If I’m hurting because someone I trusted let me down, I may write a short letter of encouragement to someone who I let down in the past. It helps me keep my own imperfection in perspective when I’m upset by the imperfections of others.

If I’m feeling sorry for myself for a vague, unnamed reason, I like to leave encouraging comments on a few random blogs-especially guys’ whose ministries may not receive a lot of attention-and say a short prayer for those guys.

I’ll bet Satan hates this strategy, because in effect, it turns his heaviest artillery against him. And when I venture away from my dilemma for a few minutes to bless someone else, I often find that the discouragement has greatly subsided by the time I return.

Your Church's Reputation.

How do we become known as the church that is more interested in helping than being helped? The church that is more interested in loving than being loved? The church that is more interested in giving than getting? How do we become a church that gives itself away?
If we try to be all things to all people, in spite of Paul’s words, we are likely to become nothing to nobody stretched so thin that real accomplishments slip through our fingers. Most churches don’t have the manpower to staff effectively every ministry that can be thought of by human kind. Our communities each have hurting people with needs, but how do we choose which needs are most important? My suggestion is that boards, committees, and impact studies are not the answer. The key to being effective in an outreach area of ministry is to let people in the church who have a heart to fill certain need find others who are like minded. Once there is a core group of people who want to start a ministry, then it doesn’t fall on the shoulders of the pastoral staff to try to coerce people into volunteering for something that a committee decided would be a good idea. All the pastor/pastors need to do at that point is be supportive and if needed get the process going by which some funding from the church’s budget can be used to help finance the ministry. As lay leaders in the church are trained to take charge of areas of ministry it promotes spiritual growth in the leader, the group and reaches out to the community in a way that you as the pastor might never be able to. Letting people know that it isn’t about how many people will join your church because of this new ministry but how many lives will be affected for Jesus Christ is a great step in the right direction. Creating an environment in which people feel free to try something new, perhaps having great success and perhaps failing, is this layman’s view of a great pastor and pastoral staff.

Counting Sheep

Pastors and Lay ministers when they get together often ask, “So how many people does your church have?” or “What is your membership over at Fillinblank Church?” We have all heard of pastors who are accused of counting the mice and cockroaches to inflate their numbers. I want to propose a different standard by which we measure a church. It is much harder to quantify than backsides counted on a pew each Sunday morning, but here goes. Why don’t we try counting the number of lives that are being affected positively for Jesus Christ by our congregation? This might include people who never darken the doorstep of your church, and in some cases might not count people who attend every Sunday! When a church is consistently reaching beyond its walls to the community at large for Jesus, there may be thousands on this list even though the Sunday AM service only numbers 75 or 100. Just a quick anecdote to make my point: I once had a pastor who preached his last sermon about a week before he died in his early 90’s. His church wasn’t more than 50 people on Sunday mornings, but the people in the community who showed up at his funeral who considered him their pastor or whom he had led to the Lord personally numbered well over 500. When one considers that this was in a very rural area and the population of that end of the county was only a couple thousand, I would say that he was a very successful pastor! Was his church perfect? Of course not, but they reached out to the community around them just as their pastor did. They loved on this young man in a time of emotional and spiritual crisis helping me to hold onto my faith in our loving Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Hopefully your church is affecting many outside the walls of your building for the Lord in a positive way. One thought I heard recently that you might think about on this topic is: (((If our church went under today, would anyone care other than the staff and those who attend?))) I pray that your church is making a difference and would be sorely missed by your community!

Big Church/Small Church

If your church has less than thirty people, you can skip this blog and come back later. Many people like a “small church” because they feel like they get to know people better. One of the complaints about mid-size and large churches is that people feel they get lost in the numbers and don’t really create relationships. So, the challenge is to create the “small church” inside the “large church”. That is where all the small groups come in. Churches who get people plugged in to what they are doing find that those people don’t leave. It is a way of closing that back door. Small groups can be many things though, not just Bible study groups. Again, I will give a few suggestions, but then let your brain spin a little and see if you can add some.
1. Traditional Small Groups/Home Groups/Cell Groups/Sunday School
2. Accountability Groups
3. Worship team or Choir
4. Drama Group
5. Motorcycle Club
6. Prayer team
7. Church Decorating team
8. Ministry teams – puppet, music, street evangelism…
9. Creativity team – Art, Setting up the Pulpit area for each series the pastor is doing.
10. Event Coordination team – Sets up 4th of July, Septemberfest, Christmas activities etc.
Hopefully this scratched the surface for you and got you thinking about ways to plug people into small groups in your church so that they can build the relationships that smaller churches take for granted.

Reading to stay fresh in your ministry...

Are you busy? Yeah, I know, dumb question. This isn’t so much about your reading the Bible as it is about reading to stay fresh. (If you aren’t reading God’s Word and you are a pastor or lay leader in your church you need some time off to spend with God in prayer and getting into HIS word. You can’t do it on your own.) A good friend once told me to read old and new books to challenge my faith. I think he was citing C.S. Lewis, but even if he wasn’t, it was good advice. You can read to stay up to date, but it is also important to read to stay grounded in your faith. If we only talk to people in our church and community, it is easy to get stale in our teaching. If we read great books, we can see how great minds think. Isaac Newton said something once about doing great things because he stood on the shoulders of great men. In this century, we have the luxury of having millions of books in print. We can thus stand on the shoulders of both those who are currently doing great things in God’s kingdom and also those great saints who have gone before us. Scheduling time for reading is tough, but it can be done. My wife teases me because I prefer reading to TV, but seriously, many of us spend a lot of time watching very un-educational television. If you prefer the internet reading, which may be true if you are reading this, then check out the Christian Classics library. http://www.ccel.org/ I also have a link to it on the sidebar. There are many great Christian classics on this site. Most of all have fun. Don’t read it if it totally bores you. You may not be ready for it, or it is below you etc. As anyone who has read more than a few books knows, sometimes you can think a book is awful, and then a few years later, when you try it again, it is one of the best books you every read! What happened? You changed, the book didn’t. So that to say, if you don’t like it, try it again later.
Sorry if this was more rambling than usual, but hopefully you take from this that reading is a great way to help you stay fresh in your area of ministry!

Memorize the Playbook?

I heard an interesting thought this evening that I thought would be worth sharing with the type of people who might read my blog. The thought was, “If churches were like football teams, then most pastors would get fired after the first season.” Most churches and church leaders included have the idea that we memorize the playbook (Bible). We teach the playbook. We even practice the plays in the playbook. But what would happen to a team that knew every play in the book but couldn’t execute the plays for a win during the game? The team owners wouldn’t care if the coach said, “I know we lost 55-0 but my players know every play in the playbook.” Pastor’s and leaders in the church are much like a coach. Once the people leave the confines of the locker room (church lobby) and head out onto the field (real life) that is when we find out how good a job the coaching staff is doing. Philippians 4:9 tells us to “Put into practice what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.” Hopefully we can inspire and motivate those who are learning, receiving, hearing and seeing from and in us to put what we have modeled for them into practice so that the game of life can be won! If you didn’t like this blog, blame me. If you really liked it, check out Travis Holmes’ new church Thrive Church at www.thrivechurch.tv or see his blog link to the right on my page. Most of this thought was stolen from his mind.

Five Points of the Church

If you are a pastor, you most likely at some point back in Bible College or Seminary studied the five reasons for a church’s existence -- Discipleship, Worship, Ministry, Fellowship, and Evangelism. If you didn’t go to Bible College, maybe where introduced to these fundamental truths through Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Church. As time goes by, has your church continued to work in all five areas? Are you really good at Fellowship, but maybe haven’t reached out in Evangelism in a while? Or maybe Evangelism is your focus! But somewhere the Discipleship got left out.
Before you start beating yourself up and feeling like this is going to be one more thing you read which shows you how or why your ministry is failing, remember the words of Paul in I Corinthians 12: 12 “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body.” You, as a pastor or leader in your church cannot fulfill all of these roles by yourself. WE as the whole body of Christ work together to create the community that is the Body of Believers.
This blog is just a reminder that as we constantly seek to improve our walk with the Lord and to improve our churches we can get back to basics. We can ask ourselves five simple questions that may need more than just simple answers.
1. Am I working to disciple one person?
2. Does my life worship God?
3. How am I ministering to others?
4. Have I spent time with another Christian sharing with them and uplifting them?
5. How have I shared Jesus with someone recently?

Have fun and enjoy serving the Lord!

Accountability Groups

In your church, there are men and women who struggle with sin! If this comes as a shock to you, I suggest leaving the bubble you live in. Satan likes to tell us that since we have all sinned that God can’t use us anymore and that we should just give up and be sinners. Accountability groups allow us to confess our sins one to another as James 5:16 exhorts us to do without the fear that our deepest darkest sins will be broadcast from the bell tower for all the land to hear.
So you think this sounds like a good idea and don’t know how to get started. Here are a couple pointers.
1. Pick people of the same gender! While hanging out with people of the opposite gender is great fun, they make for lousy accountability partners. Men are more open with men, and likewise women are more open with women.
2. Pick people that don’t gossip. Proverbs 20:19 says, “A gossip betrays a confidence; so avoid a man who talks too much.” (NIV)
3. Set some ground rules. One good one is that what is said in your Accountability group stays in your accountability group. I don’t even share with my wife the things the men in my accountability group share with me.
The following are the questions we use, though feel free to modify them or make up questions of your own that challenge your group in the areas that you and they are struggling with. (Disclaimer: I didn’t come up with these. I hope there is not a copyright on this list of questions. If you are the author; feel free to contact me and I will either give you credit or remove them at your option.)
1. Have you spent daily time in the Scripture and in prayer?
2. Have you had any flirtatious or lustful attitudes, tempting thoughts, or exposed yourself to any explicit materials, which would not glorify God?
3. Have you been completely above reproach in your financial dealings?
4. Have you spent quality relationship time with your family and friends?
5. Have you done your 100 percent best in your job, school, etc.?
6. Have you told any half-truths or outright lies, putting yourself in a better light to those around you?
7. Have you shared the Gospel with an unbeliever this week?
8. Have you taken care of your body through daily physical exercise and proper eating/sleeping habits?
9. Have you allowed any person or circumstance to rob you of your joy?
10. Have you lied to us on any of your answers today?
My personal experience has been that as I grew to know and trust the men in my accountability group, my spiritual walk with the Lord also grew and I learned to trust HIM more too. The first step can be scary, but I highly recommend getting together at a set time and place each week to grow in the Lord with a small group of people with whom you can let your guard down. You will also see great new friendships bloom out of these relationships. Don’t forget to have fun!

Stretching out for the health of the body

This isn’t about reaching down and touching your toes of course, though keeping the physical body in shape is part of God’s plan for each of us. What I am talking about here is stretching your church to reach beyond the walls of your building. For many years, churches across our country seem to have had the attitude that they were there in their buildings waiting for sinners to come through the doors to get saved. Maybe once a year they hold a week of “revival” services and once in a while a potluck dinner and feel that people should come to those events. I heard a quote recently that challenged our church. “If your church went under today, would anyone outside the staff and membership notice it was gone?” I want to challenge you to reach out to your community. You might say, “How? Our church isn’t very big.” OK, it is true that a church of 35 cannot reach its community in ALL the same ways a church of ten thousand can reach its community, but that is not to say that it cannot have an impact. Your church, starting with you, can pick one thing that it thinks it can do well. Here are some ideas for you, but feel free to add comments to this blog to add more ideas as I am but one man with a computer.

1. Block party – A midsize church in my area recently piggy backed onto the city’s 4^th of July festival. The church parking lot was on the edge of what the city was doing, so they set up their parking lot with blow up toys, a climbing wall, trampoline, Thomas the Train ride etc. They gave golf cart rides for people from the parking lots that were farther out. (Golf carts provided by members of the church who golf.) They gave away free hotdogs, cotton candy, snow cones, water, sodas etc. (Those things were mostly donated by people in the church.) The result was that thousands and thousands of people came through their parking lot and now know that the church exists in the community. An added bonus is that the next Sunday, there were three or four new families that attended that church.

2. Cleaning something up – maybe there is an elderly person in your area who can’t seem to get the tree cleaned up that fell in the last storm. Instead of griping about why they don’t take care of that tree, volunteer to go cut it up and haul it off for them. Or see if a local city park or an empty lot needs some clean up. (Make sure to track down the right person to get permission from on the empty lot one.) This doesn’t take a huge church, but it can make a huge impact in a person’s life or in the life a community.

3. Find another organization to serve in your community -- One Sunday School class in a church began taking Saturday morning breakfast to a boy’s home to help the staff there have a day off from cooking. What began as simple breakfast led to the members of that class getting more and more involved in the lives of those young men. The class continued to grow closer through the bonds they created through serving. Soon, they were putting together outings to baseball games, days at the farm or the lake, etc. They built a solid reputation with those young men and the people who worked at the boy’s home. (Side note disclaimer: Years ago, I was the Sunday School teacher for that class. Since then, I have gotten married and moved to a new city and new church. They have continued with the ministry without me. Recently one of the boys whose lives they touched walked into the church I am now a part of. The boy who we spent time with is now a young man who is serving the Lord.)

What can your church do? The sky is the limit. These were just three quick ideas. I am sure with some quick brainstorming; you can come up with many more.Have fun!

Church Leadership

This note is about pastors. Is your pastor a rancher or a hired hand? You might say, “Wait, I thought the pastor was supposed to be a shepherd.” Here is the quick summary of my thoughts. In my own church, one of the things I learned at our membership class is that our pastor cannot be fired by a deacon board or other such entity in the church, while when I was a youth pastor/associate pastor, I answered to a board of elders who controlled the vision/goals/structure etc. of the church. One can quickly see where this is going. The Pastor who is the rancher, or chief shepherd if you prefer, sets the goals, vision etc. His only fear is that he will not hear God correctly and will have to answer for that to an almighty God. That is not to be taken lightly, however it is entirely different from the attitude of the hired hand pastor. He serves at the whim of the powers in the church and is realistically incapable of leading the church. That is because if he attempts to lead in such a way that the sheep don’t like, they have no trouble in firing him and searching for a new hired hand. Take a hard look at your own church. Maybe you are on that board that likes having just a hired hand instead of a land owning rancher for a pastor. To grow, a church needs strong leadership, and from experience I can tell you that the church rarely gets its leadership from its laity if the laity is not in submission to the pastor.