Doing something different

This morning, I went to a yard sale. It was put on by a group from my church going through financial classes at our church. The cool thing is, they aren't just learning about personal finance and thinking it would be nice to be debt free. They were doing something about it! Selling off a lot of their stuff to go toward paying off their debts that they accumulated buying that stuff. These people got up on a Saturday morning and were out making a difference in their lives and in the process, they were able to talk to other people about what they were doing. Was it a super spiritual thing? Maybe not, but they were making connections with others and talking about something they believe in.
Shouldn't we as Christians be doing something different to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with our communities? Just being there at the yard sale gave me a chance to talk to someone about my church. Is that the same as sharing the Romans road with them and bowing our heads for the sinners prayer. No it isn't, but it was establishing a positive relationship with this particular man toward a church that is letting people have a yard sale in the parking lot. Many people who first make friends with people in a church later become believers in Jesus Christ through seeing God work through those they meet. My hat is off to those trying to get out of debt and achieve financial freedom! I myself am on that journey...and 20K less in debt this year than I was two years ago! Let us all go out and do something different for Jesus Christ. Like in the movie "Pay if Forward", just come up with something that will change the world.

What are you doing?

OK, so you have a church. What is its purpose? Who is it trying to reach? I know that all churches have some things in common. They at least should have in common that they are trying to reach people for Jesus Christ and disciple those people and most likely be a place of fellowship for believers. Beyond that, there are differences. Example: if you are trying to reach out to young urban professionals, would you really want to start your church in a barn or a rodeo arena? However, if your target is to reach cowboys, that might be the perfect place. Some things to keep in mind as you plant a church or redefine the church you have just started pastoring...or even just realized something needs to change because you have been in a downhill rut for years in the church you are a leader at.
1. Know what you are about. If you don't have a passionate call from God to reach the people you are trying to reach, then why should they come to a laissez faire church? Like writing a blog, if the church doesn't offer quality content, then there is to much competition for their time. They won't waste it on a church just because it has a building and a sign out front.
2. Be proactive in evangelism. You can't expect people to come through the doors of your church on their own. They need a reason to come. Some will occasionally come because they are family of the people already there, but to reach the rest of the community, it is important to go to them. There are thousands of ways to do that, but the important thing is that you are reaching out beyond the walls of the church.
3. Don't rely on tradition to bring them in. This may just be a continuation of point 2, but just because peoples parents are from the Church of God of Methodibapticostal Episconazaratholic doesn't mean that they will follow in those footsteps unless they have a reason to. This is also a point to look at what you are currently doing. Is your church doing X program because it is effectively helping you reach one of the goals of the church like reaching out to the community or discipling believers, or is X program in place just because as long as grandma has been there in that church that is the way it has been done?
4. Help your congregation find their passions. Most people have them they just need help focusing their passion. They need leadership, and that is where you as a pastor or church leader come in.

I hope this gave you a few ideas for kick starting your church if you were in a slump and if you are a church planter, my hat is off to you! Hope this helped you too.

Christians are WHAT?

I am sitting here at my desk thinking about how some sales people will tell you anything to make the sale whether it is true or not. "Yep, This here 1984 Ford Pinto can do an 8 second quarter mile...no problem." Do we ever do that when trying to lead someone to the Lord? Just like the guy who drives the Pinto off the lot and finds it really needs a quart of oil each tank of gas to keep running and the quarter mile is more like 8 minutes than 8 seconds, he won't be coming back to that car dealer for another car in the same way, people who "make a confession of faith" due to a high pressure "sales pitch" or misinformation are likely to just as quickly turn their back on God and "religion" when they realize that being a Christian doesn't mean that you will get rich or suddenly everyone will like you... Here in America, people aren't often killed for their faith in Jesus, but shouldn't those people who decide to follow Jesus do so knowing that they could be killed for their new found belief?

The Excitement of New Believers!

This weekend at 5 Point Fellowship we had 7 people that I counted, and our pastor said 8 people in staff meeting that gave their hearts to Jesus Christ on Sunday morning! Either way there is a party going on in heaven! Sunday night, I taught the New Believers Class. It is incredible to hear their testimonies of HOW God reached down into their lives and caused their hearts to turn to HIM! New life is contagious! New believers are incredible witnesses! Like the blind man who Jesus healed in John chapter 9, they don't have to know all the right theology, but tell everyone, "One thing I do know, I was blind but now I see!"(John 9:25). In our congregation we have so many people that can say, "I was a druggie, but now I am clean!" or "I was a sex addict, and now God has made me whole!" or "I really screwed up my life in this or that way, but now God has cleaned me up!" It is great to see God working in people's lives and then seeing them get so excited about it that they want to tell everyone they know! Sometimes, those of us who have been Christians for years have to so intentionally go out to find people to witness to because all our friends are Christians. New believers don't have that problem. They still know lots and lots of sinners! And they are thrilled to attack hell with a water pistol and go tell those friends all about the brand new relationship with Jesus Christ that they have discovered! This isn't much of a teaching blog, but I wanted to share the excitement of this week with you. Thanks for reading.

Some thoughts on Acts Chapter 5

Acts 5: Verses 12-16 seem almost impossible, and if we separate it from the rest of the chapter, it most likely would be. After verse 16, we see how the early church leaders were persecuted. Even though they were spared death by Rabbi Gamaliel’s speech, they were still beaten. (vs. 40) Notice that in verse 41, the apostles who had been beaten with whips were rejoicing “because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. “ So how does that affect the miracles going on in verses 12-16? The early church lived dangerously and at the same time powerfully! Not in their own power but in the power of the Holy Spirit! They didn’t just pray about the sick in their congregation, they healed them! Many of these healings throughout the book of Acts are sudden and dramatic. They aren’t just someone feeling a little better after a prayer is said, they are crippled people getting up and walking, paralyzed people not just twitching a toe, but getting up and leaping and jumping in the air! People are raised from the dead! Before you start thinking, “that was then, we live in the 21st century now and those things don’t happen”, remember, our Lord Jesus Christ is the same Yesterday, Today and Forever! (Hebrews 13:8) Pray believing that the Lord will do miraculous things!

Home TEAMs

About a year ago, I started working with the small group ministry at our church. We call them Home TEAMs, you may call them small groups, cell groups, Sunday school... As it continues to grow, I am amazed at how each group has its own dynamic. While all are accomplishing the two primary goals of Home TEAMs which are to help people build relationships with God and with each other, I find that each group interacts in different ways. It is, on a microcosm level, a great example of how churches are all different, but should be all working together toward the same goal of reaching people for Jesus Christ and then discipling them to help them grow in their walk with the Lord. Some of our Home TEAMs seem to grow by leaps and bounds, so I am constantly working to find new leaders and hosts so that we can divide the group up into smaller Home TEAMs. Other groups seem to go for months and months without gaining or losing members. That second group isn't a failure! Those people are growing in the Lord, they are serving God in many ways both inside and outside the church! Just the Home TEAM itself doesn't see its primary mission as evangelistic. The people in the group are, but they invite new believers or non believers to our church, not to their Home TEAM. Other Home TEAMs invite people off the street who aren't a part of our church at all. Each is serving as a different part of the body of Christ, just as each church and each member is serving doing their part of the work of the Body. Keep doing what God has called YOU to do!

Swine Flu - Christian Response

I don't often do this, but the following post by John Lindell was excellent. I didn't want to just rewrite it in my own words, since there wasn't much I would change..so I cut and pasted his entire blog entry here. Click Here to see original blog.

As the World Health Organization raised the pandemic level to 5 on a 6 step scale governments worldwide are being encouraged to take steps that could diminish the spread of the 2009 H1N1 virus or as its better known the “Swine Flu.”

If you’ve never been a thorough “hand-washer” now would be the time to acquire that discipline! But of greater concern to me is the response of Christians during a time of crisis–how should Christians respond?

1. There is no substitute for prayer. We can pray God’s mercy and protection over the lives of people. A pandemic is not inevitable…prayer changes things…and our prayers can make a huge difference!

2. Walk in love and faith as opposed to selfishness and fear. Because we have a God who loves and cares for us. Because we have a God who watches over us and is a healer; during this time of potential crisis we are set free from fear and the need to save ourselves which should allow us to be a people of compassion.

The Apostle Paul wrote, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness…” (Colossians 3:12). One of the hallmarks of the Early Church and one of the reasons that it made such an impact on a totally pagan culture that hated Christians was the fact that Christians were compassionate and kind. They understood the power of compassion when it comes to touching people’s lives. They lived in a society that devalued life-deformed boys were thrown in the city dump. Unwanted girls were thrown on trash heaps and it was the Christians who came along and rescued those little babies by feeding them and providing for them.

Often you read that the churches’ passion for the poor and the needy was so great that they had seasons of fasting–not just fasting and prayers for the poor but they saved their money from missing those meals and collected it to give to the poor and the needy! In a culture that cared nothing for the poor; it was the Christians who walked the streets and reached out to care for them.

Early church historians tell us that when two devastating disease epidemics swept through the Roman Empire (165 A.D. & 251 A.D.) one third of the people across the Roman Empire died. En masse, people fled the cities for fear the plague might overtake them. In the mist of those epidemics it was the Christians who stayed in the towns and cities to minister to those who were dying and it made a huge impact on the culture. Over time an entire culture was changed because of the Christians’ compassionate and kind response to those around them.

No one wants a crisis but the darkness of the hour creates an opportunity for the Gospel light to shine even brighter if the followers of Jesus will walk in faith and love.

Out Reach stuff

A guy I talked with last night just made my week! Maybe my month! April 4th, our church put on "Easley Egg Drop 2009". The concept was simple. Drop a bunch (about 180,000 or so) plastic eggs from a hot air balloon. We gave away prizes, cotton candy, snowcones, popcorn, drinks...everything was free and open to the community. About 200 volunteers from our church helped put on the event. From a numbers perspective, it was a success, somewhere around 10,000 people or more came and participated. Kids had fun, lots of smiling faces etc. Now, back to the guy I talked to last night. He was sharing his testimony with me in a parking lot. He and his wife both got saved after coming to the Egg Drop! They couldn't believe that everything really was free! They interacted with people from our church and found them to be friendly and helpful. So they decided to check out our church. A couple weeks later, the wife asked Jesus into her heart! Then a week after that, this man had asked Jesus into his heart! God is now working in both of their lives! So what does dropping a plastic egg with a tootsie roll in it have to do with bringing people to know Jesus Christ in a very personal and wonderful way...absolutly nothing...unless it is accompanied by people who are sharing the love of Jesus Christ with others while not expecting anything in return. That selfless love is what brought this man and his wife to the Lord!
PS. Thank you to all the volunteers who helped out! This family's salvation is in a large part due to your actions!

Options

In life, we often have many options to choose from. The cereal isle in the grocery store for instance. However, in our view of Jesus Christ, there are only two options. Many people seem to want to say that he was a good man, or a great teacher or a myriad of other things, but they don't have that option. Jesus was one of two things. He was either God like He claimed, or he was the craziest lunatic to walk the planet. There are many people today in insane asylums that claim to be God. They however don't make the lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear, feed thousands with a few loaves and fish...They don't let themselves be killed and then come back from the dead to be witnessed by hundreds of people! I choose to believe that Jesus is exactly who He says He is: God! I also understand that I do this on faith and that not everyone shares my faith. Taking Jesus half-way as just a good man isn't an option though...only full time commitment is allowed...each of us commits one way or the other. Savior or deranged insane one. Take your choice.

Snowballs

Yesterday, there actually was a short snow fall here in South Carolina in April,but that isn't what I am talking about today. If you have followed this blog or my Home TEAM blog, you know that our church just put together an Egg Drop event in Easley, SC. It was a great success...which means we are already working on the next events. Yes Plural. Next year, we will be doing a bigger, better Egg Drop on March 27th! Mark your calendar! Currently, though other than having reserved the field for next March, I am working on some smaller events. May 17th is Tennis Shoe Sunday! May 24th is our Outdoor Baptism! We are planning for a big day there! July 4th is a big block party event in the parking lot at 5 Point Fellowship! It takes time to put together a great event! If you are a leader in your church, you will quickly find out that those events that you just "throw together" look like exactly that. Spend the time and money to do everything your church does with excellence! Oh, and if you are wondering why a church is involved in city event planning...Sunday morning about 10 people gave their hearts to the Lord! Many new visitors have come because they attended one of our community events. Have fun in your community showing people the love of Jesus Christ and then see what happens!

Lost People...

My church is in the Bible belt, and so it might seem to outsiders that everyone down here in South Carolina are already Christians. Here is the truth; There are enough lost people to fill the churches in our town many times over! For to long churches have been about seeing themselves grow and so they start a new neat program that gets a few people to transfer membership from the church down the road and they at the same time fight to stay ahead of the other churches so that their own members don't transfer away. That is a horrible way to grow a church! When our churches remember that the number one goal of God's people is to reach out to lost sinners, then the church will grow! Like D.L. Moody said, "It is the greatest pleasure of living to win souls to Christ." That zeal to win souls on his part helped lead thousands if not millions of people to the Lord! That was a huge revival! If you want to see growth in your church, reach the lost in your community and your church will explode. (Warning: Baby Christians are messy and will screw up your perfect programs!)

Reflections on Sunday.

This week, we had a wonderful Sunday! The morning services went well with a decent attendance. Then Sunday evening, we were offering a free showing of the movie Fireproof. It is a great movie and I was excited to see a packed house! Our church is an old movie theater, so it makes sense for us to use movies to reach out to our community. The great thing was that as I welcomed people in, only about 1/2 of them were people who go to our church. The rest were a mix of church people who just wanted to go out to a good clean movie, and unsaved people who were just there for something free to do and had heard it was a good movie. We used it as a kick off for a new Sunday evening series on marriage improvement using the curriculum designed to go with the Fireproof movie. The point of this blog is to share with you some success, but more importantly, to challenge your church to use its facilities in a way that makes sense in your community. Not everyone is meeting in an old theater...(Which is a good thing.) Take a new look at what your church has to offer the community. Take a bold step and see if the "if you build it they will come" principle will work. Also, if you haven't seen the movie Fireproof, it has a great salvation message and a wonderful message of redeeming a seemingly hopeless marriage. I highly recommend it. If you have a young couples group in your church, it could be a great activity to get together at someone's house and show it. Have an awesome day! I hope you have some new thoughts for your ministry.

Reaching Out

We need to reach out to our community. Jan Johnson in her Moody Monthly article "Escaping the Christian Ghetto" refers to people she calls "Rabbit-Hole Christians." According to Johnson, "In the morning they pop out of their safe Christian homes, hold their breath at work, scurry home to their families and then off to their Bible Studies, and finally end the day praying for the unbelievers they safely avoided all day." That is exactly the kind of Christian that we want to avoid being. Our goal as a church is to reach the un-churched for the Lord and then to teach them to grow in their faith in Jesus Christ. The best way that this happens is when people in the church are excited about what is happening and they tell their friends outside the church. God is Awesome! He is doing incredible things in the lives of people here! That is the message that hurting people living without the Lord will hear and be curious about. They will not be interested in hearing that they read the wrong version of the Bible or that their eschatological views are not scripturally accurate. Something my pastor said recently is that we need to see people as opportunities instead of burdens. I pray that across Christendom we can ignite the fire in each other to reach out to people for the Lord and lead them to Him!

True Revival!

I just want to share a quick story today about an event that God inspired. A young man in the next town over from mine was waiting at a house for a drug deal to commence. While waiting, the Holy Spirit convicted him so strongly that he told his friend he didn't want to do it, and he went home. On the way home, he began to weep and ask God to forgive him. When he arrived at home, he confessed to his father what he had been doing recently. Now he is involved in a thriving youth group and growing in the Lord. Notice the obvious here. No one was asking him where he would go if he died tonight. No one was leading him down the Romans road. While those things are great! It was God who decided that this lost sheep needed to come home! True revival is breaking out among the young people of today. I just pray us "older and wiser" folk don't miss it!

Sin Or Normal?

Is it ok to have a Bible study at the home of a dating couple who are living together? What if they are both male? Or have a porn collection in the living room? Before I go on, it is only fair to let you know that the couple doesn’t yet know Jesus as their savior. This hypothetical couple is not “living in sin” as we church folk might be quick to say, they are still completely lost souls heading to hell. The fact that they are engaged in activities that are counter to what the Bible tells us is appropriate, is normal. Yes, normal. Sinners tend to sin and some do it very well! God calls us to go unto all the world and preach the gospel. He calls us to be fishers of men. The good news is that He doesn’t command us to actually catch the fish/men, nor does He expect us to clean them. Back to my starting point. The unsaved couple who exhibit signs of sin need Jesus and many won’t darken the doorstep of a church. WE must go unto THEM and share Jesus. Have fun fishing! Oh, and while I am on the topic, there are many kinds of bait out there. (Stealing an idea from Dean) It doesn’t matter what kind of bait you use, (within reason), what matters is that Jesus Christ is changing lives through us as individuals and through our church. Rockin churches will catch one kind of fish, while traditional churches will catch another kind, Cowboy churches another, and Biker Churches yet another…Each are fishing.

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!

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.

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!

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!