Church leaders are “change agents”, called by God to initiate change by moving people forward to where they need to be.
I believe that every leader needs a “model” for leading change. I have put one together from the life of Nehemiah that has been a great help to me.
Here are eight steps to leading effective change in your church. You will also find them helpful for leading change amongst any other group or organisation.
See the Need for Change.
All positive change begins with seeing the need for it first. Change for change’s sake is crazy, but change aimed at helping people and improving things is essential. Allow God to place a burden on your heart about the way things are.
Receive a Clear Vision from God.
All vision begins with seeing the big picture of what God wants to do. As you spend time in prayer, God will show you what He can do through you and give you a vision of a preferred future. Every leader needs to invest time into receiving a clear vision from God for their life and ministry. Effective leaders tie all change to vision and purpose. They know where they’re headed and why.
Create a Strategic Plan.
You need to know exactly what God wants you to do (vision) and then think through all of the details of how you will do it (strategy). Wise leaders take their God-given vision and form it into a plan that describes how and when the vision will become a reality. This takes time and involves a process. It needs wise and godly counsel from other leaders. The more significant the change, the more necessary it is to have the input from all perspectives.
Speak to the Influencers.
Unless the people who were in positions of influence buy into the vision, the change will not occur.
When speaking to the influencers, don’t present the solution first. Speak about the problem so that they agree on the need for change. Unless people see and embrace the need for change, they will not be willing to pay the price or be committed to the work required to bring the change about. People need to understand the purpose of the change and see the benefits it will bring. When people see the need for change and catch a realistic vision of how things could be better, they become motivated to become part of the solution.
Organise the Work to be Done.
Vision has to be broken down into a strategic plan that enables people to take simple steps towards realistic goals. A church leader must seek to acquire ownership from the entire congregation for positive change to take place. It needs to become their vision so that they are committed enough to work towards it.
Deal with the Opposing Forces.
I wish I could tell you that there will be no problems when you lead change but the reality is that movement causes friction. Resistance to change is normal and so we need to prepare for it and handle it wisely. In every change, there will be opposing forces. Someone or something will face loss, despite the many gains. You may encounter anger, frustration, fear, uncertainty and disappointment during the transition. Wise leaders think through the possible reactions or problems and avoid unnecessary conflict by preparing for and addressing these forces in advance.
Communicate Continually.
When leading change, we must stay close to the change process and actively lead the transition from the old to the new. People need to be constantly inspired and motivated about the importance of the vision and the progress that is being made. We all tend to drift and vision can easily become blurred. Wise leaders constantly bring the vision back into focus and never allow people to be satisfied with the way things are.
Don’t Give Up.
Announcing a change or coming up with a vision statement is the easy part of leading change. It’s harder to then translate that vision into a workable plan. But it’s even more difficult to implement that plan step by step and monitor it until it is completed. This takes diligence, patience and focused attention. However, oh, the joy and fulfilment that comes when you are able to bring about positive change. Don’t give up. Persevere. If the vision is from God, it’s worth fighting for. Don’t chop and change direction. Yes, make adjustments along the way, but finish what you start.
Commit to it and be willing to pay the price.
I think the most challenging task of leadership is to manage change and transition. The key issue is to know in your own spirit that God is leading you and that you are moving out in His will for your ministry and your church. The giants will be there and the need for courage will be great, but God will not fail you or let you fail. As you seek Him, He will guide you, give you wisdom and favour with the people. Change is not easy. In fact, it can be very uncomfortable. However, the church must change if it is to be what God intends it to be in the world.
P.S. This article is summarised from the last chapter of the book, Transfoming Your Church, available from the CityLife Church online bookshop or from Christian bookstores. Also, consider purchasing my most recent book, Pass the Baton - Successful Leadership Transition, in which I outline the key principles that have helped CityLife Church move effectively through three successive senior leaders over it’s forty year history.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
leadership and management
There is a big difference between leadership and management. Management tends to focus on “doing things right” while leadership focuses more on “doing right things”.
Here is a good story to illustrate this difference. Imagine a group of people cutting through a jungle. The managers are right there, making sure things are going smoothly - organising rosters, providing the sharp machetes, arranging regular rest breaks, ensuring adequate first-aid facilities, etc. The leader is the person who climbs a tree, looks around and yells, “Wrong Jungle!” But the managers respond by saying, “But we’re making such progress!” Yes, they’re making progress, but go fast in the wrong direction is not true progress!
For me, life in the ministry can be a bit like a jungle. There’s so much to do, so little time to do it in, the work is hard going most of the time and the pressure can become intense. I have found great benefit in scheduling a regular “Climb A Tree” day.
I have been doing this monthly for many years now and it is one of my favourite habits of effectiveness. What I do is schedule one day for each month of the year where I “retreat”. I don’t prepare sermons on this day. I spend it totally by myself and I try to get out of the office (either go for a drive in the car or a walk in a park). I spend the day reflecting back over the previous month and asking myself some key questions such as, “Father, what are you saying to me right now?” “How am I doing … as a husband, father, pastor, leader …?” “What’s going well?” “What needs to change?” I then look forward to the coming month and do some prayerful planning and preparation for the future.
I record my thoughts in a notebook or journal. Writing things down helps you to focus (your mind can’t wander when you’re writing!) and it also gives you a record of what God says to you so you can review it later on (I usually review my journal from the previous month as part of this day).
The accumulated years of regularly doing this month after month give you a sense of continuity and progress as you see God’s work in your life. I come away from these days rejuvenated and with a clear fresh mind ready to face the coming month. By the way, I discovered that this is a Biblical concept! Not only were there weekly Sabbath rest days in Israel. Every New Moon was a special holy day or festival, like the Sabbath, for God’s people (Num.10:10. Ps.81:3). They were not to work on these days but were to offer special offerings and I imagine they took time to reflect on the previous month and get ready for the next one. Hey, God thought of it first!
The best gift you can give your church is you being a healthy leader. Climbing a tree every now and then makes sure you don’t get lost (or eaten!) in the jungle. Take time to look at your spiritual compass (where you’re headed) not just the clock (how fast you’re going).
Jesus did this regularly and I believe it was the key to his focus and his effectiveness. After all, at the end of only three and a half years, he was able to say, “It is finished!” Wow, wouldn’t that be great! He didn’t do everything that could have been done but he knew what he was called to do and he did that alone.
Here is a good story to illustrate this difference. Imagine a group of people cutting through a jungle. The managers are right there, making sure things are going smoothly - organising rosters, providing the sharp machetes, arranging regular rest breaks, ensuring adequate first-aid facilities, etc. The leader is the person who climbs a tree, looks around and yells, “Wrong Jungle!” But the managers respond by saying, “But we’re making such progress!” Yes, they’re making progress, but go fast in the wrong direction is not true progress!
For me, life in the ministry can be a bit like a jungle. There’s so much to do, so little time to do it in, the work is hard going most of the time and the pressure can become intense. I have found great benefit in scheduling a regular “Climb A Tree” day.
I have been doing this monthly for many years now and it is one of my favourite habits of effectiveness. What I do is schedule one day for each month of the year where I “retreat”. I don’t prepare sermons on this day. I spend it totally by myself and I try to get out of the office (either go for a drive in the car or a walk in a park). I spend the day reflecting back over the previous month and asking myself some key questions such as, “Father, what are you saying to me right now?” “How am I doing … as a husband, father, pastor, leader …?” “What’s going well?” “What needs to change?” I then look forward to the coming month and do some prayerful planning and preparation for the future.
I record my thoughts in a notebook or journal. Writing things down helps you to focus (your mind can’t wander when you’re writing!) and it also gives you a record of what God says to you so you can review it later on (I usually review my journal from the previous month as part of this day).
The accumulated years of regularly doing this month after month give you a sense of continuity and progress as you see God’s work in your life. I come away from these days rejuvenated and with a clear fresh mind ready to face the coming month. By the way, I discovered that this is a Biblical concept! Not only were there weekly Sabbath rest days in Israel. Every New Moon was a special holy day or festival, like the Sabbath, for God’s people (Num.10:10. Ps.81:3). They were not to work on these days but were to offer special offerings and I imagine they took time to reflect on the previous month and get ready for the next one. Hey, God thought of it first!
The best gift you can give your church is you being a healthy leader. Climbing a tree every now and then makes sure you don’t get lost (or eaten!) in the jungle. Take time to look at your spiritual compass (where you’re headed) not just the clock (how fast you’re going).
Jesus did this regularly and I believe it was the key to his focus and his effectiveness. After all, at the end of only three and a half years, he was able to say, “It is finished!” Wow, wouldn’t that be great! He didn’t do everything that could have been done but he knew what he was called to do and he did that alone.
Leadership Essentials
Leadership Essentials
Leadership is a complex task!
There are multiple things that we need to be aware of and do well at – mission, vision, core values, strategy, goals, plans, systems, programs, culture, just to name a few. Therefore, having a clear “big picture” of how all these pieces fit together is essential.
Let’s briefly look at some of the key components that a leader works with:
Mission answers the question, “Why?” Why are you here and why do you exist? This is core stuff for every leader and every church. There are many ways of articulating God’s mission for the church but it needs to include loving God, loving one another and reaching a lost world with God’s love as a core part of our purpose.
Core Values answer the question, “Who?” Who are you? What is important to you? What are you building on and what do you hope to outlast you? “Culture” emerges out of values and answers the question, “How are things done around here?”
Vision answers the question, “Where?” Where are you going in the next period of time (3-5 years)? What is on the horizon and which way are you heading? Leaders are called by God to communicate a preferred picture of the future that motivates people with passion to give their lives to make it a reality (see Prov.29:18 and Hab.2:1-3). Vision must be clear, specific and should lead us towards further fulfilling your mission.
Team Building answers the question “Who?” Much of your effectiveness as a leader will be directly related to your ability to build a team of people who are passionately committed to the ministry or department you lead. Team building is leadership the way God designed it (Mk.1:16-17. Eph.4:11-16). The team building process includes four important tasks: gathering, motivating, training and mobilising.
Strategy answers the question, “How?” How will you get from where you are now (the current reality) to where you need to be (your vision)? What programs, processes (or systems), structures and events will you use to assist you in moving forward? Strategy includes the establishment of “goals” or “objectives” (which are milestone measurements along the way) to help you focus your energies on the next appropriate step.
Planning answers the question, “When?” Here is where strategy and goals come together to form a plan of action that propels you toward your vision and a greater fulfillment of your mission, all flowing out of your core values about what’s really important (Ps.20:4. Prov.15:22). Planning also includes the allocation of resources (time, energy, finance, staff, volunteers).
Spiritual Momentum. This answers the question, “What is God saying or doing right now?” Momentum is a leader’s best friend and it comes from a combination of God’s work in our lives and the church, along with our responsiveness to keeping in step with the Spirit. Attention to things such as spiritual “atmosphere”, “vital signs” (growth in quantity and quality) and congregational “health” are important.
Though these words are not specifically used in the Bible, all Godly leaders use these principles. For instance, Jesus knew his mission, his core values and he had a vision of what he would accomplish in his few years of ministry. He also had a clear strategy and a plan of how he would build his church, which included many facets (preaching in every town and village, training disciples, sending the Spirit, etc).
Okay, how do get all these pieces then put them all together? “Mission” and “Core Values” work best if they emerge out of an extended time of prayer, Bible study and discussion with your key leadership team.
Take time to seek God and thrash out these essential foundation stones for your ministry (these things shouldn’t change over time). Once mission and core values are established, you can then spend time praying and sharing together about your “Vision” – what you see God wanting to do in the next few years. Then put a task group together to help outwork a “Strategy” and a “Plan” of implementation. Along the way, always seek to be in tune with the Holy Spirit, as, after all, we’re building the kingdom of God not just a human organization.
Finally, remember that all of these things are important but they are not an “end” in themselves. Ultimately they are just “tools” to help us get the job done – which is all about leading people to fulfill the purposes of God in our generation.
Leadership is a complex task!
There are multiple things that we need to be aware of and do well at – mission, vision, core values, strategy, goals, plans, systems, programs, culture, just to name a few. Therefore, having a clear “big picture” of how all these pieces fit together is essential.
Let’s briefly look at some of the key components that a leader works with:
Mission answers the question, “Why?” Why are you here and why do you exist? This is core stuff for every leader and every church. There are many ways of articulating God’s mission for the church but it needs to include loving God, loving one another and reaching a lost world with God’s love as a core part of our purpose.
Core Values answer the question, “Who?” Who are you? What is important to you? What are you building on and what do you hope to outlast you? “Culture” emerges out of values and answers the question, “How are things done around here?”
Vision answers the question, “Where?” Where are you going in the next period of time (3-5 years)? What is on the horizon and which way are you heading? Leaders are called by God to communicate a preferred picture of the future that motivates people with passion to give their lives to make it a reality (see Prov.29:18 and Hab.2:1-3). Vision must be clear, specific and should lead us towards further fulfilling your mission.
Team Building answers the question “Who?” Much of your effectiveness as a leader will be directly related to your ability to build a team of people who are passionately committed to the ministry or department you lead. Team building is leadership the way God designed it (Mk.1:16-17. Eph.4:11-16). The team building process includes four important tasks: gathering, motivating, training and mobilising.
Strategy answers the question, “How?” How will you get from where you are now (the current reality) to where you need to be (your vision)? What programs, processes (or systems), structures and events will you use to assist you in moving forward? Strategy includes the establishment of “goals” or “objectives” (which are milestone measurements along the way) to help you focus your energies on the next appropriate step.
Planning answers the question, “When?” Here is where strategy and goals come together to form a plan of action that propels you toward your vision and a greater fulfillment of your mission, all flowing out of your core values about what’s really important (Ps.20:4. Prov.15:22). Planning also includes the allocation of resources (time, energy, finance, staff, volunteers).
Spiritual Momentum. This answers the question, “What is God saying or doing right now?” Momentum is a leader’s best friend and it comes from a combination of God’s work in our lives and the church, along with our responsiveness to keeping in step with the Spirit. Attention to things such as spiritual “atmosphere”, “vital signs” (growth in quantity and quality) and congregational “health” are important.
Though these words are not specifically used in the Bible, all Godly leaders use these principles. For instance, Jesus knew his mission, his core values and he had a vision of what he would accomplish in his few years of ministry. He also had a clear strategy and a plan of how he would build his church, which included many facets (preaching in every town and village, training disciples, sending the Spirit, etc).
Okay, how do get all these pieces then put them all together? “Mission” and “Core Values” work best if they emerge out of an extended time of prayer, Bible study and discussion with your key leadership team.
Take time to seek God and thrash out these essential foundation stones for your ministry (these things shouldn’t change over time). Once mission and core values are established, you can then spend time praying and sharing together about your “Vision” – what you see God wanting to do in the next few years. Then put a task group together to help outwork a “Strategy” and a “Plan” of implementation. Along the way, always seek to be in tune with the Holy Spirit, as, after all, we’re building the kingdom of God not just a human organization.
Finally, remember that all of these things are important but they are not an “end” in themselves. Ultimately they are just “tools” to help us get the job done – which is all about leading people to fulfill the purposes of God in our generation.
Monday, March 3, 2008
SHIFT IN CHURCH FOCUS
small cloud is on the horizon. The winds of change are beginning to gather strength and with certainty a storm is coming…change is coming. All over our world there is a quiet movement of the Spirit of God that is causing believers to re-examine how they “do church.” Churches are throwing out the old measures of success. It’s no longer merely about size, seeker sensitivity, spiritual gifts, church health, nor the number of small groups. It’s about making a significant and sustainable difference in the lives of people around us—in our communities and in our cities.
There is a growing awareness that we cannot continue to do the same old things and expect a different result. If we want to be the salt and light, we as the church were created to be, we have to do something different…we have to be something different! Community transformation is not found in programs, strategies, campaigns or tactics. For most of us it will take nothing less than a shift of seismic proportions in what the church is to be in the 3rd millennium. A paradigm is a model consisting of shared assumptions regarding what works or what is true. A paradigm shift is that “aha!” moment when one sees things in such a new light that one can never go back to the old ways again. Each paradigm shift takes us from model of thinking that we must discard to a new model that we must embrace. A new paradigm is the new wineskins that will be needed to hold the new assumptions about what is true. To maximize our impact on our communities--urban, suburban or rural, we need changes in at least ten of our paradigms of how we currently view church.
1) From building walls to building bridges. “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13,14). The first paradigm shift pertains to where we, as the church, see ourselves in relation to our communities. Will we remain outside of the community inviting people in or will we go to our communities, seeking to be a transforming agent? The church is called to be separate in lifestyle but never called to be isolated from the people it seeks to influence. For many years founding pastor, Robert Lewis, of Fellowship Bible Church (FBC) in Little Rock was content to be growing a successful suburban mega church. By his admission, FBC was a “success church.” Success churches seek to grow by having attractive programs and offerings that people can come to and benefit from. But Robert grew increasingly dissatisfied with the impact FBC was having on the community. So he made an appointment with the mayor of Little Rock and asked one question, "How can we help you?" The mayor responded with a list of challenges facing the greater Little Rock area.
FBC then challenged themselves with the question, “What can we do that would cause people to marvel and say, ‘God is at work in a wonderful way for no one could do these things unless God were with them?”’ That one question was the first step in becoming what Lewis calls a “bridge-building church.” For the past four years, FBC has joined with over 100 other churches and over 5,000 volunteers in the greater Little Rock area and served their communities by building parks and playgrounds and refurbishing nearly 50 schools. They set records for Red Cross Blood donations and have enlisted thousands of new organ donors. They began reaching out to the community through "LifeSkill" classes (on finances, marriage, wellness, aging, etc.) in public forums like banks and hotel rooms, with over 5,000 people attending. In the past four years the churches of greater Little Rock have donated nearly a million dollars to community human service organizations that are effective in meeting the needs of at-risk youth. They have renovated homes and provided school uniforms, school supplies, winter coats, and Christmas toys for hundreds of children. After getting new shelving for her classrooms, one school principle said, “I think this is the most fabulous day of my life as far as education is concerned. I’ve been in this 29 years and this is the first time a community or church project has come through for us.”
The churches of Little Rock have let their light shine in such a way that Jesus Christ is made real to the community. Once a church makes this mental shift regarding how it lives in its community, it is only limited by its creativity in how it can serve its community and be the salt and light it was meant to be. It makes the transition from providing ministry programs for the community to forever changing its relationship to a community.
2) From measuring attendance to measuring impact. “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast...mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough” (Matthew 13:33). In a post-modern world most people are neither impressed with the size of a church or its commitment to “truth.” Yet from the cover of TIME magazine to the front page of the Wall Street Journal, transformational community-centered ministries are grabbing the attention of the American people. Perhaps, in this century, the greatest apologetic for the reality of Jesus Christ living in a community will be observational more than propositional. To have a faith that can be observed is to be living out the truths we want others to grasp and the life of the Savior we want them to know.
When Jesus chose one passage to describe his mission and ministry, he picked up the scroll of Isaiah and read from Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners…to comfort all who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair…” The way he “preached” best was by holistically combining proclaiming with comforting and providing. This is how Jesus did ministry. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). Likewise, the apostle Paul was as “eager to remember the poor” (Galatians 2:10) as he was “eager to preach the gospel” (Roman 1:15-17). Effective ministry has always been holistic, combining good deeds with good news (Acts 10:36-38).
When Tillie Burgin started Mission Arlington, her mission was simple—take the church to the people who were not going to church—“to hang out and hover around John 3:16.” As she ventured out to meet and minister to her neighbors, she was immediately challenged by Jehovah’s Witnesses who told her, “You’re invading our territory. Get back into your church building where you belong.” Today Mission Arlington is a house church movement of nearly 250 community house churches (and nearly 4,000 in attendance) serving over 10,000 people a week in the Arlington Texas community with food, furniture, medical and dental care, school transportation, child and adult day care, counseling, etc. What can Jesus do for a community? The people of Arlington know. Every year hundreds of people come to Christ through this transformational ministry. Lives are being touched. Lives are being changed. The church should and can make a huge difference in a community.
Windsor Village United Methodist Church has made a big difference in southwest Houston. From 25 members in 1982 Windsor Village is currently the spiritual home for more than 14,000 members. Embracing both evangelism and economic development and armed with the belief that every member is a minister, each congregant is encouraged to embrace Jesus’ mission of identifying and holistically meeting the needs of those around them. Under the leadership of pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell the church purchased a 104,000 square-foot former K-Mart that was converted into their “Power Center.” Since 1999 the Power Center has had an estimated $28.7 million impact on the community creating over 500 construction jobs and 300 regular jobs through the Power Center which serves over 9,000 families a month through Windsor Village’s over 100 ministries. Currently they are engaged in developing a 24-acre planned residential community consisting of over 450 affordable single-family homes called Corinthian Pointe and they continue to make a difference.
In 1988 Vaughn and Narlene McLaughlin moved into a depressed area of Jacksonville to begin a church designed to meet the needs of the whole person. Today their converted Bell South building called the "Multiplex" houses nearly 20 for-profit businesses including the Potter’s House Café, a credit union, a beauty salon, a graphic design studio and a Greyhound Bus terminal, all started by church members who lacked capital but had a dream. Another building serves as an incubator for two dozen new businesses. The multiplex also houses a 500-student Christian Academy. In addition to their ministries of economic empowerment and education, they also have nearly 25 other ministries such as a prison and jail ministry, youth ministry, Big and Little Brothers, and free car repair. They also have a team of 250 volunteers who “look after things in the city” even if it means to simply sweep the streets of Jacksonville. Though an outstanding preacher, to Bishop Vaughn McLaughlin, ministry is always what happens outside the church-"If you are not making an impact outside of your four walls, then you are not making an impact at all." In 1999 Bishop McLaughlin was named "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Florida State University. Is it any mystery why the city and its leaders have so wholeheartedly embraced Potter's House? The question he repeatedly asks is the question that churches in all kinds of neighborhoods are increasingly asking themselves: "Would the community weep if your church were to pull out of the city? Would anybody notice if you left? Would anybody care?"
The question, “How big is your church?” should be replaced with “How big is the impact you are having on your community?” Every other measure is interesting but not relevant. Let’s refuse to be impressed by numbers alone. There are many ways to engage the community and make an impact. The only “bad” way to engage the community in service is not to engage at all!
3) From encouraging the saints to attend the service to equipping the saints for works of service. “It is (God) who gave some to be…pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service…” (Ephesians 4:11,12) In the typical church, lay people are asked to serve in five or six capacities:
· Teach a Sunday School class
· Work in the nursery
· Lead a home Bible study or small group
· Sing in the choir
· Be an usher or greeter
· Serve on a board or committee
Little wonder pastors lament that only 20% of their members are “active.” Could it be that the service opportunities are not broad enough to engage the energies and passions of people in the church? Robert Lewis notes that when people entered his church they were excited for about 4-5 years. How could they not be excited? Fellowship Bible is a teaching church and Robert is an incredible teacher. But he observes that after around five years, people get bored with church if they are not involved in ministering to others. It was not until the church began to serve their community did members find their serving niche and continue in their growth. Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City writes that the process of mobilizing members into ministers “starts by articulating clearly and regularly a theology of ‘every-member ministry’…From the pulpit, in the classes, by word of mouth, it must be communicated that every layperson is a minister and that ministry is finding needs and meeting them in the goal of the spread of the kingship of Christ.”
In the 1980’s a small group in Mariner’s Church in Costa Mesa, California met for a year to study every Scripture that had to do with the people of God and the needs of a community. They asked themselves two questions—“What could we do?” and “What should we do?” This was the beginning of Mariner’s “Lighthouse Ministries.” Today Lighthouse is employing the volunteer hearts and entrepreneurial skills to minister to the under-resourced people Orange County. In 2001 Lighthouse Ministries employed the dedication and talents of nearly 3,400 church volunteers who gave 95,000 hours of service (the equivalent of 46 full-time staff!) in the form of tutoring foster children, mentoring motel families, taking kids to camp, visiting the elderly, teaching English at one of their learning centers, working in the Mariner’s Thrift Store ($168,000 in sales last year) distributing Christmas gifts, team building with teens at their leadership camp, assistance with immigration papers, working in transitional housing or volunteering with Orange County Social Services. Despite the prolific use of volunteers, volunteering is simply the avenue to “build relationships with people in our community.” Recently they were featured on National Public Radio for their work in providing transitional housing for youth leaving foster care. Last year they touched the lives of nearly 12,000 people in their community through their relational volunteer ministries. Their mission of “Bringing Christ’s hope to those in need” is being fulfilled.
4) From “serve us” to service—from inward to outward focus. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give…” (Mark 10:45). Several years ago Chuck Colson made the observation that when the Communists took over Russian in 1917, they did not make Christianity illegal. Their constitution, in fact, did guarantee freedom of religion. But what they did make illegal was for the church to do any “good works.” No longer could the church fulfill its historic role in feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, housing the orphan, educating children or caring for the sick. What was the result? 70 years later, the church was totally irrelevant to the communities in which it dwelt. What Lenin did by diabolic design, most churches have done by default. But the result is identical. Church is irrelevant to most people. Take away service and you take away the church's power, influence, and evangelistic effectiveness. The power of the gospel is combining the life-changing message with selfless service.
Marion Patillo is the executive director of a ministry in Dallas called Metro-link. As the name suggests, Metro-link serves as a “conduit” between volunteers from some 40 churches and 27 city blocks in South Dallas. Marion observes that when Metro-link began, there were 955 churches in South Dallas yet the area was rife with crime, alcoholism, drug addiction and prostitution. Why? It was certainly not from the lack of churches! The problem centers on the fact that most churches had not been serving this community. It is observations like this that caused Charles Chaney, former head of Southern Baptist Home Mission Board to remark, “America will not be won to Christ by existing churches, even if they should suddenly become vibrantly and evangelistically alive. Nor will the US be won to Christ by establishing more churches like the vast majority of those we now have.” The power of the church is not merely in the number of churches but the focus of those churches.
Mary Francis Boley, was the director of women’s ministry at First Baptist Church in Peachtree City, Georgia. Women from metro Atlanta would gather each week around coffee and an open Bible. But the ministry took a radical step forward when Mary Francis decided that no Bible studies could meet unless they included a component of ministry to the community. So they scoured Atlanta for the women in the “highways and hedges” who nobody else was reaching. They identified cashiers, food service employees, hairdressers, single moms, the women’s shelter, strippers and prostitutes. Mary Francis calls her ministry, “Wellspring of Living Water.” The goal of Wellspring is to get the women within the church to reach the women who are outside of the walls of the church. Mary Francis’ purpose is to “save the women in Atlanta”—and that begins with the women who are in the pews of the church every Sunday. She firmly believes that people cannot grow into Christian maturity without giving themselves away to others. By ministering to “the least of these” they invite the presence of Jesus into their ministry (Matthew 25:31-46). Lives are being touched and changed.
Churches like Vineyard Community Church of Cincinnati have also found that it is easier and more effective to recruit existing small groups to engage in ministry and service projects than it is to motivate, administer spiritual gift tests and recruit individuals to serve in a ministry. You can serve in most any ministry with your friends. Each Saturday they send out teams of people just to serve people in the city through “low touch-high grace random acts of kindness.” One day you might find them handing out free Cokes or washing cars for free. Founding pastor Steve Sjogren defines their servant evangelism as “demonstrating the kindness of God by offering to do some act of humble service with no strings attached. It’s not so much a matter of sharing information but sharing love.” Senior pastor Dave Workman notes that their church believes that it takes between 12-20 positive “bumps,” or refreshing encounters with the church, before people come to Christ. These small acts of service move people towards Christ. Though all service is with no strings attached, each year they see hundreds of people come to faith. Carved in stone over the entrance of the church are engraved the words: “small things done with great love will change the world.” Steve Sjogren’s admonition to church planters is this: “Don’t go to start a church…go to serve a city. Serve them with love and if you go after the people nobody wants, you’ll end up with the people everybody wants.”
First Baptist Church of Leesburg, Florida (population 20,000) has a prevailing influence on their community though their incarnational (John 1:14) ministry which they call ‘ministry evangelism.” The church has spawned over 70 ministries to intersect the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the people in Leesburg. Through their Men’s Shelter, Women’s Care Center, Benevolence Ministry, Latchkey Ministry, the Children’s Home etc, they regularly lead hundreds of people to Christ and disciple them towards maturity. Senior pastor Charles Roesel (since 1976) says, “The only way the gospel can be biblically shared is to focus on the whole person, with all their hurts and needs, and to involve the church in ministering to those persons and leading them to Christ. This is the essence of ministry evangelism.”
Erwin McManus of Mosaic Church in East Los Angeles says that the single biggest factor in his church retaining people is not personal follow-up or joining a small group; it is being involved from the very beginning in service to others in the community. When members have told him that they want the church to meet their needs his reply is “You ARE the church and together we are called to meet the needs of the world.” Over 1,800 members agree. We grow and are healed as we serve others. Maybe this is what Isaiah (58:6-8) had in mind when he penned God’s words to his people: “Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen: To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter…? Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear.” What if we settled for nothing less than 100% of our church members engaged at some level in meaningful ministry to the community? People (or small groups) could choose their field and level of engagement (from once a week to once a year), but non-involvement would not be an option.
There is a growing awareness that we cannot continue to do the same old things and expect a different result. If we want to be the salt and light, we as the church were created to be, we have to do something different…we have to be something different! Community transformation is not found in programs, strategies, campaigns or tactics. For most of us it will take nothing less than a shift of seismic proportions in what the church is to be in the 3rd millennium. A paradigm is a model consisting of shared assumptions regarding what works or what is true. A paradigm shift is that “aha!” moment when one sees things in such a new light that one can never go back to the old ways again. Each paradigm shift takes us from model of thinking that we must discard to a new model that we must embrace. A new paradigm is the new wineskins that will be needed to hold the new assumptions about what is true. To maximize our impact on our communities--urban, suburban or rural, we need changes in at least ten of our paradigms of how we currently view church.
1) From building walls to building bridges. “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13,14). The first paradigm shift pertains to where we, as the church, see ourselves in relation to our communities. Will we remain outside of the community inviting people in or will we go to our communities, seeking to be a transforming agent? The church is called to be separate in lifestyle but never called to be isolated from the people it seeks to influence. For many years founding pastor, Robert Lewis, of Fellowship Bible Church (FBC) in Little Rock was content to be growing a successful suburban mega church. By his admission, FBC was a “success church.” Success churches seek to grow by having attractive programs and offerings that people can come to and benefit from. But Robert grew increasingly dissatisfied with the impact FBC was having on the community. So he made an appointment with the mayor of Little Rock and asked one question, "How can we help you?" The mayor responded with a list of challenges facing the greater Little Rock area.
FBC then challenged themselves with the question, “What can we do that would cause people to marvel and say, ‘God is at work in a wonderful way for no one could do these things unless God were with them?”’ That one question was the first step in becoming what Lewis calls a “bridge-building church.” For the past four years, FBC has joined with over 100 other churches and over 5,000 volunteers in the greater Little Rock area and served their communities by building parks and playgrounds and refurbishing nearly 50 schools. They set records for Red Cross Blood donations and have enlisted thousands of new organ donors. They began reaching out to the community through "LifeSkill" classes (on finances, marriage, wellness, aging, etc.) in public forums like banks and hotel rooms, with over 5,000 people attending. In the past four years the churches of greater Little Rock have donated nearly a million dollars to community human service organizations that are effective in meeting the needs of at-risk youth. They have renovated homes and provided school uniforms, school supplies, winter coats, and Christmas toys for hundreds of children. After getting new shelving for her classrooms, one school principle said, “I think this is the most fabulous day of my life as far as education is concerned. I’ve been in this 29 years and this is the first time a community or church project has come through for us.”
The churches of Little Rock have let their light shine in such a way that Jesus Christ is made real to the community. Once a church makes this mental shift regarding how it lives in its community, it is only limited by its creativity in how it can serve its community and be the salt and light it was meant to be. It makes the transition from providing ministry programs for the community to forever changing its relationship to a community.
2) From measuring attendance to measuring impact. “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast...mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough” (Matthew 13:33). In a post-modern world most people are neither impressed with the size of a church or its commitment to “truth.” Yet from the cover of TIME magazine to the front page of the Wall Street Journal, transformational community-centered ministries are grabbing the attention of the American people. Perhaps, in this century, the greatest apologetic for the reality of Jesus Christ living in a community will be observational more than propositional. To have a faith that can be observed is to be living out the truths we want others to grasp and the life of the Savior we want them to know.
When Jesus chose one passage to describe his mission and ministry, he picked up the scroll of Isaiah and read from Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners…to comfort all who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair…” The way he “preached” best was by holistically combining proclaiming with comforting and providing. This is how Jesus did ministry. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). Likewise, the apostle Paul was as “eager to remember the poor” (Galatians 2:10) as he was “eager to preach the gospel” (Roman 1:15-17). Effective ministry has always been holistic, combining good deeds with good news (Acts 10:36-38).
When Tillie Burgin started Mission Arlington, her mission was simple—take the church to the people who were not going to church—“to hang out and hover around John 3:16.” As she ventured out to meet and minister to her neighbors, she was immediately challenged by Jehovah’s Witnesses who told her, “You’re invading our territory. Get back into your church building where you belong.” Today Mission Arlington is a house church movement of nearly 250 community house churches (and nearly 4,000 in attendance) serving over 10,000 people a week in the Arlington Texas community with food, furniture, medical and dental care, school transportation, child and adult day care, counseling, etc. What can Jesus do for a community? The people of Arlington know. Every year hundreds of people come to Christ through this transformational ministry. Lives are being touched. Lives are being changed. The church should and can make a huge difference in a community.
Windsor Village United Methodist Church has made a big difference in southwest Houston. From 25 members in 1982 Windsor Village is currently the spiritual home for more than 14,000 members. Embracing both evangelism and economic development and armed with the belief that every member is a minister, each congregant is encouraged to embrace Jesus’ mission of identifying and holistically meeting the needs of those around them. Under the leadership of pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell the church purchased a 104,000 square-foot former K-Mart that was converted into their “Power Center.” Since 1999 the Power Center has had an estimated $28.7 million impact on the community creating over 500 construction jobs and 300 regular jobs through the Power Center which serves over 9,000 families a month through Windsor Village’s over 100 ministries. Currently they are engaged in developing a 24-acre planned residential community consisting of over 450 affordable single-family homes called Corinthian Pointe and they continue to make a difference.
In 1988 Vaughn and Narlene McLaughlin moved into a depressed area of Jacksonville to begin a church designed to meet the needs of the whole person. Today their converted Bell South building called the "Multiplex" houses nearly 20 for-profit businesses including the Potter’s House Café, a credit union, a beauty salon, a graphic design studio and a Greyhound Bus terminal, all started by church members who lacked capital but had a dream. Another building serves as an incubator for two dozen new businesses. The multiplex also houses a 500-student Christian Academy. In addition to their ministries of economic empowerment and education, they also have nearly 25 other ministries such as a prison and jail ministry, youth ministry, Big and Little Brothers, and free car repair. They also have a team of 250 volunteers who “look after things in the city” even if it means to simply sweep the streets of Jacksonville. Though an outstanding preacher, to Bishop Vaughn McLaughlin, ministry is always what happens outside the church-"If you are not making an impact outside of your four walls, then you are not making an impact at all." In 1999 Bishop McLaughlin was named "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Florida State University. Is it any mystery why the city and its leaders have so wholeheartedly embraced Potter's House? The question he repeatedly asks is the question that churches in all kinds of neighborhoods are increasingly asking themselves: "Would the community weep if your church were to pull out of the city? Would anybody notice if you left? Would anybody care?"
The question, “How big is your church?” should be replaced with “How big is the impact you are having on your community?” Every other measure is interesting but not relevant. Let’s refuse to be impressed by numbers alone. There are many ways to engage the community and make an impact. The only “bad” way to engage the community in service is not to engage at all!
3) From encouraging the saints to attend the service to equipping the saints for works of service. “It is (God) who gave some to be…pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service…” (Ephesians 4:11,12) In the typical church, lay people are asked to serve in five or six capacities:
· Teach a Sunday School class
· Work in the nursery
· Lead a home Bible study or small group
· Sing in the choir
· Be an usher or greeter
· Serve on a board or committee
Little wonder pastors lament that only 20% of their members are “active.” Could it be that the service opportunities are not broad enough to engage the energies and passions of people in the church? Robert Lewis notes that when people entered his church they were excited for about 4-5 years. How could they not be excited? Fellowship Bible is a teaching church and Robert is an incredible teacher. But he observes that after around five years, people get bored with church if they are not involved in ministering to others. It was not until the church began to serve their community did members find their serving niche and continue in their growth. Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City writes that the process of mobilizing members into ministers “starts by articulating clearly and regularly a theology of ‘every-member ministry’…From the pulpit, in the classes, by word of mouth, it must be communicated that every layperson is a minister and that ministry is finding needs and meeting them in the goal of the spread of the kingship of Christ.”
In the 1980’s a small group in Mariner’s Church in Costa Mesa, California met for a year to study every Scripture that had to do with the people of God and the needs of a community. They asked themselves two questions—“What could we do?” and “What should we do?” This was the beginning of Mariner’s “Lighthouse Ministries.” Today Lighthouse is employing the volunteer hearts and entrepreneurial skills to minister to the under-resourced people Orange County. In 2001 Lighthouse Ministries employed the dedication and talents of nearly 3,400 church volunteers who gave 95,000 hours of service (the equivalent of 46 full-time staff!) in the form of tutoring foster children, mentoring motel families, taking kids to camp, visiting the elderly, teaching English at one of their learning centers, working in the Mariner’s Thrift Store ($168,000 in sales last year) distributing Christmas gifts, team building with teens at their leadership camp, assistance with immigration papers, working in transitional housing or volunteering with Orange County Social Services. Despite the prolific use of volunteers, volunteering is simply the avenue to “build relationships with people in our community.” Recently they were featured on National Public Radio for their work in providing transitional housing for youth leaving foster care. Last year they touched the lives of nearly 12,000 people in their community through their relational volunteer ministries. Their mission of “Bringing Christ’s hope to those in need” is being fulfilled.
4) From “serve us” to service—from inward to outward focus. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give…” (Mark 10:45). Several years ago Chuck Colson made the observation that when the Communists took over Russian in 1917, they did not make Christianity illegal. Their constitution, in fact, did guarantee freedom of religion. But what they did make illegal was for the church to do any “good works.” No longer could the church fulfill its historic role in feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, housing the orphan, educating children or caring for the sick. What was the result? 70 years later, the church was totally irrelevant to the communities in which it dwelt. What Lenin did by diabolic design, most churches have done by default. But the result is identical. Church is irrelevant to most people. Take away service and you take away the church's power, influence, and evangelistic effectiveness. The power of the gospel is combining the life-changing message with selfless service.
Marion Patillo is the executive director of a ministry in Dallas called Metro-link. As the name suggests, Metro-link serves as a “conduit” between volunteers from some 40 churches and 27 city blocks in South Dallas. Marion observes that when Metro-link began, there were 955 churches in South Dallas yet the area was rife with crime, alcoholism, drug addiction and prostitution. Why? It was certainly not from the lack of churches! The problem centers on the fact that most churches had not been serving this community. It is observations like this that caused Charles Chaney, former head of Southern Baptist Home Mission Board to remark, “America will not be won to Christ by existing churches, even if they should suddenly become vibrantly and evangelistically alive. Nor will the US be won to Christ by establishing more churches like the vast majority of those we now have.” The power of the church is not merely in the number of churches but the focus of those churches.
Mary Francis Boley, was the director of women’s ministry at First Baptist Church in Peachtree City, Georgia. Women from metro Atlanta would gather each week around coffee and an open Bible. But the ministry took a radical step forward when Mary Francis decided that no Bible studies could meet unless they included a component of ministry to the community. So they scoured Atlanta for the women in the “highways and hedges” who nobody else was reaching. They identified cashiers, food service employees, hairdressers, single moms, the women’s shelter, strippers and prostitutes. Mary Francis calls her ministry, “Wellspring of Living Water.” The goal of Wellspring is to get the women within the church to reach the women who are outside of the walls of the church. Mary Francis’ purpose is to “save the women in Atlanta”—and that begins with the women who are in the pews of the church every Sunday. She firmly believes that people cannot grow into Christian maturity without giving themselves away to others. By ministering to “the least of these” they invite the presence of Jesus into their ministry (Matthew 25:31-46). Lives are being touched and changed.
Churches like Vineyard Community Church of Cincinnati have also found that it is easier and more effective to recruit existing small groups to engage in ministry and service projects than it is to motivate, administer spiritual gift tests and recruit individuals to serve in a ministry. You can serve in most any ministry with your friends. Each Saturday they send out teams of people just to serve people in the city through “low touch-high grace random acts of kindness.” One day you might find them handing out free Cokes or washing cars for free. Founding pastor Steve Sjogren defines their servant evangelism as “demonstrating the kindness of God by offering to do some act of humble service with no strings attached. It’s not so much a matter of sharing information but sharing love.” Senior pastor Dave Workman notes that their church believes that it takes between 12-20 positive “bumps,” or refreshing encounters with the church, before people come to Christ. These small acts of service move people towards Christ. Though all service is with no strings attached, each year they see hundreds of people come to faith. Carved in stone over the entrance of the church are engraved the words: “small things done with great love will change the world.” Steve Sjogren’s admonition to church planters is this: “Don’t go to start a church…go to serve a city. Serve them with love and if you go after the people nobody wants, you’ll end up with the people everybody wants.”
First Baptist Church of Leesburg, Florida (population 20,000) has a prevailing influence on their community though their incarnational (John 1:14) ministry which they call ‘ministry evangelism.” The church has spawned over 70 ministries to intersect the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the people in Leesburg. Through their Men’s Shelter, Women’s Care Center, Benevolence Ministry, Latchkey Ministry, the Children’s Home etc, they regularly lead hundreds of people to Christ and disciple them towards maturity. Senior pastor Charles Roesel (since 1976) says, “The only way the gospel can be biblically shared is to focus on the whole person, with all their hurts and needs, and to involve the church in ministering to those persons and leading them to Christ. This is the essence of ministry evangelism.”
Erwin McManus of Mosaic Church in East Los Angeles says that the single biggest factor in his church retaining people is not personal follow-up or joining a small group; it is being involved from the very beginning in service to others in the community. When members have told him that they want the church to meet their needs his reply is “You ARE the church and together we are called to meet the needs of the world.” Over 1,800 members agree. We grow and are healed as we serve others. Maybe this is what Isaiah (58:6-8) had in mind when he penned God’s words to his people: “Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen: To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter…? Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear.” What if we settled for nothing less than 100% of our church members engaged at some level in meaningful ministry to the community? People (or small groups) could choose their field and level of engagement (from once a week to once a year), but non-involvement would not be an option.
THE PRESENT FUTURE
THE PRESENT FUTURE
Six Tough Questions for the Church
Reggie McNeal
Jossey-Bass, 2003, 151 pp. ISBN 0-7870-6568-5
McNeal is the director of leadership development for the South Carolina Baptist Convention. His challenge is to get out of the clubhouse (church) and into the world (community). “This is not a how-to book. I am writing this book as a polemical volume...to galvanize church leaders to action.” Most church leaders are preoccupied with the wrong questions. I want to create a new mental landscape, to help the church rediscover its mission. (Introduction)
Very thought provoking. I applaud his call to get the church out into the world. I also have a number of questions and some commentary.
McNeal speaks often of missionaries and the Great Commission. He wants Kingdom growth and Christians to use missionary methods to understand and address the non-Christian culture, but he doesn’t get involved with the “all nations.” Of course getting Christians into the community would be a step.
New Reality Number One – The Collapse of the Church Culture
The current church culture in North America is on life support. It is living off the work, money and energy of previous generations from a previous world order.” (1)
The number of Americans who have “no religious preference” has doubled from 1990 to 2001, reaching 14 percent of the population. Only 1 percent claim to be atheists. The unchurched has grown from 24 to 34 percent in just one decade. (3)
“The values of classic Christianity no longer dominate the way Americans believe or behave.” (5)
“Not only do we not need God to explain the universe, we don’t need God to operate the church. Many operate like giant machines, with church leaders serving as mechanics. God doesn’t have to show up to get done what’s being done. The culture does not want the powerless God of the modern church.” (6)
Wrong Question: How Do We Do Church Better?
“Church activity is a poor substitute for genuine spiritual vitality.” (7)
“You can build the perfect church—and they still won’t come. People are not looking for a great church.” “People outside the church think church is for church people, not for them.” “The need of the North American church is not a methodological fix. It is much more profound. The church needs a mission fix.” (10)
Tough Question: How Do We Deconvert from Churchianity to Christianity?
“People may be turned off to the church, but they are not turned off to Jesus. Jesus is popular.” (12)
“We need to recapture the mission of the church.” God is on “a redemptive mission in the world.” (12) “God revealed to Moses his heart for his people. It involved a purpose and a mission.” (13)
“The church was never intended to exist for itself. It was and is the chosen instrument of God to expand his kingdom.” “We do not need to be mistaken about this: if the church refuses its missional assignment, God will do it another way.” (15-16)
“The movement Jesus initiated had power because it had at its core a personal life-transforming experience.’’ This is the dynamic of genuine Christianity.” (17)
“The appropriate response to the emerging world is a rebooting of the mission, a radical obedience to an ancient command, a loss of self rather than self-preoccupation, concern about service and sacrifice rather than concern about style.” (18)
“That’s the church’s mission: to join God in his redemptive efforts to save the world.” (19)
New Reality Number Two – The Shift from Church Growth to Kingdom Growth
“I would argue that the church growth movement is a transition in the North American church between the old church culture and the emerging culture.” (23)
Wrong Question: How Do We Grow This Church? (How Do We Get Them to Come to Us?)
“A Lilly study released in 2002 found that one-half of church goers attended churches in the top 10 percent of church size.” (24)
“Churches have jumped headlong into the customer service revolution.” (24)
The focus was on methodology – human psychology, management issues, strategic planning, massive financial campaigns, communication skills, etc.
“The focus of the church is on itself, on what it takes to succeed.” (25)
“The transfer of Christians from the dinghies to the cruise ships is pretty well complete.” (25)
Tough Question: How Do We Transform Our Community? (How Do We Hit the Streets with the Gospel?)
“If they aren’t going to come to us, then we’ve got to go to them.” (26) “They need what people always need: God in their lives.” (27)
“The North American church is not spiritual enough to reach our culture.” “I’m talking about missional spirituality.” (27)
“It is the expectation of Pharisees that people should adopt the church culture, including its lifestyle, if they want admittance.” (31) [Lifestyle can mean many things, but in a very real sense, being a Christian is a whole lot about lifestyle. Becoming a Christian certainly should bring change to a sinful lifestyle. We should expect lifestyle changes. Dlm]
“How many church activities for the already-saved are justified when there are people who have never been touched with Jesus’ love?” (32)
“One clear generational distinction of the millennials (born 1983-2000) is a renewed civic consciousness.” (33)
New Reality Number Three – A new Reformation: Releasing God’s People
People do not have to rely on denominations to structure their giving or ministry focus. “Increasingly, these are individual choices, driven by a sense of personal mission, not mere underwriting of the church or denominational program by faithful loyalists.” (44) [A sense of personal mission is good but sometimes individualism is a much higher value among Christians than is good for us. Dlm]
Wrong Question: How Do We Turn Members into Ministers (i.e. get them to do church work)? (45)
“Church ministry is an add-on activity to an already crowded life.” [This may be a symptom of a secular lifestyle. Dlm]
Tough Question: How Do We Turn Members into Missionaries?
[Missionaries are by definition workers sent across cultures. McNeal is referring to reaching from the church sub-culture to the non-church or post-modern subculture within a shifting U.S. culture. That’s what an evangelist does, but ‘missionary’ is more euphonic and expresses his focus on contextualization. Dlm]
“How do we deploy more missionaries into community transformation?” “This will require that we not only release ministry but that we also release church members.” (48) [How does McNeal understand community transformation? Is he thinking of changing the community’s corporate culture? It would seem we must work with individuals. Dlm]
Life in the church bubble can shrink-wrap your vision down to the size of the church.” (49)
“I am proposing that missiology come into prominence, both as a theological pursuit and as a guiding operational paradigm.” (51)
“North America is the largest English-speaking mission field in the world. It is the fifth or sixth largest mission field of any stripe. If we are not focusing on missiology, we are being disobedient to the Great Commission.” (51) [Using the term mission field and missionary for the U.S. has the unfortunate effect of diluting the meaning of missionary and discounting the overwhelming missionary activity needed elsewhere in the world. A mission field is a place that has little access to the Gospel and few Bible-believing churches or Christians in its language and culture, something that cannot be said about the U.S., no matter how many people stay home from church. France, Spain, Japan, and Saudi Arabia are mission fields. The U.S. is an evangelism field. According to Patrick Johnstone, the U.S. has one fifth of the world’s evangelicals—read evangelists—but they are bound in a hyper-busy secular lifestyle (so we don’t even meet our neighbors, let alone love them) and gagged by a sensitivity to culture that says not to invade someone’s private space with religious talk. Dlm]
“Only people without a missiology disdain attempts at being culturally relevant. The point is not to adopt the culture and lose the message; the point is to understand the culture so we can build bridges to it for the sake of gaining a hearing for the gospel of Jesus.” (51) [Of course. But this is exactly where we have gone wrong. We have adopted the culture so completely we can’t even see it. We are “of the world” but not “in it!” dlm]
“When people hear me talk about learning the language of people outside the church, they sometimes resist on the basis that this is pandering to the culture. How absurd! We don’t think that missionaries to Russia...became Communists when learning Russian.” [This is correct. But we must be aware that any number of missionaries have gradually adopted not only the language but the culture and the religion of those they went to reach. This is one reason why most mission organizations require significant Bible study, so they know clearly enough what they believe that they don’t get seduced by the lifestyle and beliefs of others. Our culture is very attractive and seductive. We have become practicing secularists. Dlm]
“The church in North American is thoroughly modern.” It has reduced its understanding of spirituality to numbers that can be reported (the triumph of materialism over spirit).” (54) [My point above. And the next church generation may be thoroughly post-modern. We need to understand it, but we must not fall into it! Dlm]
“Room for God is growing in the postmodern world.” Postmoderns are wildly spiritual, which reflects a hunger for meaning and connectedness. (57)
“We have a church in North America that is more secular than the culture. Just when the church adopted a business model, the culture went looking for God. Just when the church began building recreation centers, the culture began a search for sacred space.” (59) [Does this indicate that trying too hard to be relevant inevitably leads to irrelevance? Os Guinness speaks to this in A Prophetic Untimeliness.Dlm]
McNeal gives some suggestions for creating a missiological culture, including build for the community, adopt a school, invest in the community, have local missions projects. (63) [I question whether buildings and occasional projects provide a context for community or personal transformation. It seems that personal relationships are required. Dlm]
Go first. If you are a pastor or staff member of a local congregation, you must model missionary behavior for the church to see.” (64)
“Church scorecards currently reflect member values: how many show up, pay up, and participate in club member activities.” “A missionary church culture will need to begin keeping score on things different from what we measure now.” (67)
“I pleaded with them to consider doing less church stuff and doing more ministry aimed at the pre-Christian culture.” “Who is this for? May be a good way for you to begin your own journey from member to missionary. (68)
New Reality Number Four – The Return to Spiritual Formation
Wrong Question: How Do We Develop Church Members?
“We aim at the head. We don’t deal in relationship.” (70)
Tough Question: How Do We Develop Followers of Jesus?
“What percentage of your congregants feel they grew to be more like Jesus this past year?” What if church leaders asked each other, ‘How is God at work in your people?’ or ‘Where do you see Jesus bustin’ out?’” (740
“I am recommending that churches provide life coaching for people. We need to view this as spiritual formation.” (77) [This is a great idea but Christians with the qualities to be coaches may be rare. Dlm]
“We have assumed that if people come to church often enough they will grow.” (80)
“Our approach to biblical study must not stop short of applying to life.” (81)
“Love changes people’s behavior.” (83) “Evangelism that will introduce Jesus to this culture will flow from people who are deeply in love with Jesus.” (82)
“The issue now is learning, how to make sense out of the information that is available. The agenda is more and more being set by the learner.” [This can be taken too far. The learner brings his circumstances but the learning must be informed from Scripture. Dlm]
“Jesus facilitated spiritual formation in his disciples by introducing them to life situations and then helping them debrief their experiences.” “He talked about the kingdom of God, but mostly he lived the kingdom of God, practicing a life in front of his followers that modeled very different core values....” (85) [Ah, we are in desperate need of such modeling, both for our leaders to model for us and for us to model for those around us. This seems like the most important point so far. Dlm]
“Curriculum-driven is artificial; life-driven is organic.” “I am a proponent of small groups.” However, groups can move from one curriculum piece to another and never experience any real growth. Effective groups where people grow allow people to declare to each other what is going on in their lives, what they’d like to see going on in their lives, and what kind of help and accountability they need to move toward their hopes and away from their frustrations. This brings life to the table, not a book!” (86) [Book studies can be irrelevant. However, sharing life can also be unproductive unless individuals seek growth, accept accountability, and weigh actions and life circumstances against Scripture. Too many curriculum-less small groups degenerate into mutual commiseration or “Well I think...” sessions. Dlm]
The home was and is the center for spiritual formation. (87)
“The spiritual formation process should be customized and shaped to the learner for intentional outcomes.” “The person development process is highly labor intensive.” (91) [This is one good reason why God has assigned first-line responsibility for spiritual formation to parents. Otherwise such intensive life-on-life opportunities are very rare. Dlm]
New Reality Number Five – The Shift from Planning to Preparation
Wrong Question: How Do We Plan for the Future?
Tough Question: How Do We Prepare for the Future?
[McNeal wants us to get beyond planning, management and marketing and prepare ourselves for what God plans. Good. However, some of his recommendations—vision, values, and results, for example—sound a lot like what we read in business management books.]
New Reality Number Six – The Rise of Apostolic Leadership
Wrong Question: How Do We Develop Leaders for Church Work?
The new breed of church leaders is missional, visionary, entrepreneurial, a team-worker, a releaser of ministry, anti-bureaucracy, spiritual, and culturally relevant. (126) They are focused on kingdom growth.
They often view seminary as supplemental, not essential. (128) [Seminary may not be the only answer but I wonder if we are getting more “preaching light.” Preaching out of Brian McLaren or Rick Warren or another popular writer is not the same as preaching from the Scripture. I wonder how such leaders learn to exegete the Scriptures. Dlm]
Tough Question: How Do We Develop Leaders for the Christian Movement?
Church teachers are usually trained in using curriculum, leading discussions, and employing teaching techniques. It is interesting that few are intentionally trained in how to study the Bible....” (130)
Leadership development that supports apostolic leadership and a missional renewal in the church pays attention to four arenas of learning: paradigm issues, microskill development (dozens), resource development, and personal growth. (130)
“A word to pastors. Over time there is no substitute for your leadership inner circle to be in some small group setting with you where your heart for the kingdom can have an impact on theirs.” (138)
“The reason to get in touch with the culture is not to adopt it but to engage it for the same reasons a missionary does—in order to gain a hearing for the gospel.” (141)
* * * * *
Six Tough Questions for the Church
Reggie McNeal
Jossey-Bass, 2003, 151 pp. ISBN 0-7870-6568-5
McNeal is the director of leadership development for the South Carolina Baptist Convention. His challenge is to get out of the clubhouse (church) and into the world (community). “This is not a how-to book. I am writing this book as a polemical volume...to galvanize church leaders to action.” Most church leaders are preoccupied with the wrong questions. I want to create a new mental landscape, to help the church rediscover its mission. (Introduction)
Very thought provoking. I applaud his call to get the church out into the world. I also have a number of questions and some commentary.
McNeal speaks often of missionaries and the Great Commission. He wants Kingdom growth and Christians to use missionary methods to understand and address the non-Christian culture, but he doesn’t get involved with the “all nations.” Of course getting Christians into the community would be a step.
New Reality Number One – The Collapse of the Church Culture
The current church culture in North America is on life support. It is living off the work, money and energy of previous generations from a previous world order.” (1)
The number of Americans who have “no religious preference” has doubled from 1990 to 2001, reaching 14 percent of the population. Only 1 percent claim to be atheists. The unchurched has grown from 24 to 34 percent in just one decade. (3)
“The values of classic Christianity no longer dominate the way Americans believe or behave.” (5)
“Not only do we not need God to explain the universe, we don’t need God to operate the church. Many operate like giant machines, with church leaders serving as mechanics. God doesn’t have to show up to get done what’s being done. The culture does not want the powerless God of the modern church.” (6)
Wrong Question: How Do We Do Church Better?
“Church activity is a poor substitute for genuine spiritual vitality.” (7)
“You can build the perfect church—and they still won’t come. People are not looking for a great church.” “People outside the church think church is for church people, not for them.” “The need of the North American church is not a methodological fix. It is much more profound. The church needs a mission fix.” (10)
Tough Question: How Do We Deconvert from Churchianity to Christianity?
“People may be turned off to the church, but they are not turned off to Jesus. Jesus is popular.” (12)
“We need to recapture the mission of the church.” God is on “a redemptive mission in the world.” (12) “God revealed to Moses his heart for his people. It involved a purpose and a mission.” (13)
“The church was never intended to exist for itself. It was and is the chosen instrument of God to expand his kingdom.” “We do not need to be mistaken about this: if the church refuses its missional assignment, God will do it another way.” (15-16)
“The movement Jesus initiated had power because it had at its core a personal life-transforming experience.’’ This is the dynamic of genuine Christianity.” (17)
“The appropriate response to the emerging world is a rebooting of the mission, a radical obedience to an ancient command, a loss of self rather than self-preoccupation, concern about service and sacrifice rather than concern about style.” (18)
“That’s the church’s mission: to join God in his redemptive efforts to save the world.” (19)
New Reality Number Two – The Shift from Church Growth to Kingdom Growth
“I would argue that the church growth movement is a transition in the North American church between the old church culture and the emerging culture.” (23)
Wrong Question: How Do We Grow This Church? (How Do We Get Them to Come to Us?)
“A Lilly study released in 2002 found that one-half of church goers attended churches in the top 10 percent of church size.” (24)
“Churches have jumped headlong into the customer service revolution.” (24)
The focus was on methodology – human psychology, management issues, strategic planning, massive financial campaigns, communication skills, etc.
“The focus of the church is on itself, on what it takes to succeed.” (25)
“The transfer of Christians from the dinghies to the cruise ships is pretty well complete.” (25)
Tough Question: How Do We Transform Our Community? (How Do We Hit the Streets with the Gospel?)
“If they aren’t going to come to us, then we’ve got to go to them.” (26) “They need what people always need: God in their lives.” (27)
“The North American church is not spiritual enough to reach our culture.” “I’m talking about missional spirituality.” (27)
“It is the expectation of Pharisees that people should adopt the church culture, including its lifestyle, if they want admittance.” (31) [Lifestyle can mean many things, but in a very real sense, being a Christian is a whole lot about lifestyle. Becoming a Christian certainly should bring change to a sinful lifestyle. We should expect lifestyle changes. Dlm]
“How many church activities for the already-saved are justified when there are people who have never been touched with Jesus’ love?” (32)
“One clear generational distinction of the millennials (born 1983-2000) is a renewed civic consciousness.” (33)
New Reality Number Three – A new Reformation: Releasing God’s People
People do not have to rely on denominations to structure their giving or ministry focus. “Increasingly, these are individual choices, driven by a sense of personal mission, not mere underwriting of the church or denominational program by faithful loyalists.” (44) [A sense of personal mission is good but sometimes individualism is a much higher value among Christians than is good for us. Dlm]
Wrong Question: How Do We Turn Members into Ministers (i.e. get them to do church work)? (45)
“Church ministry is an add-on activity to an already crowded life.” [This may be a symptom of a secular lifestyle. Dlm]
Tough Question: How Do We Turn Members into Missionaries?
[Missionaries are by definition workers sent across cultures. McNeal is referring to reaching from the church sub-culture to the non-church or post-modern subculture within a shifting U.S. culture. That’s what an evangelist does, but ‘missionary’ is more euphonic and expresses his focus on contextualization. Dlm]
“How do we deploy more missionaries into community transformation?” “This will require that we not only release ministry but that we also release church members.” (48) [How does McNeal understand community transformation? Is he thinking of changing the community’s corporate culture? It would seem we must work with individuals. Dlm]
Life in the church bubble can shrink-wrap your vision down to the size of the church.” (49)
“I am proposing that missiology come into prominence, both as a theological pursuit and as a guiding operational paradigm.” (51)
“North America is the largest English-speaking mission field in the world. It is the fifth or sixth largest mission field of any stripe. If we are not focusing on missiology, we are being disobedient to the Great Commission.” (51) [Using the term mission field and missionary for the U.S. has the unfortunate effect of diluting the meaning of missionary and discounting the overwhelming missionary activity needed elsewhere in the world. A mission field is a place that has little access to the Gospel and few Bible-believing churches or Christians in its language and culture, something that cannot be said about the U.S., no matter how many people stay home from church. France, Spain, Japan, and Saudi Arabia are mission fields. The U.S. is an evangelism field. According to Patrick Johnstone, the U.S. has one fifth of the world’s evangelicals—read evangelists—but they are bound in a hyper-busy secular lifestyle (so we don’t even meet our neighbors, let alone love them) and gagged by a sensitivity to culture that says not to invade someone’s private space with religious talk. Dlm]
“Only people without a missiology disdain attempts at being culturally relevant. The point is not to adopt the culture and lose the message; the point is to understand the culture so we can build bridges to it for the sake of gaining a hearing for the gospel of Jesus.” (51) [Of course. But this is exactly where we have gone wrong. We have adopted the culture so completely we can’t even see it. We are “of the world” but not “in it!” dlm]
“When people hear me talk about learning the language of people outside the church, they sometimes resist on the basis that this is pandering to the culture. How absurd! We don’t think that missionaries to Russia...became Communists when learning Russian.” [This is correct. But we must be aware that any number of missionaries have gradually adopted not only the language but the culture and the religion of those they went to reach. This is one reason why most mission organizations require significant Bible study, so they know clearly enough what they believe that they don’t get seduced by the lifestyle and beliefs of others. Our culture is very attractive and seductive. We have become practicing secularists. Dlm]
“The church in North American is thoroughly modern.” It has reduced its understanding of spirituality to numbers that can be reported (the triumph of materialism over spirit).” (54) [My point above. And the next church generation may be thoroughly post-modern. We need to understand it, but we must not fall into it! Dlm]
“Room for God is growing in the postmodern world.” Postmoderns are wildly spiritual, which reflects a hunger for meaning and connectedness. (57)
“We have a church in North America that is more secular than the culture. Just when the church adopted a business model, the culture went looking for God. Just when the church began building recreation centers, the culture began a search for sacred space.” (59) [Does this indicate that trying too hard to be relevant inevitably leads to irrelevance? Os Guinness speaks to this in A Prophetic Untimeliness.Dlm]
McNeal gives some suggestions for creating a missiological culture, including build for the community, adopt a school, invest in the community, have local missions projects. (63) [I question whether buildings and occasional projects provide a context for community or personal transformation. It seems that personal relationships are required. Dlm]
Go first. If you are a pastor or staff member of a local congregation, you must model missionary behavior for the church to see.” (64)
“Church scorecards currently reflect member values: how many show up, pay up, and participate in club member activities.” “A missionary church culture will need to begin keeping score on things different from what we measure now.” (67)
“I pleaded with them to consider doing less church stuff and doing more ministry aimed at the pre-Christian culture.” “Who is this for? May be a good way for you to begin your own journey from member to missionary. (68)
New Reality Number Four – The Return to Spiritual Formation
Wrong Question: How Do We Develop Church Members?
“We aim at the head. We don’t deal in relationship.” (70)
Tough Question: How Do We Develop Followers of Jesus?
“What percentage of your congregants feel they grew to be more like Jesus this past year?” What if church leaders asked each other, ‘How is God at work in your people?’ or ‘Where do you see Jesus bustin’ out?’” (740
“I am recommending that churches provide life coaching for people. We need to view this as spiritual formation.” (77) [This is a great idea but Christians with the qualities to be coaches may be rare. Dlm]
“We have assumed that if people come to church often enough they will grow.” (80)
“Our approach to biblical study must not stop short of applying to life.” (81)
“Love changes people’s behavior.” (83) “Evangelism that will introduce Jesus to this culture will flow from people who are deeply in love with Jesus.” (82)
“The issue now is learning, how to make sense out of the information that is available. The agenda is more and more being set by the learner.” [This can be taken too far. The learner brings his circumstances but the learning must be informed from Scripture. Dlm]
“Jesus facilitated spiritual formation in his disciples by introducing them to life situations and then helping them debrief their experiences.” “He talked about the kingdom of God, but mostly he lived the kingdom of God, practicing a life in front of his followers that modeled very different core values....” (85) [Ah, we are in desperate need of such modeling, both for our leaders to model for us and for us to model for those around us. This seems like the most important point so far. Dlm]
“Curriculum-driven is artificial; life-driven is organic.” “I am a proponent of small groups.” However, groups can move from one curriculum piece to another and never experience any real growth. Effective groups where people grow allow people to declare to each other what is going on in their lives, what they’d like to see going on in their lives, and what kind of help and accountability they need to move toward their hopes and away from their frustrations. This brings life to the table, not a book!” (86) [Book studies can be irrelevant. However, sharing life can also be unproductive unless individuals seek growth, accept accountability, and weigh actions and life circumstances against Scripture. Too many curriculum-less small groups degenerate into mutual commiseration or “Well I think...” sessions. Dlm]
The home was and is the center for spiritual formation. (87)
“The spiritual formation process should be customized and shaped to the learner for intentional outcomes.” “The person development process is highly labor intensive.” (91) [This is one good reason why God has assigned first-line responsibility for spiritual formation to parents. Otherwise such intensive life-on-life opportunities are very rare. Dlm]
New Reality Number Five – The Shift from Planning to Preparation
Wrong Question: How Do We Plan for the Future?
Tough Question: How Do We Prepare for the Future?
[McNeal wants us to get beyond planning, management and marketing and prepare ourselves for what God plans. Good. However, some of his recommendations—vision, values, and results, for example—sound a lot like what we read in business management books.]
New Reality Number Six – The Rise of Apostolic Leadership
Wrong Question: How Do We Develop Leaders for Church Work?
The new breed of church leaders is missional, visionary, entrepreneurial, a team-worker, a releaser of ministry, anti-bureaucracy, spiritual, and culturally relevant. (126) They are focused on kingdom growth.
They often view seminary as supplemental, not essential. (128) [Seminary may not be the only answer but I wonder if we are getting more “preaching light.” Preaching out of Brian McLaren or Rick Warren or another popular writer is not the same as preaching from the Scripture. I wonder how such leaders learn to exegete the Scriptures. Dlm]
Tough Question: How Do We Develop Leaders for the Christian Movement?
Church teachers are usually trained in using curriculum, leading discussions, and employing teaching techniques. It is interesting that few are intentionally trained in how to study the Bible....” (130)
Leadership development that supports apostolic leadership and a missional renewal in the church pays attention to four arenas of learning: paradigm issues, microskill development (dozens), resource development, and personal growth. (130)
“A word to pastors. Over time there is no substitute for your leadership inner circle to be in some small group setting with you where your heart for the kingdom can have an impact on theirs.” (138)
“The reason to get in touch with the culture is not to adopt it but to engage it for the same reasons a missionary does—in order to gain a hearing for the gospel.” (141)
* * * * *
THE EXTERNALLY FOCUSED CHURCH
THE EXTERNALLY FOCUSED CHURCH
Rick Rusaw and Eric Swanson
Group, Loveland, CO, 2004, 224 pp. ISBN 0-7644-2740-7
http://www.grouppublishing.com/
Rusaw is pastor of LifeBridge Christian Church in Longmont, Colorado. Swanson works for Leadership Network. Based largely on the experience of LifeBridge, the authors explain how a church can focus on serving its community. This book follows in the train of Robert Lewis of Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, (see The Church of Irresistible Influence).
“Our world is still open to a gospel it can hear and see. The real gospel is two-sided—it’s truth and proof!” (Robert Lewis, Foreword)
“The early church served. Service is, and should be, the identifying mark of Christians and the church.” (11) [Perhaps service is one of the identifying marks of love, which Francis Shaeffer called the mark of a Christian. dlm]
“One of the most effective ways to reach people with the message of Jesus Christ today is through real and relevant acts of service. Honest, compassionated service can restore credibility to the crucial message we have to share. To tell the truth, we must show the truth.” (11)
“How we spend out money and our time exposes what truly matters to us.” (12)
The church has become more concerned with telling than showing. We have forgotten to show God’s love. (13)
“Internally focused churches concentrate on getting people into the church and generating activity there.” (16)
Externally focused “churches look for ways to be useful to their communities, to be a part of their hopes and dreams. They build bridges to their communities instead of walls around themselves.” They measure “the spiritual and societal effects they are having on the communities around them.” (17)
Focus on two groups: those on the margins and the city. (18-20)
“Being externally focused is about the perspective and purpose of the church more than any program....” “These churches have concluded that it’s really not ‘church’ if it’s not engaged in the life of the community through ministry and service to others.” “[It is] woven into every aspect of church life.” (24) [I suggest the same thinking applies to both people unlike us nearby and people unlike us far away, i.e., missions. dlm]
“It is only when the church is mixed into the very life and conversation of the city that it can be an effective force for change.” (25)
Ministering and serving are normal expressions of Christian living. Christians grow best when they are serving and giving themselves away. (26)
Two strategies: 1) identify the needs of the community and start ministries to meet the needs, 2) partner with existing ministries or human-service agencies that are meeting needs in the community. (29-30)
“Power is important. But focus is everything.” (36)
The Great Commission describes the fruit. Matthew 28:19-20. (36)
Too often our people—our greatest resource—are underutilized and we feel we have done our part by donating money. Previously, LifeBridge created large special events as their main outreach strategy. Events take lots of money and staff time and they are internally focused, asking the community to come to us. (37-39)
“We decided to come alongside schools, service organizations, and other nonprofits (religious and secular) to see how we could help them.” (41)
“We often used the image of ‘crossing the street.’ For us...that literally meant crossing the street from our church into the neighborhoods and city streets across the highway.” “For us, serving in the community meant getting to know our community.” (45)
Community transformation “lies at the intersection of the needs and dreams of the city or community, the mandates and desires of God, and the calling and capacity of the church.” (56) “God has always used his people to bring hope and health to a community.” (58)
“When people come to faith, they can immediately be involved in serving others. From the get-go, they can understand that being a Christian isn’t an isolated experience but a life lived in community and service.” (62)
“Service is always about meeting others’ needs or helping others succeed.” “Service is the mark of a Christian. ‘Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus...taking the very nature of a servant’ (Philippians 2:5-7).” (64)
“It takes between twelve and twenty positive bumps [refreshing encounters with the church] before people come to Christ.” (67, quoting Dave Workman, lead pastor of Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati)
“So much good can be done apart from money.” “The poor need relationships more than they need money. In the inner city, there’s a lot of free stuff to be had. What the poor need is people who care.” (quoting Vicki Baird, Cincinnati Vineyard Community Church) But sometimes there is no substitute for cash. (68)
One church asks their members to give 5% of their incomes to ministries outside the church! (72)
“Good nutrition alone cannot make a person healthy. Good Bible teaching alone is insufficient for spiritual maturity. People need exercise... We grow by serving others.” (76) “Getting people involved in service is much easier than getting them involved in activities specifically designed to deepen their faith.” “Of course, it is possible to serve without growing spiritually....” “Serving puts people in real-world situations where their faith is on the line.” (77) [I would have appreciated more emphasis on ‘nutrition.’ Many churches do much social work but with little spiritual transformation in either those ministering or those being ministered to. Dlm]
“We do nothing and give to nothing where our people are not involved. We tell our congregation, ‘If you give money to a ministry, then we want you to get involved in that ministry.’” (83 quoting Kenton Beshore, Mariners Church)
“We in the church have often defined ministry too narrowly. In doing so, we have limited the opportunities for meaningful ministry.” “Ministry is simply ‘meeting another’s need with the resources God has given to you.’” (86)
“Wouldn’t it be great if on any given Sunday you could point randomly to any person in your congregation and say, ‘Please tell us about your ministry,’ and every person...would come forth with a description of how God is using him or her in ministry to others?” (90)
“The church grows through relationships.” (93) “Relationship is key to building bridges into the community.” (94)
“First, make sure that the church and the community organization both clearly understand each other’s needs and expectations. Second, begin slowly, if possible. Third, ensure that one person with passion for the project is responsible for it.” “Finally, no matter what hurdles you face along the way, remain committed to finishing what you start!” (96)
“One rule of thumb is that churches should come only to serve and bless, not to control.” “Always ask the organizations in your community, ‘How can we help you?’ and don’t worry about who gets the credit.” (101)
“Watch for opportunities to share God’s grace, but don’t force the message.” “We serve for two reasons: to meet basic needs and to create positive relationships.” (103)
Community leaders generally don’t trust Christians and the church doesn’t have a reputation for being very helpful. (105)
“The best way to create relationships is to enter the world of those you seek to know, rather than waiting for them to enter yours.” Discover ways to be useful. (106)
“The early Christians lived in such a way that caused the world to stand up and take notice, for they had a distinctive lifestyle that could not be ignored.” (113)
“The Christian faith, for the most part, has been reduced to a philosophy—principles and tenets that we believe and can defend but don’t necessarily practice. It is our actions toward others that separate Christianity from philosophy. It is tying loving God to loving our neighbors as ourselves that puts legs to our faith.” (116)
“We need an apologetic for faith that can be observed more than postulated and debated.” “It’s not so much a matter of sharing information as it sharing love.” (118-19)
“Good works can be the bridge or the road, but they are not the saving message that crosses that bridge or travels that road. Good works are the complement but never the substitute for good news.” “We must figure out ways to be intentional about evangelism—sharing the good news.” “If we think it is necessary for people to understand the gospel, then we’ve got to use words.” (120-21) [I would have liked some additional explanation of how they do it and how they ensure that it gets done. Dlm]
“In serving others, salvation is our ultimate motive but not our ulterior motive. People sniff out motives pretty quickly.” (122, quoting Sam Williams)
How to tell the good news:
1. Listen to the other person’s story. 2. Ask permission to tell your story. 3. Ask permission to tell God’s story: the plan of salvation. (123-24)
Casting the Vision. Chapter 8 is a good chapter on vision, summarizing much of what has been written on the topic. (145-154)
Vision Problems (from Mark Scott, Ozark Christian College) (149-51)
· Nearsighted – too focused on daily stuff
· Farsighted – all vision and no action
· Tunnel Vision – so focused on their own situation they miss surrounding opportunities
· Walleyed – Caught up in the latest fad
· Lazy Eye – Great vision but lack of effort yields mediocre results
“An external focus is not a tactic or a strategy. It is a transformation.” (152)
The core values of LifeBridge: outreach, spiritual development, worship, and involvement. “Each ministry department develops plans, events, and activities that reflect our values.” (152)
“We see community outreach as an important part of our overall mission. So each ministry department is encouraged to find ways to make community outreach a part of its programming and plans.” (153)
Assessing the Needs of Your Community.
1. Ask the people you are serving to identify their needs and dreams.
2. Conduct or use existing research on your community. Get latest information regarding income, educational levels, demographics, and employment statistics from formal census research at http://factfinder.census.gov/
3. Recognize the power of existing relationships. Often you already have a ‘champion’ in the church that is involved in a ministry on his or her own.
4. Look and listen. Observe. (159-163)
Six categories of needs (per Raymond Bakke): physical, spiritual/moral, social/relational, emotional, education, training/mentoring. (165)
Types of people: poor, children, aged, widows/single parents, orphans, prisoners, sick/disabled, aliens/immigrants. (166)
You can make a chart with types of people across the top and needs down the side and fill in the blanks to list service opportunities. (166)
“Whatever your focus, aim for the double benefit of changing the lives of those who are serving as well as of those who are being served.” (167)
Some ideas for narrowing your selections:
1. Draw a geographical radius.
2. Establish some ‘engagement criteria,’ such as
a. Does this put us in relationship with those we seek to help or others who are serving?
b. Is this ministry or agency willing to work with us?
c. Will this allow us to minister holistically?
d. Do we have people ready, willing, and able?
e. Will this result in changed lives? (168)
“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” (173, quoting Winston Churchill)
“When hiring staff, make certain the job and their passions are intertwined, that they are being paid to do something they were born to do. It’s too big and too important just to be a job.” (176)
“Define the minimum qualifications for a volunteer.” (177)
“Churches that seek to mobilize every person must also define ministry in a broad enough way to encompass the skills, experiences, giftedness, passions, and relationships of every person in the church.” (178)
We have to figure out ways for the volunteers to get “paid” –ways that are meaningful to the volunteers. Pay is whatever motivates people. (179)
Provide four things to young people in the church: (182)
1. a mentor to guide him or her
2. a teacher to develop skills
3. a judge to evaluate progress, and
4. an encourager to cheer them on.
[This might be a good model for following up people who go on mission trips! Dlm]
“Our vision is only as big as that for which we are willing to raise money.” (185)
“Working with what already exists [meaning organizations already working in service ministries] may be a church’s most underleveraged opportunity.” (192)
Measure inputs: the resources you put toward your objectives.
Measure outputs: the results of your efforts (194)
“It’s not what you add to your life, it’s what you abandon that will make the difference.” (203)
“The best way to engage the hearts of high-capacity people is by engaging their minds around big challenges and ideas.” (209)
“It’s not about size; it’s about impact.” (214)
[Service is the outworking of love and love draws people to oneself and to Jesus. However, it is possible to serve from other motives—a sense of duty, to be part of a group, to meet others’ expectations, etc.—and fail to develop relationships and express love. I suppose some kinds of service must be much more effective at reaching people for Christ than others. dlm]
* * * * *
Rick Rusaw and Eric Swanson
Group, Loveland, CO, 2004, 224 pp. ISBN 0-7644-2740-7
http://www.grouppublishing.com/
Rusaw is pastor of LifeBridge Christian Church in Longmont, Colorado. Swanson works for Leadership Network. Based largely on the experience of LifeBridge, the authors explain how a church can focus on serving its community. This book follows in the train of Robert Lewis of Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, (see The Church of Irresistible Influence).
“Our world is still open to a gospel it can hear and see. The real gospel is two-sided—it’s truth and proof!” (Robert Lewis, Foreword)
“The early church served. Service is, and should be, the identifying mark of Christians and the church.” (11) [Perhaps service is one of the identifying marks of love, which Francis Shaeffer called the mark of a Christian. dlm]
“One of the most effective ways to reach people with the message of Jesus Christ today is through real and relevant acts of service. Honest, compassionated service can restore credibility to the crucial message we have to share. To tell the truth, we must show the truth.” (11)
“How we spend out money and our time exposes what truly matters to us.” (12)
The church has become more concerned with telling than showing. We have forgotten to show God’s love. (13)
“Internally focused churches concentrate on getting people into the church and generating activity there.” (16)
Externally focused “churches look for ways to be useful to their communities, to be a part of their hopes and dreams. They build bridges to their communities instead of walls around themselves.” They measure “the spiritual and societal effects they are having on the communities around them.” (17)
Focus on two groups: those on the margins and the city. (18-20)
“Being externally focused is about the perspective and purpose of the church more than any program....” “These churches have concluded that it’s really not ‘church’ if it’s not engaged in the life of the community through ministry and service to others.” “[It is] woven into every aspect of church life.” (24) [I suggest the same thinking applies to both people unlike us nearby and people unlike us far away, i.e., missions. dlm]
“It is only when the church is mixed into the very life and conversation of the city that it can be an effective force for change.” (25)
Ministering and serving are normal expressions of Christian living. Christians grow best when they are serving and giving themselves away. (26)
Two strategies: 1) identify the needs of the community and start ministries to meet the needs, 2) partner with existing ministries or human-service agencies that are meeting needs in the community. (29-30)
“Power is important. But focus is everything.” (36)
The Great Commission describes the fruit. Matthew 28:19-20. (36)
Too often our people—our greatest resource—are underutilized and we feel we have done our part by donating money. Previously, LifeBridge created large special events as their main outreach strategy. Events take lots of money and staff time and they are internally focused, asking the community to come to us. (37-39)
“We decided to come alongside schools, service organizations, and other nonprofits (religious and secular) to see how we could help them.” (41)
“We often used the image of ‘crossing the street.’ For us...that literally meant crossing the street from our church into the neighborhoods and city streets across the highway.” “For us, serving in the community meant getting to know our community.” (45)
Community transformation “lies at the intersection of the needs and dreams of the city or community, the mandates and desires of God, and the calling and capacity of the church.” (56) “God has always used his people to bring hope and health to a community.” (58)
“When people come to faith, they can immediately be involved in serving others. From the get-go, they can understand that being a Christian isn’t an isolated experience but a life lived in community and service.” (62)
“Service is always about meeting others’ needs or helping others succeed.” “Service is the mark of a Christian. ‘Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus...taking the very nature of a servant’ (Philippians 2:5-7).” (64)
“It takes between twelve and twenty positive bumps [refreshing encounters with the church] before people come to Christ.” (67, quoting Dave Workman, lead pastor of Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati)
“So much good can be done apart from money.” “The poor need relationships more than they need money. In the inner city, there’s a lot of free stuff to be had. What the poor need is people who care.” (quoting Vicki Baird, Cincinnati Vineyard Community Church) But sometimes there is no substitute for cash. (68)
One church asks their members to give 5% of their incomes to ministries outside the church! (72)
“Good nutrition alone cannot make a person healthy. Good Bible teaching alone is insufficient for spiritual maturity. People need exercise... We grow by serving others.” (76) “Getting people involved in service is much easier than getting them involved in activities specifically designed to deepen their faith.” “Of course, it is possible to serve without growing spiritually....” “Serving puts people in real-world situations where their faith is on the line.” (77) [I would have appreciated more emphasis on ‘nutrition.’ Many churches do much social work but with little spiritual transformation in either those ministering or those being ministered to. Dlm]
“We do nothing and give to nothing where our people are not involved. We tell our congregation, ‘If you give money to a ministry, then we want you to get involved in that ministry.’” (83 quoting Kenton Beshore, Mariners Church)
“We in the church have often defined ministry too narrowly. In doing so, we have limited the opportunities for meaningful ministry.” “Ministry is simply ‘meeting another’s need with the resources God has given to you.’” (86)
“Wouldn’t it be great if on any given Sunday you could point randomly to any person in your congregation and say, ‘Please tell us about your ministry,’ and every person...would come forth with a description of how God is using him or her in ministry to others?” (90)
“The church grows through relationships.” (93) “Relationship is key to building bridges into the community.” (94)
“First, make sure that the church and the community organization both clearly understand each other’s needs and expectations. Second, begin slowly, if possible. Third, ensure that one person with passion for the project is responsible for it.” “Finally, no matter what hurdles you face along the way, remain committed to finishing what you start!” (96)
“One rule of thumb is that churches should come only to serve and bless, not to control.” “Always ask the organizations in your community, ‘How can we help you?’ and don’t worry about who gets the credit.” (101)
“Watch for opportunities to share God’s grace, but don’t force the message.” “We serve for two reasons: to meet basic needs and to create positive relationships.” (103)
Community leaders generally don’t trust Christians and the church doesn’t have a reputation for being very helpful. (105)
“The best way to create relationships is to enter the world of those you seek to know, rather than waiting for them to enter yours.” Discover ways to be useful. (106)
“The early Christians lived in such a way that caused the world to stand up and take notice, for they had a distinctive lifestyle that could not be ignored.” (113)
“The Christian faith, for the most part, has been reduced to a philosophy—principles and tenets that we believe and can defend but don’t necessarily practice. It is our actions toward others that separate Christianity from philosophy. It is tying loving God to loving our neighbors as ourselves that puts legs to our faith.” (116)
“We need an apologetic for faith that can be observed more than postulated and debated.” “It’s not so much a matter of sharing information as it sharing love.” (118-19)
“Good works can be the bridge or the road, but they are not the saving message that crosses that bridge or travels that road. Good works are the complement but never the substitute for good news.” “We must figure out ways to be intentional about evangelism—sharing the good news.” “If we think it is necessary for people to understand the gospel, then we’ve got to use words.” (120-21) [I would have liked some additional explanation of how they do it and how they ensure that it gets done. Dlm]
“In serving others, salvation is our ultimate motive but not our ulterior motive. People sniff out motives pretty quickly.” (122, quoting Sam Williams)
How to tell the good news:
1. Listen to the other person’s story. 2. Ask permission to tell your story. 3. Ask permission to tell God’s story: the plan of salvation. (123-24)
Casting the Vision. Chapter 8 is a good chapter on vision, summarizing much of what has been written on the topic. (145-154)
Vision Problems (from Mark Scott, Ozark Christian College) (149-51)
· Nearsighted – too focused on daily stuff
· Farsighted – all vision and no action
· Tunnel Vision – so focused on their own situation they miss surrounding opportunities
· Walleyed – Caught up in the latest fad
· Lazy Eye – Great vision but lack of effort yields mediocre results
“An external focus is not a tactic or a strategy. It is a transformation.” (152)
The core values of LifeBridge: outreach, spiritual development, worship, and involvement. “Each ministry department develops plans, events, and activities that reflect our values.” (152)
“We see community outreach as an important part of our overall mission. So each ministry department is encouraged to find ways to make community outreach a part of its programming and plans.” (153)
Assessing the Needs of Your Community.
1. Ask the people you are serving to identify their needs and dreams.
2. Conduct or use existing research on your community. Get latest information regarding income, educational levels, demographics, and employment statistics from formal census research at http://factfinder.census.gov/
3. Recognize the power of existing relationships. Often you already have a ‘champion’ in the church that is involved in a ministry on his or her own.
4. Look and listen. Observe. (159-163)
Six categories of needs (per Raymond Bakke): physical, spiritual/moral, social/relational, emotional, education, training/mentoring. (165)
Types of people: poor, children, aged, widows/single parents, orphans, prisoners, sick/disabled, aliens/immigrants. (166)
You can make a chart with types of people across the top and needs down the side and fill in the blanks to list service opportunities. (166)
“Whatever your focus, aim for the double benefit of changing the lives of those who are serving as well as of those who are being served.” (167)
Some ideas for narrowing your selections:
1. Draw a geographical radius.
2. Establish some ‘engagement criteria,’ such as
a. Does this put us in relationship with those we seek to help or others who are serving?
b. Is this ministry or agency willing to work with us?
c. Will this allow us to minister holistically?
d. Do we have people ready, willing, and able?
e. Will this result in changed lives? (168)
“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” (173, quoting Winston Churchill)
“When hiring staff, make certain the job and their passions are intertwined, that they are being paid to do something they were born to do. It’s too big and too important just to be a job.” (176)
“Define the minimum qualifications for a volunteer.” (177)
“Churches that seek to mobilize every person must also define ministry in a broad enough way to encompass the skills, experiences, giftedness, passions, and relationships of every person in the church.” (178)
We have to figure out ways for the volunteers to get “paid” –ways that are meaningful to the volunteers. Pay is whatever motivates people. (179)
Provide four things to young people in the church: (182)
1. a mentor to guide him or her
2. a teacher to develop skills
3. a judge to evaluate progress, and
4. an encourager to cheer them on.
[This might be a good model for following up people who go on mission trips! Dlm]
“Our vision is only as big as that for which we are willing to raise money.” (185)
“Working with what already exists [meaning organizations already working in service ministries] may be a church’s most underleveraged opportunity.” (192)
Measure inputs: the resources you put toward your objectives.
Measure outputs: the results of your efforts (194)
“It’s not what you add to your life, it’s what you abandon that will make the difference.” (203)
“The best way to engage the hearts of high-capacity people is by engaging their minds around big challenges and ideas.” (209)
“It’s not about size; it’s about impact.” (214)
[Service is the outworking of love and love draws people to oneself and to Jesus. However, it is possible to serve from other motives—a sense of duty, to be part of a group, to meet others’ expectations, etc.—and fail to develop relationships and express love. I suppose some kinds of service must be much more effective at reaching people for Christ than others. dlm]
* * * * *
LIVE LIFE ON PURPOSE
LIVE LIFE ON PURPOSE
God’s Purpose. Your Life. One Journey.
Claude Hickman
Pleasant Word, 2003, 202 pp. ISBN 1-4141-0036-1
www.thetravelingteam.org
Claude Hickman is the assistant director for The Traveling Team, a national missions mobilization movement. His book is a strong challenge to young people to give their lives for God’s purposes. This book is contemporary, energetic, “all out.” Give it to every young person you know.
“The more I grew spiritually the more I realized that God was not really interested in me Christianizing my life as much as He was interested in me crucifying my life.” (10)
“This generation is on an aggressive search for purpose.” (18)
“Life is too short to be harmless!” (18)
“God isn’t interested in joining your journey. You were created for His.” (19)
“Don’t be afraid of the unknown on the journey; be afraid of missing the life God has appointed you to live.” (20)
“The journey is the process in history and in your life where God brings all the ‘pieces’ together for the good of His final purpose.” (21)
“You can’t entrust your life to maps. The only way to be sure of your course in life is to trust...a compass. A compass...gives you direction.” “The great thing is that every believer gets a compass: knowledge of the general overarching purposes of God.” “Once I discovered what God was doing, I had a North Star to live my life by.” (21-22)
“God gives people direction more than directions.” (25)
“It is almost like we just Christianize whatever we want to do and call it ministry.” (25)
“It’s not about changing vocations, but about changing our passions.” (26)
“This generation’s worst fear is that they will choose the wrong path and miss their destiny.” (26) “The answer...is to know what is truly supreme in life; to have a North Star passion.” (27)
“No one has the boldness to tell anyone they are wasting their life on temporal things.” (28)
“Just because you read your Bible, go to church, throw in a college degree, achieve some impressive accomplishments and raise a good family and shake those all up in a long life, it doesn’t mean that out falls a life that counted for the eternal.” (31)
“We must begin the journey of finding our purpose with His end in mind—the fulfillment of the Great Commission.” (31)
“If you live without a vision of the glory of God filling the whole earth, you are in danger of serving your own dreams of greatness....” (35, quoting Floyd McClung)
“I was getting some great maps for my life, but I was locked in on a wrong destination.” “I had planned my life around the things that God was silent about instead of what He was clear about in His word.” (36-37)
“All the Christians we know are headed the same direction. As we look around, the lifestyle and pursuits of the average Christian look extraordinarily similar to the lifestyle and pursuits of the average non-Christian.” “This has damaging effects on our evangelism and paralyzing effects in our church.” (39)
The destination I was created for is God’s glory in all the earth. (40)
Don’t seek a map. Seek a compass. A compass is grounded in something outside of yourself. “The compass of God’s purpose allows us to have something to gauge our maps by.” (41)
“The story of God accomplishing His mission is the plot of the entire Bible. God’s mission is the backbone upon which the Bible is built and is best understood. Therefore, God’s mission is the reason there is a Bible at all.” (43, quoting Steve Hawthorne)
“God has one mission—all nations, and one method—all believers.” (45)
“The story of the Bible is a story of God’s plan to gather the worship of all the nations that He has created.” (47) “The compass of God’s purpose points toward this one end.” (50)
“The people God uses in His journey are not people who have incredible, unwavering faith; so much as they are normal people that are willing to take the next step....” (51)
“God’s purpose for the world is not just to save the lost, but to fill the earth with the knowledge of His greatness....” (52)
“The gospel has the authority to interrupt the course of your life.” (55)
“You cannot walk both your journey and God’s. There is only room in life for one journey.” (56)
“The great fear of most of this generation [is] to give their lives to the things that don’t really matter.” (57)
“If you are a Christian, you are in the family and responsible for the family mission—the salvation of all the nations.” (62)
“His plan for the nations is that they would become loving worshippers of God, captured by His glory and in awe of His holiness.” (80)
“No one sins in a box. Our sin, mine included, effects [sic] not only those around us, but it stains the very name of God.” “No wonder no one is running to the church.” (85)
“The gospel is not only for us. He died not only for our sins but for the sins of the whole world (I John 2:2). He chooses us to be the vehicle that spreads His fame into all the world.” (96)
“There is a selfish side of Christianity. It is masked as love for Jesus, but really it is just a love for His gifts.” (101)
“The only way to reach all the nations is by sending people to all the nations.” (106)
“All believers are expected, like Paul, to align their lives with God’s global purpose and be a channel of the gospel to all the nations.” (107)
“America has over 400,000 churches and over 1 million Christian workers. That is one full-time Christian minister...for every 250 people here.” By contrast, Iran has 1 missionary for every 3 million people. India has 1 missionary for every 2 million people. (124-25)
Many of us are not looking for a missionary call. It would take a shove. “If every Christian is already considered a missionary, then all can stay put where they are, and nobody needs to get up and go anywhere to preach the gospel.” (126, quoting C. Gordon Olson)
“Most people think the world is like a pancake. When you pour on the syrup it spreads over the entire pancake. But the world is like a waffle, with many pockets of people groups, and the gospel doesn’t spread. (130-31)
“One of the greatest obstacles right now to the Great Commission is Christian parents.” (137)
“The reason there is a 10/40 Window is Christians are busy doing great Christian things.” (143)
“There is a subtleness to the American Dream that has snuck up on the church. Now you can go to church, live a moral life, raise a good family, but ultimately live for yourself....” “It is deadly to evangelism because no one wants to follow a church full of people claiming to live for Heaven, but running after the same carrots they chase after.” “The drug of the American Dream kills the brain cells of eternal thinking.” (147)
“The way to win in life and to finish the journey is to live with a vision of the end. Even though you are a great distance away you ‘see it.’” “This is what I mean by living by the compass. It is living life on purpose, directing the daily decisions of your life by the true north of God’s purposes toward the world.” (164)
“Are the things you are living for, worth Christ dying for?” (166, Leonard Ravenhill’s gravestone)
“If you are going to walk the journey, you must be open to the option of going long-term. The command has been for us to ‘go.’ If the journey is going to be completed, it will hinge on an army of relentless, passionate goers. The way to find your specific niche in the journey and exactly where God’s purpose is for your life is to obey and see.” (179)
“Everybody wants to follow someone that is going somewhere with a purpose.” (182)
“You were created for this one journey. Take your next step.” (202)
* * * * * *
God’s Purpose. Your Life. One Journey.
Claude Hickman
Pleasant Word, 2003, 202 pp. ISBN 1-4141-0036-1
www.thetravelingteam.org
Claude Hickman is the assistant director for The Traveling Team, a national missions mobilization movement. His book is a strong challenge to young people to give their lives for God’s purposes. This book is contemporary, energetic, “all out.” Give it to every young person you know.
“The more I grew spiritually the more I realized that God was not really interested in me Christianizing my life as much as He was interested in me crucifying my life.” (10)
“This generation is on an aggressive search for purpose.” (18)
“Life is too short to be harmless!” (18)
“God isn’t interested in joining your journey. You were created for His.” (19)
“Don’t be afraid of the unknown on the journey; be afraid of missing the life God has appointed you to live.” (20)
“The journey is the process in history and in your life where God brings all the ‘pieces’ together for the good of His final purpose.” (21)
“You can’t entrust your life to maps. The only way to be sure of your course in life is to trust...a compass. A compass...gives you direction.” “The great thing is that every believer gets a compass: knowledge of the general overarching purposes of God.” “Once I discovered what God was doing, I had a North Star to live my life by.” (21-22)
“God gives people direction more than directions.” (25)
“It is almost like we just Christianize whatever we want to do and call it ministry.” (25)
“It’s not about changing vocations, but about changing our passions.” (26)
“This generation’s worst fear is that they will choose the wrong path and miss their destiny.” (26) “The answer...is to know what is truly supreme in life; to have a North Star passion.” (27)
“No one has the boldness to tell anyone they are wasting their life on temporal things.” (28)
“Just because you read your Bible, go to church, throw in a college degree, achieve some impressive accomplishments and raise a good family and shake those all up in a long life, it doesn’t mean that out falls a life that counted for the eternal.” (31)
“We must begin the journey of finding our purpose with His end in mind—the fulfillment of the Great Commission.” (31)
“If you live without a vision of the glory of God filling the whole earth, you are in danger of serving your own dreams of greatness....” (35, quoting Floyd McClung)
“I was getting some great maps for my life, but I was locked in on a wrong destination.” “I had planned my life around the things that God was silent about instead of what He was clear about in His word.” (36-37)
“All the Christians we know are headed the same direction. As we look around, the lifestyle and pursuits of the average Christian look extraordinarily similar to the lifestyle and pursuits of the average non-Christian.” “This has damaging effects on our evangelism and paralyzing effects in our church.” (39)
The destination I was created for is God’s glory in all the earth. (40)
Don’t seek a map. Seek a compass. A compass is grounded in something outside of yourself. “The compass of God’s purpose allows us to have something to gauge our maps by.” (41)
“The story of God accomplishing His mission is the plot of the entire Bible. God’s mission is the backbone upon which the Bible is built and is best understood. Therefore, God’s mission is the reason there is a Bible at all.” (43, quoting Steve Hawthorne)
“God has one mission—all nations, and one method—all believers.” (45)
“The story of the Bible is a story of God’s plan to gather the worship of all the nations that He has created.” (47) “The compass of God’s purpose points toward this one end.” (50)
“The people God uses in His journey are not people who have incredible, unwavering faith; so much as they are normal people that are willing to take the next step....” (51)
“God’s purpose for the world is not just to save the lost, but to fill the earth with the knowledge of His greatness....” (52)
“The gospel has the authority to interrupt the course of your life.” (55)
“You cannot walk both your journey and God’s. There is only room in life for one journey.” (56)
“The great fear of most of this generation [is] to give their lives to the things that don’t really matter.” (57)
“If you are a Christian, you are in the family and responsible for the family mission—the salvation of all the nations.” (62)
“His plan for the nations is that they would become loving worshippers of God, captured by His glory and in awe of His holiness.” (80)
“No one sins in a box. Our sin, mine included, effects [sic] not only those around us, but it stains the very name of God.” “No wonder no one is running to the church.” (85)
“The gospel is not only for us. He died not only for our sins but for the sins of the whole world (I John 2:2). He chooses us to be the vehicle that spreads His fame into all the world.” (96)
“There is a selfish side of Christianity. It is masked as love for Jesus, but really it is just a love for His gifts.” (101)
“The only way to reach all the nations is by sending people to all the nations.” (106)
“All believers are expected, like Paul, to align their lives with God’s global purpose and be a channel of the gospel to all the nations.” (107)
“America has over 400,000 churches and over 1 million Christian workers. That is one full-time Christian minister...for every 250 people here.” By contrast, Iran has 1 missionary for every 3 million people. India has 1 missionary for every 2 million people. (124-25)
Many of us are not looking for a missionary call. It would take a shove. “If every Christian is already considered a missionary, then all can stay put where they are, and nobody needs to get up and go anywhere to preach the gospel.” (126, quoting C. Gordon Olson)
“Most people think the world is like a pancake. When you pour on the syrup it spreads over the entire pancake. But the world is like a waffle, with many pockets of people groups, and the gospel doesn’t spread. (130-31)
“One of the greatest obstacles right now to the Great Commission is Christian parents.” (137)
“The reason there is a 10/40 Window is Christians are busy doing great Christian things.” (143)
“There is a subtleness to the American Dream that has snuck up on the church. Now you can go to church, live a moral life, raise a good family, but ultimately live for yourself....” “It is deadly to evangelism because no one wants to follow a church full of people claiming to live for Heaven, but running after the same carrots they chase after.” “The drug of the American Dream kills the brain cells of eternal thinking.” (147)
“The way to win in life and to finish the journey is to live with a vision of the end. Even though you are a great distance away you ‘see it.’” “This is what I mean by living by the compass. It is living life on purpose, directing the daily decisions of your life by the true north of God’s purposes toward the world.” (164)
“Are the things you are living for, worth Christ dying for?” (166, Leonard Ravenhill’s gravestone)
“If you are going to walk the journey, you must be open to the option of going long-term. The command has been for us to ‘go.’ If the journey is going to be completed, it will hinge on an army of relentless, passionate goers. The way to find your specific niche in the journey and exactly where God’s purpose is for your life is to obey and see.” (179)
“Everybody wants to follow someone that is going somewhere with a purpose.” (182)
“You were created for this one journey. Take your next step.” (202)
* * * * * *
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