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Tag: church

  • What say you?

    Ran across an interesting quote today that I’m still digesting. What do you have to say?

    “Perhaps it is in this awareness of the ‘needs of the other’ that we, as an increasingly crabby church, can reconnect with the Jesus of the Whole Gospel, our Savior and lover of our souls; forgetting our own petty inconveniences and embracing the true pain and suffering that is going on around us. Teaching, showing, and demonstrating the compassion of the Good Samaritan could be the ounce of cure that is needed to prevent the spiritual burden of navel gazing upon our own boring and meaning deprived lives.”

  • Why Church Marketing is Important

    Because it’s not only about what you want to say, but about what you may be unintentionally be saying.

    Make sure you send some love to whoever at your church works hard behind the scenes to make sure that you’re communicating clearly!

  • Reflections from Staff Retreat

    This past week we had a day-long staff retreat. It was an incredible time of just continuing to get to know the staff I serve with, but also an extremely inspiring and spiritually energizing day. I thought that I’d share my notes from one of the sessions we had.

    Session: The Five Greatest Leadership Challenges

    Challenge #1: The emotional challenge

    The three-headed monster of ministry

    • Fear: of failure, of what people think
      • The cure? Failure in small doses to build up immunity
    • Discouragement
      • The cure? Zooming out.
        • “Leadership is about what God has done and leading from overflow”
    • Jealousy
      • The cure? A kingdom mindset

    “The happiest and healthiest people can laugh at themselves the most”

    Personal Note: I need to be able to laugh at my mistakes sooner.  I have no problem with looking back at past mistakes and laughing at them.  My problem is becoming defensive right away when I find myself in a situation where I have made a mistake.

    I need to be a person that does these two things:

    1. Recognize and admit my mistakes right away
    2. Be transparent and lighthearted enough about them so that i communicate that “Failure can be fun and funny.”

    Challenge #2: The family challenge

    “Do not sacrifice your family on the altar of ministry”

    “If you don’t control your calendar, your calendar will control you — set boundries.

    “Disciple your family first”
    I should be praying and strategizing my plan for discipling my family MORE that I plan and strategize my plan for discipling the people I pastor.

    “Don’t apologize for taking time for yourself, to be with family, friends, or to be with the Lord over time in vocational ministry”
    Not only should I not apologize publicly about choosing time to self/relationships over ministry, I should admit them.  For instance, when an opportunity for ministry comes up that conflicts with a pre-arranged priority with family, I should openly admit it.  For example, I should say, “I have a prior commitment to Leona and I cannot do _______”

    Challenge #3: The criticism challenge

    “Don’t let an arrow of criticism pierce your heart unless it first passes through the filter of Scripture.”

    • I need to make sure I pause first when I receive criticism to let it pass through the filter of Scripture

    “Stay Humble”

    • Be teachable
    • View everything as a gift from God
    • The ceiling of faithfulness can be found estblished most of the time by the prescence of pride

    “Don’t play defense”

    “Consider the source”

    • Are critics bringing criticism because they desire that their church be a placed that they can actively invite their unsaved friends to attend?

    “Be yourself”

    • Don’t try to be a leader or a pastor — just be yourself (couple this with challenge #5 sub-point “Be concerned about personal growth — not about church growth)

    Challenge #4: The staffing challenge

    “Hire someone with a sense of humor”

    • Those you surround yourself with ought to be able to not take life/themselves too seriously.  To me, this is another way to describe the importance of having people who have accurate estimations of self, aka “Humility”

    “Be Concerned about personal growth”

    • This ought to be the only thing I worry about as a pastor.  Church growth is not my concern.  Biblically speaking, it isn’t even my responsibility because the Lord builds His Church…and the gates of hell will not prevail against it!

    “Keep dreaming God-sized dreams”

    • It is important to make initiatives in ministry that absolutely cannot happen without the Lord’s intervention.  When I find myself only planning things that “I know” will have success, then I should be worried.

    Challenge #5: The spiritual challenge

    • Keep a healthy pace

    “Don’t do the work of God in a way that destroys the work of God in you”

    • Make sure you have a mentor
    • Be concerned about personal growth
      • Don’t worry about church growth
    • Keep dreaming God-sized dreams

  • Make fun of yourself…

    Because it’s healthy to be able to laugh at yourself, I laughed at this video:

    [vimeo 11501569]

    HT: edsetzer.com

  • “Not so Famous” quotes

    “You can’t be late and expect to get taco bell!”

    When I was about 15 years old I got shoved into the position of leading worship for my church’s youth group by (at that time) the “new” youth pastor.   I learned a lot of things about ministry and leadership at that time, but one of the greatest lessons he taught me was during the one night I arrived late to my own worship team practice.

    During the formation of our new worship team we started rehearsing at around 5:30pm before church, which was tough as high school kids just getting out of school. So to do what I thought was a way to “reward” us for making the sacrifice of coming out early, my youth pastor said he’d buy us all Taco Bell.  The only condition was that we needed to at the church at 5pm if we wanted free taco bell.

    Well I didn’t arrive until 5:30pm.  And when I got there, I came in (like a typical teen) expecting to get some food. When I found out the food was gone, I made a big stink that I didn’t get dinner and I probably had some lame excuse for being late too. My youth pastor looked me right in the face and told me, “Phil, you can’t be late and expect to get taco bell!”

    That day was the moment I learned some huge principles in leadership.

    1. Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable. As a leader, my actions set the precedent of what “on time” means. If for me, being on time means 5 minutes late in reality, then whenever I say, “Be there by so and so” people will always feel that what I’m really saying is “be there at ‘so and so’ but if you’re 5 minutes late, it’s cool.”
    2. The reward for doing what you’re supposed to do is the doing. Too many times you can place your hopes in the result of your “doing” as a reward, when the “doing” is the reward. If we as leaders can begin by seeing that being a leader is a reward that God has given, then it will take the focus off of us, because leadership is not about you, it’s about others.
    3. People are watching. Leadership is about influencing others. That night I learned that acting out of selfishness caused a diminishing effect on my leadership status in front of those who I was leading. Yes I was hungry, but as a leader, there is a fine line between “keeping it real” and understanding that my actions can hurt my ability to influence others. (1 Corinthians 9:11-23)
    4. Keep the main thing the main thing. Taco bell was a reward for coming to worship practice, but I as a leader did not accept the position to get taco bell. I wanted to be used by God to lead people into real encounters with a living God. If I was focused on that, then I would have thought with my head instead of my stomach.

  • “How’s your church doing?”

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    When I hear this question, I know what’s being asked.

    • How many people showed up on Sunday?
    • What is the giving like?
    • What percentage of your congregation is serving at the church?
    • What kind of “Big Days” did you pull off?

    As of recently, I’ve been wanting to answer that question like this:

    “Well, the Church that I am a part of is doing great!  In fact, it is doing better than ever because God said that He will build His church.  Now are you asking about how THE church is doing, or are you asking how our people are doing?  If that’s the case, then I would say that they are

    Broken

    Unemployed

    Recently Divorced

    Hurting

    BUT

    Totally depending on Jesus and the expression of him through the local fellowship of believers that I am a part of.

    Continually moving towards maturity in their love for God and their obedience to loving others without agenda.

    So I guess we’re doing pretty good.

    Don’t ask me how my church is doing.  That’s easy to answer.

    Ask me how the people are doing.  That’s a messier story, but it’s authentic, it’s relational, and can be life-changing.

  • Book Review: Missional Renaissance

    Missional Renaissance

    “Missional” is just another spin at Christian-ese.

    A new generation of ultra-hip, establishment-abortionists with their mac computers and iPhones has come up with a new “catch-phrase” to label their definition of what they think church should be. Why “missional?” Can’t we just say we are biblical?

    This is what I used to think when I heard of the word “Missional” being tossed around a few years ago.  Fortunately, my own personal journey of following Christ has allowed me the opportunity to see beyond my own stubborn paradigms.  So when I received this book in the mail, I was open and excited to explore a movement that defines many Christ-followers, who I have judged before even taking the time to understand.

    The first thing I realized when I started reading this book was that what I thought the term “MISSIONAL” meant – was wrong.  Being Missional isn’t some trite or redesigned way to describe a people who are evangelistic or believers who like to drink at bars (though being at a bar may be an intentional strategy to fulfilling God’s desire for biblical living).

    I will be honest and say that I am still processing a lot of this information.  Right off the bat, I found some things I was saying, “YEAH!!  RIGHT ON!”  Then there were things I was saying, “REALLY?   THAT‘s biblical?”  But overall, I found that nothing heretical in nature was found.  In fact, I am starting to believe that the “Missional Mindset” may, in fact, truly be a renaissance of sorts in the organization of the people of God – the church.  With that said, here are some things that stuck out to me, ranging from things I totally agree about to the things I need to break open my bible and talk with God about.

    • We must change our ideas of what it means to develop a disciple, shifting the emphasis from studying Jesus and all things spiritual in an environment protected from the world to following Jesus into the world to join Him in His redemptive mission.
    • …study after study continues to reveal that active church members do not reflect a different value set than the culture at large.
    • Missional followers of Jesus don’t belong to a church. They are the church.
    • Our job is not to “do church” well but to be the people of God in an unmistakable way in the world.
    • The missional follower of Jesus cannot conceive of their spiritual identity outside of being in accountable and encouraging relationships with other Jesus followers.
    • …substituting religions activity for helping people doesn’t cut it with God.
    • People deserve to be blessed simply because they are people, not just so we can “witness” to them.
    • When the church thinks it’s the destination, it also confuses the scorecard.
    • Substituting church activity as the preferred life expression is as weird as believing that airports are more interesting than the destination they serve.
    • The missional church, as you might guess, has an allergic reaction to the reach-and-assimilate social engineering of people.
    • People will accept help in shaping their spiritual path…especially from people they respect and trust, who seem to have their best interests at heart.
    • …if the [YMCA] operated like the church, it’d bring people in once a week, feed them coffee and donuts, and let them watch Jason [the club personal trainer] work out!
    • Maturation is messy. It takes time.  It doesn’t occur linearly.  Maturation occurs in an atmosphere where accountability is expected and practiced.
    • Giving people information without providing means for application and accountability for their behaviors turn them into knowledgeable but disobedient people.
    • …the New Testament discussion about gifts and ministry occurred in a world where acts of ministry were primarily done in the marketplace, not “at church.” They were being the church in the world.
    • …missional leaders…believe [they] are on a mission in the world and are partnering with God in blessing the people in [their] sphere of influence.

    How “Missional” are you?

  • Missional huh?

    Photo 9

    Today I got my copy of Reggie McNeal’s Missional Renaissance: Changing the scorecard for the church.  To be honest, I don’t really know with this book is about.  As a new member of the staff at Maple Grove Evangelical Free Church I know that this was a book that I was encouraged to read, since everyone else had already read it.  Looking forward to expanding my mind!  As the old saying goes: “Leaders are readers.”

    I’m gonna go get my read on!