This is part one in a series of post to come over the next few days. I have been reflecting a lot lately on my ministry. Three years ago about this time I had been a church planter for only a few weeks. I wrote a few words on how I had hoped my ministry would turn out. Needless to say things went a differing direction than what I had expected. It went exactly as God wanted it to, in part to shape my view of ministry. Continue reading
Things that drive me nuts about established Christianity, a short list.
1. It doesn’t consistently reflect Jesus.
2. It often promotes an inaccurate image of God.
3. It makes church into something God never intended.
4. It talks about grace but often doesn’t live it.
5. It trivializes the reality of heaven and hell.
6. It trivializes the purpose of worship.
7. It trivializes theology.
8. It promotes Christians that church hop.
9. Many (if not most) Christians that don’t understand the gospel.
10. It reduces life and eternal stuff down into buffet style, pithy one-liners, driven by guys with egos, programs, or some other religious crap.
Some solutions, plant a church where people besides just me can say:
1. We seek to reflect Jesus seven days a week.
2. We seek to promote the true God even though we admit we certainly aren’t perfect.
3. We seek to clarify the identity of the church as a people and not a place.
4. We seek to exemplify every aspect of grace.
5. We seek to be honest about eternity both heaven and hell.
6. We seek to learn what God meant by he seeks those who will worship in spirit and truth.
7. We seek to give theology a central place in our worship since it is what God designed to educate us about Him.
8. We seek to make it abundantly clear that God doesn’t want us to date the local church.
9. We hope teach and live out the gospel by spelling it so people can live it out.
10. We hope to make Sunday service the high part of the week that launches into service throughout the week. We hope we move people in their relationship with God from curiosity to courting to life long commitment. We hope.
Bottom Line: I am a man filled with hope for what God may do.
Core Group Phase
1. Weeding out people that are there for personal needs
2. Get your people to give (where your treasure is there your heart is) Leaders, Gathers, Servant, Givers
You need a wing man
Mark’s answer.
Top 5
1. Get a wife
2. Bible
3. sleep
4. have her read the bible
5a. your done
Ed added the following and alternative to 5b.
Entrepreneur, go getter, maverick
5b. Get under someone else’s leadership, formalized spiritual leadership, kind of like a coach that can tell you what to do but also what you need to know.
The moderator Scott Thomas
added
remain humble and teachable
read C.J. Mahaney Humility
missio means sent
We need to know that God is sending and we need to respond to why God is sending.
Mission isn’t going, it is catching God’s mission.
1. God is a sender by nature.
We must live sent.
a. One who sends.
b. To the people who God is sent.
The sending God sends the church.
Ephesians 3:10
Missional
1. biblical faithful
2. culturally relevant
3. counterculture communities
If you want to plant biblical churches
1. You have got to be
2. got to do
3. and got to tell the gospel
We are looking for men.
It starts in the home.
40% of kids don’t have a dad in the home. They think that even have to be a wimp or a bully.
A man above reproach. that means no legalistic, nit-pickers, etc.
If you rush a man to quickly he is going to rush you.
One woman kind of man, where his eyes, heart, and hands are only on his wife.
Often ask your wife and children do you feel like a priority, do you know you are a priority?
Have a study at home, meet at the office.
You should be reading your bible in the context of being at your home and talking about it with your wife and your family.
1. read the bible
2. sing to Jesus
3. pray with them
have a plan for your family 1st
have a plan for your church 2nd
The people that matter the most are suppose to be your wife and your kids
Hebrews 13:7
Christ-centered
Trinitarian
Bible sufficiency
Out of Christology comes ecclessiology, missionology, theology
What we are basically saying is the gospel changes everything.
Principlogoy (the idea of reducing the scriptures just to principles) Don’t do it, it minimizes the cross and Christ.
Creation
Fall
Redemption
Consummation
We wonder why we have small Christians, it is because we have a small Jesus. If Jesus is not magnified something else will be magnified. If our cross isn’t being enlarged then we aren’t growing and we are raising something up as a false priority/gospel (in reality we are creating a false god).
Formalism
Legalism
Mysticism
Activism
Biblicism
Psychology-ism
Social-ism
Principle of Variability
Evaluate everything you do in light of the gospel?
Are people leaving with a great appreciation of what Jesus has done?
Is Jesus being lifted up in the groups, music, preaching?
Pride robs us of the glory of Christ because it exalts us over Christ.
Pride robs us of fellowship because it put us before others.
1. We preach because Jesus preached, and that is why we preach! Preaching comes from the Greek kerusso means to proclaim, to be the divine crier that tells the truth.
2. Preaching Jesus, we don’t proclaim what we want to proclaim, we don’t preach what is comfortable, we preach Christ and him crucified.
What do you hope to accomplish from your preaching? Romans 16:25
What is the gospel?
3 Goals of Preaching
1. To honor Jesus
2. Love and Conviction
3. Transformation occurs
We need at least 15 hours a week to let the passage we are going to preach to us and change us before it can change others. Not for presentation value, not for not stumbling over words, but to let it change our soul.
There is nothing normal in preaching. The subject is not ordinary. It is extraordinary. The subject is always Jesus either directly or indirectly.
Pray that you will let the good hand of the Lord rest upon you -Ezra 7:9-10.
1. We are entrusted with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
2. We are committed to the authoritative scriptures that God has a word for the whole world
3. We embrace the call of being missionaries in our own life. We have to have a middle earth mindset (John 17). We must be in the world but not out of the world.
4. We acknowledge our purpose is to take Christ to the irreligious world. We need to pause long enough to “Hear if we are in God’s mission. We need to make sure we are on God’s team and are not God’s enemy.
5. We must be willing to go even if it means we fall on our face.
6. We must be willing to sacrifice ourselves. We must rely on the HOLY SPIRIT.
7.
8. We must sacrifice.
I am working on name tag ideas for church. how about
If you ever wonder if you are doing something that is pleasing God then you may need to look and see what obstacles are in your way. I was at a church planter’s conference today that was just outside of Charlotte. Charlotte is about 4 hours from my house and I left at about 5 am after taking about 45 minutes to get out the door. Four AM wake ups are not in my general DNA. Anyway at the conference they finally got to the place where they started talking about raising money to pay for the church plant.
I am amazed at the guys who raised 50 to 60 thousand at the blink of a eye the year before launch and never seemed (seemed maybe the optimal word) to see that as much of a obstacle. I was thinking man that is really a obstacle our little church has had to face, in figuring out where we are going to raise the funds we need for our launch and hiring people. I went up to the speaker afterwards and asked how do you do that when you don’t have a bunch of contacts with deep pockets. He said you just got to do it. Not exactly the answer I was looking for. I left a little downbeat on that one. I got to thinking on the 4 hour trip back to Wilmington from the conference. Four hour trips are great for thinking time even when you are dog tired. Maybe, just maybe God is trying to grow our church and me expressly by setting up obstacles. Continue reading