When They've Heard It All Before

How do we preach to those who have heard it all? Here are seven ingredients:

• Round out Bible characters. For many sermon veterans, familiar Bible characters are flat, one dimensional, either good or bad. But real people have inner tensions, complications, and mixed motives. When a preacher portrays that, listeners identify readily.
  
• Get specific about application. An example is more powerful than an explanation. There’s a world of difference between telling someone that prayer changes things and sharing a fresh example of a situation transformed by prayer.
  
• Let it grip your soul. A critical quality in preaching effectively to those who’ve heard it all is sincerity. If our sermon is honest and heartfelt, a truth as common as “Jesus loves you” can thunder in the hearts and minds of our listeners.
  
• Address the tough question. We would like to think that hearing a lot of sermons would answer most of a person’s questions. But people who have heard it all love to hear a preacher tackle the tough ones.
  

Conducting a Spiritual Audit

Twelve questions to keep your personal accounts in order.

1. Am I content with who I am becoming? Every day I get one day closer to who I will ultimately be. Am I satisfied with who this will be?
2. Am I becoming less religious and more spiritual? The difference: I can control religion, while spirituality controls me.
3. Does my family recognize the authenticity of my spirituality? If I am growing spiritually, my family will recognize it.
4. Do I have a flow-through philosophy? As a Christian I am to let the blessings flow through me to others.
5. Do I have a quiet center to my life? There is an important difference between the fast track and the frantic track. Peace is the evidence of God.
6. Have I defined my unique ministry? Unless you know the things you can do uniquely well, you end up doing many mediocre things just to please others.
7. Is my prayer life improving? One test is: Do my decisions have prayer as an integral part, or do I make decisions out of my desires and then pray?

Shared Values Make A Difference

People work better when they are working towards the same goal.  When agendas or expectations differ, confusion often wins over production.

Take the time to get people on the same track.  Taking the time to educate and motivate people towards the same agenda will pay dividends.   You may want to start a project or ministry today, but consider that this vision may be for a future date.  God sometimes speaks to leaders about things we think are for today, but in reality, they are events God would cause to happen in the future.  Take the time to educate people and cause them to come under the same burden and vision that you have. This will make the process much easier once God’s plan begins to unfold.

Create teams.  People work better when they have someone else to lean on now and then.  A team can encourage each other and help to share burdens.  This also allows people who are inexperienced and who would otherwise be unable to get involved the opportunity to gain experience.  They may later be able to lead a team of their own.

Pastor/Leader – explain your vision thoroughly. Most people want to follow their leader’s vision.  This is absolutely necessary in the church.  Differing visions can kill revival in the church.  “One Vision” should be the theme of every new venture of the church.  When people are following the Pastor’s vision, their own agenda does not get into the way.

Working As A Team

At a Midwestern Fair, spectators gathered for an old fashioned horse pull. The Grand-champion horse pulled a sled with 4,500 pounds on it. The runner up was close, with a 4,400 pound pull. Some of the men wondered what the two horses would pull if hitched together. Separately they totaled nearly 9,000 pounds, but when hitched and working together as a team, they pulled a total weight of over 12,000 pounds.

Herein lies the value of team work. There is some kind of energy that is exchanged when someone feels that there is someone working with them.

I read somewhere a while back of a ward in a particular hospital for premature babies. In one case there was an infant who was several months premature. The mother and father had abandoned the baby at the hospital and it looked as though the child would die. The doctors and nurses did everything they could to care for it, but in all that they did, it grew weaker. In a last ditch effort, one nurse had the idea to place another healthier infant in the same bed as the weak infant. She made sure that the two children were close and touching at all times. Immediately upon feeling the touch of the stronger infant, the weaker one's heart rate began to get stronger and stronger. After several days of touching and being touched by the stronger infant, the preemie became stronger and soon was able to eat on it's own and became healthy.

As leaders, I believe it is paramount that we understand the value of the existent and potential leaders around us. Moses was a man who tried to do everything by himself. He was someone who felt that if God called him to a task, then God would give him the supernatural strength to complete the task. Moses also found out that he was wrong in his assumption.

Moses' father in-law on the other hand, was someone who saw untapped leadership resources everywhere he looked. So, he suggested that Moses find, recruit and train other leaders to assist him in his leadership responsibilities. Once Moses did this, he was not only able to sleep at night, but the needs of Israel were met.

Jesus hardly started His ministry before he chose out 12 men to train in leadership. He understood multiplication instead of addition. Rather than build the church on one man's shoulders, he chose to build it on 13. His and 12 others. As a result of this, when His own life and ministry was ending, 11 others were just beginning. The beauty of the situation was that not one of them detracted from his own ministry, but rather added to it.

How to Keep Those We Reach

A question haunts many conscientious leaders. Although many people receive the Holy Spirit, many do not remain. Their new birth often proves to be more of a stillbirth. How can we reduce the number of stillbirths and lead newborn Christians into meaningful relationships with the Lord and the church?

Statistics reveal that unless a new convert is able to develop six or seven new relationships in the church within 9 months, he will probably leave the church. To compensate for this, we need to develop a caring community to nurture and integrate these people into the life of the church. Such a program will include:

• A. A strong commitment from the leadership, not only to reap, but to keep the harvest;
  
• B. A method for nurturing new converts; and
  
• C. A way to help the new convert make friends in the church.

Here is a method that is working in several churches.

1. Start with a new convert’s follow- up class to be taught by the pastor. He may later turn it over to someone else with the ability to care for, teach, and nurture new converts.
   
2. Find one or two couples who are outreach oriented, motivated by love, and loyal to the pastor to work in the area of new convert follow- up.

7 Things to Consider When Asked to “Lead the Service”

All too often the people who lead the service mislead it.  These good people whom the Pastor has asked to help out in the service many times serve to cause frustration and confusion in a church service.

Leading a service properly can bring about a move of God that can break every yoke in the service.  Leading it improperly can cause people to go home more bound than they were when they came. 

Every element of the service should prepare the way for the next.  The end result of the service is the move of God in the alter.  When you get in the way of the progression, you kill the potential of what could happen.

Here are a few things to consider when asked to “Lead the service”. 

Keep it moving.  Don’t allow for delays or “dead air” places in the services.  In radio, “dead air” is when you hear silence.  It is also when the producer did his job wrong and did not prepare for those seconds of the day.  It is during this time that many people will change the channel or turn off their radio.  You don’t want this happening in the church service.  “No Dead Air!”

Do not continually comment.  If you are introducing the various singers and elements of the service don’t comment each time on the last person who sang or spoke.  Just introduce the next part of the service.

Be prepared.  Have a written outline of how the service will run.  This way you will not forget any part or aspect of the service.  (Forgetting to have the children’s choir sing when they have practiced all week will get a lot of people upset at you.)

Don’t ramble.  Recently I attended a service where the person who led the service in the Pastor’s leave, killed it with his constant rambling.  He actually spoke more than the preacher did.  He thought he was funny with his jokes and spiritual with his “little messages”.  Needless to say, the congregation did not pay much attention to the preacher when he was finally introduced, since they already heard plenty of oratory from the person leading the service.  I love preaching, but I have to admit, the guy leading this service wore me out.

The Dark Side of Spiritual Abuse -- Part 3

This is the third installment in a series on spiritual abuse. The whole idea of spiritual abuse is a very troubling at best. The church was intended to be a place of redemptive recovery facilitated by the grace of God. When manipulative control moves to the forefront it can have a very harmful effect on the people who gather to worship. It also has to be established that spiritual abuse can take place in a reverse order. It can originate from the congregation in the form of a board of elders or a single influential member who controls the pastor through financial means or sometimes through psychological and physical intimidation. Increasingly one will find the reverse order in churches that once had to deal with a pastor who was spiritually abusive.

Spiritual abuse is defined as “the mistreatment of a person who is in need of help, support, or greater spiritual empowerment, with the result of weakening, undermining or decreasing that person’s spiritual empowerment.” It can be defined another way as “destructive and dangerous involvement in a religion that allows the religion, not a relationship with God, to control a person’s life. He also goes on to say, “People broken by various experiences, people from dysfunctional families, people with unrealistic expectations, and people out for their own gain or comfort seem especially prone to it.”Spiritual leaders who resort to this kind of activity may or may not immediately recognize the control they are exerting. The trend usually isn’t immediately recognized but as time passes the cycle of behavior manifests in a manner that has a horrific effect on people’s lives. Even worse is the leader who acclimates himself to a state of denial of his own personal responsibility. To compensate for the increasingly unsettled environment, he may begin to assign all of the spiritual shipwrecks of the past as those who were “wolves” or “rebellious.”

As I filtered through all of the material concerning spiritual abuse, I jotted down a series of questions concerning not just the church but the leader too. They were based more on a rhetorical nature that did not so much require an answer but rather an evaluation of the spiritual health of the place where this activity is taking place.

• What does spiritual abuse do to those who worship there? How does it affect their sense of worship and understanding of God?

• Can God have freedom to transform and can grace really do an adequate work in this atmosphere where fear, intimidation, and manipulation prevail?

• Can true spiritual growth and discipleship take place in this setting?

• What do the actions of the pastor have on his soul in the long term? This was a very troubling question to me personally. What dark things begin to take place in the soul of the pastor who exerts force in such a way that he is never challenged and held to a standard of accountability himself?

• Are his actions motivated by pride of place or position?

• Has he moved from being an under-shepherd to a lord over God’s heritage? Such spiritual abuse literally takes the place of God in the working of the church.

• Is there a sense of the grace of God reflected in any of the public ministry of the Word?

• Is there an attempt to place heavy weights on the people he is called to shepherd?

• Does he empower people to live in a venue of spiritual growth in a public setting as well as within the private confines of the heart?

Decision Making

Most leaders must constantly work at making decisions simple. The implication of a decision will always be complex enough, and sometimes we try to solve or deal with all the implications - the how, who, why, how much and so on at the same time we make the decision.

What are the five to ten most relevant, proven facts in this situation?

• Right up front, distinguish proven facts from what are simply your assumptions. Assumptions are what we believe to be true. They can be very faulty foundations on which to build your decision. A proven fact is "Last month the house down the street sold for X dollars." An assumptions is "I think houses in this neighborhood will generally sell for about X dollars."
  
• The most frequent violation of sound decision making is trying to decide before all the facts are known. Somehow in our minds we have a need to decide now, a need to bring closure, a need to have things settled. Because an undecided situation often brings us stress, our minds compel us to make a decision too quickly before all the facts are in. "Once the facts are clear, the decisions jump out at you." Find out the facts!

How will this decision impact all the people involved?

• Who are the main players? Who else will be affected? People in other departments? You spouse and children?

What will be the long-term impact of this situation?

• What will be the long term impact of this decision?
  
• How would this decision affect people a year from now? Five or ten years from now? By the time the children leave home? By the time I retire?
  
• The more reversible the decision and it's consequences the freer you are to move faster in making it.

What legal, moral, or ethical concerns are involved in the decision?

• Be clear on these factors, especially if it's a big decision involving major commitments of money, time, and energy and affecting a number of lives.
  
• Understand the difference between these three categories. Legality is based on a coded law. Morality is based on a moral code or trust. Ethics are based on an accepted local or cultural standard.
  
• Sort out these terms and their application to your decision making process, since some decisions you make could be legal and yet immoral or ethical and yet illegal.

Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff

Here are some simple ways to keep the little things from taking over your life:

1. Ask yourself the question, “Will this matter a year from now?” Is what you are worked up over going to matter a year from now? If not, don’t let it destroy you today.
   
2. Practice Humility. The less compelled you are to try to prove yourself to others, the easier it is to feel peace inside.
   
3. Remember that you become what you practice the most. How do you spend your time? What you do is what you become.
   
4. Every day, tell at least one person something you like, admire, or appreciate about them. Telling others that you appreciate them takes almost no effort, but pays enormous dividends.
   
5. Choose your battles wisely. Every circumstance or problem is not worth the fight. There will always be things and people that don’t do right.
   
6. Life is a test. It is only a test. When you look at life as a test, you begin to see each issue as an opportunity to grow.
   
7. Remind yourself that when you die, your “In Basket” won’t be empty. The purpose of life isn’t necessarily to get it all done, but to do the right things.