Wrongfully Accused, Again

Has it ever happened to you? It happened to me again today. Someone said I said something that I didn’t. They did it to defend themselves and their lifestyle of sin. I guess they figured if they could make me look small, it would somehow make them bigger, or at least more righteous.

Several years ago, I realized that people will (dog) the Pastor or the church in order to make themselves appear better than the church. This way, when someone comes to invite them to church, they can use this as a way of saying, “your Pastor is no better than I am. Why should I come to your church?!” And boy if you did say what they said you said. Or if you did what they said you did, now they have every reason in the world to never come to church. As if by some miracle, you were as wise as Solomon and did everything perfectly.

I believe Jesus understood this. Mary and Martha would have blamed Him for their brother’s sickness and death, but the fact of the matter was it was their own lack of faith that allowed their brother to die. And for their lack of faith, Jesus wept. Adam himself wanted to blame his wife for his own sin. As much as Eve did play some part in tempting Adam, the real one at fault was no one else but Adam.

I’m sure if you have been in ministry long at all, you have counseled people only to have them use your good counsel to try to destroy your character and reputation. Personally, I refuse to allow other peoples sin to affect me. When they want to make excuses and bring my name into the situation, I have decided to quickly turn the conversation around and allow light to come into the problem. “The real reason there is a situation, is you have had an affaire, not that I counseled you or did not counsel you about this.” I think you get my thinking here. There are several examples I could give.

“My brother would have lived if you would have been here Jesus”. No, he would have lived if you would have prayed for him to live. Why bring my name into your faithlessness. “My family would have stayed together if the Pastor would have spent more time with us.” No, your family would still be together if you would have slept in your own bed. “I’d still be in the church if that Pastor wouldn’t have offended me with his preaching.” The only thing that is offended by good preaching, is sin. Why don’t you confess your faults and be healed instead of blaming the Pastor for your unrighteous lifestyle.

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.

Thinking Big - For a Change

One definition of insanity is to believe that you can keep doing what you’ve been doing and get different results.  We want revival.  We want growth in our churches and we think that it is somehow going to miraculously happen by the methods and programs we have used unsuccessfully for the past 20 years.  We think that because we did have “some” growth using manmade antiquated methods, that we are definitely on the right track. 

Someone once said , “It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.  If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”  I’m not so sure you have to run twice as fast to get somewhere else.  All you have to do is change the direction you are heading.  Many of us are “running as fast as we can and yet, we find ourselves stuck in the same place”.  Some of us are trying as hard as we can try.  We are working very very hard and yet at the end of the day, our efforts for the Kingdom are rewarded only minimally.  Why is that?

Peter and his co-workers had labored all night.  Using techniques and skills they had learned over a lifetime of working on fishing boats, they toiled fruitlessly in dangerous seas.    Their response to the Lord was, “We’ve caught nothing!”

Jesus who probably never spent a single day fishing on a boat tells them, “Cast your nets on the other side.”  Peter must have inwardly thought, “What does this carpenter know about fishing?”  “What can he tell me that I don’t already know?”  “I’ve been doing this all my life!” 

You know what happened. They caught a ton of fish, simply by changing the side of the boat they were casting their nets on.  Now you may also say, “Well, Jesus did a miracle for them”.  He may well have, however, notice that He did require them to do something they had never done before, to get the miracle.  Had Peter cast his net one more time from the same side of the boat he had been casting on, he would have again, pulled in empty nets.

Too many of us have worked all the night also and caught little or nothing.  We may brag that we’ve had a 10% or even 20% increase of growth to our church in the last year, but is that truthfully the kind of revival our Lord would want to give?  Considering the tens of thousands of people in your city, is 10% growth in our church really what He would want to give. 

The early Apostolics turned all of Asia upside-down in just 2 years.  What have we honestly accomplished in our city in the last 20 years?  Too many of us have only held onto the status quo.  While many churches have folded up (We don’t like to talk about these.) and others have barely grown at all.  

We call ourselves Apostolic.  We identify ourselves and our movement with the people of the book of acts.  We speak as if we have arrived at the same conclusions and understanding as those who turned Asia upside down in two years, but this preacher believes we have sadly fooled only ourselves. 

Let's be honest …  20 years ago, didn’t God give you a much greater vision than what you’ve realized.  Didn’t you step into this boat thinking, “I’m going to win my city!”.  “I’m going to have a great drought.”  “We’re going to have a great revival!”

If It's Frustrating You, It's Definitely Frustrating the Church

What are we talking about?  The loss of ministry momentum.  When the church starts and a pastor promotes a new ministry in the church, everyone gets excited.  That excitement is the fuel that this ministry is going to need to get started and for success to quickly begin to happen.  The labor and energy that goes into promoting new ministries within the church is great.  The planning aspect alone often takes many, many hours of several people working together to cause this new ministry to be possible.  However, once it starts, if constant encouragement and direction is not given, it could very possibly begin to lose its momentum within just a very short amount of time. 

Simply placing somebody over a ministry is not enough.  You have to work with that person, train them, encourage them, and let them know exactly what it is you hope to see accomplished in this new ministry.  This mentoring of the new leader is absolutely necessary if you want this new ministry to succeed.  However, oftentimes our own schedules don't allow us to properly train and equip the people that we placed over various ministries within the church.  When this happens, the new ministry begins to lose momentum.  Do your leaders consistently lose the encouragement that they need?  Do they have questions that are not being answered?  Do they lack the training and direction that they need, or are they too are simply losing interest?

Feed My Sheep

Few people will deny the theory that a local church stops growing as the size of the church building reaches 80% capacity.  The reason for this is purely human and not so spiritual.  Most people simply will not tolerate feeling crowded in the pews.  Using chairs instead of pews helps this problem somewhat, but eventually the congregants feel like their space is being invaded and they soon become uncomfortable. However this is not the biggest reason why churches plateau and stop growing.

We use the analogy that a fish will only grow to a certain size in a small fish bowl but in a larger pond for instance, the fish can grow much larger.  I’m not so sure however that God’s church should so easily be compared to a fish.  I suggest that the building is not necessarily the problem in most cases.  In fact, we have all seen churches who were literally bursting out at the seams.  In many parts of the world today, revival is happening at an unprecedented rate.  Pews are packed and chairs are in the aisles.  Some churches are utilizing 2-3 services per day to accommodate the crowds. 

While it is true that most people don’t like to be in a crowded atmosphere, it is also true that people will come when they are being fed.  Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me Peter?”   Peter responded in the affirmative and when he did, our Lord told him to “Feed my sheep.”  He did not tell Peter to house them or get them plenty of exercise.  He told him to “Feed Them”.

People who are starving in the natural will do everything they can to get even the smallest amount of food or water.   Something within them drives them on as they struggle to find something to fill their belly.  It is very sad that much of our world’s population goes to bed hungry and starving every day.

We are also living in a day when people are starving spiritually.  People are eating almost anything that comes along spiritually speaking.  Truth is often ignored in the famished rush to simply fill the starving spiritual belly.  People don’t care what you are preaching, just so it answers some of the gnawing that is in their heart and soul.  An alcoholic will receive the five (or is it six) step program and ignore the friend who is telling him about the delivering power of the Holy Ghost.  Why is that?   He’s hungry.  He wants whatever is going to fill his spiritual belly.  Mentally he makes the decision to do what is simplest and easiest to fix his spiritual problem.  That couple in the divorce court often don’t care if you say God is 3 or God is 1.  They are looking for the thing that is going to keep their family together.

What’s the greatest church growth program you could have this year?  Feed His sheep.  People won’t mind sitting closer to one another when your ministry is holding their family together.  When the Holy Spirit is the element that is behind every song and every sermon, people will crowd in to see and hear what is going on. 

The Work Of The Connector

In his book, The Turning Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes the work of the connector.  The connectors he explains are important to social epidemics.  The reason why a new restaurant would become the new hotspot in the community might well depend a great deal on the work of the connector.  You see, a connector is the person in the market place who tells all their friends about the great deal they just got at Wall Mart.  Or the fantastic food they ate at a new restaurant.  Every church has connectors in them.

I have identified my wife as being a connector.  Should Natalie find a bargain at say Wall Mart, she will immediately call her mother and sister on the phone and them about the great deal and why they should head over to Wall Mart as soon as they get off work.   My wife is a connector.  She loves telling people about everything from the newest restaurant, to the store who has a sale on paper napkins.

My life was changed by a connector.  I was 17 years old when I came into contact with this person.  95% of the relationships I have today are a direct result of this one connector in my life.  Mike was his name.  Had this person never told me about and invited me to his church, I never would have met most of the people who I now know as my close friends and colleagues.  He was not a preacher.  He was a connector.

Something excited him about his church and he could not help himself to share it with someone else.  Mike is not an orator.  He is not a teacher of God’s word.  But he connected me to the people who would eventually change my life. 

We all have had the work of a connector in our lives.  They introduced us to the church.  They introduced us to our spouse.  They told us the kind of car we should buy.  They work behind the scenes to promote projects, products and agendas and they do it every day without pay or recognition.  You might say it’s their personality.  I would say it’s more of an obsession with some people.

My wife can’t help herself.  She has to share her good fortune.  I have told her in the past to keep some bargains to herself.  Like the beautiful new dress she just got off a clearance rack for a few bucks.  I tell her let people think you paid a little something for it, but no, she has to tell the world where they can get the same deal.  She loves to be the connector.

Leadership's Limitations

In this unpredictable and changing world, the one thing we can always control is the way we think. While we have little control over circumstances or the actions of others, we can control our reactions to them. And anyone can learn how to think more positively and operate with a better attitude, regardless of circumstances, temperament, or intellect. To begin thinking more positively and leading your people to do the same, follow these guidelines:

Act like the person you wish to become.
To start thinking positively, begin by acting positively. Most of us wait until we feel like taking action, but that’s going about it backwards. Instead, by putting our desires into action, we can establish a habit of thinking positively – and this results in a positive attitude.

Cultivate a Consistent Positive Attitude.
To reap a successful harvest, a farmer doesn’t plant seeds and then just expect them to grow on their own. He must continually water, weed, fertilize and nurture the growing plants if he wants them to reach maturity. Likewise, if we want a successful life, we need to spend time everyday nurturing our attitude. Focus on the positive and successful. Don’t feed the weeds.

Momentum - Leading the song service

Don't slow it down to fit your expectation of what the service should be doing. 

It doesn't have to be a fast song, just don't let it be a dead one. 

Just Don't Quit!

The story goes like this...

The guy wakes up on Sunday morning and say's, "I'm not going to church today!" "Why not?" The good wife asks. "I just don't feel like it and besides, I'm not sure everyone there likes me. In fact, I'm sure that Sister Jones outright hates me!" The man retorts. "Well you have to go." Responds his wife. "Why's that?" He asks. "Because", she says, "You're the Pastor!"

Ever been there? Don't answer that. I can't find much scripture on this, but I honestly feel a spirit of Defeat attack me at least one day out of the week. This little guy must keep a tight schedule, since he always comes on the exact same day. Hardly ever does he come around on an off day. It's always the same day, Monday!

You may not understand this unless you've Pastored or been in ministry for a while. I've heard other ministers say this Imp who I will call Defeat, attacks them on Mondays too. So I suppose I am not alone on this one.

I'm not much of a quitter. Quitting is just not in me. Sometimes I wonder if I'm too stubborn to quit, or too stupid to realize it's time to quit. Like old Shammah. Defending a field of lintels against a whole troop of Philistines. Just him and an dead donkey's jawbone.

Was that guy tough or just not smart enough to get out of the way? We've preached him tough, but I really worry for the man. He didn't have much to work with there. Why didn't he just fall back (quit) and regroup? You know, get some help. I believe I have the answer...He was neither stubborn or dumb. He knew his purpose!