Category: Ministry

Why is our evangelism broken?

A friend posted the following question on Facebook. I wanted to respond, but I did not want to blow up the thread. So, I decided to take some time to think about the question and respond more fully (mainly for my sake).

On to the question.

Should our focus lean more towards training church members to invite someone to church so they can hear the gospel or on training them to share the gospel without a church invite in mind?

Let me make a couple of observations right at the beginning.

  1. I believe framing of the question is all wrong, but I understand (at least I think I do) why it is asked this way.
  2. The problem the Church has to address is its insistence on defining/describing the church as a location.

I want to unpack my two observations a little more fully. This is an important issue and one that we have to work harder at addressing in the Church.

First, I believe the question is all wrong.

Why? Because it poses a question that God, Jesus, the Bible, the apostles, church history will NEVER be able to answer. And the reason the question won’t be answered is that it doesn’t actually identify a problem the aforementioned saw as an issue. The idea of inviting people to go to a location to receive information has been completely foreign to the life of the church.

The notion of “thought leaders,” “content matter experts,” “influencers” and gurus is a modern innovation. This is not the way that people generally looked for answers to their questions. Life was the great teacher. And the people you did life with were the primary source of learning and growing.

To go a little deeper here, the Church does not have a focus, it has a mission. Christians don’t do training, we engage in discipleship. We don’t invite people to church, we receive them into the body. The church is not the place to hear the Gospel, it’s where believers receive instruction for Gospel mission it’s when believers assemble to receive instruction for Gospel mission. Until we straighten out how we are thinking and talking about these issues, we will continue to have issues.

Second, we have to stop talking about the Church as a place. Period.

The Church is everywhere. And, there may be expressions of that one Church in local congregations. And, those congregations may meet in a variety of locations. But there is still and always will be one Church. No matter how messed up the people who make her up.

This is something I’m actually working on myself. I don’t want to invite people to church. I want to invite them to visit our fellowship, or to come and enjoy our community, or attend our gathering. Anything that makes the invitation about the people present.

We have to move away from using the concepts of marketing and branding as the lens through which we interpret the Church’s identity and purpose. These are tools. Tools that we should redeem. But when the tools become the means by which we understand who and what we are, it may be time to check our hearts!

The Pastor’s Greatest Enemy

It was one of the most pronounced encounters with the Holy Spirit of my life because I knew that I had crossed a line in my relationship with God.

I have shared this story in a couple of places, but I will share it again here for those who may not be familiar with it. It is the best example I have of what can happen to those of us called to vocational ministry if we are not watchful over our lives. I actually give thanks to God for his grace in teaching me through the events you will read below about how wrong my thinking was with regard to my place in God’s great plan.

I was 19 years old and had accepted the position as Interim Pastor of a small, country church. I want to say from the outset that this was a wonderful church filled with some of the finest folks I have ever known. This is not a story about them exactly even though God used the intersection of our paths to teach me an important lesson.

My responsibilities were to preach on Sunday morning and evening and to teach a Wednesday night bible study. At the time I was trying to figure out what I should be doing because I knew God had called me into full-time ministry. At the campus ministry where I was involved, I saw an advertisement had been posted for someone to come and preach. After some “encouragement” (a story for another day) I called and made plans to go and preach. For the next three weeks, I was asked to return and preach the following week. After the fourth week, I told the members (all 7 of them) that I would continue to preach until they were able to find someone to take over the position full-time. I was still in school and did not feel that I should take on the church.

Everything was going wonderfully (or so I thought). After several months I was growing frustrated because I felt that my talents were being wasted in this small, country church. I decided to vent to my dad as I was driving home one Wednesday night. I can’t remember if I actually said these words, but they capture the sentiment from which I was speaking. To summarize, I was essentially telling my dad, “I am too good for this place.”

Even now as I write those words it is shocking how pretentious and arrogant they are. But that is how I was feeling at the ripe old age of 20. My dad reminded me that I wouldn’t be there forever; that God was using that small church to help teach me some things about preaching and ministry. I don’t remember everything he said, but I do remember not being entirely satisfied with his words.

A few days later it was Sunday again. The service was going as normal. We typically sang a song before the message and this morning a song I had never heard before was chosen. It is called “Little Is Much If God Is In It” by Kittle L. Suffield.

Here is a rendition of that song by The Gaither Vocal Band.

Gaither Vocal Band - Little Is Much When God Is In

They do a much better version of the song than I heard that day. However, I can tell you, as God is my witness, I will never forget how the Holy Spirit used that moment and that song to absolutely take a wrecking ball to my pride.

In particular, the second verse brought on me such a heavy weight of conviction after the things I had said and thought in the days prior, that I began to weep. I lost all control. It was one of the most pronounced encounters with the Holy Spirit of my life because I knew that I had crossed a line in my relationship with God. I could not deny it and I accepted the burden of my shame. I had not only been disobedient, I had become rebellious against God’s purposes in my life.

The second verse goes like this:

Does the place you’re called to labor
Seem so small and little known?
It is great if God is in it,
And He’ll not forget His own.

Refrain:
Little is much when God is in it!
Labor not for wealth or fame;
There’s a crown, and you can win it,
If you go in Jesus’ name.

After that day, I made a promise to God. I told God that I would NEVER hold back in my preaching or shy away from any opportunity to share the Gospel. I promised to never look at the numbers and determine how good I was going to preaching. If all I was called to preach to were 7 (as was the case in that small church), I would preach with everything within me. And if it was to 700 or 7,000, I would preach with the same energy and passion. I have not gone back on my promise.

If you are a pastor or called to some form of vocational ministry, you have a great enemy. But, that enemy does not exist “out there.” That enemy is that small voice that keeps telling you that some task is beneath you. It is that feeling that you are too good for some assignment or that you are too talented to listen to someone of lesser ability. That is not the posture of a servant of God.

Your calling is a gift to you. God did not have to call you, but he did. But your calling is also a gift to those to whom you are sent. When you accept an assignment you are there to take what God has placed within you and share it with others.

That is why when we hold back we are doing harm to both them and us. We harm those we serve because we deny them the best we can offer. And, we harm ourselves because we grieve God with our disobedience, causing a rift in our relationship with him.

I want to encourage you to not give ground or to give in to this enemy. Never forget that where you are is where you are supposed to be. God is at work if we are available to work alongside.

I’ll say this as final thought. It’s something my dad says frequently: “I want to be so available to God that he has no choice but to use me.” That has become a helpful reminder to me.

How about you? How available are you to God?

The Ambassador Way, Pt. 3 | Embrace Your Mission

When you know who you are and why you exist, how you are going to live out these two realities is vitally important.

Introduction

This is the third article in series about The Ambassador Way. This is how I have described what it means to live out our identity as called out group of believers. If we are going to make sense of what we are supposed to do, we have to intentionally move through each of these phases. Each phase helps us stay focused on the main thing for our church.

So, once you have defined your identity as a church and have articulated your vision, the next step is to embrace your mission. When you know who you are and why you exist, how you are going to live out these two realities is vitally important. Continue reading “The Ambassador Way, Pt. 3 | Embrace Your Mission”

The Ambassador Way, Pt. 2 | Articulate Your Vision

In my last post, I talked about the importance of defining our churches identity. The reason for defining our identity as a church is that it will help to sift out those things that are not “us.” They are not things that we should be doing. As leaders in the church, we should not be afraid of saying that something simply does not fit into who God is calling us to be. It is right to make sure that, as a church, we understand who we are and who we are supposed to be. Continue reading “The Ambassador Way, Pt. 2 | Articulate Your Vision”

Pastoring with my Dad

Since January of 2014, I have served with my dad in the church that he planted in Columbus, GA. It was and is a dream come true. Ever since I felt the calling of God to pastoral ministry I had hoped of working with him, serving with him, and sharing in the journey of ministry. However, during the time that he was a military chaplain that was simply impossible. Continue reading “Pastoring with my Dad”

The Ambassador Way, Part 1: Defining Our Identity

In the first three months of arriving at Ambassadors of Christ Ministries, I began to wonder if we, as a church, really understood what it meant to be a part of this particular body of believers. We understood that God was doing something in our church. What I felt was that we were not always taking what we were doing as a corporate body and filtering it down to ourselves in our personal lives. As time passed, as I observed, and as I interacted with our membership my conviction increased. But, if there I was going to help our members understand how to be Ambassadors, I had to understand and believe it for myself. Continue reading “The Ambassador Way, Part 1: Defining Our Identity”

I just don’t want to preach this

The pastor of our church will be out of town for the next couple of Sundays. So, I have been asked to preach. Preaching can be a challenging task. Having to study the text, interpret it and then try to find ways of helping the congregation to apply it to their lives can get overwhelming.

I have felt this burden before, but it has been particularly poignant this week. As I have done my work to prepare, I have been confronted with some difficult choices to make. I have never shied away from saying what I believed needed to be said, and I will not begin today. What I have felt in a new and more direct way is that weight of this responsibility.

If you are a pastor charged with the teaching and preaching ministry of your congregation, I want to encourage you. You are not alone in your struggle to speak forth from the Word of God. It can be a daunting task to stand in front of your congregation and declare, “thus saith the Lord.” However, you cannot abdicate this responsibility to anyone else. You are the one who has been called and you are the one who responded in the affirmative.

I would also like to say a word to the listener of these messages. I know that there are those who do not take the preaching ministry as seriously as they should. I know that there are sermons that should never be preached. In spite of this there are many pastors who do take their charge to preach seriously. They recognize the great responsibility to not speak their own words, but to speak words that reflect the heart and character of God. If you are a member of church who has a pastor that takes great care and effort in preparing to preach; who does not take the prophetic role of their ministry lightly; who stands in the pulpit every Sunday after spending time with God through the week; if this is your pastor pray for them.

They need your prayers because sometimes there is a sermon that needs to preached that they simply do not want to preach. They recognize how difficult it will be to get it right. They feel the weight of the message because they have labored with the text and the God of the text. They understand that they may be misunderstood and that in the process some may start thinking differently about God.

These are just some of the many challenges that every preacher deals with on a regular basis. Pray for your pastor today. Pray for them often because you never know when they will be working on a sermon where they are fighting against the temptation to give in to the thought, “I just don’t want to preach this.”

A Letter to My Former Youth

To my former youth,

If you were a member of a youth ministry that I served, this is for you.

I offer my thoughts to you as an act of love. In light of recent events I want to offer one more lesson. Take it our leave it. That’s up to you. I just feel like I should say something. While there will be ongoing commentary as to what happened, how it happened, should it have happened, and what will have to be done by those on both sides, I feel compelled to offer some words to you, my former youth, who will and are living in a world very different from the one I grew up in. Continue reading “A Letter to My Former Youth”

Death, Mourning, and Pastoral Care

Today was one of those days when you just don’t know what to do. This morning I received word that a friend’s father had died suddenly. Within an hour of that message, a member of my church also faced the same reality. I shared with my wife that there is never a good time to hear news like this. As the person receiving the news about the news I was reminded again of how fragile, transitory, and temporary our journey upon this orb called Earth really is.

Death is a violation of our Souls

I hate death. It is the greatest enemy of our peace of mind. Those who do not think of death–either their own or that of others–live with a carelessness that is both unhealthy and dangerous. Then there are those who cannot get away from a morbid and fatalistic way of thinking about life. Both of these extremes are not helpful. We have to find a way to find balance when contemplating the finality of life.

I did not always believe what I am about to say. But, my thoughts have been impacted by my own experiences and being a witness to how my time on earth is being marked by the growth of my own children. If we are going to make the most of this life we must live in light of our own mortality. I may not like the idea that I will not live forever, but this should not be a hindrance to evaluating my life and making priorities based on the finitude of the same.

What this means is that we must make honest evaluations of who we are, who we want to be, and what we have to do to reduce the discrepancy between the two. Death is the grand equalizer. It puts all of humanity upon equal footing. There is no escaping death’s grasp or results. One day death will take us. The one question that lingers in my mind on days like today is this: When my time is up will I have lived in a manner meriting thi great gift of life?

We all have to ask ourselves this question. If we do not we risk squandering our lives on things that are vacuous and limited.

The truth of the matters is that death is a violation of our souls. It grips us and threatens to hold us captive. This does not need to be so. The Bible offers us a powerful reminder that God has dealt death a death blow. Death has been defeated. It has been stripped of its power and emptied of its venom. Our hope is not found in our ability, but in Christ’s capability to infuse our lives with his own. A mortal life must be sustained by the eternal life of the Son of God. Without his life in us, there is no life for us.

Mourning is a process

I want to offer a word of advice to those who, like me, are hearers of the news about the news. Please stop saying stupid things to those in mourning. The depth of sorrow felt is, at the very least, in proportion to the love felt for the one who was lost in death. If the one who has experienced the loss loved someone for three decades of life, do not expect them get over it or move on in a month, or a year, or whatever other time frame you think is appropriate.

Please, just shut up! Mourning is a process and the emptiness that is left is not something that can be quantified or timed. Yes, we should be on the look out for signs of prolonged depression and sadness. We should stay close enough to know when the one mourning is struggling to make sense of what has happened. We should offer words of comfort and reminders of our love for them. What we should avoid are assumptions of how long the wound a death makes will take to heal in a person’s life.

We should stop and listen more than trying to think of something to say. There is nothing to say. The death of a loved one cannot be truncated into the trite and religious platitudes so many times offered because we don’t know what else to say.

Pastoral Care is doing more by doing less

In my first official church job, I learned some valuable lessons regarding pastoral care that have helped me in the years since. My job as a pastor is just to be present when everyone else just wants to leave. One of the unspoken truths of ministry is that we will encounter people on the worst days and most difficult moments of their lives.

This is not a call to be a superman. This is a call to humble sacrifice. To mourn with those who mourn. It truly is one of the most difficult aspects of ministry. There will be time to speak the truth about salvation and heaven; hope and joy; peace and God’s promises. There will be time to be the “preacher”. The truth of the matter is that in times of mourning what most people need is just another fellow traveler willing to stop.

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I have been thinking about these things all day. I just wanted to put some of my thoughts down before the feelings dissipated.

How have you learned to deal with death and mourning?

What advise would you give to a pastor about caring for those grieving a loss?

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