Tag Archives: ministry

Sent Out (Part 4)

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“‘And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them.’  They went out and preached that people should repent.  They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.”
-Mark 6:11-13

  1. You need to prioritize.  The call CANNOT be compromised!  The disciples couldn’t stay where their mission couldn’t be fulfilled.  They could have stayed and pleaded with God to move, and poured themselves out in service and teaching, and waited until something happened…but they were charged with a mission from Jesus and knew that they weren’t being called to see results, they were being called to be obedient.  Sometimes Satan shows you an opportunity for something good to keep you from giving your all in something better…vision is vital!  And not only did Jesus tell the disciples to leave the place that didn’t receive them, He told them to “shake the dust off [their] feet”—essentially, to not even let any remnant of what was there go with them.  Too often we carry around the “dust” of past experiences where we failed, or weren’t received, or didn’t have our expectations met.  But Jesus wants us to shake that dust off and walk according to His revelation, and not to our evaluation!
  2. You need to be bold.  Were they scheduled at the local church or venue?  Did they have their arrival advertised?  No…they weren’t expected or planned for.  They didn’t have a place to go when they got there.  They simply went and did.  A lot of times we lack the courage to bring the kingdom because we’re not a renowned speaker or a well-known author or a recognizable ministry leader—but neither were the disciples!  It was their boldness and courage to respond to Jesus’ guidance despite the fact that no one knew who they were or where they came from that released the power of God to them.  God rarely calls us to do things we are completely confident in doing; it is our faith in HIS ability to pull through and HIS sovereignty that releases heaven.  The kingdom will come in strength when our faith in who He is overshadows our fear of who we are not!
  3. You need to be ready for God to show up! Jesus’ disciples fit each of these things, and the drove out demons and healed the sick.  Our God is extravagant, and mighty, and powerful, and creative, and majestic…He comes with faithfulness and fire…there is restoration and healing in His touch…and in His presence, all creation bows in worship.  EVERYTHING is subject to His name and His rule.  What He speaks becomes, and what He thinks IS.  And when we walk according to His way, led by His Spirit and taught by His word, submitting ourselves to His authority and surrendering our lives of death for His life of life, His fullness will follow…and that is a truly glorious and awesome thing!

Sent Out (Part 2)

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“Calling the twelve to Him, He sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits.  These were His instructions: ‘Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts.’”
-Mark 6:7-8

When Jesus sent His disciples out to do ministry on their own for the first time, he sent them with a lot of guidance that we should probably learn from, too.  A couple things from these verses that we need to be mindful of if we want to be as effective as the disciples were:

  1. You can’t do it alone.  Jesus had twelve disciples, but He paired them off…sometimes it may seem to us that God’s way of doing things will take more time, or will be more complicated, or just simply won’t be as effective as what we have in mind.  The disciples could have seemingly covered a lot more ground and done a lot more ministry if they had gone individually, but Jesus cut their numbers in half so that they wouldn’t be alone.  One of the biggest lies we can buy into is that the more spread out we are, the more we are able to accomplish.  Jesus knew otherwise.  He knew that the disciples would need each other; they would need encouragement, and they would need accountability, and they would need each other to fully invoke the presence of God.  Pride simultaneously convinces us that we are capable, and makes us entirely incapable.  God is King.  And sometimes we need to stop trying to be, and allow others to come alongside us so that we can accomplish things that are bigger than ourselves!
  2. You have to trust God to provide. God is waiting to fill us with His dreams and place His provision in our hands, but in order to receive we must first make room.  You will not have room for God’s kingdom in your life if your kingdom never gets smaller.  As Bill Johnson has said, “the further you go with God, the less you can take with you.”  Jesus didn’t want His disciples to take anything with them, NOT because He wanted them to have little, but because He wanted them to put all their trust in the Father so that He could provide for their needs.  Our dependence and trust in God is directly tied to our impact on the world, and if we do not need God for anything, we won’t know God for anything either.  But as soon as we make room in our hearts and put ourselves in positions of dependence, the Holy Spirit fills our hearts with holiness and our Father reaches from heaven to prove His faithfulness to those who love Him!

Sent Out (Part 1)

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In Mark 6, Jesus sends His disciples out to do ministry on their own.  It’s the first time they’ve been released from His side to bring the love of God into the world.  This is what Christ calls each and every one of His disciples—including you, and me—to do.  But Jesus is very specific with His disciples about how to do things…and it’s not because He wants to make things difficult, or just wants to make rules because He’s God and people HAVE to follow them.  It’s because He was equipping His disciples to make the biggest impact possible!  And if we want to make the biggest impact possible in our world…our time…our generation…we should take a few moments to learn from His advice!

Before Jesus even sends the disciples out, there are two things we should be mindful of:

  1. The disciples had spent a LOT of time with Jesus first. They had seen many miracles, heard many parables, and learned from  many teachings.  They had basically lived with the guy who preached the sermon on the mount, and who was constantly saying to them things like “Why are you so afraid?  Do you still have no faith?”  He was constantly challenging them and encouraging them.  This is SO important, and rightly the first thing to mention, because you cannot go in the name of Jesus if you do not have the heart of Jesus.  Demons and sicknesses were subject to the name of Jesus…but it was because the disciples were too!  Until we have truly founded our lives on the truths of the gospel and have matured beyond spiritual infancy (He 5:12-14), we won’t be sent out like the twelve were.
  2. The disciples were commissioned to initiate, not just appreciate. When Jesus sent His disciples out, a shift of perspective happened.  They weren’t part of the crowd anymore.  They weren’t the observers.  They became the teachers, and the prophets, and the healers, and the servants, to everyone else.  They became the DOERS instead of the WATCHERS.  And if we are going to bring the kingdom of God into the world we have to commit ourselves to the cause.  You cannot wait for someone else to lead the way…you have to be willing to blaze trails yourself (after all, we were not given spirits of timidity…2Ti 1:7).  When Jesus told Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against His church, He meant that the church was going to invade—not the other way around!  We’ve got to trust in the Lord and unashamedly parade the gospel of Jesus Christ into the darkest corners of the world.

More on the way…

Six Questions for the Ministerial-Minded

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I recently asked the small group leaders at 24-7 to ask six questions during their planning, and I thought I would share them with the internet world and expand on them a little bit… (almost all of them can be applied in some way to any area of ministry, so this may be applicable to everyone who is not a small group leader too!)

  1. Does it bring God glory and make much of Him? If what we are doing isn’t first and foremost bringing glory to God, then it is inevitably bringing glory to something else, and is no longer leading people TO His throne, but leading them AWAY from it.  It is really easy to include God without making it about God.  Instead of looking first at our lives and then searching for how God relates to them, we ought to look at God first, and then see how our lives relate to Him.  This keeps us focused on the fact that man was made in God’s image, and not the other way around!  Too often people live lives that include God but do not require Him…the first step in changing that is to model it in our own lives, and then to make it a foundational part of our ministry!
  2. Does it help people know God in a deeper and more relevant way? If we are not helping to lead people into a deeper relationship with God, we’re probably not leading them anywhere helpful at all.  A leader’s purpose is not to do things for others, but to help others get to a place in which they can do things for themselves.  If you aren’t continually encouraging and challenging people, you are actually building up glory for yourself by keeping them reliant on you to give them what they need.  Instead, we’ve got to lead in such a way that eventually makes us unnecessary because those we’ve been leading have become self-sustaining.
  3. Does it challenge people to live in greater integrity? We’ve got to make it a point to have people seek God’s approval, rather than man’s.  Many churches have made it far too easy to look Godly without being Godly, and that may be because they’ve forgotten that people aren’t held accountable to the church—they’re held accountable to God, who sees their hearts and knows their motives.  The world can’t be changed by liars…which is what we’re letting people be when we let them come to church and get involved in ministry without challenging them to be filled with the Spirit and live as they are called.
  4. Does it inspire people to make a heavenly impact on the world? The church isn’t a social club, it’s an army!  God gave us victory over every power and principality of the world, and yet many Christians keep that victory inside the walls of a building instead of storming the gates of hell and bringing the good news to the world in both word AND power.  Christianity can’t be allowed to settle as self-help…that’s an insult to the power of God that raised Christ from the dead (which is in you, by the way!).  Tekmito Adegemo said, “We cannot preach good news and be bad news,” and it’s bad news if the people who claim to love and serve a God of life, peace, hope, joy, and justice don’t do anything to bring those things into the world in a HUGE WAY!  Jesus said that we would make a greater impact on the world than even He did…so we’ve got to lead people into that promise and do everything we can to raise up people who are relentlessly in love with Christ and obsessed with a hope for the world.
  5. Does it create opportunity for vulnerability? It was the broken, the hungry, the sick, and the rejected that Jesus went to.  And I think there’s a whole lot more people who are broken, hungry, sick, and rejected than we perceive.  But it’s sometimes hard to admit that.  There are walls that are often built really high, and really thick, in people’s hearts…and those walls keep them from moving forward.  Leaders need to create an atmosphere of forgiveness if they want others to really start growing and dealing with their issues.  Grace has got to be our greatest asset.  And we need to not only notify people of grace, but give them opportunities to experience it for themselves by encouraging honesty and openness.
  6. Is it encouraging to people? JESUS IS GOOD NEWS! There is no reason anyone should be able to be around Christians and not be encouraged.  It makes sense that if we want people to grow, we ought to always be building them up!  A leader’s encouragement can act as fuel for a person’s progress.  There is always something in a person that is worth our encouragement…if there wasn’t Jesus wouldn’t have died for them!  We have to draw the purpose out of people and help them to discover and step into their gifts and talents.  And we’ve got to do everything we can to lighten their spirits, energize their minds, and inspire their hearts every time we get a chance!

A Few Thoughts

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God has been going crazy at 24/7!  Talk about JOYFUL worship!  Two reasons why I think it’s happening:

  1. Our services have been more about Jesus than our church.  When you have a church that spends all its time talking about how YOU are going to do things, what YOU need to change, how YOU felt about the music last week, what direction YOU think the church needs to be going, what YOUR doctrine statement is, how YOU are managing the church’s money, what YOUR vision for the church is, the things YOU think are important to have in a meeting…the souls God has placed under your leadership to steward are never led to the One from which all meaning and significance flows.  The moment even one single aspect of your ministry stops being about God, the entire ministry becomes irrelevant and pointless, and its purpose is reduced to simply making you feel good about yourself for “doing what God called you to do.”  God never calls people to do anything that makes them the hero.  Churches must be all about how GOD wants to do things, what GOD is pleased with, where GOD leads you, and what brings GOD the most praise and glory.
  2. We’ve prayed for a spirit of celebration instead of a spirit of success.  The reason we go to church services is not primarily so that God will do something, but because of what God has done already.  The Sabbath was the day God rested from working the other six days.  We should not ever rely on the one hour per week we have at church for God to do miraculous things.  We should be listening for God’s voice and acting on what He reveals to us on the other six days, and use Sunday to rest and celebrate.  So many Christian’s lives revolve around what they will get out of a church service, when really, they should be bringing something to put into the church service as a harvest of the work God has done through their faithfulness.  We sing songs to God because He is faithful and praiseworthy…but unless we truly believe that, our voices are empty, and unless we are seeking God in the other 167 hours of the week, we will have a much harder time truly believing.  Soren Kiergegaard said, “It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey”…obedience nurtures belief.  None of this means that God doesn’t do miraculous things and speak to people and change lives at a church service, in fact it’s often quite the opposite—but we ought to come to church services with joy and thankfulness more often than despair and demands.  God often only gives us more when we are good stewards of what we have already.

When we put God and His glory above ourselves and our own efforts, and when we are satisfied in Him instead of demanding of Him, INCREDIBLE THINGS HAPPEN.

How It Should Be

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Tim DeGroot knows what’s up with this blog post.  Simple and right to the point.  This is what I long for every week…if this isn’t our heart about church, we’re probably not aiming for the right things!  Jesus said to make disciples of all nations…when was the last time you envisioned an entire country being reborn in Christ and living in obedience to God?  We are called to do everything we can to make “nations of salvations.”

Dream big…because God is bigger!

ONE Lesson #4: Raising the Bar

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With God behind us, we can do anything (Php 4:13).  But when our knowledge goes too far beyond our practice, our belief becomes a burden because we’re not giving God space to fulfill the promises of scripture in our lives.  It’s easy to acknowledge what God says to us and still live lives that never go beyond what we can do.  As Christians, we’ve got to keep each other accountable, and not just with struggles or responsibilities, but with our faith at its core as well.  If we want to step into God’s dreams for our lives, we have to challenge each other to live in ways that require both God’s sustenance and each other’s support (both are necessary…Lk 10:27).

While explaining how individual’s personal walks with God play a part in their unity as a team, the youth staff at NewSpring Church said that they hold people to a standard they can’t live up to without Jesus and each other.  Leaders especially need to have unity between each other that is so solid that every person’s quiet time is vital to the operation of the ministry.  Holding each other accountable in this way not only makes sure that what you’re doing is always based in, surrounded by, and covered with scripture…it also ensures that your personal time with God becomes not only for yourself, but for your teammates too!

ONE Lesson #3: Purposeful

Posted by Steve on

I accidentally deleted this post from before, so I had to completely rewrite it…I have to confess an unreasonable amount of frustration after I realized what I’d done…hopefully I haven’t forgotten anything really significant!

The best thing a leader can do is NOT to be in front of people, dragging them behind.  The best thing a leader can do IS to be behind people, pushing them to go places on their own.  The primary purpose of leaders in ministry should be to encourage others into their gifts, to help others realize their callings, and to provide others with the means to accomplish what God has laid before them.  Brad Cooper said “People are saved from hell, but they are saved for a purpose.  If they did not have purpose in the kingdom, God would take them straight to heaven right when they became saved.”

Leaders—draw out the purpose in people.

Here are just a few ways we can do this (NOTE – this is by no means an exhaustive list):

1) Empower them. Too many leaders keep all the responsibility to themselves and don’t trust the people they’re leading.  If you don’t put trust in the people following you, they won’t be able to put trust in you either.  Remember than when the disciples came to Jesus about the five thousand hungry men, He told the disciples to feed them before He fed them Himself (Mt 14:15-16)!  Show them that they have purpose that is of equal importance to your own purpose (as it is given by the same God), and have the faith in them that they need to have in God.

2) Help those you’re leading do what you’re doing better than you. YOU ARE NOT ETERNAL!  Your time may be now, but it won’t be always.  It is our responsibility to build up followers of Jesus who not only do what we do, but do what we do better than we do it.  God wants His church to grow, and if we never help people to achieve more than we do, we become the biggest obstacle for our ministry.  You must lead in a way that makes you unnecessary because of how prepared you’ve made everyone else.  Follow Jesus’ example when He told His disciples that they would do “greater things than these;” we should be able to say that to the people we’re leading!

3) Humble yourself. This is the most important thing a leader can do.  The less glory you take for yourself, the more glory goes to God…He is most glorified when you are most humbled.   You are not leading your ministry, God is leading His ministry and just so happened to choose you as His vessel.  When we forget that, we become poor stewards—broken vessels—that end up “sinking” the opportunity He has given us.  This doesn’t mean we can’t be confrontational and confident: Jesus was both, but still willing to humble Himself further than we can really grasp (Php 2:8).  What it DOES mean is that we’ve got to put others before ourselves, and make sure our leadership serves them, rather than demanding that they serve us.

How else can you draw out the purpose in people?

Necessities

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I cannot tell you how excited I am for tonight. It’s our first 24-7 service of the new school year, and the leadership team has been praying so much for God to show up in an incredible way…I believe that God is going to answer that prayer!  When our ministry (which is EVERY effort you make to share the gospel and show the love of Christ, not just church-related jobs or groups) is supported by prayer and passion, it becomes unstoppable.

If you are involved in ministry and you are not constantly praying for God to bless what you are doing, you need to do one of two things:
1) START praying about your ministry, because you cannot do anything of significance without the Holy Spirit backing you up; and when you pray for God to move where you are investing your time, it shows Him that you really do care about it and believe that He can do anything and everything to make it succeed;
2) STOP doing it, because if God is not involved in your ministry you are wasting your time.

We have to constantly be in a place of helplessness and total reliance on God to come in power and change people’s hearts…you received the grace of God from God, not from another person—that doesn’t change with your ministry!  You never received the ability to give that…people only receive God’s grace from God.

If you are not passionate about your ministry, you need to do one of two things (this might sound familiar):
1) START praying for God to change your heart about what He has called and anointed you to do, and begin putting every effort you can into serving and building up the people you serve with.  God doesn’t ever want us to do things begrudgingly, but sometimes we have to press on through a lack of motivation and passion as an act of faithfulness to what God has chosen us for.  IF you are truly doing what God has called you to do, obligation will shortly become obsession when it is backed by a sincere pursuit of God’s heart.
2) STOP doing it, because the world has enough people who dirty God’s reputation by doing ministry half-heartedly and showing through their actions that the kingdom of God is not worth pursuing excellence for.  God has chosen you for a purpose, and if you are not seeking and fulfilling that purpose because you have planted yourself somewhere else, you are not only missing out on a life of meaning and fulfillment that only comes from serving God as He calls you, but you are also keeping those you are currently serving from meeting with God in the way that He desires, because He has chosen someone else to do what you’re doing with the passion that you don’t have.

Every single one of us has a purpose in the kingdom of God, and to fulfill that purpose we need to continually seek God’s blessing and direction, and constantly be evaluating where we’re at and comparing it to where God wants us to be.  When we are where God wants us and passionate about being there, miracles happen!

ONE Lesson #2: Sports and Math

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The vision that God gives us for our ministry to others is so vital to the life of that ministry.  Without God’s dream for our lives placed in our hearts, we will always burn out and lose focus.  But WITH God’s calling, we cannot STOP being on fire for it!

However…just because God gives you a vision doesn’t mean He gave everyone that same vision.  And sometimes it is really easy to try and force your vision onto others, because you think it’s right and it’s what God wants.  But you can only know what God has called YOU to do, not anyone else.  And forcing your vision onto others results in them burning out and losing focus, because you are not God, and He is the only one that can inspire people beyond their imaginations.  If you want someone else to be sold out on your vision, you’ve got to rely on the wind of the Holy Spirit to spread the fire in your heart to others – it cannot ever be forced on someone.  As Brad Cooper said, “Vision is caught, not taught.”

With that being said, every single person that is involved in one particular ministry MUST be sold on the vision.  When two people are working together but have different goals, it will cause a split.  So many different ministries fall apart because not everyone is sold on one vision, and end up trying to steer it in multiple directions.  “The vision must be identical or it’s ‘double vision,’ which is the same as ‘division,’” Perry Noble said.  When we have double vision, we can’t see straight, depth perception is gone, focus is impossible, and nothing is accomplished.  When we have division, things simply keep getting smaller and smaller, and there are remainders (that in ministry end up being people who need God to speak through you) that we push off to the side.  If we want our ministry to succeed, we have to all be clearly seeing the same goals, be in agreement on how God wants us to get there, and be absolutely zeroed in on our purpose…and when that happens, God makes things bigger and BIGGER and BIGGER and instead of leaving people behind in our hurry to accomplish our own individual passions (see 2 Samuel 4:4 for a Scriptural example) God continually brings people to us so that they can see and be a part of the unifying power of Jesus.