'Jesus even loves brummies'

Church planting pastors usually experience a painful crash course in leadership. Very few seminaries teach this well and very few churches model this well. So, young pastors led by a vision and driven with passion often run into a leadership brick wall. I remember the first church I led as Pastor and Chairman. The Board was more concerned about Robert’s Rules of Order than they were in Jesus’ Great Commission (Mt 28:16-20). I move that we postpone indefinitely the exclusion of the Holy Spirit in church leadership meetings.

A Tool for Leaders Leading Leaders

I have used one leadership tool in my 30 years of ministry and 21 years as a chairman of a non-profit Board more than any other tool. Perhaps it may help you as you lead a newly formed leadership team or an official board of directors. It may even be the difference maker in any leadership team you direct.

In leading other church leaders, ask them to weigh in and not just to buy in to a product (any idea, project, concept, or thing produced by the work of the organization).

Buying in is securing the commitment of affected parties to a decision where they have not been involved in its formulation (i.e., I need their buy in to my plans)

Weighing in is having an idea, concept, or vision and asking for key leaders to lend their ideas (weigh in) on its formulation (i.e., I want them to weigh in on this need we have)

Average leaders will appreciate your bringing a finished product to them for their approval. But great leaders will want to help shape it, refine it, and make it a better product. Which kind of leader do you want to lead your organization?

via A Tool for Building Great Leaders | The Resurgence.

Is The Main Thing The Only Thing?

When I was in Bible College I often heard an old preacher tell the students, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” Of course he wasn’t the first to say it, but I loved it. I still do.

Recently someone I respect asked me, “is it possible that within the ‘gospel-centered movement’ some people are making the main thing the only thing?”

 First Importance

It is a great question, and I think it does point to a problem of unhealthy reductionism among some well-meaning brothers and sisters. I believe this brother was essentially saying, “Look, our people need to know what their hope is before God. This is of first importance. But, they also need to know how to pray, fast, love, give, fight, and serve.” Of course, I agree with this sentiment.

There is more in God’s word than the gospel. God has given us his law to show us the way, uncover our corruption and condemnation, and point us to our need of redemption. There are commands to be obeyed, there is wisdom to learn and practice, and affections to feel and be moved by. But, the law itself is unable to create within us new hearts, or empower us to obey its demands. So let me say it this way: The gospel is the main thing, but it is not the only thing. However, it is the only thing that brings life, power, and transformation. The gospel isn’t everything, but it does connect to everything, and preachers and teachers in the church must be able to show that connection lest we allow the church to drift (or even be lead) into various kinds of hopeless, powerless legalism.

“The gospel is the main thing, but it is not the only thing. However, it is the only thing that brings life, power, and transformation.”

Learning and Reminding

Let’s take one example. I need to learn how to pray, but I also need to learn, and be reminded, that I can only pray because Jesus has made peace between God and sinners like me. I need a practical method for praying, but I also need the assurance that when I fail to pray, God’s love for me is secure and not based upon my performance. I need counsel on how to pray without ceasing, but I need the confidence that Jesus prayed perfectly in my place, prayed on my behalf, and currently intercedes for me. These gospel principles don’t merely compliment the command to pray, that satisfy it. They do not remove the need to pray, they give freedom and power to approach God with boldness. Without these gospel principles we are left to our own devices, and at least implicitly encouraged to trust in our work more than God’s grace.

The best teaching of the church preaches the “whole counsel of God,” unpacking all of the subject matter available within, but does so with the aim of grounding the hearers in the gospel. When we fail to do this we show that the functional main thing is the act of teaching or learning, rather than the gospel itself.

via Is The Main Thing The Only Thing? | The Resurgence.

Dr. Ed Welch talks about a fundamental way to help people in everyday conversations.

via CCEF | Restoring Christ to Counseling and Counseling to the Church.

Mark Driscoll gave this talk at the Resurgence conference in Orlando, Florida earlier this year. In this talk, he addresses the four theological distinctives of the current global movement in Christianity: Reformed theology, complementarian relationships, Spirit-filled lives, and missional churches.

via Four Points of the Movement | The Resurgence.

“Missional” is the current buzz word of the church. But what does it means to be missional? what is the “mission” of those being missional?

In one sense we are all missional, we live our lives with certain goals, aims and priorities of what we want to achieve.  So what is the mission of the church (global and local)?  As pastor of a local church i want to encourage and work alongside, if not always together, with other local churches and christian organisation because i think it brings glory to God when His family is united in purpose. However, i find myself very confused about what ‘mission’ some of these groups are on!  One group banging on about and prioritising the social justice issues, another community transformation, others to be seeker sensitive and other friendship evangelism? So biblical what is the mission of the church and how do these individual parts find there place and priority in the light of the great commission?

Here is an hour-long panel discussion at The Gospel Coalition with Matt Chandler, Kevin DeYoung, Jonathan Leeman, and Trevin Wax on the the Great Commission and the mission of the local church.

What on earth is the mission of the church?

<iframe src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/25624674?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0″ width=”400″ height=”225″ frameborder=”0″></iframe><p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/25624674″>Gospel, Mission, and the Church</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/gospelcoalition”>The Gospel Coalition</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

As a young church plant we are more susceptible to the changing wind of ‘missional’ visions as our vision is yet to be deeply rooted and embedded in the hearts and mind our the church’s DNA.  So should i work with or alongside other with a different twist or possibly distortion of that the mission God has called his people to.  I’m not talking about methodology here. i’m not really concern with how people fulfil the mission and mandate that Christ has given to us, which he was given by His father but surely as his people we should have clarity on what the mission is.  If we do work with others with a different ‘mission’, i know that i’ll be exposing the church to at best misplaced passion and at worst wrong and faulty theology. i desire unity but i also want to protect the sheep from making things of secondary importance the main thing.

hope you find the discussion helpful

How does a church bring God glory in the world? Jesus put it very simply in the Great Commission:

Go into all the world and make disciples, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you

God receives glory through more and more people becoming followers of Jesus. Every local church is meant to be a community of disciples, each and every one of whom is involved in some respect in making more disciples. It is multiplicatory.

“Missional” is a current buzz word. All it means is having a commitment (as individual disciples and as a local church of disciples) to doing what Jesus said: making more disciples. Witnessing, praising God to the world, calling others to come and be worshippers and followers with us.

Therefore the goal of all leadership, all ministry, is growing and equipping missional disciples to do this. A church is not just the church when we are gathered for a couple of hours on Sunday. We are God’s missional community when we are dispersed in our work places, families and everywhere we go for the other 110 hours a week we aren’t asleep, living for Jesus and speaking for Jesus. The role of biblical leaders is to equip all the disciples to go there and make disciples.

God gives leaders to churches to facilitate every single disciple in participating in various ways according to their spiritual gifts in disciple-making ministry. Every disciple has unique disciple-making opportunities that nobody else has, because they have unique networks of relationships. A senior medic said to me a couple of weeks ago that his clinical director had asked him an astonishing question about the Lord out of the blue, and he instantly had an opportunity to encourage the man towards Christ. Disciple-making.

God does not give leaders to remove the burden of having to make disciples from everyone else and just do it themselves. It is worth leaders and congregations taking a long hard look at everything they do to see whether each activity has a connection with biblical disciple-making to the glory of God. Every home group leaders, every Sunday school teacher, every compassion ministry leader, every preacher. If it doesn’t, we must ask “why are we doing this thing?”

Just think for a minute of the difference in effectiveness between a church where everyone has a correct concept of themselves as a disciple-maker, and one of the same size where everyone thinks that is the job of one or two leaders. The gospel effectiveness of the second is a fraction of the first. Woe betide the leaders who take disciple-making away from every disciple and keep it all for themselves. They decimate the maturity of the rest of the disciples, take away their joy in witness and radically diminish the glory that goes to God.