How to anticipate change

Jesus worked at preparing His disciples to be ready for the massive changes that were coming to His Kingdom. As a man that is experiencing huge changes in my own life, my interest in piqued at a huge new level.

He taught them several specifics (from Luke 9:37-50 that really help me:

1. Beware of memory creep.  It's amazing how memory embellishes, reduces, or changes over time. Jesus told us to carefully hear what he said, and remember it well lest we believe things that are simply not what He taught. Our memory needs to be refreshed with regular doses of the actual word of God, not what we heard about it or think we remember. Our memory is simply not trustworthy enough.

2. Don't worry about the pecking order. Jesus' disciples kept getting into arguments about wh0 would be the greatest. In times of change, it is amazing how much energy I am tempted to use up on worrying if other people like me enough, respect me properly, or think well enough of me. I need to let God worry about those things. 

3. Rethink "us" and "them".  One of the insiders came and told Jesus: "there is a guy over there who is casting out demons in your name. We told him to stop because he wasn't in our group." Jesus rebuked them and told them to believe people were for them until they knew otherwise. Don' be so quick to exclude others from your group, or chase them away.

I am getting ready to stay focused on Jesus no matter how much things change around me...

The Tulsa Team...and The River church

All this week, I have been eagerly tuning into to Twitter, blogs, and emails to learn how Jason Fitch and his team are doing in Tulsa. They are out there exploring and praying through their plan to plant a church there.

God constantly stretches me with this kind of stuff. I love that He does, and look forward to the next stretch. It seems like every day some new tension matures into some kind of brilliant insight into His heart and His plan. Love it.

Also today, I got an exciting email from our newest church opening -The River Church of Juniata County! The first sunday they expected maybe a 100, and got more than 250. This week 184 attendees,  and 6 new salvations! God's grace is bursting through some painful past challenges and pain, abd resulting an population growth for Heaven.

This country needs 1000,000 new churches just to get this thing started- to get The Water Level rising. My little ideas are a drop in the bucket, but every bucket starts to fill with some drop somewhere. It is an honor to be part of it, however small

change happens

Lots of things are changing right now. 

Politics, economy, maybe even your health. We all have to adjust to and adapt to change.

This weekend we kicked off a new teaching series to share what we are learning as we search the Word of God for clues on how to handle change. Cause change happens to us all, but not everyone handles it well.

I am very excited about this, because I think it will help a lot of people. Like me- I hope it helps me. I often mourn change and resist it, where I think I should celebrate it, grow through it, ad adapt more quickly.

Today we look at two guys who were coached through change by Jesus himself. They struggled to adapt to all that was going on, and how much of their thinking had to change for them to survive it.

Jesus had them re-tell their story. Then he helped them simplify it. It was not as complex as they thought when they heard themselves re-tell it to someone they thought didn't know the details they lived through.

Simplifying helps.

Then he helped them see the upside of the changes they were facing. As they began to see it, enormous energy surged into their tired bodies. Where they were dragging, they suddenly had plenty of energy to get a lot of things done that seemed impossible before!

Adapting to change is like that. Get God's heart on it, find the upside, and energy flows again.

The cold spiritual place where I live

check it here) called The End of Christian America. Interesting and sad stuff.

On my watch (I've been in ministry for about 25 years), Christianity in America has dropped precipitously, dropping an additional 10 points since 1990. Newsweek is declaring the triumph of post-christian culture, and how wonderful it is that we are more open politicallybecause of it.

One of the pieces of information that grabbed my attention quickly, was that the Northeast now leads the country in religiouslyunaffiliated people. This of course, is our area and our challenge.

As I pray about this, however, I tend to see one possible light at the end of this dismal tunnel. This could be what Seth Godin calls "the dip", that spot where developmental progress hits an all-time low just before it explodes into the greatest growth season of all time.

God help us turn this slide into a growth curve. God helps us somehow see Christianity grow in 'market share' in our lifetime. God help me not need to face retirement having spent my whole ministry working hard, but not seeing the turn-a-round that rescues my nation from hopeless and helpless decline.

It's interesting and sad that I don't know of anyone who has a definitive plan or idea that is likely to turn this nation around. We need leaders with such a passion, such a plan, and such a likely outcome!

"Give me souls or I die"

Learning through teaching

It often seems like God has me teach certain things so that I learn them better. I am amused and challenged by His graciousness in leading me to self-revelation.

Like, right now I am teaching The Developing Outreach and Discipleship course. And I am learning(perhaps a little re-discovering)  so much through the homework students return to me.

Like, the 4 interviews of unchurched friends. Tonight I was reading Charity's recent interview of a friend who when asked about why he doesn't go to church, cited how "judgmental" church people are, and how they think they are better than other people.

This is a common theme through almost all of the interviews of unchurched people. And the usual response of us church people is to agree with them and beat ourselves up for our judgemental ways!

But I think the Holy Spirit is reminding me of some deeper reasons. Like for example the conviction of the Holy Spirit! These interviewees are feeling conviction- convinced of sin and judgement. They feel it most in the presence of God- in church. And Satan uses it to keep them out of church, by "accusing" and by arming them with reasoning to stay away from God's presence.

I really need to pray more about how to help people overcome thins thing, and try God again. I really don't think that church people by and large, are all that judgemental most of the time. Do you?

What I think I need, is more prayer time considering how to help people overcome this stronghold. How to preach about it on the TV show so that people watching can be helped. How to help people who deign to visit once, consider coming back. How to disarm the accuser of the brethren in his accusations.

I believe there is gold in these ideas. God help me find it, for the sake of precious people who are trapped.

teaching leadership

Tonight I taught the opening class of my favorite discipleship teaching concerning the priesthood of the believer- leadership! 

Jesus teaching on leadership in Luke 10, is still the most amazing, mind bending, life giving stuff on the subject, ever. The more I teach it, the more I learn from it! I simply love his stuff.

We just covered the first few concepts that Jesus taught his up and coming leaders:

1: The harvest is plentiful; think abundance if you want to work for this guy. He is not a glass-half-empty thinker. Perhaps the most challenging thing in leadership is to think possibilities when others see problems.

2. The laborers are few: God is looking for people willing to work hard, smart, and focused on the harvest. These people live in an amazing place of God's provision. They are not asking God to provide while they sit under the shade tree waiting for Him to take care of them. They go out into the hot sun and labor in the harvest, because no matter how awesome the harvest is, it will not bring in itself.

3. Ask the Lord of the harvest: learn to seek the right source. I often tend to seek other opinions, other wisdom sources, other kinds of research. But the Lord of the Harvest wants me to seek His face first. where you go for wisdom first just might be your real God. James put it this way; a lot of us do not have because we do not ask. This is about taking responsibility to identify our desires and form real requests, not just expect God to know what we want. Grow up and ask clearly for real things.

4. To send forth laborers; the main request to God ought to be to send out more workers! The real task of leadership is to get people involved in real work!

Great, great stuff. I wonder if I ever get this stuff deep in my soul, that God will finally allow me not to teach it so often! I have no doubt that it is me He is trying to shape with this mind-bending stuff.